The summers in Austin had always been scorching, the city’s lakes and rivers once only shimmering reminders of what they had been: playgrounds for both locals and tourists. The relentless encroachment of pollution had dulled their allure, reducing once clear waters to murky reflections of a long-lost vibrancy. But now...now something had changed.
It began with a whisper, a quiet revolution that, at first, no one really noticed. The project was called ReLeaf, a name simple enough, easy to forget in the noise of the city's daily grind. Yet those who paid attention saw something remarkable growing—not on the land but above it. Vertical gardens had sprouted along the Colorado River, draping like green waterfalls from once-barren banks. They swayed gently in the wind, like the hair of giants.
Austin had borrowed the idea from Munich, they said. Munich had transformed the Isar River back in the early 2000s. The rumor was that someone, a visionary maybe, had stood on the riverbank and dreamed up the same for Austin. The vertical gardens worked like magic—though of course, it wasn’t magic at all. It was science: the roots of these plants absorbed the toxins, purifying the water drop by drop as it wove its way through the city.
The Colorado River was the first to change. If you were paying attention, you'd have seen it. What had once been brown and sluggish grew brighter, clearer, and the air above it fresher. Birds returned, their cries filling the skies. And with them, people came too. Not the hurried commuters or tourists that typically crowded the streets, but families. Workers unwinding after their shifts. The river was healing, and so was the city.
Lady Bird Lake, a sparkling centerpiece of Austin, became a new kind of urban oasis. On summer days, paddleboarders skimmed the surface of the water, laughing in the shadow of lush towers of greenery. Zilker Park, once a dusty patch of land, transformed into something out of a fairy tale. The vertical gardens bloomed, and beneath them, picnic blankets dotted the grass. Lovers lay on them, staring up at the new skyline of plants. Children ran barefoot, their laughter filling the warm evening air.
But it wasn’t just for show. The water itself was different, purer. Lake Travis, the reservoir that had long been a source of concern, was now reborn. The same gardens graced its edges, ensuring not only cleaner water for weekend boaters but also for the millions who depended on it for drinking.
And yet, despite the beauty of it all, there was something that felt...unspoken. A tension, as if the city’s newfound paradise was too good to last.
No one could quite say when it started, but whispers began to drift through the community. The gardens, for all their promise, had a life of their own. Some said they were growing too fast, spreading in ways no one had predicted. The roots, once praised for their ability to purify, now stretched deeper than anyone had anticipated.
There was talk of strange sightings near the banks of the Colorado River. At first, just murmurs. People swore they saw something moving in the water at night. Not just fish or the occasional otter. No, this was different. Larger.
A rumor spread like wildfire: the gardens were not just purifying—they were changing the water itself.
On a warm Friday evening, as the sun dipped below the horizon, a crowd gathered at the river’s edge, where the gardens grew thickest. No one was quite sure why they had come. Curiosity, perhaps. Or something deeper, a collective intuition that something was about to happen.
And then, the water rippled.
For a long moment, no one moved, their eyes locked on the spot where the river’s surface had been disturbed. The air seemed to grow colder, the smell of fresh water now tinged with something else—something metallic.
The gardens swayed more violently now, as though some invisible force was tugging at their roots.
And then, from beneath the water, something began to rise.
To be continued...
🚮 W.A.S.T.E.: Words Assisting Sustainable Transformation & Ecology
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Arrival Hour (0.00) | A moment outside of chronology when a crowd gathers not to witness but to be witnessed, waiting for something that may never fall. |
| Chestnut Book Nook (0.00) | Little Library is located on a quiet street and under a street light to make an evening or late night book grab easy peasy. |
| Clonestitch (0.00) | The act of weaving borrowed processes into new contexts, threads of replication forming fresh patterns. |
| Colorado River Watershed (0.00) | Practice of local repair, reuse, mutual care, and shared access. People use scrap, skills, and trust to keep each other safe and resourced when official systems fail. |
| Creekback (0.00) | The soft push at your ankles when Shoal Creek sends ripples both upstream and downstream. People feel it as a quiet yes from the past. |
| Creekside Testament (0.00) | The whispered truth of moving water, reminding wanderers that time itself delivers quiet justice. |
| Floor 1 (0.00) | Welcome, intrepid explorer! You find yourself standing on the First Floor of the sprawling ReLeaf Organic Media Collections & Botanical Gardens. A sense of wonder washes over you as you realize you're surrounded by a wealth of knowledge and natural beauty. Directly ahead, you see two grand, ornate doors. Each door leads to one of the most visited rooms within this treasure trove of a library. One door is adorned with intricate designs of rivers and creeks, signaling the entrance to the Watersheds Collection. The other door is decorated with an array of book spines, bookmarks, and paper leaves, inviting you into the Big Free Library. In the Watersheds Collection, you can immerse yourself in writings and other media that celebrate beloved watersheds like Shoal Creek, Waller Creek, and even Marigold Town's very own Settler's Creek. It's a room where each creek, river, and tributary tells its own story, awaiting your discovery. Alternatively, step into the Big Free Library—a haven for book lovers. This ever-growing collection is dedicated to promoting the circulation of books and other forms of organic media. Here, every shelf offers a new adventure, a new perspective, and an opportunity to engage with the world in a different way. Now, adventurer, the choice is yours: Which room will you explore first? |
| Icosaflow (0.00) | A network of modular water-cleansing icosahedra, pulsing with unseen currents, designed to weave purity back into rivers and lakes. |
| Icosahedra (0.00) | Floating twenty-faced purifiers seeded in Austin’s creeks and lakes, each facet filtering toxins while refracting sunlight into shifting mosaics of clean water and hope. |
| Lady Bird Lake (0.00) | The wide, restless heart of Austin, a man-made river-lake where festivals, protests, and blooms of algae ripple against the city’s reflection. |
| Lake Exhale (0.00) | The felt breath of Lady Bird Lake offering quiet forgiveness that loosens the day. |
| Mycoremediation (0.00) | The practice of enlisting fungi as silent custodians, their branching mycelial webs breaking down toxins, filtering waters, and stitching damaged ecologies back into balance. |
| Skeletron (0.00) | TRASH MAGIC SKELETRON!
SKELETRON IS A SET OF SELF-REPLICATING GEOMETRIC CONSTRUCTIONS USING STICKS, CORDS, AND THE PRICIPLE OF TENSEGRITY! DRILL HOLES IN THE ENDS OF STICKS! CUT CORDS TO ABOUT 18 INCHES(ONE CUBIT) IN LENGTH AND TIE THEM INTO SQUARE KNOTS TO CONNECT VERTICES! USE THE PLATONIC SOLIDS TO CONSTRUCT WORLDS OF GEOMETRY! BUILD FULL TRASH MAGIC UP AND DOWN EVERY RIVER VALLEY IN THE PLANET! AND CREEKS! 
REPLICATOR SCROLL AT GITHUB!
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| Vertical Garden (0.00) | Dive into our Vertical Garden section where creativity meets sustainability. This is a celebration of the innovative approach of integrating plants into urban environments in a vertical format, a testament to human resourcefulness in the face of limited space. Here, you'll discover a vast array of ideas on how to transform would-be waste materials into sustainable, beautiful, and thriving gardens. From DIY guides on upcycling aluminum cans into modular planters, to detailed articles and SolarPunk fiction exploring the transformative power of these gardens in various settings like Austin's schools and cityscape, the Vertical Garden category provides a deep dive into a green future. Through the articles and stories in this section, we share and explore concepts, techniques, and innovations that align with a sustainable, circular economy, which views waste as an asset rather than a problem. Whether you are looking to start your own vertical garden project or just enjoy immersing yourself in hopeful visions of a green urban future, you're in the right place. Join us as we explore and reimagine our relationship with nature and urban space, one vertical garden at a time. |
| Walnut Creek (0.00) | Walnut Creek is a 23-mile (37 km) long tributary stream of the Colorado River in Texas. It flows from north to south, crossing the Edwards Plateau on the western side of Austin, down to the Blackland Prairie on the eastern side of the city where it then drains into the Colorado River downstream of Longhorn Dam. The stream's upper region flows over limestone, while the southern stretch passes through deeper clay soils and hardwood forest. Walnut Creek's watershed, spanning 36,000 acres (15,000 ha), is the largest in Central Austin. |
| Zilker Park (0.00) | Practice of local repair, reuse, mutual care, and shared access. People use scrap, skills, and trust to keep each other safe and resourced when official systems fail. |