Behind the term Black Butterfly: Two Baltimores: The White L vs. the Black Butterfly
The main argument of the video is that they are human beings who should be allowed to exist in their own right, outside of the mythologies propagated by polluting corporations and western countercultural movements. It is possible to deconstruct dehumanizing stereotypes while celebrating and advocating for the adoption of traditional ecological practices, but promoting these practices while conceptualizing indigenous people as supernatural fauna is big yuck.
The latter half of the video discusses how they were forced into the market economy to survive, how murderous westward expansion destroyed their cultures, with a major conclusion being:
The United States government is the most ecologically catastrophic force on planet Earth since the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs.
I live in a city, but I'll share some programs that/organizers who may provide some inspiration:
BMORE Beautiful - provides trash picking kits and helps residents organize cleanups in their neighborhood. They were incredibly friendly, so might be worth reaching out on how to build a similar program in your area
Weed Warriors - trains participants to recognize and remove common invasive plants, provides training for participants on how to organize efforts in their communities
Community gardening - this video is from an animal liberation podcast, but the guest's opening story of being completely ignorant about gardening but doing it anyway is inspiring. The remainder is about their work on food justice and grassroots organizing
Compost collective - this is the podcast of the guest in the previous video. They interview the founder of Baltimore Compost Collective who works with youth in the city
Guerrilla gardening - this is a classic TED Talk. The speaker discusses growing food in a public space and how they successfully fought their city to keep their garden. They also talk about their volunteer gardening group, planting food gardens at homeless shelters
Maryland Food & Abolition Project - may no longer be active, but an interesting idea nonetheless. Their mission was (is?) to partner community gardens with prisons to provide fresh produce
Echoing @poVoq, don't discount seniors! I used to be a case manager for the elderly and many are more interested than people give them credit for.
The link in the post body has some tips on how to do so responsibly. Might be worth sharing with your neighbors!
The local cottontail raised her litter in my yard and the family didn't care for them, other than using them as a hangout spot. They did eat all the Virginia spiderwort and there's a bunch of violet stems around with no leaves, but mostly they stick to the plantains (Plantago sp.) in the lawn.
I had no idea deer lived in the city until I started doing this. Sometimes I'll catch one sleeping in my backyard which is a surreal sight. They munched the sunchokes, hazelnut, and chokeberry to the ground, but all are bouncing back.
Most of the flowers are divisions of plants, some volunteers and others I got as plugs in summer 2022. I decided to start small and expand over time. The coneflower was four plants last spring which I divided into 12, then into about 30 this spring. Rose milkweed and late boneset are just as prolific.
I have spread some seeds around and others have blown in. The groundcover in the second photo is all volunteer.
The mulch was leftover from a chipdrop. I used it to make the beds look "intentional" when everything was sparse and muddy back in February :) The plan is for everything to grow so dense that I won't need to mulch it again.
They don’t want most of the crap people plant trying to be Eco friendly anyways or so the landscape architect told me.
The research of entomologist, Dr. Doug Tallamy, and his team at the University of Delaware have identified 14% of native plants (the keystones) support 90% of butterfly and moth lepidoptera species. The research of horticulturist Jarrod Fowler has shown that 15% to 60% of North American native bee species are pollen specialists who only eat pollen from 40% of native plants.
Just witnessing tactical urbanism and guerrilla gardening projects were my gateway 😈