This is excellent. Now that it’s fall and the trees in my city are bearing, I’m always bummed out by the lack of free and open fruit trees, which very often fit the profile of the trees planted in city parks. The only difference is prettier springs and more fruitful falls (lit+fig). This particular experiment is made possible buy the sterile fruit trees planted as part of a city initiative, but the guerrilla planting of fruit trees is always possible, as well as finding older fruit trees and grafting new varietals on to create a healthier tree.
This is just glorious!
For anyone who doesn’t grow, grafting is a trick you can do with many plant species. Because plants have no immune system, you can cut a branch from one tree and attach it to another tree, and that branch will continue to grow. Bind the two plants at the join for long enough, and the two will grow together, giving you, basically, a Frankentree. Sometimes the plant tissues will even grow into each other, so you end up with single branches that have living tissue from both plants in them, like some kind of chimeratree.
They don’t even need to be the same species (though they do need to be compatible). A lot of plants you can buy from professional growers are actually grafted. It’s quite common to take a plant with a strong root system and graft the top half of another plant to it – this can let you grow plants in environments which wouldn’t normally support them. If you ever see chilli plants on sale, it’s quite common for them to be grafted. Look for the join, low down the stem, a few centimetres above the soil.
You can be audacious with this kind of thing, and grow fruit branches on trees that wouldn’t normally bear fruit, or you can even grow one tree with multiple types of fruit.
Terrible stories of atrocities included in an updated map and archive of Australia’s massacres, which new research reveals continued into the 1920s.
the myth that the Aboriginal people just melted away of their own volition is still tacitly accepted in Australia because the alternative is too awkward.
On this day, 5 November 1916, at least five members of the revolutionary Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) union were massacred by police and bosses’ thugs after about 300 IWW members (aka: Wobblies) went from Seattle by two steamships to support striking workers and free speech in Everett, Washington. Only one of the steamships, the Verona, which carried over 200 of the IWW members, got to the dock in Everett. More than 200 police and anti-union vigilantes were waiting for them. When asked by the Sheriff Don McRae who their leader was, the Wobblies on the boat replied, “We’re all leaders.” Moments later the boat, with Wobblies as well as non-IWW affiliated passengers and crew, was under intense gunfire (two vigilantes were even accidentally shot from behind by their fellow vigilantes). In the chaos, the steamship left back for Seattle, notifying the Calista to do the same. Upon return, 74 Wobblies were arrested (being acquitted some six months later).
More info, including about the role played by women in the dispute, in our podcast: https://workingclasshistory.com/2018/12/02/e16-women-in-the-early-iww/https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1255436281308186/?type=3
This blog is mostly so I can vent my feelings and share my interests. Other than that, I am nothing special.
If you don't like Left Wing political thought and philosophy, all things related to horror, the supernatural, the grotesque, guns or the strange, then get the fuck out. I just warned you.
