Joyce Hostyn
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joycehostyn.bsky.social
Joyce Hostyn
@joycehostyn.bsky.social
360 followers 930 following 47 posts
Plants little forests, pocket forests and pocket meadows as songs, poems, love letters to the land. Adjunct @QueensU
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joycehostyn.bsky.social
Pollinators of all sorts enjoying Devils Walking Stick (Aralia Spinosa). After flowering migrating birds feast on the berries.
August 31, 2025 at 5:44 PM
joycehostyn.bsky.social
Discovered a bumble bee nest under a leaf bag. Possibly brown-belted bumble bees?
July 31, 2025 at 8:53 AM
joycehostyn.bsky.social
Found a Song Sparrow nest at Lakeside today just before Paul Preston, who’s doing a Song Sparrow study this summer arrived to facilitate an urban bird workshop. If you find one let Paul know, he’s looking for 100. #ygk kingstonfieldnaturalists.org/nests-in-the....
Picture of a song sparrow nest with four speckled eggs in the midst of old goldenrod stems
May 10, 2025 at 6:49 PM
joycehostyn.bsky.social
Ducks in the pond! Fingers crossed they’ll nest again this year.
April 15, 2025 at 9:55 PM
joycehostyn.bsky.social
Enjoying the beauty of Red Willow Mskobiimwish (Red Osier Dogwood) coated in ice, feeling grateful for last weekend's teachings by Elder Deb St. Amant of Mskobiimwish (Red Willow)'s gifts, including use as Asemaa
Branches of Red Osier Dogwood (red willow) coated with ice, with White Pine in background Red Osier Dogwood (red willow) shrub coated with ice, in the ditch next to a oroad pictures of the hands of a woman with a knife scraping the bark of Red Willow into a bowl
March 31, 2025 at 11:13 AM
joycehostyn.bsky.social
Air is Kin: "Air has a dynamic ecology... The microbiome of the air (the aerobiome) is primarily 'fed' by the soil & vegetation... We inhale the exhalations of plants & diverse microorganisms as they inhale ours––the most magnificent occurrence of unconscious reciprocity." www.thecentriclab.com/aik
screenshot from "A Declaration for Air" prepared by Centric Lab with the words: The Air is alive. They are Kin. They create life. They are part of our Great Creator. They consist of life-sustaining microbes, nutrients and oxygen. Without these element, Air is erased. We are asking for the right for Air to exist freely, expansively and abundantly. When we understand that Air is medicine, they become the medicine our bodies need.
March 28, 2025 at 1:30 PM
joycehostyn.bsky.social
"The story of the shit fence" - string a perching wire & birds deposit their gifts. Would need some editing to remove unwanted plants
Diagra of the ”shit” fence. A fence that was set up before a woodland planting to prevent it all from hares, rabbits etc. Already after five seasons a lot of visits by birds, that had been sitting on the fence, had done what they should. An half open,impressionistic outer edge of trees and shrubs, and sometimes hedge, had been created increasing values. The illustration points to each of the different trees and shrubs planted by birds after five seasons.
March 16, 2025 at 10:21 AM
joycehostyn.bsky.social
Chickadees enjoying late season snacks in the Staghorn Sumac
March 15, 2025 at 2:24 PM
joycehostyn.bsky.social
the perils of birdscaping with non-native plants "birds of many species loved the fruits and built their nests in the thick shrubbery [of plants we now consider invasive]; they also spread the digested seeds far and wide, creating even more bird food. I" www.nativeplanttrust.org/feeding-bird...
screenshot: "Alas, in their well-intentioned zeal to protect birds, but driven by the misapprehension that birds were not getting enough to eat, early bird conservationists came up with the idea of planting shrubs that produced abundant fruit and in many cases thick cover for native birds. These included European buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica) and glossy-buckthorn (a.k.a. glossy false buckthorn, Frangula alnus), Russian- and autumn-olive (Elaeagnus angustifolia, E. umbellata), multiflora rose (Rosa multiflora), Asian honeysuckles (Lonicera maackii, L. japonica, L. tatarica, L. morrowii, to name some common ones), Japanese barberry (Berberis thunbergii), Oriental bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus), black and pale swallowwort (Cynanchum louiseae, C. rossicum), and other fast-growing non-native species."
March 15, 2025 at 2:14 PM
joycehostyn.bsky.social
"It’s up to us to decenter the human and co-create ways of being, doing, working, designing relating, organizing, etc. that serve the lives of all species." sympoiesisworld.substack.com/p/reworlding...
quote - "To imagine is to momentarily stop outside our limiting 'I' and sense into how other lifeforms experience their world - and us."
March 9, 2025 at 4:34 PM
joycehostyn.bsky.social
"Like the mycelium that runs below our feet, stories are everywhere, threading and reshaping our reality, even if we don’t see them... we need to tell stories that enliven, provide solace, and inspire collective action." www.whatisemerging.com/opinions/dsa...
Excerpt from David Abram's book, The Spell of the Sensuous ENLIVENING STORIES — BELONGING IN A BREATHING WORLD A story must be judged according to whether it makes sense. And 'making sense' must be here understood in its most direct meaning: to make sense is to enliven the senses. A story that makes sense is one that stirs the senses from their slumber, one that opens the eyes and the ears to their real surroundings, tuning the tongue to the actual tastes in the air and sending chills of recognition along the surface of the skin. To make sense is to release the body from the constraints imposed by outworn ways of speaking, and hence to renew and rejuvenate one's felt awareness of the world. It is to make the senses wake up to where they are.
March 9, 2025 at 12:50 PM
joycehostyn.bsky.social
"Could verb-based languages instead help us understand the world through its complex, entangled, changing relationships?" nowthenmagazine.com/articles/ver...
contrasts noun-based static governance (division of a city by industrial, commercial, residential zones) with verb-based dynamic governance... flows responding to changing ecosystem limits
February 21, 2025 at 10:44 AM
joycehostyn.bsky.social
"Let us imagine Rewilding as an engagement of energies that invite Nature (capital N) into our quickly-approaching, post-carbon society. Rewilding is then a manner of reparations, a veering away from simplification and a full-on investment in diversity..." coyoteandthunder.com/f/thinking-l...
illustration of California watershed alongside the following principles: - We carry into our future at least as many responsibilities as we do rights - this is our charge - we have the right to extract, but we have the responsibility to restore - we have the right to inhabit, but we have the responsibility to set aside - stewardship is the active management of leaving the more-than-human world to its own functioning devices.
January 29, 2025 at 9:57 AM
joycehostyn.bsky.social
rethinking urban landscapes centred on the land: (eco-)cathedral/seven generation thinking; (eco-)acupuncturist design igniting small interventions;(eco-)cracy multispecies decision-making www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/12...
table outlining four different relationships and visions of the city and its relationship to nature: contrast (wilderness), contact (accessible nature), contract (ecosystem services), contingent (indistinguishable where nature directs urban form)
January 26, 2025 at 11:31 AM
joycehostyn.bsky.social
Environmental policies, legislation & approach to biodiversity need a paradigm shift

Leverage points for improving urban biodiversity conservation in the Anthropocene: A novel ecosystem lens for social-ecological transformation www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Chart illustrating leverage points for improving urban biodiversity conservation in the Anthropocene. Intent > multispecies just and flourishing environmental governance system; Design > Adaptive, nimble approaches to biodiversity conservation; Feedbacks > The agency and adaptability of novel ecosystems to repair damaged landscapes is a new recognized dynamic; Parameters > increasing type and number of ecosystems that are protected and valued
January 24, 2025 at 3:03 PM
joycehostyn.bsky.social
the problem with systems adjacent approaches: "What we call systems are not just stories about webs of relationships; they are also stories about boundaries and where we decide to draw them."
diagram with two overlapping circles, one is aspects of systems thinking, the other aspects of complexity thinking - in the intersection sits what the author calls some of the most interesting and practical approaches such as Cynefin, ecological economics and systems ecology
January 24, 2025 at 10:26 AM
joycehostyn.bsky.social
just stumbled across Citizen Bird, a wonderful book from 1923 designed to help children fall in love with birds at a time of crisis www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/31728#p... getting reprinted this spring www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/citizen-bird...
scan of a page of the book on "the tree swallow" that describes the birds appearance, song and nesting behaviour. "A good Citizen of the United States, but more shy than the Martin and Barn Swallow; these two often return, year after year, to some favorite place, but the Tree Swallow is not so reliable. A Sky Sweeper.
January 22, 2025 at 4:49 PM
joycehostyn.bsky.social
"the horseshit problem wasn't made irrelevant by a 'better' question — but by the speculative emergence of radically innovative alternative paradigm" emergentfutureslab.com/blog/radical...

Image: F.W. Geels, Multi-Level Analysis of the Transition Pathway from Horse-Drawn Carriages to Automobiles
The Dynamics of Transitions in Socio-Technical Systems: A Multi-Level Analysis of the Transition Pathway from Horse-Drawn Carriages to Automobiles (1860–1930) by F.W. Geels, 2005
January 22, 2025 at 11:12 AM
joycehostyn.bsky.social
I've been a recovering human-centred designer since leaving the world of software. Community-centred design is one alternative: "How utilities can achieve equity through community-centered design." www.esource.com/blog/001231l...
table that compares individualism (competitive, focused on difference) vs communal (collaborative, focused on success of the larger group) culture. Individualism goal = independence. Communal goal = success of the tribe, family, or community. Individual sayings: "pull yourself up by your boostraps, if it's to be, it's up to me, if at first you don't succeed, try again" Communal sayings: "may hands make light work, lifting as we climb, power to the people, we shall overcome". Individualism development: "becoming the best individual creates a better society", Communal development: "building the best society makes you a better individual", Individualism resources: "work to get a bigger piece of the pie" vs Communal culture "work to widen the pie so everyone gets a bigger slice, individualism decision making: "make the best decision for yourself now" vs communal "make decisions considering the impact to the seventh generation, individualism reward: "individual success, freedom and material possessions" vs communal "healthy and thriving tribe, family or community"
January 22, 2025 at 10:23 AM
joycehostyn.bsky.social
How might we design a highrise that considers the needs of more-than-humans? By "reframing the questions we ask throughout the design process, we can circumvent the current system, which centres humans rather than Country." architectureau.com/articles/a-c...
Illustration of a highrise that Incorporates the needs of other life forms: clear flying paths (lights out), visible building features (glass treatment & screening), safe places to land, heat mitigation & pollution reduce with green walls, collision avoidance (sound treatments & deterrents), habitat create with dense endemic planting, risk free movement with downward motion sensing lighting & green & blue paths, habitat support with bee bricks, rockeries and crevices & shallow water points Image: © Djinjama
January 20, 2025 at 11:40 AM
joycehostyn.bsky.social
Riverhood - enlivening rivers in all their senses - four interrelated ontologies: ‘river-as-ecosociety’, ‘river-as-territory’, ‘river-as-subject’, and ‘river-as-movement’
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
details of the four interrelated ontologies that allow engaging with rivers as arenas of material, social and symbolic co-production among humans and nature
January 11, 2025 at 12:06 PM
joycehostyn.bsky.social
For a diplomatic council of river basins that amplifies the voices of various entities—mountains, waterways, forests, animals, plants, and others unrulynatures.ch/Diplomatic-C...
illustrates dominant vs pluriversal narratives of life. Influences of the pluriversal include; bien-vivre, reinhabiting, feminism, care of life, recipes for transition, recreating the conditions for life
January 11, 2025 at 8:46 AM
joycehostyn.bsky.social
Bioregional resilience through bast fibres: “Clothing has the potential to make connections to land & people past and present, once the stories bound up in the creation of cloth come alive.”
media.churchillfellowship.org/documents/Zo...
January 10, 2025 at 7:32 PM
joycehostyn.bsky.social
Indigenous water scholarship: reclaiming and re-storying Indigenous Water Knowledges and traditional ways of knowing www.water-alternatives.org/index.php/al...
Conceptualisations of the different intersecting elements of Water Back movements across the six core Water themes: water cosmology & governance, water colonialism, water justice, water rights and responsibilities, water health, water & climate change
January 10, 2025 at 11:44 AM
joycehostyn.bsky.social
reimagining stakeholders (including human): when a tree is also a multispecies collective, a photosynthesis process, and
a carbon cycle openresearch.ocadu.ca/id/eprint/38...
table listing typologies of nonhuman stakeholders: individual organism, single species collective, multispecies collective, life processes, living system, biogeochemical cycle, processes of the atmosphere
December 29, 2024 at 10:11 AM