Unstuffed: The Tree Year: Update

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

The Tree Year: Update

Whoa! Have I ever been seriously remiss on my Tree Year posts. My last ones were in March. I should have known that once gardening/foraging/wildcrafting season got going full swing, other things would get put on the back burner (like most of my dirty dishes!)

I mean the catalpa is in full bloom. It's almost done blooming in fact.

Aren't they gorgeous? They look like orchids, and smell wonderful. I love having such an exotic, tropical looking tree in this northern climate.

I'm not sure how many more posts I'll manage to get in over the summer, but I am still observing my trees and watching for changes throughout the seasons.

3 comments:

Susan said...: One of my favorites!; June 29, 2011 at 11:36 PM
Dragonquillca said...: THAT'S what that tree is!! Cool!
Cambridge has a number of these trees but I never knew what they were! What is significant about them besides their smell and leaf size? Anything a forager/prepper should know?
Thanks for the post!; June 30, 2011 at 8:48 AM
Amber said...: Carolyn, the Native Americans reportedly used the bean pods kept among their belongings to keep away pests and insects and wove baskets out of the pods for those same properties.

There is some history of use in herbal medicine, of other Catalpa species, using the pods and seeds in the treatment of asthma and other bronchial complaints.

I suspect it would be anit-parasitic internally as well.

The leaves were bruised and applied to skin sores and ulcers that would not heal.

The bark was used in much the same way.

A beautiful tree and useful too!; June 30, 2011 at 12:13 PM

Raison d'etre

In 2008 I didn't buy anything new for the whole year. Food and basic toiletries (but not toilet paper) were the obvious exceptions (twice I broke my own rule). Used items were allowed, but I tried really hard to reduce consumption as much as possible.

I finished my year successfully, and along the way learned a lot about how much the world consumes, the waste we produce, sustainability, voluntary simplicity, climate change, peak oil, resource depletion, the water crisis, the food crisis, voting with your dollar, voting with your fork....

Now, I've transformed into a slightly nutty, very passionate, gardening, preserving, DIYing, simple living, nature loving, weed eating, backyard medicine making, urban homesteader, and I still don't use toilet paper!

With the help of the Awesomedudeguy (ADG), I'm continuing my exploration of living lightly and frugally, while increasing my self-sufficiency and resiliency, staying debt free, and preparing for a climate changed, resource depleted world, in uncertain economic times.

My nothing new restriction is lifted, but I continue to be a gentle, local consumer as much as possible.

My hope is that some of the information and resources I post about here will be helpful to others. Thanks so much for stopping by !

Yours in unstuffing,
Amber

"Forgive me if I never visit. I am from the fields, you know, and while quite at home with dandelion, make a sorry figure for the drawing room" ~Emily Dickinson

"I never had any other desire so strong, and so like covetousness, as that.... I might be master at last of a small house and a large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life to the culture of them and the study of nature." ~Abraham Cowley

"The laws of nature are under no obligation to cater to our culture’s emotionally charged fantasies of perpetual progress and limitless growth." ~John Michael Greer

"Sometimes we think we are too small to make a difference in this big world. Our actions seem insignificant in comparison to global issues such as climate change and population growth. However, the reality is that action on an individual level is exactly how big changes are made. Without individual and family sustainability, there’s no community sustainability. And without community sustainability, there’s no global sustainability. In fact, earth-wide change is absolutely impossible without individual change.
It really does come down to you and me."
~From Living Sustainably: It's Your Choice

"The universal conspiracy of the silent-assertion lie is hard at work always and everywhere, and always in the interest of a stupidity or a sham, never in the interest of a thing fine or respectable. Is it the most timid and shabby of all lies? It seems to have the look of it. For ages and ages it has mutely laboured in the interest of despotisms and aristocracies and chattel slaveries, and military slaveries, and religious slaveries, and has kept them alive; keeps them alive yet, here and there and yonder, all about the globe; and will go on keeping them alive until the silent-assertion lie retires from business--the silent assertion that nothing is going on which fair and intelligent men and women are aware of and are engaged by their duty to try to stop." ~Mark Twain

"It is not enough simply to abstain from theft...We must remember that nothing in this world really belongs to us. At best, we are merely borrowers. It is our duty, therefore, to borrow no more from the world than we absolutely need, and to make full and proper use of it. Taking more than we need, and wasting it, is a form of stealing from the rest of humankind."
~Commentary on Sutra 30 The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali