A plant newsletter is here and so are you, what are the odds.
Time to leaf all those worries behind.
I’m hearing a horn honking. Doesn’t that seem a little unfair? Like you could just be in your own domicile and all of a sudden, a blaring alarm-y noise just streaks through the room? It makes me want to teleport to the nearest forested hilltop. But nature can be loud too. Forests go into sonic hyperdrive, when it’s windy. You hike through them in a sharp wind and wonder if you’re in a car wash or something. The trees have their own secrets for rustling in unison; they know it well.
It’s soothing and sometimes a little unnerving but mostly soothing.
I saw this weird illustration on Reddit the other day and just thought, ok, I probably need a long nap in this machine:
The internet says this is Baumkronenweg Park, Kopfing, Austria, and the photo is by Anne Rongas. I can’t find the original, but it does seem like something that would exist in that park, which appears to be a cross between a low-key summer camp and an upscale spa. Let’s all just dream of going there, ok? Meantime, if you haven’t tried this yet, you can listen in on various forests with tree.fm. But, a word of warning, some are kinda cacophonous. There’s a lot of life in there.
What the plants are reading
In college I took a weekend geology field trip to this region, and: can confirm, the landscape of the Driftless Area feels otherworldly:
We were people of the prairie. We were people of the trees. We were the maple and birch, the oak and elm. We were corn and wheat and soy, we were the black earth that grew it. We were bluestem and switchgrass, we were rivers and lakes. And out past the horizon of hardwood and pine, we were mountains. — “The Landscape that Made Me,” by Melissa Faliveno in The Paris Review
Haven’t been able to leave your house in nearly a year? Welp! You can scroll around this photo competition from Wiki Loves Earth and feel like you took a little trip.
Orchidaceous is a word, and it was apparently really popular between 1850 and 1875 but I have no idea why. Feel free to copy this example sentence, though, “The singer's outfit was colorful, shiny, and downright orchidaceous.” I think you’ll find tons of uses for that.
Speaking of orchidaceous, this library that looks like a shelf of books sprouting out of the ground is truly stealing the show. I want to grow to there.
Or, maybe your plant-book Venn diagram could be fulfilled by writing a book in ink made from oak trees. I won’t tell you how to live your dreams.
Or you could start planting a garden in space, if that’s more your thing. Lots of options. Plants love space, it seems, according to a scientist with the best job title of all time:
“This experiment is just really amazing; it shows the skill of the astronauts, the care that they take to do things, and also the differences that you see in microgravity,” Veggie Program Plant Scientist Gioia Massa said. “Fluids behave very differently in space than on the ground. The behavior of fluids – in this circumstance – seems to have helped the plants.”
What else?
Well, you might find a sea lion in the forest and I think you need to be prepared.
In my hometown of Buffalo, the Albright-Knox art museum constantly does incredible things, including featuring this rad art installation.
And then, companion activity for the kiddos, tree of strength diagrams! Super cute.
Although I realize that this was a legit scientific experiment it also seems to really embody how my standards for “this is fine” have morphed over the past year.
And finally, this seems about right:
May you hear what you need today,
Lindsay
Administrative P.S.
Did you miss the last issue? Here it is.
This newsletter sends on Ẅednesdays because Ẅednesday is a great day to celebrate Vegetation 🌱 It arrived on the right day today.
Feel free to reply to this, and I will get it like a regular email! Send me links or personal blooms for my entertainment. I love them all.