south texas (10 acres)

This piece of land has undergone heavy disturbances, as monoculture farmland, and most heavily as an oil field, where an oil refinery company drilled for light oil. This land has been in our family for over 20 years. I have fond memories of my father collecting mesquite wood for fires as my mom picked mesquite pods for us to eat. We sat in the shade and climbed all over the mesquite trees. Their shade was invaluable in the humid summer heat that the Rio Grande Delta is notorious for. It was in these lands that I also first learned of the importance of plants for immediate survival, as we hid once from an angry rancher behind all the thornbrush. Had the land been cleared out without the trunks of the mesquite trees to find refuge in, we might have faced a different fate. It is our biggest hope to keep these lands abundant with thornbrush trees, cacti, and plenty of flowers for our insect relatives. Many animal relatives also use this land as burial grounds, with countless bones always lying peacefully under the sun. It brings us great joy knowing that our animal relatives find their last moments under the shade of a mesquite tree, cushioned by the soft undercover of native plants. 

For the past decade, mesquite and palo verde were the most prominent trees, with little diversity. Through the years, different native plants have now appeared, gifted to us by the passing animals and the drifting wind spirits. Retama, Mesquite, Huisache, and a variety of ground cover plants are rewilding the land. We have slowly chipped away at this land, with a lot of our restoration methods relying on the natural process of the earth and its elements, letting our animal relatives pass through this land to drop their seeds, form their families, rest, migrate, and return whenever they feel called to. We will be integrating ourselves more in this process by removing invasive grasses and re-introducing forage foods for humans and non humans, more wildflowers for our insect relatives, and a variety of thornscrub trees using a variety of methods ranging from growing our own seedlings spreading seeds as we walk and pray through the land, to letting animal and wind relatives continue to exist and restore the land in their own ways. With every seed we spread, we hope that new life can emerge for all of us to care for and build connection with.