#Plant Your Flowers Water Your Flowers

[judilyart]

Finished commission for the lovely @mankrikswife 💜🌿

[snekdood]

*casually posts this at the same time to further my agenda of growing native plants instead of grass and shitty ornamentals*

[heikeee]

he's a dog alright

[lixydynavolt]

No dragon today because I worked on Fakemon instead. (amongst other things) My Regional Tangela and Tangrowth based on Kudzu! Not 100% sold on the visual design yet, I need to figure out a way to stylize the leaf-cover, but I feel like I'm on the right track.

🌿This Tangela is very friendly. It's identity is obscured by large leaves and vines that are said to never stop growing. Some people harvest their tails for food, but the Tangela don't seem to mind. Kantonian Tangela are usually seen on the ground in grasslands and forests, but this one will often climb trees and try to get as high as possible for more sunlight; sometimes it will even climb on other Pokemon!

🌷This Tangrowth is a massive walking carpet of vines and leaves. The dense, quick growing foliage of Tangrowth alongside many healing moves make it hard to overpower. The vines of Tangrowth are very useful, often being used for food, medicine, textiles and even tea. It seems to like being around humans, but not other grass types, and it has a tendency to topple them!

[notedchampagne]

thing my therapist told me today: everything worth getting is worth a little bit of suck

[anipgarden]

One thing I've found important but also sometimes difficult to learn is that the difference between a 'butterfly garden' and a 'biodiverse habitat' is that you gotta accept that sometimes things are gonna die.

This isn't to say that you shouldn't try to tend to things. If I find a bunch of oleander aphids harassing some of my young milkweed plants, I'll get the hose and spray them off no problem--hard to tend a garden and save milkweed seeds if they're getting the life sucked out of them before they can even go to seed. If I see a lot of snails starting to devour some of my flowers and turn them into brown mush, I'll pick them off and toss them to the neighborhood ducks.

But with that being said, creating a biodiverse environment for wildlife means there's gonna be prey animals and predator animals, and some insects may fill several niches. I plant milkweed and other flowers so monarchs and other insects can enjoy them as a host plant and a nectar source. Some years, I can barely even find large caterpillars because the wasps just go ham and pig out. That doesn't mean I'm gonna hunt down any and every wasp nest and spray it to death for being oh-so-mean to my precious baby caterpillars! They're just trying to survive, just like everything else in my garden!

And in the grand scheme, everything is part of a cycle that feeds everything else. The caterpillars feed the wasps, which then feed the cardinals and chickadees and mocking birds. Later in the summer, I always see some ladybugs, and my aphid problems drop even without me bringing out the hose. Sure, the snails are a major problem for me, right now. But they might be feeding things I'm not even seeing, late at night--like blindworms, or possums, or frogs, and maybe even the birds are going at them when I'm not outside.

The literal basis of my pollinator garden is so things can eat other things--the caterpillars feed on the milkweed, after all. I can't deny that they're part of an ecosystem, and the effort in trying to just sprays poisons everywhere for no real reason.

If I really wanted to, I could try and collect every single tiny little baby caterpillar and keep them in a little container, so I can rear them by hand, if it hurts too much to think of them getting eaten by wasps. My next door neighbor did that. Brought in 26 caterpillars to protect them from outside enemies, and promptly ran out of milkweed. Out of all that, only maybe 10 tops made it. And the instant she set out her stripped-bare plants again, there were already more monarchs coming in and laying seeds on the stems of plants that just barely were starting to leaf back out.

Nature's a balancing act. Monarchs have been dealing with pests like wasps through all this time. Every time I wonder where the caterpillars are, I sure can still find a few dozen eggs on my plants. Butterflies are still dropping by, still laying tons of eggs on my plants. And it's not like I go out there five times a day to count caterpillars--for all I know, there could still be dozens of those little guys growing up where I don't even see them.

I feel like I'm losing my point. Long story short, if wasps are eating some caterpillars in my backyard, I'm not gonna lose my mind. I want my garden to be part of a wider ecosystem, not a members-only club.

[chroniclesofnadia111]

🌺Grand Rising ✨ Enjoy your 🌞 Dei

[barnbridges]

I hate to be like that on al gore's internet bur I grew up with an inconsiderate mother and. sometimes someone can just be inconsiderate and a decent human being, and you cannot just define a relationship as abusive because they don't gage how much your hobby means to you. like yeah my mom thinks I overspend on books but she also like... sacrificed her life for me to get an education, I don't think it's that big of a deal if she doesn't know my favorite soda lol.

[bolithesenate]

Boli?

....................i bought an orchid.

wish me luck?

I am no Qui Gon. I kill plants really easily. but I will try. For you! the Orchid Star Wars Friend in my computer!!

YES!

YESSS!!!

MUHAHAHAHAHHAHAAHAHA

the orchid agenda continues! i shall singlehandedly stop the public from misjudging them as a finicky plant!! it will be my magnum opus!!!

anyways. the three thinking steps to a healthy, happy orchid are:

immediate repot in orchid bark and a not too deep see-through glass container (salad bowls are my go-to)

when u repot cut off all dry and brown or mushy black roots, leaving only healthy bright green ones

put in close relation to a window and water once a week (maybe more at times when the air is really dry)

[what-the-fuck-khr]

wind was fucking up my flowers massively so I cut them and brought them inside however they’re the infamous flower my idiot cat tried eating a couple days ago which ISNT ALLOWED!!! so although I have hayfever and whatnot, I’m keeping the flowers bc the only rooms in which cats aren’t allowed into without direct supervision is my room (very breakable things, very messy, I don’t trust them) and the toilet (Mochi will unwind the entire toilet paper roll and it’s annoying as shit) so! after having moved the carnation Out of my room and into the toilet earlier this week, that left only one option for my poor anemone poppies (windflowers) and one hyacinth lol

[spitedemon]

genuinely i think a lot of you would actually be fixed if you went out and volunteered for something you believe in

[icewindandboringhorror]

Misc daily life images

[snekdood]

idk who needs to hear this but growing native plants is not hard at all, at all

[nicejewishgirl]

going to local ER instead since I’m losing too much blood, way too fast! last week was bad but this is scary and I need to be monitored ASAP!

[touch-starved-lurker]

helloo opinion on those tiny flowers with like four petals??

i uhhhhh... i don't know if you're talking about a specific type, but hell yeah pretty flowers!! :D i draw them all over my hand when i get bored in school sometimes, it's lovely

also thanks for reminding me to water my plants, i don't know if i did that this weekend... love you anon <3

[tiredsadpeach]

I don’t think any of my friends would even notice if I just isolated myself lmao