Another one from the deep archives, 9 years ago this month. In reflection what I wish is that I’d had more time to elaborate and get better photos. Noted, but probably not improving much in all these years. Maybe that’s why it had zero likes besides my own?! Room for improvement.
I know in these old posts formats and links are screwy. Sorry about that, but hope it’s still of value to someone, somewhere, sometime, besides me.
3.20.2017
Some iconic lines in films imprint on the psyche collectively and I know you could think of one right now that instantly crosses several generations and continental divides.
“You can’t handle the truth!” Name that film, name that actor. Could you even name his co-star in that blockbuster?
Somehow, somewhere, as a collective, we’ve given ourselves over to worship and celebrity and fantasy and distraction in the most destructive ways. I am not resolved from that influence and never will be. I watched TV constantly for years in high school, only to give it up for years later in exchange for an exhaustive social life, only to give that up more years later for work I found most of all, exhausting.
I had/have this secret fantasy I’m going to share right now (again). After hurricane Katrina, right after, when I heard on the news the city was more or less safe, and me many hours away in a quaint bed and breakfast drinking wine with lunch, the hurricane widely reported as much less dangerous than anticipated, but that residents would need to stay away for a few days at least for safety precautions, I was glad. Nearly giddy, and not from the wine.
I had just started a new position at Tulane university and already I didn’t really want to go back. It took a day or so more before all hell broke out and select areas of the city flooded terribly and all residents had to stay out indefinitely. In our case, we were allowed to go back after two months. For some, it was never. We lived in a trendy and relatively upscale area right on Audubon Park. It was a beautiful spot, both before and after the hurricane. Some were far from so lucky and they’d been there many generations, not just two weeks, like us.
I do hold shame for this secret fantasy, because I still feel it. When I dwell, necessarily, in the dark places of my life and the world, I know there is much sickness, far too much. Far too much destruction, voluntary and deliberate and needless. Still, I have dwelt in destruction.
And there is too much wind, dammit, all around me lately seeming to get worse every year. It’s bloody annoying! We had no winter and now no spring. The plants and animals struggle with it far less than I, but still, I know, they do.
Wind is really stressful! This makes me smile, because there was a time I lived in Chicago and worked downtown and yes, the wind was legendary, but it was mostly something I peered at from the window and got annoyed at how it affected my hairdo.
But the wind is far more powerful and penetrating than I had, and I think most, ever realize. Is that not what blew down the house of each of the three little pigs?
They are blowing, those wolves, our weather right now is as manipulated as the currency market. And in my secret fantasy I sometimes can’t help but wonder—would we all be better off in the long run if they would just blow it all down? Roses blooming at the same time as the dogwood?! It just ain’t right.
This week’s breadcrumb, I’ve got so many I’d love to share this week, but this one is so essential it needs to stand alone.
Unslaved podcast, exploring the self in the work of Ayn Rand and others.
As the world reboots, this is where the rubber will meet the road.
After I got over the shock of hearing the squeals of a drift of wild hogs crashing through the forest, and the fear that I’d lost our dearest Tori, I was amazed to see her come through the trees clearly proud of herself. Still a fav, La Duchesse de Brabant, unfortunately with a bad case of ‘black spot’ but which I’ve been treating with whey, banana peels and chicken poop. Tori’s ‘Illuminati’ pose, hehehehehe!
A combo post–a bit of Homestead Happenings with a bit of my favorite conspiracy theory.
We are having our New Normal weather whiplash where 1/4 of the population pretends the weather has always been like this; another 1/4 couldn’t care less about it, normal or otherwise; 1/4 who think it’s all manmade, but not by tech, by carbon pollution; 1/8th who LOVE the idea of man controlling the weather; and the final 1/8th who believe one of the following: it’s NAZIS controlling the weather, aliens are controlling the climate, a global ice age is coming, too many paranoid plebs are actually causing climate change through their malignant minds, or, the world’s militaries have been using weather tampering against the public for many decades.
23 February 2026 | ZEROGeoengineering.com | Report below published in 2021 by the Land Forces Academy Review evaluates the use of weather influencing technologies and their impact on global security. The authors discuss potential damage resulting from weaponized weather changing activities: “artificially increasing the level of precipitation in order to cause floods and paralyze the enemy’s transport communications; artificially reducing the level of precipitation, in order to cause drought in enemy territories and difficulties in the supply of fresh water; the creation of unfavorable weather conditions that impede the conduct of hostilities (increased wind speed, deterioration of visibility); violation of radar and radio communication by direct impact on the Earth’s ionosphere. The use of technologies for changing the weather for military purposes leads to the destruction of infrastructure, paralysis of the economy, losses in agriculture, disruption of the work of state and commercial structures, mass casualties, large financial losses and demoralization of the local population.” Olena Shevchenko and Kira Horiacheva, Impact of Weather Change Technologies on Global Security, Land Forces Academy Review, Vol. X XVI, No. 4(104), 2021, DOI: 10.2478/raft-2021-0042
“increased wind speed?” check “unfavorable weather conditions?” check “artificially reducing the level of precipitation, in order to cause drought?” check “demoralization of the local population” check, check and check! Well they can certainly count me in! It’s indeed demoralizing to see the bumblebees out because it’s over 80 degrees for a week and all is blooming, only to then frost and kill all the buds. Including the fruit trees. Or to be told by a young gardener that ‘winter is our dry season’. What? Since when?! So I guess all seasons now are our ‘dry season’. Except for when it suddenly floods in one county while the neighboring county stays bone dry. Or the crazy winds that make these sudden and highly unnatural shifts with storm-level gusts that continue for days making any outdoor activity really unpleasant, if not impossible. Soon every five mile radius will have its own climate, and the technocrats will cheer, even if it makes vast swaths of the world uninhabitable by all but the scorpions and robots and data centers.
Can you see the honeybees on the henbit? The henbit does really well as a groundcover even through our last ‘wintery mix’ (used to be called snow). They also like the other early bloomers and I LOVE to see them. But, for bee sustainability it’s not a good thing, necessarily. If they build up their colonies too quickly too early there will be a lot of starvation of the young brood if (when) the temperatures plunge again killing off the buds.
Until that time I guess we’re stuck here counting our blessings.
We did get that frost, and now we’re going right back up to the 80s.
A few garden blessings doing well, one box under protection with lettuces, radishes, the last of the crucifers, some parsley and cilantro
Crucifers, like many veggies, do not like weather whiplash
Atleast if we can share some credible and valuable information while it’s available to us, the next generation might know more what they are in for when they move to the country thinking they’ll start a farm or homestead in order to escape the rat race. Newsflash, you might want to research underground gardening, because between the inclement weather and the cost of energy you won’t be able to garden, indoors or out!
It really helps to start seed indoors, an extra protection from weather whiplash season, but it’s not exactly economical these days. Growing here are lots of tomatillos, my garden mission this year, and more broccoli, flowers, squash and lettuce.
Everybody’s doing it, nowhere to escape!
Oldfield, J. D., & Poberezhskaya, M. (2023). Soviet and Russian perspectives on geoengineering and climate management. WIREs Climate Change, 14(4), e829. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.829
“Soviet science contributed significantly to our understanding of anthropogenic climate change and, as part of this, played a central role in the emerging science underpinning climate modification and geoengineering initiatives. A key focus of discussion was the use of stratospheric aerosols linked to the innovative ideas of Mikhail Budyko and colleagues. This work had its origins in what has been termed the theory of aerosol climatic catastrophe, which gained prominence in the Soviet context during the early 1970s.”
Onions also don’t like weather whiplash, but we usually get a decent crop I finally got most of the strawberries replanted. They multiplied like rabbits last summer and I gave wheelbarrows full to the neighbors and still plenty went into the compost. It’s taken quite a lot of effort to get the strawberries to multiply during our summers, but I think I finally figured it out. We’ll have to wait and see how well they produce in a couple of months. I’ll keep y’all posted!
Thanks for stopping by, and be sure to watch your skies!
When I first started watching alternative history Youtube channels I was skeptical, and I still am. I want the truth, not more redirection. Not more fantasy. Not more illusion. Not more heavily curated or mediocre nonsense.
So far, I don’t sense I’ve found it, but I’ve become ok with never finding it. I’ve resigned myself to what’s as close to the truth as I’ll be able to manage to get to in this lifetime, which is: I’ll never know the truth, but I may be able to manage truth-adjacent with enough study and discernment. I can confidently opt-out of the lie, permanently. That’s a big improvement to the path of blind acceptance I was, and most are, still on.
The first step toward truth was achieved pretty easily, it began with calling bluffs. As long as I don’t allow it to frustrate me, which isn’t exactly easy, this alone feels pretty empowering. For me, as usual, I had to experience it directly, no Youtube influencers, no professors, no self-styled experts can convince me, not without applying my own eyes and ears and reason.
I looked to the architecture because that’s what’s visible, and only then to the official history, because that’s what’s accepted as truth. I started in my own neighborhood, that is, the small city closest to us, called Palestine. It’s actually easier I think to consider the small city, rather than the large ones, because there’s been less tampering more likely, more holes in the narratives that can be more easily noticed by the novice.
The well-maintained Redlands Hotel today.
Like, the story of the popular Redlands Hotel, where I sometimes go for lunch on my rare trips to town. It’s a lovely old building that they’ve done a relatively decent job of keeping up, especially considering the condition of the vast majority of the downtown area.
Interestingly, they have a panaramic photo of the early years of the city on display. As you follow the railroad tracks from left to right in the photo, you end up at graffitti painted on the side of a building. That is, the word OWL.
That’s my cue to start calling bluffs.
The owners of this hotel are deep into the official history, which is superficially helpful. As it goes, in 1914 when stockholders rushed to build the brown brick building, it was oxen that delivered the sand for the concrete. That is, sand from the Trinity River, 30 miles away. Are you kidding me?! That’s a pretty big bluff.
And even with that serious transport challenge, on supposed dirt roads, they managed to complete the five story building in a year. Apparently dirt roads weren’t effected back then by rain or snow, neither were the human builders, or the oxen. Amazing.
Even more amazing was that another striking building was going up on the other side of town, that is, the County Court House. The two structures apparently shared Italian artisans who installed hexagon tile to both buildings.
The original burned court house, depending on which source cited. Another source states the original courthouse was a small building made of wood.
“Considered one of the most modern constructions of its era, and built to withstand the challenges of time, its walls are made of concrete, masonry blocks, sheetrock, and metal studs—evident in the structure today.”
My those were some busy boys and oxen!
In fact, with just a bit of digging, we learn there was in fact another town at the Trinity River junction where the cherished sand came from, now missing from both the land and the history books. But, there remains one hand-drawn map available in the archives, Magnolia was the town’s name, and it was apparently so bustling with commerce and activity according to one source that they called it the ‘St. Louis of the South”.
One of the many demolished structures of the non-existent town once called Magnolia, according to the official history.
“Magnolia was established in the early 1840s as a Trinity River cotton port and was named for a large magnolia tree in the center of the townsite. Magnolia had a post office from 1851 to 1871. William A. Haygood was one of the principal property owners in the community and operated cotton gins, a hotel, a livery stable, a general store, a blacksmith shop, and a local ferry. Among other businesses in the community were a drugstore and John McClannahan and son’s warehouse. Magnolia was reported to have a population of 800 at its peak around 1863, when the town had thirty-three blocks of residences and businesses. Most shipments from the port went to Galveston, but on May 5, 1868, a steamboat traveled up the Trinity to Dallas. After it was bypassed by the International and Great Northern Railroad in the 1870s, Magnolia declined rapidly. By the 1930s it was no longer shown on the county highway map, though its name was preserved in that of the two schools that stood on the site of the former town. In 1932 the Magnolia school for whites had an enrollment of forty-three and the Magnolia school for blacks, thirty-four. A 1982 map showed only the Magnolia Cemetery at the townsite.” Magnolia, Texas
This is the sort of vessel which would have been traveling the Trinity River through Magnolia.
Nothing remains of this supposed river hub besides the hand-drawn map of the area where it was supposed to have been, where is now located some simple family houses, an intersection and the cemetery. I couldn’t even locate the river, or the supposed subsequent railroad.
Several other beautiful structures were also said to have been destroyed in this small city of Palestine not long after they were constructed.
The Temple Opera House was built originally as the Palestine Masonic Temple with the cornerstone date of August 29, 1878. In 1907, it was bought and remodeled by W.E. Swift and known as the New Temple Theater. In 1929, it was the home of Garrett Motor Company, Palestine’s first Ford Motor Car Agency. It was demolished in 1962. It originally had another floor on top, but this was removed at some point.
At some point? Not even the official historians can tell us more specifically.
Exquisite building of multi-functions which didn’t have enough value to the small city to remain for a full century. The small box building housing a liquor store in that location now is so much better, I’m sure.
The “Railroad YMCA Building” was another one.
The Railroad YMCA opened in April of 1903 and continued as the YMCA until the building burned in the mid 1950’s. Interestingly, there seems to be no recorded photos available of this horrid fire event of a huge BRICK building. Nothing to see here! (In fact, I believe this to be another building altogether, more on that in a future post.)
As I searched the stacks of the local history at the library I was surprised to find several ‘fake books’ — that is supposed local history written by a source who cannot be located and is listed in the local phone book with phone numbers that don’t work and at addresses which never existed. Three different phone books, three different addresses, I actually went to all of them personally. Nothing. The books appear to be written by AI! I brought this to the attention of the library board, and no one cared. At all. I never heard back, though I went personally to the board meeting with evidence in hand. They didn’t even care to know which books it was with these obvious falsities, possibly written by an unaccountable AI, and sitting in their stacks posing as actual local history written by a fake person.
And now I feel frustration setting in, so enough for now, to be continued . . .
We’ve all heard the expressions: “History is a set of lies agreed upon” and “History is written by the victors” and most have come to accept these tropes.
But what they may not have considered is when the history is that flexible, all those academic fields which are history adjacent–like anthropology, sociology, philosophy, literature, all cultural studies, even linguistics– become subject to those authoritarian whims and fashionable irregularities.
Generalization, subjectivity, distant observation, even making obvious comparisons across vast and complex measurable units–ie. pattern recognition–is not just discouraged, it’s potential grounds for dismissal. It’s considered sloppy, unprofessional, unacademic. Pseudo-subjects and conspiracy theory.
Academics are especially vulnerable to such manipulations as their fields are controlled in a strict hierarchical system and their studies, even as tenured professors, tend to stay very narrow in scope. They do not need to strive for a cohesive worldview in their academic work as they are mostly employed to measure the minutia, to dig deep into one tiny corner of the field, as has been the case with the historical and architectural world of the Mound Builders.
What the volumes of academic work on these cultures tend to do is narrow in so microscopically as to make all similarities irrelevant and cross-cultural observations inadmissable. They debate ad nasauem around shards of pottery found just beneath the surface of their archeological sites and the thousands of ways these tiny artefacts differ from one locale to the next.
There are literally thousands of pages published on comparisons and categorizations of tiny fossils and shards of the various Mound Builder tribes of the Americas. Specific measurements are taken of the space between the decorative lines and their width, length and coloration. All is catelogued in such microscopic detail as to bore to tears all but the most myopic of minds.
Truly, it is a form of academic gaslighting. Keep searching right here, right in this tiny framework where we’ve given the appropriate boundaries and designations. Don’t broaden, don’t do your own investigations, don’t venture out of your assigned territory, all alien parameters will be squashed with contempt and mockery and quite likely, career death.
Observe, very closely, and question every narrative.
That singular, rigid, hierachical model has been demolished with the Internet and for me, who formally studied and taught for four decades the very subjects now being shamelessly dismantled, I couldn’t be more pleased about it.
Actually, I could be. If there was a guarantee the ends would somehow justify all these means–as in the decades of lies and indoctrination and then subsequent ripping away of those foundations and the now erupting attempts to filter the masses into new molds for better slave management and more prosperous slaveholders–then I would certainly be more pleased.
But I’m not so naive as to think there’s ever any such guarantees. (As an entertaining aside, James Corbett here at his comedic best with more on our system of modern slavery.) https://youtu.be/ZjwO9_3g4xQ?si=8u5_OumKlk-LOMub
But my topic today is a continuation of the last What’s Been Lost new Kensho series. And say what you want about formal education, I’ve experienced the pros and the great many cons, but for all those naysayers and critics, my serious education these days comes from Youtube, mostly. I know, right?!
Don’t knock it ’till you try it, there are some really amazing teachers there (they call them creators now, which is nice) and I’m not watching them to buy into any of their conclusions, but just to appreciate their work, collect their evidence, and consider, that’s all.
There are relatively few in my life who care about this stuff at all, so I’m grateful for the company and impressed with their body of work. Yes, I do understand some of them are part of a big club, and I’m not in it. I don’t mind. And I’ve got no where else to go, and I’ve got a bit of time and loads of interest.
So for those others who might be interested in exploring and considering with me, we continue in search of what’s been lost.
Last time I shared about the Yakhchal, a common radiative cooling system used from ancient times, still in operation in parts of the Middle East, and perhaps close by as well, as close as Dallas.
Now I will introduce another thread to this story, the so-called Mound Builder ‘indigenous’ tribes of the South, officially referred to as having been ‘occupying’ these lands before the arrival of the Europeans.
A recent video by Jarid Boosters was perfectly timed and is well worth a complete viewing. In it he considers one such Mound Builder culture in present-day Moundville, Alabama, once called the Kingdom of Pafalaya, which includes Fort Morgan. Most of these sites are former military installations and are owned by universities and used as tourist traps now. Some of them are privately owned, all have vast areas not open to the public.
We have one very close to us as well, known as Caddo Mounds, which I’ve written about briefly before, after a sudden (manufactured) tornado hit during their cultural ceremony, destroying much property, killing one and injuring many. The site has since been upgraded and reopened, though there is little to see besides some very basic ‘replica’ huts and of course, a large gift shop.
What I propose has happened with these sites is a deliberate militarized program of generational amnesia.
“Generational amnesia refers to the phenomenon where each generation forgets important knowledge and experiences from previous generations, leading to a distorted understanding of the past and the environment. This can result in a lack of awareness about changes in society and nature, as new generations accept their current conditions as the norm without recognizing what has been lost.”
They tell us ‘Generative AI’ will solve this mounting modern social problem. Promises, promises. Let’s not wait on those any longer.
For a bit of background, Mound Builders refers to ‘prehistorical’ cultures of the ‘ancient’ South. For our purposes, ‘prehistorical’ refers to the most recent rewriting of history, or ‘reset’ as many interested in these topics are calling it; and ‘ancient’ refers to the ‘Roman’ era and all those pre-dating it. In this version of history we examine especially the period of the so-called “Civil” War, or the war between the states, or the war of Northern agression, or whatever other term seems appropriate for that period of time when much of the southern US was destroyed and their history re-written by the victors.
At this time the official narratives went under the command and control of the military, if they weren’t there already. In my estimation we have always been a military industrial complex, this wasn’t a new phenomenon predicted by another puppet president.
There are other ‘fringe’ channels that deal more specifically with military history, that is not my main interest, one I could recommend for this angle would be that of a former history academic: https://youtu.be/LqiZPX0Ordc?si=IOKaZQ7FT2Bjr7Wg
In fact, there are so-called Mound sites all over the South, and I’d suggest many of them are as yet ‘undiscovered’ because they sit on private property where even the land owners have no idea what’s beneath them.
In nearby Nacogdoches there is another ‘curated’ Mound site:
“Excavations at the Washington Mound site have uncovered the archeological remains of a large Middle Caddoan period (ca. A.D. 1250-1350) mound complex in south-central East Texas. The investigations of this heretofore unknown complex indicate that there was a significant post-Alto phase culture in the region that may have had a significant impact on subsequent regional Caddoan manifestations.”
While there are teams of academics studying the tiny differences in the fossils on the surface and money rolling in from the tourist trade, and grants galore for those academics willing to tow the official line, the accepted narrative framework gets further cemented into the public consciousness.
The new Southern history started in 1888 or thereabouts, with 1933 appearing oddly often. The commonalities of these sites, like the ‘charcoal-filled pits’ and ‘post holes’ are left as side curiousities or mysteries or given barely-plausible labels like ‘ceremonial spaces’ or ‘burial grounds’.
According to Wiki we see some typical features, like the involvement of the Smithsonian Institution, and a minimum of curious names and the all-important dates to keep our minds distracted from the bigger picture:
The earliest recorded written mention of the mounds was in 1779 by Athanase de Mézières, who traveled from Louisiana to San Antonio in the employ of the Spanish government. In 1919 American James Edwin Pearce was the first professional archeologist to record the site for the Bureau of Ethnology (Smithsonian Institution). In 1933 archeologist E. B. Sayles concluded that the site was a Caddo mound center, after conducting surface collection of artifacts at the location. The first scientific excavations were conducted from 1939 to 1941 by H. Perry Newell, a University of Texas archeologist with the federal Work Projects Administration in the government of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. When Newell died, archeologist Alex D. Krieger took over investigations at the site and concluded that it had been a major Caddo site. Further excavations in the 1960s and early 1970s by Dee Ann Story pinpointed the timeline of the site to 780 and 1260.
Following military service, Tunnell returned to Texas and began working with archeologist Ed Jelks on the Texas Rivers Basin Survey project funded by the Smithsonian Institution. Their first investigations took place along the McGee Bend of the Angelina River in East Texas, later impounded as part of Sam Rayburn Reservoir. He also worked in the Lake Amistad area along the Rio Grande.
As State Archeologist, Tunnell participated in scientific investigations at the Alamo and other important Spanish Colonial mission and presidio sites in Texas, directed archeological excavations at the ancient Folsom-age Adair-Steadman site, and braved the waters of the Rio Grande in order to record the archeological resources present in the canyons of the Big Bend region. He battled commercial salvagers to retain the 1554 Spanish shipwreck artifacts for the State of Texas and was instrumental in the development of the Antiquities Code of Texas, the legal tool to protect historic resources on public (state) land, including submerged shipwrecks. His films and audiotapes documenting the work of numerous folk artisans and craftsmen in the Texas-Mexico border region may well represent the only records of the practitioners of many vanishing crafts and arts. In 1981, Tunnell became THC executive director, a position he held until his retirement in January 1999. Through his decades of state service, Tunnell traveled to all 254 Texas counties and developed lasting friendships in all regions of the state. Tunnell passed away suddenly at his home on April 13, 2001.
His name was Tunnell, former military, and her name was Story. Isn’t that special. He liked to talk about Arts & Crafts. But not so much about Antiquitech.
Screenshot
What I wonder is, do the actual tunnels tell another story?
We’ve got mounds and post holes and charcoal-filled pits; we’ve got vast stone walls covered over by lakes and resevoirs and now deemed ‘legend’; we’ve got historical timelines that have clearly been ‘revised’, many times; we’ve got buildings and other structures that make no sense, but get little attention.
The burying of the past continues, the generational amensia widens, and aside from a few Youtubers and their marginalized audiences, I wonder if anyone else really cares.
Just in case you are one of the few who do, thank you, and you’re welcome.
More on the vast and ubiquitous caves and caverns of Texas and the mid-West on a future journey.
You don’t know, because it was taken long before you were born. Your father, your grandfather, ditto. Your child will know less, her child lesser still, what’s been lost.
Someday she might try to dig it up, maybe because life no longer makes sense to her.
So hideously ugly, there’s got to be a better way!
In confusion and rejection of the dystopian present she senses roots calling from the past, something deeper was once here, something grander, was it an alignment, a race, an epoch, antiquitech, infrastructure, what?
What’s been lost? Where has it gone? Who took it? Who continues to take it?
A new series for Kensho, Starting now . . .
What does ancient Persia and modern Texas have in common? The Ice House.
If I said that to a Texan they’d think I meant the popular outdoor beer gardens, and their version of history would go back to the early 1900s and they’d think that was old. Perhaps they’d offer some local trivia or home-spun yarns, like the original Texas Ice House was the first ice manufacturing company, which is now claimed to be have been merely an ice storage facility, which later became the modern day 7-11 francise. There is, like most home-spun yarns, some truth in that story. And much redirection and fabrication as well. Perhaps to keep your eyes of our own ancient history.
More from Wiki: In some parts of Texas, especially from San Antonio and the Texas Hill Country down to the Mexican border, ice houses functioned as open-air bars, with the word “icehouse” becoming a colloquialism for an establishment that derives the majority of its income from the sale of cold beer.[24] The distinction between South Texas ice houses and ice houses of other parts of the state and the South has been connected to the Catholicism of the region, a deeper-rooted Mexican culture, and the influence of German immigrants.
A nice find from a local antique shop. I believe some of the old buildings in the nearby small city of Palestine once used this radiative cooling system.
I believe it begins in Persia, still home to many ice houses, called Yakhchal. Alternative energy in the modern Western sense is really ugly, cumbersome, expensive, destructive, in comparison. Yet, there is evidence that the Yakhchal was once more widespread than just in the ancient, or modern, middle east.
The yakhchal is used for preserving and storing food, cooling structures, even making icy sweets. It works through radiative cooling, which existed in ancient times, still is in existence in remote areas today, and yet, it’s not the norm here, in the modern and advanced industrial West. Why?
The dome of an ice house in Italy.
That they propose it now to cool the entire planet with this line of tech means they think they can scale it that far up, yet they can’t manage to scale it back down, again. How can that be?
What is the difference between the common springhouse and an icehouse, which is the Yakhchal? My neighbors once had a springhouse, but I’d only know that because he told me himself, before he died, at over 90 years old.
Where else would such useful information be kept, I wonder? How will the next owners know there was once a springhouse there, one that might even be restored to a functioning status, when I see on their real estate listing that not even the grandchildren seem to know or care about this old feature? Who cares now, right, because we have the water co-op and the electric company we can pay each month.
I believe a case could be made that the very common structures once known as springhouses were the vernacular equivalent of the ice house.
Much is written about ancient Persian architecture in this work from 1887 by “Madame” . I can’t help but wonder, similar to how the meaning of Ice House changed in Texas, did the meaning of Madame also change? ‘Cause Dude does NOT look like a lady!
Three main types of Yakhchals exist: vaulted, underground, and roofless, each adapted to different climatic conditions.
Passive cooling so common and effortless that even poor people could afford ice: (PDF) Yakhchal; Climate Responsive Persian Traditional Architecture
Mehdipour, Armin. Yakhchal; Climate Responsive Persian Traditional Architecture.
Yakhchāl – Wikipedia The Mughal emperors also recorded to adopt the technology of Yakchal. Humayun (r. 1530–1540, 1555–1556) expanded ice imports from Kashmir to Delhi and Agra, insulating blocks with straw and saltpetre to slow melting, a Persian technique. Early Baraf Khana (underground pits) stored ice, adapted from ‘yakhchāl’ for preservation.[4] Akbar (r. 1556–1605) organized ice transport from Kashmir to Delhi, Agra, and Lahore via a 14-stage relay system, delivering ice in two days using saltpetre. The ab-dar khana at Fatehpur Sikri used sandstone cisterns and qanats, resembling yakhchāl, to cool water and make sherbets and early desserts.[5] During the era of Jahangir (r. 1605–1627), Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri describes baraf khana as insulated cellars storing ice for palace cooling, food preservation, and kulfi, a frozen milk dessert with pistachios and saffron. Ice was harvested in Lahore from shallow ice pans and stored in straw-lined pits.Shah Jahan (r. 1628–1658).[6] Shah Jahan built a baraf khana in Sirmaur to supply Agra and Delhi’s Red Fort. These underground structures with thick walls stored ice for drinks, food, and kulfi, symbolizing imperial luxury.[7] Although many have deteriorated over the years due to widespread commercial refrigeration technology, some interest in them has been revived as a source of inspiration in low-energy housing design and sustainable architecture.[8] And some, like a yakhchāl in Kerman (over a mile above sea level), have been well-preserved. These still have their cone-shaped, eighteen meter high building, massive insulation, and continuous cooling waters that spiral down its side and keep the ice frozen throughout the summer.
A ‘wind catcher’ tower
What we see as far as typical architectural features of the Yakhchal are domes, sometimes occuring with minerets, or spires, and sometimes with bells associated as well. Underground gardens are also a feature in the more elaborate designs.
Interestingly, Dallas has such an architectural gem, though I’ve not found any mention of the yakhchal or ice house technology mentioned in the literature.
The celebrated architect of the famous underground Dallas square.
From Wiki: Thanks-Giving Square – Wikipedia
The Square is set fifteen feet below ground level with a four-foot wall blocking the sight of automobiles to create a serene, green island. Water plays a prominent role in the landscape, with active fountains masking city noise.
Sitting amid the steel and glass skyscrapers of the Dallas business district, Thanks-Giving Chapel’s white spiral building is a beautiful—and unusual—sight. A curvilinear chapel resembling the 9th century Al-Malwia (snail shell) freestanding minaret of the Great Mosque of Samarra, Iraq, built by the Abbasid caliph Al-Mutawakkil, is not a building a visitor to Dallas expects to see. Another pleasant surprise is the Qur’anic verse “Grateful praise is due to God alone, the Lord and Nourisher of the worlds” engraved on a granite column at the entrance to Thanks-Giving Square. A portion of Psalms 100 appears on the Wall of Praise, also at the square’s entrance.
In 1971, the Dallas-based nonsectarian Thanks-Giving Foundation hired renowned American architect Philip Johnson to design a chapel that would celebrate the value and spirit of the institution of thanksgiving. Completed in 1976, Johnson’s white marble aggregate building dominates the three-acre triangular site that is dedicated to spiritual reflection. A sloping bridge built over a cascading waterfall connects the courtyard to the chapel. From his study of art history, Johnson was inspired by the spiral form of the Samarra minaret—which is similarly connected to the Great Mosque by a bridge.
“The spiral design perfectly conveys the foundation’s dual mission of offering a place for all people to give thanks to our creator and celebrating the value and spirit of thanksgiving for both sacred and secular cultures throughout the world,” Tatiana Androsov, Thanks-Giving Square’s president and executive director, told the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
Inside the chapel, a visitor’s attention is immediately drawn to the Glory Window (above), a multi-colored stained glass ceiling created by Gabriel Loire. This striking creation was memorialized in a United Nations stamp in 2000, the International Year of Thanksgiving. In one area of the room is a large white Carrara marble cube mounted on a sandstone circle made of local Austin stone. The cube is symbolic of the unification of mankind; the circle symbolizes eternity.
During the week, the chapel is a convenient and tranquil location in an otherwise busy city for Muslims working in the downtown business district to pray. “Although there are 22 mosques in the Dallas area, many Muslims working in this part of town like to come here, especially for Friday prayers,” Androsov explained. Visitors from Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Africa come to the chapel as part of the U.S. State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program, she added. The Thanks-Giving Foundation is a Department of Public Information NGO with the United Nations. For more information, visit www.thanksgiving.org.
Thanks for joining me on this little journey through time and space!
domes and spires everywhere back then!
One last deep speculation–could this ancient architectural tech also relate to the so-called Mound Builder indigenous tribes all over the Americas?
Just some happy snaps with minimal commentary this post, because it’s been too long. With more coming very shortly, as soon as my new keyboard arrives, because I loathe the hunt and peck method of the digital keyboard.
Some aged cheeses and winter herbs: smoked cheese on lees, kenshobert, pepper havarti, dill havarti and cheddar, with some fresh sage, cilantro and rosemary.
My biggest cheese this season from 9 gallons, caraway cheddar aged in a poke-tinted tallow coating. Unfortunately, it’s not my favorite. Fortunately, others like it fine so I happily gave the whole thing away.
My personal favorite, my signature Kenshobert, a local take on Camembert.
A large dill havarti and variety of experiments, most quite good!
Sharing a charcuterie board of cheeses and cured lamb.
A winter harvest of romaine, onions, herbs, radishes and even an orange from our little shrub and some cherry tomatoes because it’s been so unseasonably (and unnaturally) warm. Plus a pot of today’s milk becoming clabber for tomorrow’s cheese.
A Christmas bumblebee!
Unusual winter roses turning strange colors.
A few more happy snaps . . .
A darling bird of prey I watched right off our balcony from our recent quick roadtrip to Gruene in the Hill Country.
Also in Gruene, a so-called ‘mud-flooded’ building, more coming soon on that conspiracy theory in the new year.
They have preserved some gorgeous trees there from the ever-encroaching urban sprawl, and more power to ’em!
“Papers, please!” was a running joke among Western expats living in Eastern Europe. I wonder how many of them now carry a permanent spying device with great pleasure or perhaps even cheerfully signed on to the digital passport program, first in line, buying into the ploys of safety and convenience.
The Globe was supposed to move in the other direction entirely! We won the Cold War, supposedly, in order to NOT be treated like the perpetual citizen-criminals of Kafka’s stories.
Eastern Europe in 1989 was a surreal place for a young university sophmore voyaging long distances by train alone for the first time. It was at once charming and derelict, welcoming and suspicious, familiar and mysterious.
On the one hand I never felt physically threatened, not even as flaneuse on the city streets at night. On the other hand the decrepid state of the infrastructure whispered danger somehow, because neglect itself is a dark force.
On the one hand the relative poverty was palpable, though my midwest suburban upbringing was middle class, great food variety and consumer goods were far more available. On the other hand their resourcefullness has had a lifelong impact on me and was my first critical look at the innate and corrupting consumerism of my little world.
I didn’t speak the languages and there were very few English speakers. I got by, barely, with French, rudimentary German and smiling, mostly. Americans were considered automatically suspect, so some travelers would claim to be Canadian at any venue not requiring their passports.
Already on the issue of passports I was laughingly naive.
A variety of stamp collecting, or paving the way for the Global digital gulag? It was an especially exciting moment in the expats life when your passport got so full of stamps you had to go pronto to the nearest embassy to get new blank pages stapled into the back of the official document.
Interestingly, while Americans were considered automatically suspect, there was still a sort of cult following that adored America and those who were positively thrilled to meet one, and I made it a point of meeting those unique sorts.
I went on to be a Peace Corps volunteer there a few years later precisely because of my immediate attraction to this region. I felt compelled to know it better and the fact I had the opportunity to spend three more years there, mostly in Czech Republic, but traveling the region extensively, was in fulfillment of my deepest desires and longings at that time.
For all that I loved it, there I also felt my greatest repulsions.
The dystopian Kafkaesque bureaucrocy I experienced was not just fiction. The general acceptance of the populace, while not exactly Stolkholm Sydrome toward their Soviet occupiers, was still a quiet resignation which struck me as particularly pathetic considering their far more astute knowledge of history.
My old passports are the best symbol with which I can try to express my current level of despair seeing my greatest repulsions come to fruition all around me, even as we ‘the Capitalist West’ were the supposed winners of the Cold War.
What did we win? A military industrial complex acting against the best interests of its people. A Corporatocracy run by corrupt public-private partnerships which pretends not to be a fascistic system. Progress that is defined entirely by blind acceptance of anything stamped with the Technocrat seal of approval. Endless paving over of the countryside for roads and minimalls and condos and tourist traps in the ugliest construction ever known to ‘civilized’ man.
Civilization itself has morphed into something totally uncivil, hideous and expanding entirely out of control.
I, like many other intrepid travelers, thought of the passport merely as the modern equivalent of the old travel trunks stamped fashionably with destinations. We thought of them as a collection of strange signs and symbols we’d forever associate with our new memories of far-off places. They were the paper images of our wanderlust we planned to show one day to the grandkids, not knowing they would be holding a digital scrolling device we’d rarely be able to pry from their clutches.
Just a decade ago this was all ranch land
“Once traditional farming systems have been destabilised by the debt-trap of subsidised loans, structural adjustment policies, corporate input regimes, global supply chains, patented seeds and monocultural production, mass migration to cities becomes an inevitability engineered from above. The city thus absorbs the displaced because the countryside has been systematically stripped of opportunities or carved up for infrastructure or real estate schemes.”
What if we’d been given the actual choice, not the strategically invented one, between our current paradigm of progress as a global militarized surveillance state and the ‘stagnation’ where the Eastern Bloc resided for half a century?
This, or this?
Electric prison bars or progress?
Do folks really think WHEN this whole shitshow goes tits-up there will be government funding for the clean-up and restoration of this once beautiful land?
That I don’t want this EVER, for ANYONE makes me some kind of bitter-clinger communist?
“ALA’s annual State of the Air report found that 156.1 million people—46 percent of the population—now live in counties with failing grades for ozone or particle pollution, nearly 25 million higher than last year. Previously less-affected areas, such as Minneapolis, saw significant spikes in unhealthy air days tied to climate-exacerbated wildfires and particle pollution, such as dust.”
Universities funded by public-private partnerships clandestinely tamper with our atmosphere using euphemistically-named scientific jargon like ‘Plume dispersions’ as if this is not mass poisoning?
A hellscape of ‘progress’ in the form of the most ugly, extractive and intrusive landscapes imaginable?
How did ‘WE’ win in this global game that began long before I was born?
What kind of twisted minds call this progress? We have 70 years of documented atmospheric tampering while officialdom continues in denying its impact, which is now going into overdrive while the voices of the livid citizenry, especially those losing their livliehoods in the rural regions, get squashed. Same as it always was.
“Similarly, Gerard Winstanley, writing in the 17th century, envisioned a society in which land and labour were shared as a common good, not commodities to be exploited. His insistence on communal responsibility and ecological justice underscores the radical, enduring potential of agrarian ethics against the logic of extraction and profit.
In this light, the critique of urban-centric development becomes more than an economic critique. It represents a challenge to the very definition of progress. The rejection of the celebratory narrative of neoliberal modernity is a philosophical insistence that a society cannot be judged by its technological prowess while its ecological foundations crumble and its people are alienated from the sources of life.
The modern city, therefore, becomes a battleground where two visions of civilisation confront one another: the dominant model of corporate-led, centrally managed growth and the fragile but persistent ethic of stewardship, locality and shared responsibility. As made clear in my new open access book, The Agrarian Imagination: Development and the Art of the Impossible (available here), genuine human development cannot be measured by urban skylines or GDP figures but by the survival of relationships between people, land and community that give meaning to life.”
What disgusting filth is this filling our living room?!
We were just sitting there watching TV (Clarkson’s Farm) when the light aligned to see them perfectly. I got the tablet as quickly as I could and got it on film. But what I got is a mystery to me. Smart dust?
We’d just had a surprise rain shower the day before, which made me sick. I didn’t equate it with the rain at the time, Hubby didn’t get sick, so I don’t know. But I felt exhausted and like I was getting the flu. I took a hot shower and it didn’t help. I was shivering and feverish and went to bed about 6 pm. At midnight I woke up completely recovered.
Dane Wigington (GeoengineeringWatch.org) talks often about the toxic rain, of course. He also tells listeners to do an experiment themselves: Go out at night in a very dark place and beam a strong flashlight upward and you can see the heavy metal and other particulates densely polluting the air. I’ve done this, and it’s true and disgusting. This is what we are breathing all the time and cannot escape and certainly why a good portion of the population has breathing issues and allergies and all kinds of other degenerative diseases.
At least we can still say “NO!” to the poison injections.
But how do we say “NO!” to the toxins saturating our air?!
What do y’all think, Smart dust along with geoengineering particulates tested and proven to be polluting every breath we take?
It was bad enough when the Big Box stores started bragging about all their surveillance cameras. “So much shoplifting,” they claim.
That .2% of citizens shoplift is not just the store’s problem, it’s everyone’s problem. Cameras in the airports because, terrorists. Terrorists are not the government’s problem, they are everyone’s problem. Never met one myself, not even a friend of a friend of a friend has ever been arrested for terrorism in my 50+ years on this spinning insane asylum. But, safety. Must be kept safe from the .0002% of terrorists I’ve never encountered.
No evidence cameras stop terrorism, but in they go, and the travelers abide. When I stopped abiding I was told I was, “Letting them win,” in some backwards-ass attempt at logic.
Compliance will continue to be rewarded, as Stasi smiles. Compliance will continue to come cloaked in convenience, as Stasi smiles. Convenience will become increasingly inconvenient, as Stasi smiles.
Demanding conformity while singing diversity.
From Wiki: “Stasi officers as “Chekists”. The KGB used ‘low-visibility harassment'[17] in order to control the population, and repress politically incorrect people and dissidents. This could involve causing unemployment, social isolation, and inducing mental and emotional health problems.”
Now we have cameras. Cameras everywhere and still not enough.
Cameras are now ubiquitous not only in airports, Big Box stores, shopping malls, grocery stores, schools, at the intersections of every city, on the gates of private homes and doorstoops–they are now attached to trees on dirt roads.
Including on our dirt road. You’ve got to be flipping kidding me! As Stasi smiles.
This is the county’s camera. We are not in Soviet Russia, we are in rural Texas. These are our neighbors demanding conformity and compliance from other neighbors, as if it is their right to watch every car coming down a public dirt road.
We’ve been here nearly 20 years and I’ve not seen any dumping happening, or evidence of it. Even if there was a dumping free-for-all I still would not volunteer to have a surveillance camera installed on the road. This is not because I condone dumping, or long for dumping to pollute my property or the road, it’s because the dumping is not happening on private properties, or if it is, it is up to that property owner to surveille his own property. Do what property owners have been doing for generations: get dogs, get guns, fence your property, get to know your neighbors, put a camera up on your own land. Solve your own problems people!
If it’s happening in the creeks, owned by the State, the answer is not to spy on every private citizen, but to make more accesible dumping grounds for the people, and incentivize they dump there, instead of into public creeks and waterways.
County surveillance is grooming the citizenry for the state, federal, global surveillance grid. It’s working. It’s happening all over the world–The digital panopticon.
It’s tedious, demoralizing and infuriating to be talking and writing about this for decades as it only gets worse.
When the going gets tough, I know where to find some inspiration and re-stoke the righteous fires of indignation.
Here’s one, calls her Substack Mellowkat, though she’s anything but mellow . . .
“Bitchute: https://www.bitchute.com/channel/mellowkat/ Grow your own food. Invest in your home & community. Stop giving money to the corporate whores & fake philanthropists. No one is coming to save you. Get up.”
She’s so insensed with the nonsense she actually tracks people down and gives them the riot act. Now there’s some good old-fashioned modeling of righteous behavior!
She’s tracked down weather modification pilots and confronted them publicly, because she loathes the chemtrails as much as I do.
What to know what’s wrong with the weather? Look up people!
Just look at our skies yesterday, such disgusting filth, why is everyone not screaming about this?!
Well, she is screaming about it, and about the surveillance cameras everywhere.
“I spoke with our local PD about this. It turns out, it was their idea. They wanted to put some sweet grant money to use. I spoke with our local police Lt. “H.” She made sure to emphasize that this is for “our safety and your safety.” Hmm. Reminds me of 2020 when people chased me down with temp guns, called the police, and kicked me out of grocery stores for not wearing a mask. They had to keep me out for everyone’s “safety.” Folks, we’ve all come to recognize that promises like “Safe and effective,” or “it’s for your safety,” are a load of horse shit. And as you read on, I hope that if you know any naive supporters of Big Brother surveillance, you might help them finally understand how these cameras are really being used and abused around the world right now. It’s time to take a fucking stand.”
More from her latest post: “Stingray devices, facial recognition technology, body cameras, automated license plate readers, gunshot detection, predictive policing software, AI-enhanced video analytics, real-time crime centers, fusion centers: all of these technologies and surveillance programs rely on public-private partnerships that together create a sticky spiderweb from which there is no escape. As the cost of these technologies becomes more affordable for the average consumer, an effort underwritten by the tech industry and encouraged by law enforcement agencies and local governing boards, which in turn benefit from access to surveillance they don’t need to include in their budgets, big cities, small towns, urban, suburban and rural communities alike are adding themselves to the surveillance state’s interconnected grid. What this adds up to for government agencies (that is, FBI, NSA, DHS agents, etc., as well as local police) is a surveillance map that allows them to track someone’s movements over time and space, hopscotching from doorbell camera feeds and business security cameras to public cameras on utility poles, license plate readers, traffic cameras, drones, etc.”
It’s Shoulder Season on the wee homestead, and by that I mean a few things.
Tomatoes on their way out, eggplant just coming inAssorted melons and squashes
Shoulder season, for those who maybe new to the phrase, has a specific meaning in tourist trades, meaning between high season and low season. Savvy travelers and those who dislike crowds or who are just cheap or nearly broke try to travel in the shoulder season.
As far as I know it doesn’t have a parallel meaning in the gardening world.
But for me it does. It’s the time we move between seasons in the garden and since we garden all year, it happens twice, once in Swelter Season (now) and once in YoYo Season (formerly known as winter).
The key summer crops in the garden are either long gone–onions, garlic, crucifers, or mostly dead–tomatoes, squash, melons. And normally the cucumbers too, except those are, so far, successfully secession planted, with the new generation just coming up as the last one is dying. Good timing there, tiny bow to me!
Old cucs on left, dying fast, on right a couple of tomatillos in the back, also dying and a volunteer datura, doing great.
New cucumber plants looking good, but will they produce?
And big bow to Handy Hubby for growing this 27 pound beauty!
A nice variety of melons and squashes, we are quite pleased.
And still more, a mini-fridge of melon
And still more squash!
And cider.
While it could be Vacation Season for some more sane types, for us it’s the work of Shoulder Season. We keep the minimum that will survive our high heat for the next two months and baby most of them best we can.
But under lights inside the fall/winter garden is on its way. There’s already another crop of tomatoes coming up, as well as broccoli, cauliflower and arugula.
In the ‘babying’ bed I continue my lettuce experiment, starting romaine indoors under lights and moving under double shade cloth to transplant, then removing one level of shade cloth after a few days to adjust. They are still alive, yay!
Also in the ‘baby’ bed under shade cloth: some parsley barely hanging on, some dill trying to seed, 2 peppers, 2 dying tomatoes and lots of very happy basil.
Tomatoes, peppers and basil for marinara. And in back left is cured lamb.
There’s processing to be done still, the marinara stockpile is done thanks to Hubby, but there’s still ketchup and bar-b-que sauce. And we still call this a bad tomato year!
stockpiling marinara
Ah, the gifts and curses of relativity. And surplus.
The pears are looking promising, and the grapes–which will be the next big project–wine and cider-making season. Blackberries and pears are our easiest fruits here; everything else seems to struggle. Though we have had years of good figs, and some neighbors still do. The grapes are looking good too, but there’s no guarantee.
And I think I finally got the trick for strawberries. It seems most everything that is most delicious is high-maintenance. What can -we do, if we like high maintenance produce but to contend with the high costs of creating them?
Many years of failed strawberries, but this year was a great success in comparison. Now the runners are going crazy and taking over this bed, so next year promises to be better still.
I’m planning for more low-maintenance in future, but those might be high hopes.
Because, my choice would be to spend my dwindling number of pain-free hours working with the flowers!
I’ve seen a few butterflies and bees on the pink ‘Obedience plant’, such a welcome sight!
Which brings up my other meaning for Shoulder Season. So much shoulder pain! And I am not good at staying stationary, it drives me nuts actually. So it’s between physical anquish, or mental, and I do far better with the former.
I’ve been planting more flowersAnd trying to attract the birds and the bees
It’s as unwelcome a kinked, knotted, crippling invasion as this mystery fruit I posted about last year. I unknowingly caused quite a crisis in the garden and lost almost all the melons I planted.
What is this imposter which choked out all my melons?!
Just when I was insisting to Hubby we need to be thinking about reducing our garden plots in order to reduce our workload and water usage, I stand corrected. The orchard squash didn’t produce well at all, for some unknown reason; the garden melons were choked out by the wild cucumber; so without the third space we’d have no watermelons or honeydews, which would mean a mostly melonless summer after lots of work and wait, as the main garden produced about half a dozen sub-par cantaloupe.
A sweet, cold watermelon is the best morale booster in the hot, humid Texas summer garden jungle!
Two wheelbarrows full of vines and fruit the pigs don’t even like.
Wild cucumber vs melons and the melons lost bad. I have still not been able to figure out what these things are, which I brought into the garden under false pretenses. I have heard suggested they may be lemon cucumbers or mouse melons, but they are not the right size, shape or color for either of those.
I really get the frustration of invasive species now. I realize I’ve been a bit cavalier on that front in the past, for good reason, but I have definitely been humbled this time as these bitter, seedy imposters are still popping up everywhere.
Please, give me an invasion of the supposedy invasive Mimosa trees, and I’d be thrilled!
You have my permission to invade my gorgeous Mimosa!
The plants that thrive here in the long high heat and humidity are so impressive, even when invasive, but it helps my morale considerably to consider the non-invasive ones as often as possible.
A couple of young zuccini with the sweet potatoesA mini-jungle of cherry tomatoes growing under the elderberry
The sweet potatoes are almost effortless. Once they get established and as long as they get a good head start over the bindweed (another ‘invasive’ relative) they are pretty reliable. Eggplant and okra are others, and we’re learning to like eggplant. Maybe even a lot.
Eggplant, peppers, tomatoes, green beans and tonnato sauce over rice noodles, delish!Eggplant, basil ferment in the back and bread and muffins baked in the toaster oven outside, because it’s too hot to bake inside.
The bountiful basil takes center stage as the parsley, dill and cilantro take early retirement and don’t even bother to seed, it’s so damn hot.
Whether and which tomatoes will survive, or thrive, from one year to another is anyone’s guess.
Gavin’s seeds, the Scarlet Runnerbean (barely) and Black Hopi Sunflower, are hanging on still, very impressive.
The black Hopi sunflower behind a mystery weed that smells medicinal. Any idea what it is, anyone?
The two out of three citrus planted last spring are doing well–they look healthy and their growth has more than doubled since spring.
The poke weed, the datura, don’t get me started, such beautiful and amazing plants!
But, the mystery weeds, what are these?
What is it?Kinda pretty, very hardy, smells medicinal.Inquiring minds want to know!
