ecology

It was as if humans were studying the ecology by testing it to destruction, in a kind of huge, one-off, millennial experiment. Maybe when we've reduced the whole thing to the grass and the ants, she thought bleakly, we'll understand how it all used to work.

For a while, therefore, it looked like the great heat wave would be like mass shootings in the United States—mourned by all, deplored by all, and then immediately forgotten or superseded by the next one, until they came in a daily drumbeat and became the new normal.

Everyone alive knew that not enough was being done, and everyone kept doing too little. Repression of course followed, it was all too Freudian, but Freud's model for the mind was the steam engine, meaning containment, pressure, and release. Repression thus built up internal pressure, then the return of the repressed was a release of that pressure. It could be vented or it could simply blow up the engine. How then people in the thirties? A hiss or a bang? The whistle of vented pressure doing useful work, as in some functioning engine? Or boom? No one could say, and so they staggered on day to day, and the pressure kept building.

The struggle between life elements is the struggle for the free energy of a system.

Clearly, pairing this and other endophytes with agricultural crops can increase yield, decrease disease, and reduce the need for fertilizers and insecticides.

I believe fungi have evolved to support habitats over the long term, protecting generations hundreds of years into the future. Saprophytic mushrooms gobble up debris fallen from the trees and prevent invasion by parasites. The mycorrhizae channel nutrients, expand root zones, and guard against parasites. Similarly, endophytic fungi, less well understood, chemically repel bacteria, insects, and other fungi.

A variety of forms of mycelial mats can prevent downstream pollution. I am keen on using bunker spawn—mycelium in burlap sacks—to build mycelial buffers to capture microbes and nutrients. This subject is discussed in greater detail here.

A couple of saprophytic mushroom species I have found to promote the growth of several crops are the garden giant (Stropharia rugoso annulata) and the elm oyster (Hypsizygus ulmarius). See chapter 12 for information on incorporating these mushrooms using companion planting strategies.

Just as there is no barrier between humans and other beings, neither is there a strict hierarchy. Non-human entities do not exist merely to provide for the needs of man. Nor are they all-powerful gods who run the world as they wish. The world does not revolve around humans or around any other particular group of beings.

"The usual state of nature is recovering from the last disaster,"

"If these de-growth people want to reduce population, they should volunteer to be first."

"The de-growth crowd back on Earth doesn't seem to realize that others will expand to fill whatever space they give up."

Another April favorite is the wasabi-like Eastern native toothwort, a groundcover with piquant horseradish-flavored roots and leaves. I think a commercial producer could market the roots to the finest sushi restaurants.