Seeds And Their People - EP. 19: From a Midwestern Slovak Family Farm to Black Catholic Mississippi

Episode Date: March 25, 2023

In November 2022, we visited Father Tom Mullaly at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Greenville, Mississippi. Chris's mother Mrs. Demalda Bolden Newsome grew up in this church, as did her family going back three generations. Chris was born and baptized there as well. Father Tom grew up on his Slovak family's farm in the summers, raising food for their winter pantry. For the past 50 years, he has been a pastor in southern Black Catholic churches, keeping gardens in community along the way. In our conversation, Chris and his mom also talk about the importance of the Black Catholic church to their family and community.  SEED STORIES TOLD IN THIS EPISODE: Introduction: Speckled Brown Butterbean Calendula Honey Bean MORE INFO FROM THIS EPISODE: Sacred Heart Catholic Church No-Till Intensive Vegetable Culture, by Bryan O'Hara Italian Garden Project Celebrating Saint Joseph Altars: Italian American Podcast Stella Natura Biodynamic Planting Calendar (one of our moon calendar references) Seventy Septembers, by Mary E. Best ABOUT: Seeds And Their People is a radio show where we feature seed stories told by the people who truly love them. Hosted by Owen Taylor of Truelove Seeds and Chris Bolden-Newsome of Sankofa Community Farm at Bartram’s Garden. trueloveseeds.com/blogs/satpradio   FIND OWEN HERE: Truelove Seeds Tumblr  |  Instagram  |  Twitter   FIND CHRIS HERE: Sankofa Community Farm at Bartram’s Garden   THANKS TO: Father Tom Mulally Demalda Bolden Newsome Cecilia Sweet-Coll

I was just whacking at normal. Welcome back to Seeds and their people. I'm Chris Bolden Newsom, farmer and co-director of Sankofer Farm at Bartram's Garden in sunny Southwest Philadelphia. And I'm Owen Taylor, seed keeper and farmer at True Love Seeds. We're a seed company offering culturally important seeds, grown by farmers committed to cultural preservation, food sovereignty, and sustainable agriculture. This podcast is supported by True Love Seeds and now also you. Thank you so much to our newest Patreon members.

Lisa. Seeding, good, and Twilight Image. If you'd like to support our storytelling and seedkeeping, you can do so at patreon.com slash true love seeds. Like last episode, we're going to start this one by answering some listener questions. Let me play a clip. I recorded last night. Okay, our next question comes from dusty swamp provisions.

Why are seeds so cute? But in my memory, because I just look back at it, it was, what are the cutest seeds? So we're going to start with what are the cutest seeds, and we have a special person here to share with us his opinions. Who are you? I'm Brian. I am six. And what are the cutest seeds?

Thanks for being here, Brian. You're welcome. The cutest seeds, I think, which is beautiful too, is a butter bean. What does it look like? A butter bean looks kind of brownish some, and the way it says like brownish is redder or brown, and the little parts sometimes are white. It kind of looks like frost, but it's black a little, and I think a Kalindula seed is beautiful because it is spiky and I think a colindula seed is cool because a

colindula seed have spikes and I think a colindula seeds have spikes because it can protect itself and a honey bean I think is beautiful it looks brownish and it looks like it has the eye but it's little and that's all I think that are beautiful. seeds and cute seeds. Thank you for your opinions on this. You're welcome. Well, there you have it, folks. You heard it here first.

America's newest radio commentator. He's obviously a wealth of information and quite ready for the job. So look for him soon in probably about 18 years to be coming to you live and direct from WURD in Philadelphia. or the BBC in London or NPR in D.C. or any of those other stations because he is awesome and is already deeply involved in the world of seeds. And he is our pride and joy. So the real question was, why are seeds cute? Can you help answer that question? Okay. Well, you know, maybe I really don't think of seeds as cute. Cute to me is like a floppy puppy or kitten.

So yeah, I don't know. I don't know that I would register them as cute. I find them very cute. So I appreciate the question. I mean, of course they're deeply beautiful and meaningful. But when I am pulling seeds out of plants in the field or looking at them in jars on the shelf, I do find them preciously cute. And I think it's similar to how babies are cute and puppies, floppy puppies, like you said.

And it makes me want to protect them, you know, and a lot of, I feel like the word for seed saver or seed saving other languages is even seed guardian or seed protector. And seed keeper, I think that's, yeah, that's what that registers as to me. A seed keeper is a protector as well as someone who saves or collects something. Yeah, and I don't save them or keep them because they're cute, but it certainly helps. another listener asked how do you choose which seeds and people make it into the true love seeds catalog you want to start us off well i can tell you that for the seeds generally we are looking for uh seeds that are culturally important um as we always say that are relevant to an individual farmers or growers own ethnic and cultural background and experience. So we are always looking

for seeds that tell a story. And in reality, every single seed tells a story and fills in the gap for some persons who is looking for more depth and context to their own cultural story, especially in this so-called melting pot of a country. So for the seeds, yeah, we generally are looking for those seeds and oftentimes will have people who will suggest seeds to us culturally important seeds and we consider that to be the seed itself calling out to be dispersed to be reconnected to its people through that communication with that individual but maybe you could say more about how we choose the people that making into our seed catalog that's that's well I think that's the right question because we don't choose the seeds we choose the people and the people choose the seeds

as you were referring to and we we really identify We try to find people who are already in our network or outside of our network who are doing the essential work of cultural preservation through agriculture. And we'll ask first, what seed tells your story? And that farmer decides which seeds to add to the catalog with our help and guidance. And sometimes, but we're not trying to curate a specific catalog, but rather build relationships with farmers who have relationships or who are rebuilding relationships. their seeds their beloved ancestral seeds and so that's how our catalog expands just like Chris was saying that we kind of look take the lead of the growers and they suggest the seeds so thanks for that question on Instagram seed and weed

and reap asked is there a DIY way to get seedlings phosphorus this is a question a little out of our league because we're we're We're a different type of farmer. We're not really trained horticulturalists. We're not Mike McGrath here on You Bet Your Garden. You can buy different soil amendments. Go to your plant store, your nursery, and maybe ask some questions because I'm sure that there are different amendments.

I know that there are rock-based and mineral-based amendments that people used. So, yeah. Well, this inspired me to look it up. I mean, but I think my first answer is that we don't do that. Yeah. We are somewhat holistic in our approach in that we use a good trusted, you know, seed starting mix that has a good mix of organic materials. And we do a lot of compost application at our farms.

We really focus on soil health in a holistic way through adding organic matter, through a no-till approach. But I did look it up. I will say that first I looked at Brian O'Hara's, no-till intensive vegetable gardening book because he's a friend of ours. He's a grower for our catalog. I worked for him for a couple years up in Lebanon, Connecticut, and he wrote the book on no-till farming, and he's really honed in on the management of nutrients, micronutrients, and minerals, and also from a holistic approach. And he talks about phosphorus quite a bit in his book.

So I'm going to try to distill what I learned saying this is not from personal experience. again we are not professionals in this area at all but i will say thank you for the question because it helped me to understand it a little more phosphorus is something that really helps with plant growth in general it helps with sugar and starch formation energy and nutrient transfer it helps with root growth which i can see why you might want to apply it at the seedling phase but it especially helps with flowering, which makes me nervous about applying it at the seedling phase because it pushes a plant towards flowering and it can even push it towards fruiting. But what I read is people apply it especially when they want to kind of push a plant to the flowering stage. Though, you know,

a lot of people, it seems, do put it in the beginning of the year in the spring into the soil. You know, it's very stable in the soil. And it's not very available to the plant. It's bound up by other minerals yeah other elements so it can be hard for the plant to make use of it so one thing that brian mentioned in his book was that the more bioactive your soil is especially with fungal networks the more the phosphorus will be soluble and available to the plant roots and so if you really focus like i said even though we're not doing this intentionally for phosphorus but on feeding the soil with life, you know, increasing the biological activity, especially fungal, which I know from previous reading is kind of the dominant biological activity

in forests versus, you know, so it's field soils where it's more bacterial. It's always both. Yeah. But a lot of times people will bring in biological activity from the forest ecosystems into their field soils to increase the fungal activity, which of course helps make many things more soluble in the soil for the roots and the plants to take up. Like Chris said, there's definitely rock phosphorus, soft rock phosphorus like Kenny G. Uh-huh. Thank you. You of a certain age will know who he's talking about.

Phil Collins. And then, but the biggest thing that I looked up for DIY is that people will take bones. Yeah, bone meal is one of the more common mineral applications for that. But again, you know, I think as you said earlier, it's very stable, even with bone meal. It's not something that you put it in the ground and the plant just soaks it up. Phosphorus is one of those minerals that, you know, by design, bleaches out slowly into the soil. And I think I would really agree with what you were saying earlier. We practice regenerative agricultural techniques, which always assumes the sacredness of the soil. And that that's where the life is. And that if we are just one more members of the constellation of the field in which we're working, a great part of our job is to

just create the conditions by which there is soil health, soil wholeness. And again, I think when you're having a focus on wholeness means that that you will have all of those minerals present and available and that it's a process right um it's not something that happens in one year and i think even with the application of these rock phosphates uh and in in bone meal and all the kelp meal and all of these other things of course you know green uh sand and all of this stuff you it takes a while you know it doesn't you know again this is farming this is not and this is This is one of the things that I think that our work and the work of so many other farmers, God bless them in this country and around the world. And indeed, our ancestors, you know, is really focused on, which is that our job is to reverence the soil and to reverence it by making sure that we keep it covered, that we are keeping a closed loop system, you know, of the things that come out of our field and returning them after that sacred process of composting.

So, yeah, I think that, that, again, I would emphasize that the focus is on total health, on wholeness and less, I think, on, you know, sort of isolating particular minerals for a desired purpose. I think that's something that we really, really, really try to avoid in the work that we do. Yes, but that said, now I'm curious. And so what you could do is do a soil test to test for nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus. et cetera, calcium, all the different things, organic matter. And in the past, I've used UMass, amherst, you know, soil labs. It's pretty affordable, and they give you a lot more information than other labs about

what to do to amend. So you can test that. You can make your own bone meal. There's a lot of recipes online if your meat eating house, which we are not. You can make, you know, fish fertilizer by, you know, on your own, and there's recipes online apparently manure has a lot of phosphorus by which you mean animal manure animal manure but also green manure so you can grow cover crops and turn them in certain ones and then yeah the thing about what i read is if you want a quick dose of phosphorus then you do the liquid kelp foliar spray

like seaweed certain seaweeds and that's quick but it also quickly disappears so you'd want to do all the time, both, you know, soil level and leaf level. So I think that's enough on phosphorus, but thank you for that question. It was actually really interesting to go back into Brian O'Hara's book and then look into this a little more. Yeah, and again, we do advise everyone to get a copy of Brother Brian's book. He is an awesome sage mentor as well, of course, as his wonderful, beautiful wife, Anita and his daughter Clara. And little Clara. Okay, finally, it's not long after St. Patrick's and St. Joseph's Day, and this means we were planting some of our first crops in the field. So let's talk about this just briefly, especially because it somewhat

relates to our episode, and that we're interviewing a pastor from the Catholic Church. Yeah. Well, what is it to say? I mean, we have this confluence of holy days. We have, as Owen said, St. Patrick, Patriarch of Ireland, and let's never forget, also St. Bridget, whose feast felt a little bit before that. But then we have the spring equinox, right? So the holiness of the earth, wholeness of the earth on that day. And then we have St. Joseph, St. Joseph, who, for at least the past 1,000 years, I would say, has been very much associated for some reason with Italy. And this is the same Joseph, by the way, in the Christmas story.

for those folks who have a question mark right now. We're talking about Joseph Mary's husband. Great association with all things, Italian especially, but also patron saint of dads, patron saint of carpenters, patron saint of workers, and of the international worker movement. Just an all-around wonderful guy. One thing that I really love, particularly about the image of this saint, is that he really gives a different version of masculinity. He doesn't say a single word, apparently, in the Bible, but he's his protector figure, and he listens to his dreams and takes care of the baby Jesus and Mother Mary through these dreams that he has, right, and which tell him what to do. And so one thing we're really excited about, of course, is his association with Fava Beams. Yes, Italians love St. Joseph, especially Sicilians, but I think all Italians.

and I was just listening to the Italian-American podcast all about St. Joseph's Day and its importance in New Orleans, especially because of the Sicilian community, which apparently after emancipation, Sicilian men were recruited heavily to work the fields. And so it was like 50-something thousand Sicilian men came. And they brought with them the St. Joseph kind of traditions with the St. Joseph altar, which will have a fava being on the altar. And the reason is that in the middle ages or medieval times, there were a lot of droughts in Italy, in Sicily, in particular. And it was also the time, like a resurgence or like when St. Joseph was becoming very popular in that part of Italy. And people would pray to him around the drought, you know,

and he came through. And they had a successful harvest, especially of fava beans. And so the fava bean became associated with him. People put it on the altar. People carry it in their pocket. And so we've made the leap, and maybe this is something other people do, but to plant fava beans around that time. I mean, this is the time of year. Fava beans are one of the earliest crops to go in the ground, directly in the ground. And so, you know, tomorrow at the farm, we'll be planting some fava beans from the Italian Garden project that we got, where they collect seeds from older Italians who are keeping traditional Italian gardens in America. And a lot of times they've already passed.

So this is an important way to keep these varieties around that have been here, sometimes 100 years in Italian-American gardens. And then that, you know, for the last many years, we've heard that St. Patrick's Day is the time to plant potatoes and peas, two very Irish or two very Irish crops. Of course, potatoes are from the Andes, but they've been associated with Ireland since the mid-1800s, at least. And, you know, my great-grandmother, Mary Lenehan, she is from Galway, and I have this letter from my grandfather to my dad in the early 90s about going to visit her village,

visit the thatched roof house that she lived in with the dirt floors, get to see how close it was to the bay where they would fish and how they would grow. cabbage and potatoes and so on. And so when I plant this, the lumper potato, which is the same potato that would be grown, you know, or very closely related to the potatoes during the great hunger, and Gortamore, you know, what often is called the potato famine, it's very meaningful to me to plant it on a holiday that I know was important to my ancestors as well. And so St. Patrick's Day was last weekend, and we've found, and I've heard from other people, that St. Patrick's Day is actually slightly early, just slightly, for these things, because the peas could maybe rot in the ground.

The potatoes are fine. Maybe in this part of the world, right? No, this is where we live. Well, yeah. So I, so I, so I, because we live here, I decided to do it a week later. But it's also because we plant by the moon. And last week on the moon calendar was a no planting week. And so I was like, oh, that works out well because.

you know, it gives us another week for the soils to dry out a little more, though it's been a very dry spring. So, anyway, that's why we plant around these holidays. Yeah, I love, I love this, as you were talking about these crops that are associated with these hallowed men, St. Joseph and St. Patrick, it was occurring to me again, just thinking about the movement of seeds, the movement of crops. Fava beans also are not from Sicily. Faba beans are not Italian. I'm sure there are many old Italian guys who will fight you to hear that. But from what I understand, Faba beans are an African crop that were first domesticated or at least first identified as domesticated in Egypt. And so they

traveled, you know, wasn't a very, I wasn't a super far jump across the pond to get to Sicily, which is tickling Italy, tickling Africa, of course. But, you know, so that's one thing that came to me. So again, I love the association of this saint, who also is not Italian. He's Afro-Asiatic, right? We're talking about, you know, Palestinian Jew, you know, and then he's associated with fava beans, and I just love that connection. I love also how the peas and the potatoes, of course, also come from somewhere else. And Patrick also comes from somewhere else. You know, curiously, Patrick is not Irish, even though he's a patron saint of Ireland. So I love how these seeds sort of move and collect new stories. These crops go around the world

and get different associations. And I was really reminded with the carrying of the Faba Beans, because, of course, I, you know, our house has a great devotion to St. Joseph, prayed for his intercession. But carrying the Fava Beans this week, I had to switch out my Faba Bean. I switched out my black IP, which in my own, you know, African-American culture is what we carry as a symbolic protection and sort of the eye of God. Switching out my black IP for a father being, maybe I should just have both of them in there and just have a stew in my pocket of beans. You should. Now for our feature presentation. This episode features Father Tom Mulali of Emmett, Michigan.

He's a divine word missionary priest who lives and works in the Mississippi Delta at my home parish of Sacred Heart in Greenville. And we were there for the holidays. This is a couple months ago. What was it Christmas? Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving because it was warm. Oh, yeah. Thanksgiving.

And we were visiting your family. And we brought your mother, Mrs. Demelda, Bolden Newsome, with us to the rectory of the church and interviewed the pastor. Yeah. And, you know, I think that was a part of a sort of a neighborhood garden. We're looking at my mom's gardens. She has several gardens, garden plots, community garden plots that her and daddy are managing for the community. And there's one that's right across the street from our church. And so we were able to take a look at those gardens as well. And we were interested in talking to him because, you know, he grew up farming, gardening, and a poor family. Michigan and really surviving off of the the gardening that they did you know he had lost his father you'll hear the story but so we wanted to hear about what that was like for him how that's influenced his life you know and talk to him about his 50 over 50 years working in southern black Catholic churches yeah yeah I think to me one of the most powerful things about this is that this is a poor farm kid who has gone to the Mississippi Delta where most folks have abandoned farming

with such a complicated history, of course, him being from the far north and in the deep south where all of those very visible legacies of slavery and force work are still so sort of apparent in shadows, you know, throughout the environment. Really interesting confluence of events of this farm kid from the north coming and trying to turn former farmers back to the land. okay well let's transport you into the dining room around the table with the four of us and we're coming in right towards the end i pressed record right towards the end of an opening prayer lead us not into temptation but deliver us from me amen i'm a divine wood missionary priest and we have been working in the south among african since 1905, 1906.

And so I joined the Society of Divine Word in 1960, a dean of priest in 1970, and I've been in the South ever since working among African American Catholics, and when I came to Greenville in 2008, among Hispanic Catholics too. So that's my history. I came to Greenville in 2008,

in Greenville was founded in 1913 by Father Eldrishers Hike SVD. And in 1920, the first seminary for African-American young men to study for the priesthood began in Greenville, Mississippi, in 1920. We have a historical marker on our church yard. and then the seminary went back to what was transferred to Bay St. Louis, Mississippi in 1923 because there was more Catholics down there and more people were open for black and white studying together.

So that's how Sacred Heart began. In 1913, the present-day church was built in 1928 by Father Jacob. A year after the Great Flood, The Great Flood of Mississippi Delta began in 1927 with the break in the dam just by five miles north of town by Indian mounds. Greenville itself has about 27,000 people. And more before, it was the Queen City on the river, but sad to say a lot of our industries went overseas or closed down. So that's why I came to the Delta.

I came to the Delta in 08. I'm now 80 years old. I'm retired, and Father Sebastian is now the pastor. But I love the Delta, Mississippi. They're great people. In fact, I love all my parishes. I administer to. I've been 52 years as an SVD priest in four parishes only.

In St. Montevil, Louisiana and Notre Dame, I'll leave the Roseman in general at Louisiana and then St. Peter's in Pine Bluff and now I'm here in the Delta. So that's about who I am. I love my work. Amen. Wow. Well, that is

first and foremost, that's an impressive memory for dates. I don't think I could ever probably keep more than three of those dates, but... It keeps you getting from Alzheimer's. Yeah. Okay. That's good, remember in the day, so I'll remember that. I'll try to do that, I'll try to do that then as I get older.

So you've done all of your work then, since you were called to the priesthood, you've done everything in the South. Yes, all 52 years, all 52 years in the southern United States in Mississippi and Arkansas in Louisiana. Now, you are originally a Yankee. You came from the north. From Michigan. The great state of Michigan, yes, they did. The Wolverine State never had a damn Rooverine. in the whole state, but we still call it the Wolverines, so that's like the Wolverine state.

And what was, I'm just curious when you, when you told folks that you were going to be working in the South, particularly in that time, you said you came, you went to the seminary in 1960? Yes. Okay. And so when you told folks that you would be working in what was in the segregated South, and what were people's impression? What did you think? Did you choose to come here, or did your superior send you here?

I tell the story. I chose to come here, but I tell the history. I entered the seminary at the public school in Michigan and went to the seminary in Massachusetts, ordina Teckney, 1970, December 19th. In September, the tradition of our society is that you write a letter to Superior General asking three places where you would like to be sent.

Our society at Vinewood has about 7,000 members. We work about 80 different nations. So I put down, number one, Philippines, two, south, three, paragraph. I sent in to our Superior General in Rome. That'd be by letter, of course. There was no Texas in those damn days, nothing. So, I told my classmates, and one of my African-American friends from Bunky, Louisiana, said, Tom, why do you do that?

You'll be good to work in the South because you can get along with my people. And plus, he says, you've been sick. And it's true, I've been sick in the seminary with two major surgeries. I'm not a linguist. And my good classmate, Paul Scott from Australia, says, Tom, Sandy's right. Go South. I sent my letter in already. They said, that's okay.

Our superior general was an American. He knew me personally. So I wrote a letter to my superior general, Father John Muzinski. And Father Muzinski wrote back to me, he says, Frotter in those days, brother, I will never have sent you overseas.

You're not a linguist, and you've been ill, and I'm going to send you to the south. and that's how I came south I came south in 1971 August 15th Feast of the Lady of Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary came south

and then one of the young men in St. Martyrville says Father Malali will take you downtown St. Martyrville well they took me to Baptist Lounge with a Baptist Lounge and they was shocked to see a priest with a black shirt on and everything.

And he said, what do you want, Father? Well, I'm not a drinker. I said, I want to bud light. So I got myself a bud light. Then we went across the damn straight and saw, we went to Timmy's Lounge. And by God, by the time I got to Timmy's Lounge, they had a cold beer of Bud Light for me.

I spent four years in St. Montville. I drank every damn bud light that people gave me. Never touched one of yet. So that's how I began at Notre Dame Catholic Church, the largest rural black Catholic Church in the United States, about 4,000 members. So that's how I came there. And then I went to Gem at Louisiana along by Yotash,

and there the people built a brand new church, pay for it in cash, I laid the rosary. We worked hard for it. And we had a famous black sculptorist from Southern University, Frank Hayden. And he sculptorized three beautiful pieces, a lay the rosary, the Holy Family, and the risen Lord. And sad to say, Frank Hayden is now deceased. Then went to Pine Bluff, Arkansas.

And in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, we opened a Catholic school up by the Estabre. SS&D and sisters and myself, and we were a great school. Then I went back to St. Montevil as pastor this time, not as associate, but as pastor, 12 good years down there. And then finally, I came up here in 08, and here I am in the Delta, the Delta of Mississippi. That's my little history. I wonder if you two could talk about the important. of this parish to your family. Okay.

So my mother and her siblings started out here at Sacred Heart. My grandfather was a Baptist minister, but they wanted their children to be in a faith-based school, even though it wasn't Baptist. And so my understanding of what happened is that they were working in the fields in the summertime, the cotton fields, to pay for their tuition for the fall. And that's how they were able to go to school here. And my grandmother worked, you know, in people's houses, taking care of their children and, you know, doing some housekeeping. These are white families.

These are white families, yes. So that was how they were able to go. And they went all the way through to high school because there was a high school then. So when we came along, it was just already set in place for us to continue capital education. What years are we talking about?

Now, I had to be in the 60s. A memory isn't my father. Not at all. What do you think was the importance of a Catholic school in the 60s when everything was still very, very much segregated in Mississippi? And I know that Greenville has had the fame of being one of the more progressive cities in the state of Mississippi. Mississippi history textbooks that I've read speak with a lot of hatred towards Greenville for that reason, because it was a place where black people could be a little bit more successful, a little bit more free than in the rest of the state, certainly in southern Mississippi.

But what do you think was the role, the importance of a Catholic school in a place where there were only a handful of Catholics? I think that from what I've read, when Father Hake came here, there were two families, two black families that were Catholic, and maybe a handful of white families. but what was the importance of this of having a Catholic school in a place where most of the students were not Catholics? Well, as I was coming up, the Catholic school

was the link of connecting community. You know, to me it was where community was being built. We had the skating rink where people, not just from the Catholic school, but in the whole community of Greenville that were black that came, they had a place to be. And then we would have,

different events that went on that people from the whole Greenville would attend. So to me, it was a building of the black community in a safe space that was welcoming. I haven't gone to other events as I grew up, the ones that were held at Sacred Heart were just more welcoming, more friendly, like you felt like you belonged, whether you were Catholic or not, you weren't treated any different. I mean, I saw the nuns helping community members that were not even Catholic people. I remember once my grandmother got sick, because I was raised by my grandmother, the nuns walked all the way from the convent to our home and helped, you know, mom with getting our clothes together and making sure we were ready for school. And she,

she would walk every day until mom got better, you know. So that was like, you didn't see that. But here this white nun is walking through, you know, this community. And she couldn't speak English, you know. She was the only one that was in the, she didn't teach. She was one of the ones that just worked in the convent. But she just helped out. And I just never forgot that, you know.

they were there for you. What language did she speak? She was German. I want to ask a little more, just because it gives the context for our family's connection to the church. But I want to ask you, Chris, I feel like you have a strong sense of how this church and church community has impacted your family. And I'm wondering if you could tell us and then have your mom respond. Yeah. Well, for me, Sacred Heart, um,

I mean, I cannot actually envision our family really or even myself without this parish and the school. I think, for me, there's so much to say, and it's very emotional for me to think about because, you know, this was an alternative for black people at a time when we were subhuman to most white people. I would say in the South, but probably in a lot of ways even to, you know, in the rest of the country. We were subhuman, you know, not quite exactly full humans. And so this was an alternative. It's like Mississippi only grudgingly created public schools for black and white kids. They didn't want public schools for anybody except for the rich planners kids historically. And so the public schools were subpar for both black and white people.

You know they were really, really the bottom of the barrel for black kids. And so this was an alternative. It was either burn up in a lifetime of ignorance. or go to the public schools. To me, going to the public schools in the south and the, you know, before desegregation was almost like having these little kids look at a table full of fine food

that they could never touch, you know, getting books that were 10 and 12 years old after the white kids had run through them and tore them up and written all in them, you know. And, you know, it was just, it was just hard for people who were still just less than 100 years out of slavery, you know. you know so my my great-grandmothers parents would have been born if not in slavery right after

right after emancipation and so the catholic school presented the catholic school and the catholic church presented an opportunity for black people to move into i would say humanity in a way you know because they could skirt they the options that were given to us by white America was you either be a surf as you were designed to be what you were brought here to be, a worker, to enrich someone else and then die, and hopefully you'll go to heaven, or you can go to the public schools and learn how to be maybe a little bit more of an upper-class servant, you know, but the Catholic schools represented an alternative to all of that. They could cut all that and say, no, we get to be full humans.

And so for me, what's powerful is that, and a lot of people don't understand, and I think who are not from the South, who will say that. you know oh well they could have done more and that but you know the stories that I grew up hearing were about these German nuns and and priests you know because SVD comes up out of Germany and in those Nordic countries and Father Jansson I guess was German and and then the Holy Ghost sisters you know doing this work for people touching black bodies you know taking care of young black people they'd never seen that you know I'm like ancestors had never seen it and I think that that also brought people to the beauty of the

Catholic faith you know as a universal faith I think it moved us into the middle class frankly and I think that for a great percentage of black Americans if they're honest about it they were moved into the middle class through the work of the Catholic Church and Catholic missions was sure they could have been better they could have been more radical but we had nuns marching with Reverend King and priests and all and people getting holes too. But the everyday work, the quiet work, where they weren't necessarily demonstrating or pulling down, they got them to all killed, then, you know, nobody would have benefited really in any way except, you know, an emotional attachment to, you know, to a revolutionary past.

But instead, they were quietly doing the work of educating people and providing opportunities that Mississippi said that you don't get to have, you know? And so for me, that is powerful beyond words. It is the, it's, it's, it made all of the difference. And it's a huge reason why I'm still a Catholic today, you know. So, yeah, I could talk forever about it, but. How do you feel about that assessment? I think it's pretty spot on what he's saying about the connections.

Because just growing up here at this parish, when the civil rights movement happened, it was different what was going on at the public school and what was going on in the Catholic school, our school. It was almost like two different things going on for the longest. We didn't know that our nuns were white, which was crazy, like how we didn't know. but I just remember one of the nuns said we don't treat you like what's going on there with the white people out there remember we are white and we're like you're not white

you know because they wore habits and one of the nuns took off a habit and we just freaked out we just screamed like oh my God she is white up there we didn't know So I don't know. I know that changed my thinking, you know, about it.

Like, oh, wow, they were white all the time, and we were getting educated by them, didn't never put that together until the civil rights movement happened, you know. And people were walking out, and the nuns were trying to get us not to walk out because they were saying, we have not mistreated you in the ways that the rest of what was going on, on the outside of here was treating people. Did you all walk out anyway? We did just because it was, you know, because you never get to. It was a social moment.

Yeah. But I just remember that being pivotal, that none taking our habit off. Well, I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit, Father Tom, about we could go back to Michigan for a moment. Tell us, where are you from in Michigan, and tell us a little bit about your life growing up, particularly your history with gardens, since that's what we do. I was born in 42 in Emmett, Michigan, a small Irish town, in those days, 100% Irish Catholics, by Port Huron, Michigan. And my dad died in 49, September 28, 1949.

and my mother's side is Slovak. So I'm not going to get into how my mother met my dad as another story. But anyway, so after my dad died, in the summertime, my grandparents owned a dairy farm in Vassar, Michigan, Tuscaloac County. And Tuscaloac County, to this very day, is nearly non-Catholic. And so I went to the farm. I was seven years old. I was six years old when my dad died. And I turned 7 in November.

Then we all went to the farm. My uncle and aunt picked us up with their 49 Chevy, with their three, two children, and we packed all our stuff up for the whole summer. The five kids, my mother, my aunt and uncle, and their son and daughter. You can't imagine that all in one car today. It was the 49 Chevy. Off we went to Vassar, and then we spent the whole summer up there. And that's what I learned gardening, because my job was, as a little,

boy, water all the tomato plants, pepper plants, cabbage plants, and everything else, had water them by hand. There was no hose. And then I had to cover them up with paper from Detroit News or Detroit Times or what have you, free press, because there was frost, maybe until June the 14th or 15th, and they were safe. So I learned gardening from my grandpa and my grandmother, and also from my mother too. So we had a huge garden because my mother had five children from 11 to four and my mother had no Social Security because my dad died in 49 before Social Security came in for a private businessman. He owned a Texaco gas station. So we had no income coming in, hardly at all. So gardening was important and there my mother and my grandma canned everything. You name it, they canned it.

And then we went in the woods with our buckets and picked strawberries, not strawberry, blackberries. A lot of blackberries, wild blackberries. Along the dishes, we picked up strawberries. And then in those days, Eastern Michigan had a lot of cherry trees, a lot of orchards. Not today. But in those days, we would go out and pick cherries, peaches, what have you. And then my mother and my grandma canned everything. so we canned everything

the fruits and what have you and on the farm we had a lot of apple trees and we put apples in the basement we wrapped them up with paper so it went rot

and that's what we had to eat fresh fruits today you have banana you have every day when I grew up if you had banana

for Easter and Christmas that was it you live off the land and that's what we did so when six timber came, we came back to Amit, and my uncle bought all the canned goods. You make another trip with all the canned goods that we put in our basement. You name it, we canned the carrots,

we canned the beets, we canned everything. Salcrow, we made your own sauerkraut, and you name it all. So that's a learned gardening from a little boy, and my mother liked gardening too. So it's part of my blood. I always say this. Gardening, the plants always say thank you. They never complain. So if you want to relax, go to your garden, pick out the hole, and just touch the earth, and that's Mother Earth. That's God's creation. And the Delta has the best land in the nation. For thousands of years, the Mississippi River flooded. the Delta. And that's what we have such good land in the Delta. We should have hundreds of gardens in the city of Greenville. There should be no salvation in the city. There's enough land around here

with empty homes that people could just plant just 10 feet by 10 feet. Your grains, a tomato plant, pepper plants. But we forgot how to even put our foot into a shovel into the dirt. We forgot how to even do that. We forgot how even put seeds into the ground. A young people have forgotten their roots, how gardening can relax you, and touching the earth can relax you. Native Americans knew that. The old folks knew that. And that's why I stress gardening so much. It relaxes me. It gives me healthy and strong and no one complains. Are there, when you were growing up, were there any particular foods that your family raised in the garden connected to your Slovak or Irish ancestors? Well, I can't recall that.

We just grew the regular vegetables, carrots, beets, cabbage, cabbage, sweet corn, regular food. I can't recall anything from the cabbage a lot because of the sauerkraut. I can't recall any special vegetables? No. Just like large tomatoes, peppers, they did not plant any hot peppers like we'd have down here. Routabagas were more for the Irish side of the family, but my grandmother, grandpa liked horse radish.

Horse radish. We had the horse radish, which I don't care for too much. But other than that, just the regular, we had no mustard greens. that's down here, no collard greens, that's down here. A lot of spinach and a lot of cucumbers. It was a big garden, though, a good half an acre or more. And then we had another garden for the watermelons and cantaloupe.

We had no oak oak, that's down here, you see. So a lot of squash, a lot of squash, lots of herbid squash, summer squash, all kinds of squash. Were there any foods, any particular foods? that you remember from your mom's side of the family that they made that might have been distinct or different. If you were growing up in an Irish town and you were living with your Slovak family, were there any recipes or any things that you knew

were different than what other kids were eating? Well, I'm not a cook, and my grandmother, she cooked on an old wood stove. That was my job bringing wood in wood and coal stove. No recipes, but she made lettuce soup. fresh lettuce soup. She made that cream of lettuce soup and cream of vegetable soup of all the fresh vegetables, peas, carrots, you name it all, potatoes, you name it all. And then at Christmas time, I can't even, it's called Luxor, I think it's in Slovak, it's sweet milk,

wherever that is, and bread and poppy seed, a lot of poppy seed cake and everything. And And that's what we had for Christmas Eve, because it was a fast day in those days. And therefore, you had only one meal on Christmas Eve, and that's what we ate. And we had the meal about 5 o'clock, then we had to go out and milk the cows. It was a dairy farm. And so I learned how to milk the cows, pull the young calves out of the cow. And I had to, we had no bull. We had a bull, and the bull was called Billy.

charged Grandpa, it was on, it was October of 57, September, October 57, and Grandpa always had a pitchfork. And he was going to breed Lily the cow. He did his thing, but the bull wanted some more sex, I guess. And he didn't want to go back in the barns and charged grandpa. And grandpa stabbed them right here in the forehead. And grandpa says, Tomas, that's it. Artificial. The trailer came Monday, the truck came, that was in the Val Bowl. So we had Holstein cows, and my job on the farm would be to milk the cows, breed the cows, and fix the fences. I didn't drive the tract as much like to plow or to disc or anything else. It's with the farming. And I loved it. And so I'm close to the earth. I'm close to animals, but not cats and dogs in the house.

What was one of the most beautiful memories you can remember from being a child on the farm that made you realize how close to the earth you were? Well, I think seeing the birds and seeing the chickens, we had a lot of chickens, and I like to pet my pet chickens, and my pet cow had a little pet jersey cow, and her name was Josie, and I even trained how to shake Paul. like a dog you know and uh and play with the cows and play with the chickens and the cats and the dogs but one day i know grandpa and i were fixing fences i was about eight nine years old came upon a baby fawn in the woods i say oh grandpa we had to take this farm back to the farm i'll raise it and he says oh no no tamash the mother deer will come by you don't take that and grandpa had great respectful conservation. He didn't use the word conservation, but he had old John Deer tractor, and he would make sure that the birds, like the meadowlocks and the babblinks,

would finish nesting to cut his hay. He would even go around a site if he felt there were birds nesting, and not to kill the baby birds. He loved nature, but he didn't say that, you know, like conservation and everything else. He loved nature. He was saying, I said, Grandpa, How do you keep awake us? I sang to God in his little John Deere tractor. And he loved nature. He loved his cows. Grandma was saying, he called, he says,

they called each other old man, old lady in Slovak. And he says, she would say, my grandma would say, you take care of your cows better than you took care of me. Because he would wash the tails of all the cows. They had no dirt and the cows were clean. He knew them all. They never kick him. He would say, come boss, and all the cows will follow him.

Like he was the shepherd. I say, come boss. They looked at me. Who in the hell of you? But he knew each cow by name. They only had 32. So it was personal. And that's what I like farming.

It was personal. A lot like today with 10,000 chickens, a million chickens, or how many thousand cows so impersonal. These cows don't even see the green grass. It's sad, we became two institutionalized with our animals, our chickens and our cows. I like to see cows eating green grass. I love to see the chickens picking the grass. In fact, the chickens in Emmett, we had about five chickens.

The yolk was so strong that my sister didn't like them, because the egg was so strong eating all that grass from the yard at home. at home in Emmett. We had five chickens all the time with all of my pets. So that's I love nature. And to this very day, I love nature. And I think we as Catholics should lead the nation in social justice and with global warming because Pope Francis is a great leader in that. He wrote an encyclical La Dau-Dar-C in which he tells the people that we are destroying Mother Earth. Mother Earth is a gift from God. God's created the world. And this is his gift for you, all of us, to enjoy. And we are destroying Mother Earth. And Mother Earth speaks for God. I think God's crying

that we are destroying his earth, or her earth. And I think this creation is so important. Well, gardening is so important that we have to get back to the basic roots of life. or we can grow our own crops, help out nature, because this is God's earth. He gave each of us the ability to take care of the earth, and that's why I think Catholicism has a great theology of creation, and we should use it, but it's no one even preaches about God's creation, and we are destroying it by our own greed. everything you said was so powerful and for me is a deep inspiration. At our parish, we go to a Vincentian parish in, you know, in Philly.

Yes, apparently they are. We didn't know. I didn't know. So we lucked out on that. Say it again? The Vincentians, they're progressive people. Yeah. Yeah, they are. Usually religious older people are more progressive. The Darsan priests are more.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that has been our experience and so we do. um we we definitely prayed of that god would send us to a parish we prayed and god would send us to the right parish and it happened to be a vincentian parish and i'm very grateful for it because i didn't know the vincentians before didn't certainly didn't know that they were progressive i'd gone to a jesuit parish before but in any case um everything you said was there's so much there's so much uh you know there i think to talk about and and certainly we can't get to all

of it but you mentioned particularly that um we as catholic you have a deep theology of creation. I have helped to found care of creation ministry at our parish when we work on environmental issues and we tie it into our spirituality. And I'm just curious, how do you think that that care of creation theology can be manifested in a city, in a place like Greenville? When I got, when I, you know, come back,

I'm always surprised at how little awareness there is about the earth how much disconnection and separation as you mentioned there is between people who are these were all farming people if you throw a rock in greenville it will hit somebody who is who is probably a first generation descendant of some farmers or at least of gardeners you know and indeed even when I grew up and we I left probably at eight or nine but people still all had gardens they all had a little almost everybody had some greens in their front yard or that side yard. I'm just curious, how do you think that that, this care of creation theology that we have, and there are very few priests that, we hear it all the time at our parish. It's what, you know,

but we realize that sometimes we forget, because then when we go on vacation, we come to parishes like this, or we hear it again, you know, so we forget that we're existing in this whole, especially the American Catholic Church, which is deeply conservative in a lot of ways and very much against our current Holy Father, which is sad. But I'm just curious, how do you think that that care of creation theology can penetrate in a city like Greenville that doesn't know Catholics still and that frankly does not have a we don't recycle in this city you know there's not a there's not an awareness if you talk to most people are environmentally I mean I think I bought my bag to green to Walmart the other day about we bought our own bags and the woman you know there was a visible

pause she didn't know what to do and so she just stopped bagging you know our things and let us because, you know, it was that sort of disconnection. How do you think that can change things here? Well, I know at Kroger's, I bring my own bags, cloth bags. If I knew the answer, I'll be Jesus Christ himself. I think when you deal with creation, you must deal with yourself. if you love yourself and you see your self image and create it in God's image and likeness

then you see everything as God's creation too I believe now this is getting off maybe a deep end that there's a deep spiritual crisis happening not only in Greenville but in our nation especially with our young men and women that even though we have over 300 some children churches in this town. Many, many people do not belong in any church at all. And that if you have

no sense of who you are, in no sense of spirituality, no sense of that you are loved by God, that you love by Jesus Christ, and really feel deep down in your heart, emotionally speaking, then you see the beauty of God's moon, God's earth, God's everything. But if you have no sense of spirituality, you have no sense of who you are as a human being, then it's difficult to get people off their fanies. I think the deepest sin in Greenville is apathy. Apathy is a sin. How can we get, and I think,

Gimuth understands, to get people even to plant, to take a whole, and to get young people even involved. There was a deep sense of apathy. This apathy goes through education. It goes through voting because Mississippi has the lowest turnout of 35%, the lowest of the whole nation, even Greenville. So it all ties in together. There should be no desert of greenery in this city at all.

With all the land that we got, there should be no trouble while people should have no fresh greens, no fresh tomatoes, no fresh cucumbers. This is in Detroit, Michigan of Philadelphia, with the snow, ice, and cold, only one garden. Down here, you have two gardens. What is blessing from God? And it really saddens me

that there are so few people who take the initiative and say, you know, kids, I'm going to, let's get a hole, and we will dig and plant, and we will enjoy our fresh carrots. there was apathy that's killing the Delta. But that's my personal opinion. So, but you have done a few things in the neighborhood and in the community to help change that.

So we'd love to see one of your gardens, see your winter garden, hear about the ways that you've tried to make change with the community. It wasn't much of a change because we had to go across the street. And Ms. Boldham could tell you that parishers did it I couldn't get anyone to help me besides parishioners and I'm going to leave it like that and now we have a little community garden

that Ms. Bull can talk to on Union Street and Elizabeth which I'm going to join too because when you have a public garden it's a public garden people came to pick but no one came to whole and you don't come to hole you don't enjoy the picking either now we can go outside

and I'll show you my garden thank you and that's what I like Georgia how she got all those people involved in Georgia Father Tom is talking about Stacey Abrams who ran for governor in Georgia in 2018 and 2012 mobilizing a huge

amount of support in Georgia and beyond. Now we head to the garden. Anyway, this is the garden that I plant myself. Last year I had nothing at all because I was to Bay St. Louis. This is the mustard. That's my carrots, kale, my lettuce, and over here is the mustard, and that's all mustard too. I got my peas, but they kind of froze, you see. See how they burnt up? Cold weather, peas can't take that. And I show over here.

That's the asparagus here. Turnips. And that's your broccoli and cabbage. And that's it. And this is my little broccoli. my little brother I picked this morning. Oh, those beets. And we are going to cook it, eat it today.

Now, Father, you know, I have to ask you, as a southerner, I grew up with all of this kind of food, the turnips and the mustard greens. And since I've moved to the north, Philadelphia is a little farther east of Michigan, but similar northern culture. Nobody knows what a turnip green is. Nobody's heard of mustard greens. How did you, how did your stomach take to eating southern foods,

and particularly foods with spice and pepper in them like we eat? I don't eat no spice and that's what it comes. Simple as that. If you eat a lot of spice and a lot of pepper at all, you spend more time in purgatory. That's a good one. I guess I'll be there for a thousand years. Oh, no.

So Hispanic people know that when they cook for me, But we always had turnips up north. We never, at the tops, you always ate the bottoms. We ate the bottoms, right. Yeah, we had no mustard, no collard greens. But we always had turnips, lots of turnips, and you bake them, or you boil with nice butter and all, turnips. And this is my cabbage.

My cabbbs are not doing too good. I know what's going on. The heads are coming on. And you see, I just cut my broccoli over there, see? and now the broccoli will continue until the cold, cold weather because from those stems

come littered broccoli things and you can eat them until February or March unless it's cold, cold, cold then you lose everything but see over here let's see yeah I got one coming up over here

yet right there two I'll eat them again they're beautiful what's your trick for such perfect broccoli heads I don't know

that's the best I had in a couple years you've got to have a mild fall and hate you say it it was a dry fall which is good because you can do it with irrigation it's too wet

it rots out so obviously mild fall and you've got to plant these before Labor Day. If you plant them after Labor Day, the cold weather can come in and kill everything. A couple years ago, cold weather came in and killed everything. They were too tender. Yes, yes. So you have to plant, in my opinion, you got to plant these, let's say, about the last week of August. So you can pick them now, so in case cold weather comes, at least you got the broccoli. But from these stems,

will grow little broccoli will come up little broccoli will come up and those you can eat eat eat until things but cabbage you know yourself you pick them once that's it now next in the fall to springtime I plant all beans in here because broccoli takes everything from the ground broccoli assumes all your nitrogen cabbage too turnips so I plant all this in beans what kind of beans do you like to grow green beans yes oh Beans, those two, green or lima beans. What kind of limas?

The speckled brown ones or the white ones? Yeah, green ones. Green ones. The green line. Neither. Green. I guess they're green. What the hell they always name?

Same green beans. So next spring of God saves my life. I was 80 years old. I want to plant something at you. I got it over there. My tomato plants. I had no tomatoes last year. People picked them all.

I was gone anyway. Two years ago. plant tomatoes over there and over across the road to okra because they're okra needs lots of space okay okay over there and elvis likes his hot peppers over there and that's it how'd you learn how to plant uh you know mustard did you learn from somebody down here how to grow in the delta no just trial and error just to throw the damn seeds in that's it when did you start growing moustards and turnip greens well i started growing them when i started growing them when i was was in Louisiana see the south to be giving mustard on the and I also had

potatoes on the south too so in Louisiana I had two good gardens along by you attached so I had a lot of mashed potatoes or red potatoes and we had a lot of our mustard and turnips and I had a lot of peas and my cook there will make me homemade broccoli soup home-made vegetable soup and homemade pea soup she was from the country and she didn't eat the stuff that's true but she cooked them for me from up here no recipe

and just cooked everything so I even had a bigger garden in St. Martinville even a better garden oh yeah well good well welcome thank you so much Father Tom

this has really been a delightful time you want to close us out with a blessing Yes, please. Name the Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Oh, mighty God, I give you thanks for these folks coming here to talk about gardening. Give you thanks, oh, God, that I are able to plant gardening at my age to have some nice broccoli today, fresh broccoli.

Give you thanks for these fellows coming back to Greenville from Philadelphia. They may have a safe trip back. And I pray for all the people. who have gardening this fall in the south. Pray for the people who are experiencing global warming with droughts, especially in Ethiopia, Somalia, Cameroons, and many other places where they're migrating because there's no water.

So I give thanks to you, God, that we have water in the Delta. And I pray that somehow our world leaders will take global warming seriously and follow the advice of Pope Francis, for we are all in this together. Need the Father, Son, the Holy Spirit.

Amen. Amen. Amen. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you so much to Father Tom Malali for sharing his story with us. And thank you for listening and sharing this episode of Seeds and their people with your loved ones. Please share this episode with someone you love and subscribe to our

show in your favorite podcast app. Thank you also for helping our seed keeping and storytelling work by leaving us a review and also ordering seeds, t-shirts, and more from our website. Trueloveseeds.com. And again, please join our Patreon at patreon.com slash true love seeds. Your support keeps the episodes coming. Thank you so much to all of you who are already supporting. And remember, keeping seeds is an act of true love for our ancestors and our collective

Okay. You've made it all the way to the end, and now for a special treat. We're bringing back our newest member of the team on the podcast, our son slash nephew, Brian. He was so excited about sharing with you that he asked me to record more. So here are some more facts and imaginations and ideas and so on about plants with Brian. away bonus track so when i'm sometimes with you well when i'm always with you i see seeds and i think hmm i think hmm maybe i should pick them up and maybe grow them somewhere and i ask my uncle owen when i i asked him could you hold these seeds for me well i pick some more up like I did when we were in the woods today and he said yes sure how did we get the seeds out of the plant we stomped on the we didn't stop on the seeds while we stomped on their protection it was a seed pod it was a tree that had these like pods around the seeds what was that thing called again a seed pod no no no no

What was the tree called again? I don't know. It was kind of like a locust, like a tree than the bean family. So I thought that maybe we should grow it, but then Uncle Owen told me, I didn't know what, I didn't realize what tree it was, and he told me that it was so big. So I said, could we just take the seeds and see if any buzz can eat seeds like this? and then he said

I don't think any bugs can eat these giant seeds and then I just said could we just take them please and then he said yes sure okay that's true and then what about in the summer

when we're in the park or we're walking past gardens and how do we know when there's ripe seeds on the plants well we know that there's ripe seeds on the plants because there's a flower in there

it might be like a little potty flower or something always check from a little potty flower or a other flower potty like it has pods or it's going to the potty oh no sir

not like it's going to the potty so it has seed pots so how do you recognize a seed pod a seed pod usually has like you can recognize a seed pod from telling like stop on it first and if there's seeds coming out of it try to pick one up and try to grow it I have a other cool flower that you can touch and then the seed sometimes

pops in blue that means it's good and um sometimes when you touch the flower, it can, not explode, but it can, like, open its flower. When you squeeze the sides, it can burst open into blue. The seed, the seed can. Oh, the seeds fly away. It's called jewel weed. Jewelweed. And when their seeds are really ready, what do the fruits look like when the seeds are ready to pop out?

I think I don't remember. Do they look like long and thin? Are they like fat and pregnant? I think they look fat and pregnant. Fat and what? Fat and pregnant. Pregnant. That's true.

The fatter they are, the more likely they're going to explode. And why do you think they send their seeds so far away from themselves? I'm trying to think about that. Maybe because they want more seeds to grow like them. And I have a other cool leaf. Well, it's going to turn into a flower or a fruit or something. But I have another cool leaf to share with you that lives in California. What's that?

I don't remember what it's called, but when you touch the leaf, it closes. Oh, a sensitive plant. It's a mimosa. It's like related to mimosa. a tree in the leaves yeah they're called sensitive plant because what why do you think they call it a sensitive plant because they because they because they because they can um close their selves when you touch them yeah they're sensitive to your touch and um I think that's all oh no that's not all I need to tell you

certain bugs go on plants The The only bug that goes on any plant It wants is a termite Little teeny tiny You might want a spider to kill it Or a ladybug But not ladybug

The miraculous girl Oh, okay, not the superhero ladybug Do you mean aphids? Are you talking about termites? Aphid. Okay. And what does the aphid look like? A aphid looks super tiny.

So tiny. Sometimes you can't even see it. And what did you learn about the relationship between ants and termites? Ants and termites. So I remember, but this is disgusting. I, Uncle Owen told me this. Have you ever heard of? What is it called again?

I think it's sugar. Oh, honey-dew, honey-dew? Honey-dew. So this is disgusting, but it comes out of ants behinds. Not the ants. The ants pull it out of whose behinds. So they pull it out of their own behind. No.

Okay. ants milk the aphids okay so they they they like to get the honeydew out of the aphids and i'm going to have to fact-check this because i said it comes out of their behinds but i don't actually remember ew it might come out of their behinds let's see okay let's find this how is honeydew Aphids are small insects that live from plant sap. In essence, honeydew is the excrements of aphids. Are put more bluntly, aphid poop. Eel, that's disgusting.

I know that's disgusting. But that's how sometimes termites survive. Not termites, ants. Ants survive. Okay, on that note, thank you for sharing all of your wisdom with us, Brian. You're welcome. Okay, we'll see you next time. See you later on the radio.

Winking.