Fall Gourds

Good Witches Homestead

Storage containers, bowls, utensils, tools, masks, musical instruments, jewelry, dolls, flotation devices, toys, wheels, sieves, food, birdhouses – the list goes on and on for the many functional, spiritual, and decorative uses of the humble gourd. At this time of year, gourds abound at farmer’s markets, the grocery store, and even the backyard for some dedicated growers. This oddly shaped fruit has a colorful history – and deserves a bit of spotlight.

Origin

While not a common backyard plant today, it’s believed that gourds may be the earliest domesticated plant in North America. A previous theory held that the bottle gourd originated in Africa, carried over to the Americas via the Atlantic Ocean. But as the American Gourd Society reports, archeological and DNA evidence shows them coming from Asia more than 10,000 years ago via the Bering Strait – either by boat, by floating across the water, or carried by…

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A Tribute To The Dog — Oro Cas Reflects

I found the following piece of literature in a 1959 National Geographic magazine that I own. It is part of a huge collection that I purchased from an estate. This writing can also be found inscribed on “The Old Drum Memorial” in Warrensburg Missouri and was written in 1870. A Tribute To The Dog A […]

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When Recycling Fails: Home-Scale Solutions for Paper and Plastic Waste into Resources

The Druid's Garden

For decades here in the USA, recycling was touted as one of the more easy environmental things you could do. I, like many others, assumed that local recycling facilities processed materials, they were sent to factories, and then later, re-integrated into various products. Boy was I wrong! Turns out that recycling is an industrialized business like any other, and part of the reason is that it was so promoted is that there was profit in waste. In fact, from 1992 – late 2018, most recycling produced in the US shipped to China, who paid top dollar for recycled resources that were used to build their own economy. China had very lax environmental laws, and the more “dirty” recycling the US produced was sent to China for cheap sorting and processing. While some of those materials were recycled, many of the recycled materials ended up unusable and were discarded, moving down…

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Recycle Me Mosaics: Creating mosaic art from recycled bits and pieces — Life & Soul Magazine

Smashed plates, sweet wrappers and broken car windows, there’s a use in all of these discarded things for mosaic artist Katy Gailbraith. The Scottish artist, who works from her studio in Perthshire, creates mosaics from mostly recycled and upcycled bits and pieces. Among the artist’s creations include an Om plaque on slate; a turquoise tabletop […]

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Bird Folklore of Healing and Death

Sylum Charity: Limbitless Solutions — Sylum Clan

Limbitless Solutions is dedicated to empowering confidence in individuals with accessibility limitations. We create personalized, creative, and expressive 3D-printed prosthetics for children with limb differences using electromyographic (EMG) technology. We also create fun and immersive video games to help our bionic kids adapt to their new prosthetic. The video games use the arm’s EMG technology…

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The Tears of the Earth: A Hike on Sólheimajökull Glacier — The Druid’s Garden

It was our final day in Iceland before returning back to the US. We so many great experiences visiting this country of beautiful extremes, but more than anything, what we wanted to see on our last day was a glacier. We talked about it, and decided that we should see a glacier, as we might […]

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Shakespeare — secretsoftheserpent

https://youtube.com/watch?v=oU73kj5Sw9M%3Fversion%3D3%26rel%3D1%26fs%3D1%26autohide%3D2%26showsearch%3D0%26showinfo%3D1%26iv_load_policy%3D1%26wmode%3Dtransparent

This post will come as a surprise to a lot of people. Even ‘awake’ people don’t know very much about Shakespeare. His writings are taught in school as one of the greatest works ever in human history. While manuscripts of the most important writers in the history of the world have made their way […]

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