Tags
Adapting to Change, California wildfires, Climate Crisis, Ecological Crisis, Georgetown/Guyana, Lessons from Nature, Succulent plants
Section of my succulent garden
The succulent plants in my garden brighten my life. During humanity’s mad dash towards the abyss, their quiet dynamic presence calm my troubled mind. Under California’s scorching sunshine that set dry brush ablaze, my succulent plants have found a way to survive the extreme heat. Some change color; others become more compact in form.
“Flap Jack” or Paddle Plant – Parent plant under heat stress
“Flap Jack” or Paddle Plant – Area of little direct sunlight
Grown from cuttings from parent plant
Given their amazing ability to propagate from cuttings, I’ve planted succulents in several garden plots of our apartment complex. I marvel at their adaptation to different soil quality and amount of sunlight.
Aeonium “Mint Saucer” – Area with full sunlight
Aeonium “Mint Saucer” – Little sunlight during early morning
The adverse effects of our climate and ecological crises will intensify in the years ahead. It’s already happening here in California. People who have lost their homes in areas ravaged by wildfires must now question the viability of staying and rebuilding. This is also the case for areas facing prolonged drought and frequent flooding.
My birthplace in Georgetown, Guyana, is also under threat. The Guyanese Online Blog recently posted a video (duration 2:04 minutes) demonstrating the gravity of the situation.
Source: Guyanese Online Blog
A time is coming—perhaps, sooner than we envisage—when people everywhere across our country and planet will be on the move. Pulling up our roots and resettling in different lands is nothing new for our species. But the climate and ecological changes already underway will demand much more of us.
Like the succulents, will our species adapt to surviving on less water, on less food? How will we adapt to living on a hotter planet?
Three Worlds One Vision 
Rosie
We have survived in past
We will survive in future
For better or worse
Till exit do us part
Darwin wrote it
Survival of the fittest of the species
Today it’s survival of the most diverse/adaptable of the species
Says simple Simon
Survivor at 75 and counting
Kamtan
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Kamtan, chances are you may survive another twenty years to witness the collapse of our civilization.
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Really !
Armageddon?
Doubt it
Kamtan
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We live in different worlds, Kamtan.
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Glad your plants are thriving. It seems California is always on fire now. I watch it on the news daily with no end in sight. I lived with a family from Georgetown, Guyana, when I lived in Toronto. I always wanted to go there, They use to tell me of the floods and jungles and snakes. I will get there some day. Cheers Rosaliene.
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Thanks for dropping by, Kelly 🙂 There are lots of tours available now for experiencing the diversity of Guyana’s landscapes.
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Good work, Rosaliene
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Thanks very much, Derrick! Your beautiful garden has been an inspiration in transforming the garden spaces in the apartment complex where I live. After learning about dead ending roses on your blog, I’ve succeeded in reviving three rose bushes that had once been strangled by weeds and other plants.
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That is lovely 🙂
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The questions that you pose in the final paragraph are unsettling. Life as we know it is changing right before our eyes.
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What’s even more unsettling is seeing the following headline when I turned on my computer this morning:
President Donald Trump: “No More” Money To Fight California Wildfires
“As California burns, President Donald Trump has put its Governor on notice: there will be no more federal funding in the wildfire battle unless the state gets its forest management act together.”
We have a president who has declared climate change a Chinese hoax and is giving the fossil fuel industry the go-ahead to pump more carbon waste into our atmosphere. He’s also trying to weaken our state regulations for reducing carbon emissions from the millions of vehicles on our roads and freeways.
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This is the White House. My name is Donald Trump. I am the President. My job: destroy America. The story you have been watching is true, only the facts have been changed to confuse the innocent. During this minute my focus is on California wildfires. I have instructed the Nestle company to sell truckloads of bottled water to the firefighters. The case is closed.
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Tragically, he’s all about promoting the corporations that got him into the White House. I’ve just read the article “Why Deep Adaptation needs re-localisation” by Professor Jem Bendell’s blog, shared by blogger Dr. Stuart Bramhall. The article addresses all the questions you raised in your earlier comment.
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Some facts, Rosaliene, that the programming will not permit to be accepted and understood. “Man” was created (cloned) as a slave drone. Women were subsequently cloned to be man’s slaves. Above this, a small “elite” which called itself “blue bloods” because they had more of the “divine” DNA (they actually had blue blood) than the drones, was designed to rule over, to keep enslaved, the drones and their females. They were the establishment, the legal representatives of the makers. To keep this state of affairs more or less constant, all the clones were equipped with a mind implant. It was called the soul and the propaganda made it into a necessary and great thing. The soul made Earthians “superior” to all other non-cloned, non-souled creatures. This simple little snippet of a history that’s “truer” than any which can ever be read, goes on unfailingly to this day. When the elites, the blue bloods, don’t need drones (if they cannot be pleasured or profited from they have no value) they want them eliminated or at the very least, left to their own devices to die off. All the riches of the earth belong, by “divine” decree, to the elites. They know this innately and rarely feel any qualms of remorse if their hoarding and attendant warring causes the deaths of millions. Predatory capitalism is what has resulted from this set up and like it or not, deny it or not, man is trapped in this entropic madness until individual by individual there is a breaking free of the programming and the world is ‘seen’ for exactly what it is. Not true? Then why doesn’t anything ever change for the better, and when it does, why does it revert back, unfailingly, every single time? Why can’t “man” win once and for all? Why do people keep looking to the future either in fear of an apocalypse, or in hope of real and permanent change knowing of the existence of the endless cycle? Why do we say, hope springs eternal in the human breast, then also say, man proposes but God disposes? Why do we feel forced to engage in events (jobs, wars) we know are pointless, perverted, horrid, murderous, destructive of nature and society? Why do we enjoy experiencing and spreading gratuitous violence world wide knowing it’s against nature? Why do we insist on “performing” against all our own best interests? We can have revolts and revolutions. We can guillotine or murder rulers. We can establish democracies out of kingdoms and empires. Why can e make laws that give more justice to the poor and marginalized but within a few hundred years, even decades in some cases, find ourselves back where we began? We can start talking about environmental problems, easing up on some of the worst pollution. We can protest against resource wars. We can press the panic button re: climate change. All the while the real power holders, the elites, are changing the rules of the game so we end up with less than we started with. The point isn’t to go against the system with counter systems – the elites will be in charge of both sides – but to ask the real questions. Take the red pill (reject the programming), go down the rabbit hole and see reality. Those who thus self-empower themselves automatically rise above the elites and can counter their every move on the chess board of the system.
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Trump’s beyond disgraceful. He and anyone who likes him make me sick.
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The contrast between your lovely plants and the video (especially the last section) is stark. Beauty on one side and a horror movie on the other.
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Dr. Stein, it’s a horror movie that’s playing out in communities across our country and worldwide that our Mainstream Media refuses to cover. Meanwhile, our representatives in government are quibbling about the astronomical cost of the Green New Deal and completing ignoring the current costs we are already facing in dealing with wildfires, flooding, drought, and ever more ferocious hurricanes.
See my comment to Yeah, Another Blogger about our president’s threat to stop federal aid in fighting wildfires here in California.
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I love it.❤️
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Thanks, Laleh ❤
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❤️😘
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Thank you for sharing!!.. I have tried succulents in the past but unfortunately the prairies are not the best place for them… 🙂 there will be those people, like you and I, that will make some attempt (no matter how small it will seem) to try to reduce the impact of climate change and there will be those people, like you and I, that will make needed changes to follow our hearts… 🙂
However, there will be those closed minded, self-centered people whose ideology will not let them accept nor deal with change and they will probably go the way of their friends, the dinosaur… 🙂
Until we meet again..
May love and laughter light your days,
and warm your heart and home.
May good and faithful friends be yours,
wherever you may roam.
May peace and plenty bless your world
with joy that long endures.
May all life’s passing seasons
bring the best to you and yours!
(Irish Saying)
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Thank you, Dutch, for the beautiful wishes expressed in the Irish Saying ❤
As I follow your preparations for the coming winter, shared on your blog, I've also asked myself how best to prepare for the societal collapse ahead.
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The question I would ask is, will the new planetary configuration support mankind’s choice of having challenged nature with an overt artificial metropolitan lifestyle. How will wandering hordes from flooded and burned out cities deal without their city environment? If there is no longer even minimal social structure support? Where does water, food, clothing and shelter come from? I project a 10% survival rate for the next 300 years, bringing the population down to just under a billion. What sort of world that will be is anyone’s guess but if we assume little or no change in man’s basic nature it isn’t difficult to ‘see’ the conditions survivors will endure. Nature is saying, “You can pay me now, or you can pay me later, but you will pay.”
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Sha’Tara, all the questions you raise must be dealt with as we humans refuse to take immediate global action to change our “overt artificial metropolitan lifestyle.” As I mentioned in my comments to Dr. Stein, the US government considers the cost of the Green New Deal too much to pay. But, as you rightly conclude, those who survive our societal collapse will pay the price of inaction today.
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Nice collection of succulents Rosaliene. We don’t seem to be adapting particularly well at the moment.
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Thanks for dropping by, Denzil 🙂 Our current reluctance to adapt our lifestyles to changing conditions is what concerns me the most.
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What a compelling juxtaposition between succulents and climate change – well done!
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Thanks, Robert! For those of us who live on the West Coast, climate change is all too real.
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Pingback: Lessons from Nature: Adapting to Change – by Rosaliene Bacchus | Guyanese Online
Kudos to you Rosaliene for both your words, sharing the links and for creating gardens at your apartment complex. You are my kind of neighbor!
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It would be great having you as a neighbor, Henry 🙂 Several neighbors have expressed their appreciation for my work and have donated pots and plants. My son has been my greatest supporter.
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Nice garden, and I appreciate the video, too.I guess that is the seawall Richard Cheong visited to think.
I think it’s impossible to predict how land and water will shift in the coming years, who or what will survive. The ability to adapt, as your succulents do, will be a valuable survival skill.
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Thanks, Katharine! Yes, that’s the seawall where Richard Cheong went to clear his mind. The Georgetown Seawall is a favorite Sunday afternoon destination for “catching a cool breeze.”
NOAA provides a Sea Level Rise – Map Viewer that “illustrates the scale of potential coastal flooding after varying amounts of sea level rise. Users can simulate inundation associated with one to six feet of sea level rise at various scales along the contiguous United States coast, except for the Great Lakes.”
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I really enjoy seeing the adaptivity of succulents too! We have some out the backyard and I often marvel at how easy they are to grow from a cutting. They last a long time just in a cup of water as well. Amazing. I hope humans can be as adaptive but I fear we might wipe ourselves out or at least drastically reduce the population.
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Reduce population !
Dream on ?
With India China and Africa not introducing
Laws/incentives to depopulate …doubt it ‘
It would take decades if not centuries
to achieve…too little too late scenario !
Fact false fake fiction or fantasy…
Go google go figure !
Kamtan
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Hey I didn’t mean we should try and reduce the population. Hell no. I meant it might happen due to the impacts of climate change, food and water shortages, spread of super viruses etc .. i hope not though
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Doom and gloom ers…
End is neigh !
Kamtan
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They are truly amazing plants, Bernadette. Many of them also flower during different times of the year. Thousands of people are already losing their lives due to climate change. The numbers will definitely increase in the years ahead.
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As we pollute it, the planet will fix itself and we may get swallowed up during the final stitching process.
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Poetically and accurately stated.
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Thanks
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It’s extremely hard to grow succulents here why I live Rosaliene. Technically we’re a temperate rainforest. Moss, slugs and snails do extremely well, though.
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Dr. Bramhall, they’ve adapted to regions with little rain. Too much water kills them.
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A beautifully illustrated argument.
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Great post. We must stay aware & helpful to each other.
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Indeed
A united world is a more stronger more
peaceful one. UN must take the lead
in this endeavour….by behaving freely and fairly …democracy in principle and practice.
Google UN for its constitution
UN are the peace keepers of the planet
they must accept their responsibilities.
One nation one vote
No “block” or”privaledged” voting !
My take
Kamtan
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I love how you have written this. It’s so true how nature morphs right before our eyes. So much we can learn.
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Thanks for dropping by, Pallavi. Yes, we can learn a lot if only we would pay attention.
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I agree .. I have been thinking so much about this..
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Thanks for dropping by 🙂 We’ve all got to get involved.
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Yes definitely 🙂
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I agree. And I think the dilemma is this time we’re well aware and can document these changes. Also, there are few places to where we can ALL migrate because it will either be too hot, too cold, too rainy, too something for living conditions.
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Thanks for dropping by, Kathy 🙂
And, you can be sure that the top 10 percent would have already laid claim to the few remaining habitable areas.
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For sure
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An amazing collection of plants, Rosaliene.
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Thanks, Mark 🙂
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You’re welcome.
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I don’t think I have any succulents right now, living in a wet climate, but my spider plants are pretty resilient. I can see how the succulents calm you with their circular symmetry. Hopefully they will be among the survivors and their beauty will continue.
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JoAnna, the spider plants also grow well here. I have a neighbor who has several of them in her garden plot. I tried my hand at growing clippings, but wasn’t successful. The succulents with circular symmetry are indeed my favorite, but I also have several other succulents that aren’t circular. Earlier this year, my son bought me a Christmas Cactus that is now beginning to flower: It’s the plant on the bottom left in the captioned photo. It’s a beauty to behold! This morning, I moved it to a more prominent position where it could better attract the bees.
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i’d like to be put under
a succulent, Rosaliene!
perhaps any resilient
plant will do!
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Wouldn’t that be great! They are truly amazing plants. They brighten my day 🙂
A beautiful song. I don’t recall ever hearing it before.
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wonderful ’79 album
the secret life of plants 🙂
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Beautiful succulents – I have flapjacks too – they are beautiful and tough enough to survive our temperature extremes – I worry too about where we are headed
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Thanks, Kathryn! Resilient and a joy to behold!
I see that in Australia, you’re also facing extreme wildfire seasons like we do here in California. We humans are crazy not to address our climate crisis with the emergency it demands.
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Dry as a crisp here – the air is full of dust but no smoke just here thank goodness – yes – the whole world is being rung out – Mother Nature can shake us off her back like a dog with fleas though – I just hope the damage being done can be undone
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With succulents, you’ve just given me an excellent idea for a smart holiday gift this year.
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As I read this one again, I am struck with the reality that as populations grow exponentially, adaption is not just a concept but a necessary reality. The climate is changing like it or not… what we can do about it is debatable, but adaption and preparation for a very different future is where I believe we should be looking.
dwight
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Dwight, I’m so glad that you also agree that adaptation and preparation is the way to go.
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Not sure what we can do about population control. Perhaps Nature will do it for us! :>0
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