Welcome to Litsy!

If you love reading and learning about nature/science, and especially if you care about the environment, this is a wonderful read. In fact, I think it‘s an important read for everyone. I got this one out of my curiosity for nature in general, and also for my childhood love of mushrooms (I always believed fairies used them for housing, bowls, cute hats, etc.). But I don‘t think I was fully prepared for the mystical ride I was about to embark on… ⬇️

“Metaphors and analogies, in turn, come laced with human stories and values, meaning that no discussion of scientific ideas—this one included—can be free of cultural bias.”

“Eliminate Google and Amazon and Facebook overnight or shut down the three busiest airports in the world, and you'll cause havoc. Selectively remove large hub trees—as many commercial logging operations do in an eftort to extract the most valuable timber—and serious disruption will ensue.”

“Out of this intimate partnership—complete with cooperation, conflict, and competition—plants and mycorrhizal fungi enact a collective flourishing that underpins our past, present, and future. We are unthinkable without them, yet seldom do we think about them. The cost of our neglect has never been more apparent. It is an attitude we can't afford to sustain.”

“The word ecology has its roots in the Greek word oikos, meaning ‘house,‘ ‘household,‘ or ‘dwelling place.‘ Our bodies, like those of all other organisms, are dwelling places. Life is nested biomes all the way down.”

#storygraph roundup for June.

“A mycelial network is a map of a fungus‘s recent history and is a helpful reminder that all life-forms are in fact processes not things. The ‘you‘ of five years ago was made from different stuff than the ‘you‘ of today. Nature is an event that never stops.”

Wasn‘t really sure what to read next, so I just grabbed a book about nature that has been sitting on my shelf for a while. I‘m taking a break from social media and TV shows in an attempt to read more, I have so many books in my TBR pile.

Absolutely fascinating, compelling book! My mind was blown over and over again. Did you know that termites don‘t actually digest wood?! They chew it up and bring it back to their mounds to be digested by fungus, and then the termites consume what the mushrooms leave! Amazing.

Photo courtesy my husband, since I spotted but failed to photograph the tiny mushrooms on this tree.