Women's pocket watch in Art Deco style to be opened,
Gruen Watch Manufacturing Company, Biel, Switzerland, around 1920
Dorotheum
Four months.
He's only been alive for four months and his color is already this bananas-cray-cray.
Gucci Fall 2025 Ready-To-Wear
Pillings Fall 2025 Ready-To-Wear
We are losing nearly ten percent of the planet’s insect population every decade due to human influence. If you have taken even an entry level biology course you understand how terrifying that figure is for not just humans but all life on Earth. As EO Wilson put it,
“If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos”
Even despite the urgency of this issue, there are few conservation initiatives focused solely on preserving invertebrates. The Xerces Society is one such organization! If you share my concern about insect population decline (and you are able to do so), please consider donating to their current fundraiser to help protect our most vulnerable neighbors. They are still short of their fundraising goal!
You reblogged a post about the negative impacts of harvesting mosses and lichens from the wild which made me wonder about my own relationship with (and use of) wild mosses. I enjoy creating terrariums (for my isopod colonies for example) and tend to harvest wild moss to propagate in these. I dry it out in the sun (and make sure to remove any insects) before cooking it to remove bacteria. I then rehydrate it once I've found a place for it. I take moss from areas that are already thick with it and treat collecting it as I would any other wild plant - making sure I take as little as possible so as to have the smallest impact on the ecosystem. Despite this, I don't think I had realised the frailty of this flora and am now worried that I might have had a much more negative impact than I'd originally believed. Do you have any tips/information on how to harvest moss in a way that causes the minimum amount of impact (such as places to harvest from and techniques to employ while harvesting). If the solution is that doing so is just inherently inexcusable, could you give me tips on how to propagate the moss I already have as efficiently as possible, so that I may have enough for bigger projects (like a bioactive vivarium for my snake)? Thank you very much for your time, - A worried moss enjoyer
I’m so glad you’re thinking about this and what actions you can take! It sounds like you’re being thoughtful and intentional about your harvesting practice and not harvesting for commercial use or profit. I recommend identifying the kinds of moss you’re harvesting and doing research on their growth and vulnerability. It’s also not legal to collect moss in many areas, so be mindful of the law and local cultural practices — it’s important to be respectful to the plants and the people who care for them. You also have to consider the environment they grow in — can you replicate it well? What substrates can you provide?
Try not to take from the same place if you can avoid it — give the moss a chance to recover. Monitoring their growth after harvesting can give you an idea of how much you affect them.
Mosses are diverse and their needs and growing speeds are different. My personal recommendation is to harvest a very small amount (and maybe some of the substrate, to make sure you don’t damage the underlying structures) and attempt to grow it at home. If you can’t support it, I would choose a different moss. I would try to find a moss that you can grow so you can harvest a small amount and let it spread naturally over time.
For propagation, my mosses live with my carnivorous plants so they have high humidity and light. Not all mosses want light though, so really check where they grow.
Thanks so much for writing in and being environmentally conscious! I hope you can keep enjoying moss for many years to come.
Coperni Fall 2025 Ready-To-Wear
Dress made of cotton
1870-1880
Grand Rapids Public Museum
I’m entering my Vetinari era. Going to start saying shit like “Capital!” and “Do not let me detain you.” and “A great rolling sea of evil. Shallower in some places, of course, but deeper, oh, so much deeper in others. But people like you put together little rafts of rules and vaguely good intentions and say, this is the opposite, this will triumph in the end.” Gonna start juggling knives.
Pillings Fall 2025 Ready-To-Wear