No, I don’t think for one second that they care about getting people housed.

I never underestimate the capacity of capital to fuck shit up. I imagine some dill weed with more money than God is going to monopolize the rights, cut all the trees down that they can, and sit around waiting for someone to come begging to pay them a grip for that lumber. When a buyer never materializes, it’ll all just be left to rot under armed guard or burned to keep people from doing anything useful with it. Then they’ll turn around and get a fat tax write off / insurance payout, do five more lines of blow to see if they feel anything yet, and call up the five senators they bought this year to encourage them to send more (poor) drug users to private prisons.

Yeah, you need to cut or burn the new growth; it’s those old, huge trees that people want to cut down that survive the fires and re-seed the forest afterward.

On another thread, another lemming explained that our logging industry can’t even use the trees from national parks because we’ve specialized all of our mills to specifically sized (and possibly specific kinds of?) trees. The trees from national parks would basically just end up being used for pulp instead of building homes or something.

I was just in a national park and thinking to myself “damn, this place has too many trees! We should really cut a bunch down to make room for a Wal-Mart.”

Glad to hear it! That’s all welcome!

I just googled Phacelia and holy moly! That looks amazing! Yeah, where I’m at, the miner’s lettuce really only grows in partially shady low spots down here, the kind of stuff that’s usually overtaken with stinging nettle, sow thistle, and fescue. It’s much more common to see it in damp, low lying, shady areas in the hills at my latitude.

This is really great stuff! You know, take it or leave it, I run a Lemmy community for California native plants at https://lemm.ee/c/ca_native_plants (I forget the right way to link a community on Lemmy, sorry). I’d really appreciate it if you’d indulge me with some pictures and updates there! I plan on sharing my own progress as things get out of the seedling stage.

Wow! I’m jealous. I always assumed that calochortus and Triteleias and Brodiaea would be difficult to start from seed; I’ve only ever seen them growing in the Sierra mountains and foothills, though I’ve got a book that talks about how the Spanish saw them blanketing vast swaths of the valley. I’ll take a note of these, S. Bipinnata and p. Nodiflora are new ones on me. I’m also impressed that you’re growing miner’s lettuce, I’ve seen it growing wild in the valley, but it’s rare ime.

I’ve been trying to work up the gumption to try growing narrow leaf milkweed, but I always talk myself down because they seem to be very fickle germinators. Kinda similar, I tried growing some Yerba Santa, but they’re also apparently very fickle about sprouting conditions and I didn’t get any from the last packet I ordered.

A major cultural component of the US is the cult of wealth. You’re kind of taught/expected to put forward the veneer and appearance of economic success and wealth, even if you are neither. Fundamentally, Americans have been taught a sort of economic moralism that goes that good people become wealthy people and bad people become poor people, ergo the wealthy are good and the poor are bad. So, you want to project that you’re a good person, and one way to do that is projecting the appearance of wealth. Shit drives me bananas, man.

I live in California’s central valley. It’s a big area that’s kind of similar to the serenghetti in terms of ecology in that it’s technically a desert purely by rainfall measures, but it’s a seasonal wetland in practice. Suffice it to say that bugs used to be off the fucking hook here; if you drove for forty minutes, your car was caked. Now, you barely get six bugs. Scared the shit out of my nature-loving mom when I pointed that out.

I edited this in after you posted. Right now I’ve got California Poppies, Black Sage seedlings and Coyote Mint seedlings. There’s an epilobium species growing here that might be native and edible or non-native and poisonous (I’m an experienced and cautions forager; seems like epilobiums can be kinda bastards to tell apart, so I’m not going to proceed further there), and red clover. I’m looking into getting some Nodding Needlegrass, Three-awn grass, and some Triteleia spp. I was looking at Owl Clover, but it’s parasitic on grasses, and I don’t to piss off the neighborhood by setting off an epidemic of parasitic owl clover (my power level isn’t quite that high yet). I’ve also scattered some nettle-leaf hyssop seeds, but I seem to be coming up zeroes on that front. Now, my neighbor is a heavy irrigator and always floods my side yard after years of asking them to manage it better. Nothing grows there but mud or water-loving non-native grasses, so I got my hands on some cattail seeds (and dill and fennel) and scattered them in there. I’m curious to see if I can get some cattails going.

Yeah, fescue is not my friend. I’m looking into growing some native clump grasses and clovers and replacing my lawn with that. There’s some downright interesting plants that used to be all over the San Joaquin valley. Drives me batty when people say that nothing used to grow here before it was settled and cultivated.

Right now I’ve got California Poppies, Black Sage seedlings and Coyote Mint seedlings. There’s an epilobium species growing here that might be native and edible or non-native and poisonous (I’m an experienced and cautions forager; seems like epilobiums can be kinda bastards to tell apart, so I’m not going to proceed further there), and red clover. I’m looking into getting some Nodding Needlegrass, Three-awn grass, and some Triteleia spp. I was looking at Owl Clover, but it’s parasitic on grasses, and I don’t to piss off the neighborhood by setting off an epidemic of parasitic owl clover (my power level isn’t quite that high yet).

Yeah, exactly right. I was fucking flabbergasted at first, but I had to make sure dude understood what he was doing to earn his bread

This is fascist talk. Humans can and have co-habitated with the ecology of the earth for as long as there’s been hominids, except for the last 300-150 years or so. Let me ask you: what changed?

I dead ass had a pest company come to my door and offer to flush my lawn with pesticide to get rid of all the bugs in it. I said “my guy, did you know that global insect populations are crashing and we’re heading towards complete ecological collapse? I recognize everyone’s gotta get their bread, but this is pretty bad stuff you guys are doing.” He seemed interested and moved on. I doubt he quit the company, but a boy can dream.

Edit: no HOA, and my neighbors dgaf, so I can be a proud dandelion enjoyer. Planting tons of natives, we’ll see how it goes.

I would be very proud to say I had them on hand, but I don’t. I’ll look around, and share if I find them.

There’s a number of other studies that show that, overall, letting people go unhoused is far, far more costly than just fucking housing them. It’s not just paying for the cops and demo teams to chase them around, you’re also paying for excess use of medical services that wouldn’t be taking place otherwise, lost revenue because of people wanting to avoid the homeless, and a bunch of other things that all just pile up. It doesn’t help that some startups have entered this space and you’ve got cities like San Francisco paying them something like 40 or 80 thousand a year to keep the homeless in a fenced off area in a tent grid. It doesn’t really fix anything, it’s just another shitty, expensive band-aid whose funding could have gone to fixing the problem but didn’t.

Thanks, homie. Yeah, I’ve been pleasantly surprised. I know I’ve got a long way to go, but I’m focused on trying to build a better city for my kids.

It is in the valley, so, yeah, there’s a lot of default car brain to fight. That said, a lot of people I’ve spoken with here tend to agree with me, and really dislike being tied to a car. Even the mayor said that he agreed in spirit, but there was just no way to fund it. I think the gap that must be crossed here is much smaller than I expected going into it.

Idk, I give the mayor a lot of shit, but he’s a pretty alright dude. He’s constantly out volunteering in the community to pick up trash or feed the homeless. He also rides our pretty poor bus network every day.