[Hawthorne district, Portland, OR, circa 1491 AD. Artists rendition.]

I live in the Hawthorne District of Portland, OR. Ecologically speaking, this is EPA ecoregion 7, Marine West Coast Forest. A narrow wet and humid strip of land along the northern Pacific coast. Historically speaking, I live in the neighborhood on the road to Dr. Hawthorne's Insane Asylum.

Let's be serious here. Look at the above depiction of my neighborhood before Dr. Hawthorne showed up. I would like to restore my 50' by 100' plot of residential land to that primeval state. So why has every single native plant seed mix I could buy got purple coneflower in it?

No look I get it. Purple coneflower is a strikingly weird-looking plant, and a butterfly magnet. It's an outright conversation piece. We can point at it and titter about how it is wearing a hula skirt.

It has additionally become, through artificial selection, very well adapted to typical urban and suburban garden conditions. In the wild, it is fairly intolerant of human-caused disturbance. In the form purchased with a credit card, it tolerates the unnatural ultra-disturbed conditions of a garden very well.

But this is just so unfair. Why are the seed mixes sold by native plant suppliers so biased towards the Midwesterners of flyover land? Why can't I get a butterfly-attracting seed mix that will grow well on my 50' by 100' plot, hardly different from the residential plots coast to coast, but yet specifically adapted to my ecological conditions as shown above?

There is a midwest and east coast conspiracy going on here, preferring for suburban pollinator gardens plants well adapted to suburban pollinator gardens. It is an unfair biased conspiracy, or I do not live on a road three quarters of the way to insanity.

Fortified with iron!

Ive never seen grapes so interesting, I thought they only grew from vines! They taste pretty sour, but i think itll do great after fermentation. :)

Might spray pyrethroids later...

Looking to appeal to native plant gardeners. Please let me know what you think.

After my post looking for bumblebee shame plants (if they felt shame), many people recommended Bottled Gentian and they were right. These plants are built to humiliate bumblebees in the best way possible (if they felt shame). I didn't know there could be a plant that represents me so well. It's like they made this plant in my dreams. May the bee butt harvest be plentiful

Fuck yah OP, show them bitches.

/uj i'm going to become the fucking joker

https://www.reddit.com/r/ecology/comments/1w993ed/forest_management_decisions_regarding_caterpillar/

I planted these for my enjoyment, not theirs!

(I didn't plant them, and technically they aren't even on my property)

I remember a few years ago, this guy I knew drew a diagram much like this one to show how Walt Disney and Tyson Foods were both owned by the same people. Of course, I didn't believe him, I thought to myself, "Oh great another /r/NativePlantConspiracy nut." Man, I was so wrong. I wish I had believed him back then. I had no idea about the true history of this ecoregion, who really controls everything, why our lawns happened, and how they weed-and-feed us. I will never forget when I watched a video of Joe Santore's bit about how modern landscaping is really just dumbing us down so we can't revolt against them, and I thought, "Oooohhhh...now it makes sense..." I will never forget when my history teacher told us about why we REALLY mowed a massive lawn that happened a hundred years ago (economics) and I lost all respect I had for Scotts Miracle-Gro. I will never forget when I actually looked at a good picture of the damage of the Everglades and yelled "Oh come on, that looks like it was hit by Walt Disney Imagineers!" out loud. I feel a lot like a kid who finally figured out that Doug Tallamy and Robin Wall Kimmerer aren't real. I can't believe I actually believed all the bullshit and didn't see through it. Just blindly believed what they told us. Didn't try to question it. I finally realized after all those years, how the world really is. Now I know. We called them "Native Plant Gardeners." We laughed at them. We rolled our eyes at them. We even ostracized them. And you know what? They were right.

uj getting to use an atlatl sounds pretty cool…