#The emoji is upside down

[zuzu-draws]

King of Pouts and Grumps, Ladies and Gentlemen! /(.^.)\ ~ <3

[metukika]

not that i care or anything but if u never left that would be cool w me lol

[buckedmundo]

Like it’s the last night Like it's the last night Die with a smile -Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga

[heilos]

Hey can anyone give me some cool tunes and vibes right now in the replies section on this post cause my hockey team just had a massive melt down in the 3rd period and i'm about to lose my shit and need a distraction.

[madamemiz]

ending the year on a high note :D

[anipgarden]

Cheaply Starting Seeds

This is my fourth post in a series I’ll be making on how to increase biodiversity on a budget! I’m not an expert--just an enthusiast--but I hope something you find here helps! 

Having a high-quality seed-starting setup can feel like an ultimate but distant dream. An entire shelf--an entire room, even, filled with grow lights and plant trays in the optimal setup to make tons of plants? Tons of garden tools, each with a diverse and dedicated purpose? That’s just not an option for some of us. But that doesn’t mean we can’t get started at a low cost!

Seed Starting Set-Ups

Speaking from a somewhat biased Floridian perspective, I’ve had great success starting seeds outside! My usual set-up is on a rarely-used outdoor patio table that’s moved to a sunny spot in the yard, but I’ve even grown seeds in solo cups on sidewalks, or directly in the ground, with great results! 

Some seeds grow best when they go through a cold period before germinating, while other seeds aren’t affected much by it and just wait for warm weather. As such, a viable option is to sow your seeds in late fall, let winter roll by, and wait until the seeds sprout on their own come spring! I would try and mark off where you planted said seeds, so you don’t lose track of them and accidentally dig them up.

Alternatively, if you want to get started while it's cold outside, a popular option I've seen is to grow in milk jugs! There's a lot of different ways to do it--everyone has their preference--but if you're already drinking things like milk or juice or sweet tea, and you're going to get jugs at some point in time--why not use them for gardening?

An easy way to clear up a section of lawn to create open gardening space is by using a sheet mulching or lasagna gardening method (though I like to call it the Cardboard Snuff-Out). Place cardboard or newspaper down in fall/winter to mark out where you want to garden. Layer compostable materials like grass clippings and wood chips on top of it, or potting soil/bagged compost. It’ll decompose over Winter into an organically rich bed that’ll have killed the grass and weeds underneath it. You don’t have to break out any tools and sweat over it come spring, and the cardboard itself will slowly decompose as well!

Though it's often recommended to plant things directly into the ground to decrease watering needs and increase nutritional independence, there’s plenty of reasons you may not be able to. Whether you’re renting, living in a place without a yard, or even just can’t or don’t want to break ground in a yard, you can still help biodiversity by growing in pots. Some plants have rather extensive root systems and aren’t well suited for pots, but there are still plenty of options available for plants that’ll boost biodiversity, be beautiful to look at, and grow just fine in pots! A recommendation is to get a larger pot, if you’re able, as it’ll hold onto more water and need watering less often. Not only are potted plants great for providing food for insects, but they can be shelter for other creatures too--there’s been a good few times I’ve moved a pot and found a frog or toad living underneath it.

If you don’t have room for pots on the ground, you could consider using hanging pots or window boxes! These can be great and easily-maintained options to provide food and habitat for insects and birds in an urban living situation like apartments or townhouses, but they can also be a fun way to add even more habitat to an already-robust home garden. You can even make an entire mini habitat in a window box or pot! I can personally say I’ve seen tons of pollinators visit my yearly hanging basket garden that consists of about five to seven plants, and I’ve always loved the idea of having a window box for blooms right out my window. Just make sure that it’s safe--make sure they’re securely fixed, and that whatever they’re hanging from can handle their weight when they’re freshly watered and loaded with plants. 

If you want to start indoors, you don’t necessarily need grow lights or heat mats (though it will make things a bit easier.) I’ve successfully grown milkweed, peppers, tomatoes, zucchinis, and even sprouted lemon seeds in college dorm rooms, and kept tomato and pepper plants in a dorm room on a sunny windowsill. For the most part, you need a nice and sunny window, some kind of container, and a source of heat (in my case, I used anything from a space heater to the warmth of my laptop running nearby. If you don’t have any sunny windows, or enough windowsill space to start plants on, its possible to obtain cheaper grow lights. One year, my mom bought me some gooseneck grow lights that could clip onto things for cheap off of Amazon. (Fair warning, though, they did light up my entire room in purple. I lived alone that year (covid year, my roomies bailed), so it was fine, but it was kind of trippy,)

Another year, when I was in an apartment on my own, I bought a grow light modeled like a normal light bulb from the lightbulb aisle in Lowe’s and put it in my desk lamp. Growing seeds indoors can make them grow fast and leggy, so it’ll help if you can keep a desk fan on them so they focus on growing strong instead of tall and fast.

If you’re fortunate enough to have a friend with a nice set up, you could see if they’re willing to let you borrow some of their space to start your own plants as well! My set-up in college was by no means High Class, but I was still more than willing to start seeds for my friends who asked!

Containers for Seed Starting

So now that we’ve talked starting seeds indoors and out, we need to address what to start them in. It’s important that whatever you’re using has drainage holes, and be large enough to support your plant (starting something like milkweed or a squash in a tiny little pot won’t yield great results). Fortunately, there are options here!

If you’re looking to buy pots, Dollar Tree will sell some small plastic pots for cheap in the spring! They’re kind of thin, and won’t last forever, but they’re great for a few uses and don’t cost a lot of money. Something that’s a bit more pricey but are longer-lasting, in my experience, are the Burpee SuperSeed trays. They come in different sizes, but I’m fond of the 16-cell trays--they have silicone bottoms and are made of a nice solid plastic with a tray to hold water, so they hold up for a long time and are easy to clean and reuse!

Burpee seed tray, my beloved.

What’s better than a cheap pot? Free ones, and there’s plenty of options there! I’ve seen people use toilet paper or paper towel rolls as pots by folding the bottoms in and have it work well for them! I think this method would work best if you had some kind of tray to keep them moist, because mine dried out fast last time I tried this method. I’ve also seen people make pots out of newspaper with a few different methods, and the people who use this method love it--apparently, the roots pass through the paper easier and it decomposes faster when buried, so you can just transplant the whole pot and avoid any kind of transplanting shock. If you don’t have any newspaper on hand, you can likely ask your friends or neighbors! 

I’ve gotten lots of mileage from reusing old containers by poking a few holes in the bottom with knives or scissors--just be careful while you’re doing it! I, personally, am more likely to use an already-used solo cup for it--they’re a nice size, so they hold a good amount of soil and moisture and give the seedling a good amount of root space. I tend to write the plant information on the side of the cup in sharpie marker, or on an index card in pen. I’ve also heard of people making use of egg cartons, fruit containers, yogurt cups, milk cartons, soda bottles--the more you start thinking about what you could easily poke a hole in, the more options start coming around!

This photo may be from 2018, but I'll still regularly reuse cups like this! They're also great for cuttings!

As you start planning to move your seedlings into the ground and preparing planting sites, you’ll likely need a few tools to do it! How do you get these? You may be able to borrow some tools from a neighbor! As long as you make sure to return them in good condition, depending on how friendly your neighbors are, they might be totally fine with you borrowing their tools for awhile. If you don’t want to take that route, there may be a tool library you can borrow from, or a mutual aid group that can loan you tools for awhile. Either way, borrowing tools is cheaper than buying them--though, if you do have to buy tools, cheap hand-tools from Walmart or the dollar store work just fine. They’ll even last a good while if they’re taken care of when not in use! I've even seen places like Ross sell some tools and pots in spring!

Spotted in a Walmart gardening section by the registers, 2023.

Of course, your mileage may vary with these. I genuinely cannot think of the last time my house got a newspaper, and as I've mentioned I don't have to worry about snow. Similarly, maybe you don't use plastic cups when you can help it, or don't have a particular affinity for eggs and yogurt. Maybe there isn't a tool library in your area--I sure don't know if there is in mine--but it could still be worth poking around and asking a neighbor!

That's the end of this post! My next post is gonna be about ways to support your plants for cheap--we're gonna be talking compost, mulch, and trellises. Until then, I hope this advice was helpful! Feel free to reply with any questions, your success stories, or anything you think I may have forgotten to add in!

[of-nyon]

Ratchrod/Dratchrod where Taking Care Of (A) Prime (Who Is Not An Asshole) is one of Ratchet's mega-kinks but he's an atheist so it's like 'it's not that you're god's specialiest guy it's that you're a self-sacrificing idiot and that happens to be my comfort zone'

[obaewankenope]

i need to figure out a way to explain attribution bias, aka situational and dispositional bias to my mother without her becoming a reactive, aggressively grumpy, brat and honestly, no matter the way i've tried to do it, she just hasn't listened, done that "yeah" (snippy tone), "uh huh" (fuck you tone) and so on to the point that i'm genuinely quite tired of trying

except i kinda need to because i'm tired af of her reacting like a fucking toddler when my eldest brother doesn't come over to do labour in the garden for her when he said he would and she decides that it's because he's just being a "cunt" basically and not, ya know, maybe that he just simply forgot??? or, ya know, something else came up and he genuinely forgot to let her know because he's dealing with his son have a seizure or something like that, ya know

which, btw, for those who don't know:

situational bias/thinking = a person is doing something because of the situation, like driving over the speed limit to get to the hospital because their kid is super sick

dispositional bias/thinking = a person is doing because of their personality, like driving over the speed limit because they're actually a reckless, selfish driver

my mother attributes everyone else's behaviour to their personality, no matter what, and ya know, if people suddenly seem curt or sharp with her, they're being "funny" with her and she can't fathom it's because they're having a bad day

the amount of times i've been proven right about people she's decided were being assholes to her specifically because they're assholes and it's actually because, idk, their husband has divorced them or their mother is ill

and still she won't stop assuming people are Just Like That and it's clearly not a problem with her attribution bias because it can't be 🙃

[haltandcatchfiretothemax]

"Well what do you want me to say? Look, the fact that you two are women I'm sure doesn't help matters."

-Halt and Catch Fire (2014-2017) season 3, episode 2: "One Way Or Another"

[girlwonderers]

scribbled something short, playing with a character voice for my new pathfinder character for an upcoming kingmaker campaign

—

Early in my second century with the Knights of Ozem—as we were known then—there was an undead incursion along the Hordeline, where a sealed barrow had been disturbed by the engineers working to repair our fortifications. These were common; the bone-tyrant had left so many desecrated corpses, sown across the land like weeds, designed to spring up and choke us out. The barrow was filled with mummies, maybe brought down from Sarkoris; they were half-dust already when they crawled from their coffins. Wouldn't have been a problem if Aroden hadn't gone and bloody died and left half our clerics without any magic to speak of.

Aye, I remember Aroden's death—it wasn't that long ago, by elven measure. The First Travellers know better than most that immortality is never promised, not even to the gods.

So do the Knights, for that matter; just look at poor Arazni. Aroden didn't seem to give a damn when his beloved herald was murdered. It was our soldiers who laid her to rest, and who mourned her when her body was taken and desecrated by Geb. Can't blame her for being pissed about it when he had the bad manners to bring her back.

The loss of Aroden's divine patronage had hit us harder than any orcs or undead could, in those years. We lost more knights in the decade after Aroden's death than in thirty years before, just for a lack of healers. That was when we forged our tightest bonds with Rahadoum, thank the gods for their medics—granted they'd deck me for saying so.

It was a Rahadoumi healer, a lad named Fikri, who went with us to the Hordeline. Absolute bastard but one of the best herbalists I've ever known. Nothing short of the gods' own miracles could have saved us from the mummy rot, though. The shamblers were pathetic but there were dozens of them, and by the time we'd cut one down two more had gotten their claws in you.

My sword arm got the worst of it; mummies aren't half as mindless as you might assume, and they'd grab my arm to gouge through my leathers while my blade was buried in their comrades' bellies. By the time Fikri got to it the skin up to my elbow was already withered like rotted fruit. There was a sorcerer with us, some cassie with angel blood who said it might be saved if we made it back to Vigil. Bless him, Fikri was already reaching for his bonesaw.

Maybe his elven sensibilities showing through: where the rot lives, excise it. First rule of garden-rearing, first rule of shambler-hunting, and apparently first rule of Rahadoumi field surgery. We children of Lastwall always remember our charge, after all: to prevent the rise of Tar-Baphon and his minions by any means, with any sacrifice. Stop the spread. Cut out the curse.

The new arm holds up well, anyway, and the fingers don't stiffen in the cold like the left ones do.

I'd give any part of me. Anything. Everything. All I could cut away. Excision is necessary for the health of the whole.

[dailybehbeh]

Behbeh

[statementlou]

[taemmin]

apparently taemin gets in the upside down position for door while the rizzness vcr is playing and now im just imaging him hanging like a bat waiting for the vcr to end 😭

[emojitown]

Emojis for when you have to go “This is fine”

[perfect-fourth]

"Am I...alone, now?"

[sweetfirebird]

out of curiosity, I looked up remote jobs "near me" (idk why it asks that for remote jobs but sure) and they were all therapists for places like BetterHelp and AI training shit.

So that's great!