This Moonth I went to the New England Organic Farmers Association (NOFA) annual meeting at Hampshire College, in Massachusetts. I always try to attend the Friday night lecture because it never fails to inspire me. This time the speaker was Michael Phillips, acclaimed author of “Mycorrhizal Planet” and other volumes. He spoke about root synergy and the soil-food web and how fungi live in the root systems of plants. This partnership developed in the very early history of life on our planet when chlorophyll plants combined with fungi that could absorb carbon and minerals. This symbiotic relationship is what enables plants (and fungi) to feed themselves and each other.
Fungi are able to bring in nutrients from beyond the end of a root and can break down organic matter from as far as twelve feet away from a plant. Fungal pipelines fuse together and form a mat that can also send nutrients to other plants that need them. This mycorrhizal network is one of the ways that plants communicate with each other, some of the softwood species of trees such as Alder, Willow, Birch, Maple and Poplar have fungi that dissolve minerals from rocks and pass them along to other plants like clover.
Water and other nutrients are passed around the plant community via this “underground economy”; plants and fungi make decisions about what to pass around and who needs it most. It’s a kind of “social Democracy” where more is sent to those that need it. Fungi mediate the distribution of nutrients so that no one plant or tree has too much, and so that others do not lack.
Phillips spoke about the importance of leaving plants undisturbed over the winter – that roots should be left in place to rot naturally, because fungi in the roots hold on to lipids all winter. He said non-disturbed ecosystems have as many as fifty species of fungi that each pull different nutrients and operate at different times of the year. They will even deliver water to distant plants during drought conditions.
In other words, cooperation and support networks are the natural state of things and we humans can learn from that. Fungus and bacteria work together to dissolve bedrock and that mineralization, combined with the pipelines of the fungal mats underground, are what make the metabolic process in plants efficient and also repels insects when the plants are well mineralized and healthy.
Nitrate fertilizers and herbicides are destroying the fungal mat upon which all plants on Earth depend. Heavy equipment used in farming, construction and logging does this too, by smashing and compressing the delicate fungal mats in the soil. Our culture is literally killing the soil that feeds it.
So what to do? If you live in an area where the soil has been sickened or killed by chemicals, go to a natural forest or wild meadow ecosystem and dig up several cups of live, healthy soil. Put that soil in water and stir it well. Then spray or spread the mixture on the sickened land. Let the microbes do the work they know best.
As Rudolph Steiner once said; “Everything in nature is interdependent. Everything”. If we as a species are to survive, we will need to become mature enough to recognize this truth. So far the fungi and bacteria are wiser than us. They are, after all, our elders on the planet.
SOME UPCOMING EVENTS
- Saturday, September 30
2:30 pm – 5 pm
HERBS TO COMMUNICATE WITH THE SPIRITS OF THE DEAD
Just in time for Halloween!
At the Sirius Community, Shutesbury, MA - October 14, 2017 – April 2018
Intro to Herbalism and Self Care~ A Six Month Intensive
Two Saturdays a month, 1-5 PM near Amherst, MA, PLEASE MESSAGE ME WITH YOUR INTEREST.
Western Materia Medica, Chinese 5 Element Theory, Flower Essence Counseling, Formula making, Hands on Herbalism, Ethnobotany, Herb walks, Case taking and more. - Sunday, October 15th
Celebrate Samhain!
A talk about using herbs to communicate with the Spirits
10 am to 6 pm at the Courtyard Marriott
2200 Southwood Drive, Nashua, NH 03063 - Help Create a Druid Film Featuring Iron Age Herbalists and Healers!
Based on the Priestess of the Forest trilogy of Celtic novels the film will be set in ancient Ireland. It features strong female characters, Iron Age Herbalists, warriors, Druids, and early Christian missionaries.We have a script, a director, a lead actor and actress, a composer, and a film editor. The next step is to film a scene to put on Yahoo, as a way of attracting a major producer. We need YOU to become a patron with on-going support, or just to make a one-time gift!
Patrons receive bonuses and perks!
How to Contribute: Patreon - A Botanical tour of Ireland!
May 12-23, 2018.
If you have ever wanted to roam the Emerald Isle and spend time with its trees, herbs and flowers this might be for you! Meet local Irish Herbalists, story tellers, crafts people, roam the Burren and sacred sites.
Trip Cost Includes: The cost of the trip is €2595 (Euros)(1 Euro is about $1.16) and includes; Lodging: Rooms are double occupancy (extra fee for private room) Meals: Three meals a day are included in package. You will be fed with wonderful nourishing food both while dining out and other meals catered by specially selected chefs. One lunch and one dinner are on you own (not included in price) where you can choose where you wish to dine in two different towns we will be visiting. All entrance fees. All classes, instruction, and educational materials.
Transportation: from Shannon Airport (our meeting place) to the accommodations and all destinations throughout the entire journey. Our own private, comfortable bus and incredible driver, Fred. The trip costs DO NOT include round trip airfare to Ireland, or items of a personal nature (telephone calls, personal tips, etc), alcoholic beverages at meals. Please inquire now about private rooms, as there is limited availability and an additional fee.
Below you will find the usual collection of Archeology, Nature, Climate, Celtic, Religion, Fairy, Herb and Ethics news.
*Reminder – Yule is coming! You can purchase books from this website and get a signed copy with a personal note from the author!* (If it’s a gift please specify who you want the book signed to)
ARCHAEOLOGY NEWS
- 29,000-year old Venus of Dolní Věstonice, the oldest known ceramic artifact
- A dictionary of the oldest written language now free online
- 12 ancient Egyptian inventions
- A Pictish fort is unearthed in Scotland
- Two ancient Roman sarcophagi found
- New Irish archeology finds from the Sallins bypass
- Scotland: Rome’s final frontier (video)
- World’s oldest trigonometric table?
- The world’s oldest wine
- Picking apart the Picts
- Ancient Mesopotamian inventions
- The oldest beer recipe in history
- The Finnish Kalevala Epic and beer making
- Full text of the Kalevala epic on beer making
More… - Human sacrifice in the Iron Age
- Is this a 5000 year old depiction of an eclipse?
- An ancient Roman painting from Herculaneum
- A massive Roman villa in Sicily
- The earliest surviving secular English song
- Roman finds in Exeter
- A 1000 year old Viking ring fortress
- A hoard of Saxon gold (video)
- A 3000 year old female statue found in Turkey
- Ancient bison hunts in the American west
- A broch is Scotland is being excavated
- A 2,500 year old “Goddess” from Scotland
- A 5000 year old city in Turkey is excavated
- A Celtic burial in Slovenia
- What did Old Norse sound like?
- Roman remains found in Exeter city
- The roots of the Mesopotamian civilization
- A dig in Turkey yields 13 human skeletons
- Structure of a formal Roman ritual
- A Siberian female mummy’s head
- Brehon Law – fasting against the king
- A Bronze Age warrior discovered
- A 14,000 year old village in Canada
- Glauberg, Germany, Celtic tomb and hill fort
- Earliest depiction of a Witch riding a broomstick
- Africans in Roman Britain
- British cave dwellers ate their dead
- Bones from cannibalistic cave dwellers in Britain show symbolic markings
- Shrunken heads, bone collection to be digitized
- Evidence that ancient farms began in jungles, earlier than thought
- A Roman coin is found in Orkney
- A Siberian Ice Mummy
- A Pictish hoard
- A Roman site in southeastern France
- Boudicca, a Celtic queen who fought the Romans
- 6000 year old wood carvings unearthed in Wales
- Listen to the oldest Norse song, the “Codex Runicus”
- Paintings and inventions of Leonardo da Vinci in animation
This painting is missing from the animation - New discoveries in the City of David, Jerusalem
- The “Black houses” of Scotland and Ireland
- Swabian caves and cave art given UNESCO World Heritage status
- Sheela-na-gigs
- A 2000 year old Roman city is found in France
- An ancient female from Egypt had tattoos
- Ancient Irish funeral practices
- Human sacrifice in the Iron Age
- Mythical folklore and social networks
HERB NEWS
- Immune tea blend
- Elderberry tincture
- Elderberry syrup with goldenseal and Echinacea
- Zucchini spice bread
- Heather and Mugwort Mead
- Wild Lettuce for pain
- Vitex Agnus Castus for period pains, hot flashes
- Japanese Knotweed
(It is a food in the orient. You can eat the spears in the spring, they are sweet and very nice in a pie or a crumble. And the root makes a cure (yes cure) for Lyme disease. And the bees love the flowers, watch them go crazy over the blossoms. There might be medicine there for them too. This is another misunderstood plant that westerners haven’t learned to properly manage. Same with Kudzu which is a bio-fuel, a food and also medicine. Nature in Her wisdom is always trying to help us, give us things, but we aren’t always bright enough to notice.) - A map of medicinal plants and where they are found in the USA
HEALTH NEWS
- Texas women are now forced to take out extra health insurance if they want to be covered for abortion in case of rape, fetal abnormality
- Dietary guidelines: eat less salt, sugar, and more nuts (reminder – peanuts are not actually nuts. They are a legume)
- Report from the epicenter of the opioid epidemic
- Is sugar as addictive as cocaine?
- The true cause of most heart disease
CLIMATE, SCIENCE AND NATURE NEWS
- Off shore wind farms could mitigate hurricanes
- The Salter Sink is a way to cool ocean water, lessening the strength of hurricanes
- Hurricane Harvey flooding was made worse by lack of building regulations in Houston (just as Katrina was made worse by the destruction of wet lands)
- The sun is not an influence on global warming Max Planck Institute finds
- The science of eclipses throughout history
- Eclipse pictures from the USA, August 21. 2017
- More science pictures
- Charming news about quarks
- The ancestor of all flowering plants
- Diamonds rain down on Neptune and Uranus
- New pictures of Antares
- Why horses have only one toe
- Court rejects SE USA pipeline project citing climate concerns
- A bizarre Jurassic dinosaur
- The missing link in dinosaur evolution?
- The axis of climate evil and global warming denial
- The Moon had a magnetic field earlier than thought
- Florida is not exactly ready for sea level rise
- A shark takes a camera into its mouth (video)
- Frog evolution explained
- A ginger colored dinosaur
- Global ocean circulation appears to be collapsing due to global warming
- Sacred geometry and fractals in nature – 25 photographs
RELIGION NEWS
- Scotland: the return of a 2,500 year old Goddess
- Iceland bans American televangelists
- Catholic church in UK says child sex abuse victims “consented” and deserve no compensation
- Catholic bishop would rather go to prison than report pedophiles to the police
- Could the neo-Nazis please stop using our sacred cultural symbols?
- Pagans demand return of church buildings stolen 1300 years ago
- Women are to blame for pedophile priests according to Catholic cleric
- Holy wells, shrines of redemption
- Who was the real Mary Magdalene?
- Lughnasad in Ireland
- Lughnasad in Scotland and other places
- Study confirms link between faith and climate change denial
CELTIC NEWS
FAIRY NEWS
- Why the Fairy Forts deserve our respect
More… - Expert: Fairies are disrupting a road in Kerry
- Fairy trees in Finland (video)
- The home of the King of the Connacht Fairies
POLITICS AND ETHICS
- Robert Mueller just blocked Trump’s ability to pardon himself, his family and friends
- George Will: Trump has a dangerous disability
- Just a reminder – Mike Pence once pleaded with Congress not to spend much on hurricane Katrina relief
- Is Trump about to resign? His ghost writer (Art of the Deal) thinks so
- The real story behind all those Confederate statues
- The relevance of Nazi Germany to what is happening in America today
- White Nationalists get genetic tests then don’t like results
- Republicans have become everything they claim to loathe
- Why the biggest problem with Congress is MEN
- Pipe line protestors, including Standing Rock Sioux, arrested in Otis, Massachusetts
- Las Vegas hackers broke into US voting machines in just 90 minutes.
- A Harvard psychiatrist on the damage Trump’s speech to the Boy Scots did to young minds
- A proud Eagle Scout turned in his badge after Trump’s speech
- Proposed VA benefit cuts anger elderly, disabled vets
- Putin’s theft of billions exposed in Senate Committee hearing
- Trump is now directly implicated in covering up the Russia scandal
- 56 admirals and generals issue statement against Trump’s transgender ban
- Conservatives wasn’t to eliminate the independent, nonpartisan CBO because it conflicts with their idea of “truth”
- Trump’s ignorance revealed in embarrassing WSJ interview
- Former Scottish leader says Trump is a “nincompoop”
- Trump supporters learn they will lose their land to the border wall
- China-like wages are part of the US employment “boom”
- Salon: Trump is a damaged pathetic personality
- Trump’s grandfather was a pimp and tax evader, his father a member of the KKK
- Michael Moore on Trump, Brexit, Venezuela, etc. (video)
- Republicans seek to legalize running over protestors with cars
- The radical crusade of VP Mike Pence
- Did Trump win with falsified vote numbers? Howard Dean thinks so.
- How to boycott Trump products (an updated list)
- Charlottesville protestors didn’t talk about Robert E. Lee. They chanted about Jews
- Trump’s power is already being curtailed
- Trump’s pick for USDA top scientist may actually be illegal
- 105 year old secretary of Goebbels tells her story
- US law enforcement – Trump is fueling far right terror
- How Trump and Elaine Chao sold off flood control policy to the highest bidders
- Even Republicans are starting to wonder about Trump’s sanity
As Fall Equinox approaches may we all live in balance, a lofty goal in chaotic times.