#Tree Canker

[haikuckuck]

Baumkrebs(?)

[philodendronforming]

Lemon

Lemon

Lemon is a citrus fruit with a sour taste. India is the largest producer of lemons in the world. The scientific name of plant is citrus lemon. Citrus is native to Asia. A lemon tree is a small tree or dense shrubby plant. Citrus fruits are mostly found in tropical regions.

Varieties 

There are different varieties of lemon grown worldwide. Popular varieties such as Meyer, primofori, Verna, bearss lemons and baboon lemons.

Meyer lemon

Meyer citrus fruits is a hybrid variety crossed between lemon and mandarin orange. This lemon tree is dwarf species with a quick fruit-producing variety. It has smooth golden skin and grows at a height of 6-10 feet.

Primofiori lemon

These citrus fruits have a soft peel with a good amount of juice. It bears a medium to small, yellow colour. Large and hardy lemon tree. Grows up to 19 feet. The plant gives citrus fruits for 20-30 years.

Verna lemon

Verna citrus is almost related to the eureka variety. It contains fewer seeds and a high amount of juice. This lemon tree is a vigorous nature plant with good productivity. Verna is a self-compatible species.

Bearss lemon

Bearss variety is one of the most popular varieties. Citrus plants have a thornless branch. It has a high quantity of juice content. Fruits are round to oval shape.

Baboon lemon

Baboon citrus has bright yellow skin, a slow-growing compact plant and a thick rind. Citrus fruits are knobby and highly acidic.

Soil

This plants prefers grow in all types of soil. A simple potting mix should include 40 per cent coco-peat moss with 20 per cent compost like decomposed cow dung or vermicompost.

Watering 

The watering frequency of course depends on the zone. Water it deeply and thoroughly so that the entire root system is drenched with water and water comes out of the drainage holes. Overwatering can result in root rot and death of the plant.

Sunlight

Growing citrus plants on the balcony or on the terrace, location is very important because these trees need full direct sunlight of at least 6 hours for the best result.

Fertilizer

During the time of fruiting add one handful of steamed bone meal powder which is very inexpensive. Add banana peel fertilizer once in 15 days to supplement good potassium.

Pests and diseases

Improper care can cause pests like aphids, mealy bugs and whiteflies. Citrus canker is a major disease.

Control

Best in prevention by spraying neem oil once in 15 days (5-10ml neem oil in one litre of water)

Repotting

To maintain a healthy plant, citrus trees can be repotted once a year. 

Pruning

To prune damaged and dried leaves to promote vegetative growth. Trees pruned prior to blooming. 

Benefits

This plant helps in weight loss, and reduce the risk of heart, kidney stones and digestive issue.

This fruits are used in foods and cleaning products.

Helps clear skin and boost immunity.

Beneficial for throat infection.

It has a good source of vitamin C.

"Love the planet green to spend a happy life"

Lemon eco-friendly plant

Blog compiled by Santhionlineplants

[philoldendronindoor]

Lemon

Lemon

Lemon is a citrus fruit with a sour taste. India is the largest producer of lemons in the world. The scientific name of plant is citrus lemon. Citrus is native to Asia. A lemon tree is a small tree or dense shrubby plant. Citrus fruits are mostly found in tropical regions.

Varieties 

There are different varieties of lemon grown worldwide. Popular varieties such as Meyer, primofori, Verna, bearss lemons and baboon lemons.

Meyer lemon

Meyer citrus fruits is a hybrid variety crossed between lemon and mandarin orange. This lemon tree is dwarf species with a quick fruit-producing variety. It has smooth golden skin and grows at a height of 6-10 feet.

Primofiori lemon

These citrus fruits have a soft peel with a good amount of juice. It bears a medium to small, yellow colour. Large and hardy lemon tree. Grows up to 19 feet. The plant gives citrus fruits for 20-30 years.

Verna lemon

Verna citrus is almost related to the eureka variety. It contains fewer seeds and a high amount of juice. This lemon tree is a vigorous nature plant with good productivity. Verna is a self-compatible species.

Bearss lemon

Bearss variety is one of the most popular varieties. Citrus plants have a thornless branch. It has a high quantity of juice content. Fruits are round to oval shape.

Baboon lemon

Baboon citrus has bright yellow skin, a slow-growing compact plant and a thick rind. Citrus fruits are knobby and highly acidic.

Soil

This plants prefers grow in all types of soil. A simple potting mix should include 40 per cent coco-peat moss with 20 per cent compost like decomposed cow dung or vermicompost.

Watering 

The watering frequency of course depends on the zone. Water it deeply and thoroughly so that the entire root system is drenched with water and water comes out of the drainage holes. Overwatering can result in root rot and death of the plant.

Sunlight

Growing citrus plants on the balcony or on the terrace, location is very important because these trees need full direct sunlight of at least 6 hours for the best result.

Fertilizer

During the time of fruiting add one handful of steamed bone meal powder which is very inexpensive. Add banana peel fertilizer once in 15 days to supplement good potassium.

Pests and diseases

Improper care can cause pests like aphids, mealy bugs and whiteflies. Citrus canker is a major disease.

Control

Best in prevention by spraying neem oil once in 15 days (5-10ml neem oil in one litre of water)

Repotting

To maintain a healthy plant, citrus trees can be repotted once a year. 

Pruning

To prune damaged and dried leaves to promote vegetative growth. Trees pruned prior to blooming. 

Benefits

This plant helps in weight loss, and reduce the risk of heart, kidney stones and digestive issue.

This fruits are used in foods and cleaning products.

Helps clear skin and boost immunity.

Beneficial for throat infection.

It has a good source of vitamin C.

"Love the planet green to spend a happy life"

Lemon eco-friendly plant

Blog compiled by Santhionlineplants

[philodendronplant]

Lemon

Lemon

Lemon is a citrus fruit with a sour taste. India is the largest producer of lemons in the world. The scientific name of plant is citrus lemon. Citrus is native to Asia. A lemon tree is a small tree or dense shrubby plant. Citrus fruits are mostly found in tropical regions.

Varieties 

There are different varieties of lemon grown worldwide. Popular varieties such as Meyer, primofori, Verna, bearss lemons and baboon lemons.

Meyer lemon

Meyer citrus fruits is a hybrid variety crossed between lemon and mandarin orange. This lemon tree is dwarf species with a quick fruit-producing variety. It has smooth golden skin and grows at a height of 6-10 feet.

Primofiori lemon

These citrus fruits have a soft peel with a good amount of juice. It bears a medium to small, yellow colour. Large and hardy lemon tree. Grows up to 19 feet. The plant gives citrus fruits for 20-30 years.

Verna lemon

Verna citrus is almost related to the eureka variety. It contains fewer seeds and a high amount of juice. This lemon tree is a vigorous nature plant with good productivity. Verna is a self-compatible species.

Bearss lemon

Bearss variety is one of the most popular varieties. Citrus plants have a thornless branch. It has a high quantity of juice content. Fruits are round to oval shape.

Baboon lemon

Baboon citrus has bright yellow skin, a slow-growing compact plant and a thick rind. Citrus fruits are knobby and highly acidic.

Soil

This plants prefers grow in all types of soil. A simple potting mix should include 40 per cent coco-peat moss with 20 per cent compost like decomposed cow dung or vermicompost.

Watering 

The watering frequency of course depends on the zone. Water it deeply and thoroughly so that the entire root system is drenched with water and water comes out of the drainage holes. Overwatering can result in root rot and death of the plant.

Sunlight

Growing citrus plants on the balcony or on the terrace, location is very important because these trees need full direct sunlight of at least 6 hours for the best result.

Fertilizer

During the time of fruiting add one handful of steamed bone meal powder which is very inexpensive. Add banana peel fertilizer once in 15 days to supplement good potassium.

Pests and diseases

Improper care can cause pests like aphids, mealy bugs and whiteflies. Citrus canker is a major disease.

Control

Best in prevention by spraying neem oil once in 15 days (5-10ml neem oil in one litre of water)

Repotting

To maintain a healthy plant, citrus trees can be repotted once a year. 

Pruning

To prune damaged and dried leaves to promote vegetative growth. Trees pruned prior to blooming. 

Benefits

This plant helps in weight loss, and reduce the risk of heart, kidney stones and digestive issue.

This fruits are used in foods and cleaning products.

Helps clear skin and boost immunity.

Beneficial for throat infection.

It has a good source of vitamin C.

"Love the planet green to spend a happy life"

Lemon eco-friendly plant

Blog compiled by Santhionlineplants

[blackknotbegone]

Bacterial canker, brown rot, black knot, rust, silver leaves, etc are some of the main reasons to cause fungal problems to your trees. This makes the leaves fall prematurely. Get superior bacterial canker treatment from Black Knot Be Gone. We provide unique medicinal products composed of organic plant ingredients helps to promote healing. For more inquiries, contact: 607-343-7781.

Visit: https://www.blackknotbegone.com/

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Word List: Sun

beautiful words with "sun" to help illuminate your poem/story

Sunback - having a low-cut back for tanning and coolness—used of an article of wearing apparel

Sunbaked - heated, parched, or compacted especially by excessive sunlight

Sunbath - an exposure to sunlight or a sunlamp

Sunberry - the edible fruit of the black nightshade; also called wonderberry

Sunbird - any of numerous small brilliantly colored oscine birds (family Nectariniidae) of the tropical Old World somewhat resembling hummingbirds

Sunblind - awning (i.e., a rooflike cover extending over or in front of a place as a shelter)

Sunblink - a glimmer of sunlight

Sunbow - an arch resembling a rainbow made by the sun shining through vapor or mist

Sunchoke - Jerusalem artichoke

Sundeck - the usually upper deck of a ship that is exposed to the most sun; a roof, deck, or terrace for sunning

Sunder - to become parted, disunited, or severed

Sundew - any of a genus (Drosera of the family Droseraceae, the sundew family) of bog-inhabiting insectivorous herbs having leaves covered with gland-tipped adhesive hairs

Sundial - an instrument to show the time of day by the shadow of a gnomon on a usually horizontal plate or on a cylindrical surface

Sundress - a dress with an abbreviated bodice usually exposing the shoulders, arms, and back

Sunfall - sunset

Sunfast - resistant to fading by sunlight

Sunfish - any of numerous North American freshwater bony fishes (family Centrarchidae, especially genus Lepomis) usually with a deep compressed body and metallic luster

Sunflower - any of a genus (Helianthus) of New World composite plants with large yellow-rayed flower heads bearing edible seeds that yield an edible oil

Sunglow - a brownish yellow or rosy flush often seen in the sky before sunrise or after sunset that is due to solar rays scattered or diffracted from particles in the lower and upper air

Sungrazer - any of a group of comets whose perihelions are very close to the sun and which are often destroyed by their close approach to it

Sunless - lacking sunshine; dark, cheerless

Sunpocket - solar trap (i.e., a garden or terrace so oriented as to take advantage of the sun while protected from cold winds)

Sunporch - a screened-in or glassed-in porch with a sunny exposure

Sunscald - an injury of woody plants (such as fruit or forest trees) characterized by localized death of the tissues and sometimes by cankers and caused when it occurs in the summer by the combined action of both the heat and light of the sun and in the winter by the combined action of sun and low temperature to produce freezing of bark and underlying tissues

Sunseeker - a person who travels to an area of warmth and sun especially in winter

Sunsquall - a large jellyfish

Sunstone - aventurine (i.e., a translucent quartz spangled throughout with scales of mica or other mineral)

Sunstruck - affected or touched by the sun

Sunup - sunrise

Sunwise - clockwise

If any of these words make their way into your next poem/story, please tag me, or leave a link in the replies. I would love to read them!

More: Word Lists

[fugamalefica]

Voldemort's humiliation of Bellatrix in The Dark Lord Ascending makes me very sad, but some people (especially Bellamort deniers) blow it out of proportion. It was very mild compared to how he treated everyone else. Even in this scene, the Malfoys were treated far worse. This is the worst thing we ever see him doing to Bellatrix and I would take this over his murder of Snape and his treatment of the Malfoys any day.

“Why do the Malfoys look so unhappy with their lot? Is my return, my rise to power, not the very thing they professed to desire for so many years?”

“Of course, my Lord,” said Lucius Malfoy. His hand shook as he wiped sweat from his upper lip. “We did desire it — we do.”

To Malfoy’s left, his wife made an odd, stiff nod, her eyes averted from Voldemort and the snake. To his right, his son, Draco, who had been gazing up at the inert body overhead, glanced quickly at Voldemort and away again, terrified to make eye contact.

“My Lord,” said a dark woman halfway down the table, her voice constricted with emotion, “it is an honour to have you here, in our family’s house. There can be no higher pleasure.”

The humiliation was mostly the Malfoys'. Voldemort was much nicer to Bellatrix and he only targeted her after she spoke out of turn to defend the Malfoys. She had no reason to do so as he wasn't targeting her, but by defending them she ended up being subject to the humiliation herself, probably because Voldemort disapproved of it. I doubt he would have targeted her if she hadn't said anything.

“No higher pleasure,” repeated Voldemort, his head tilted a little to one side as he considered Bellatrix. “That means a great deal, Bellatrix, from you.”

Her face flooded with colour; her eyes welled with tears of delight.

“My Lord knows I speak nothing but the truth!”

Even though she also spoke for the Malfoys, he singled her out and made it clear that it meant a great deal only from her and not from them.

"No higher pleasure … even compared with the happy event that, I hear, has taken place in your family this week?”

She stared at him, her lips parted, evidently confused. “I don’t know what you mean, my Lord.”

“I’m talking about your niece, Bellatrix. And yours, Lucius and Narcissa. She has just married the werewolf, Remus Lupin. You must be so proud.”

Bringing up Andromeda and her daughter also hints that he disapproved of her defense, as they were technically still her family even though she had distanced herself from them. Perhaps he wanted to remind her of her loyalties.

“Enough,” said Voldemort, stroking the angry snake. “Enough.”

And the laughter died at once.

“Many of our oldest family trees become a little diseased over time,” he said as Bellatrix gazed at him, breathless and imploring. “You must prune yours, must you not, to keep it healthy? Cut away those parts that threaten the health of the rest.”

"Yes, my Lord,” whispered Bellatrix, and her eyes swam with tears of gratitude again. “At the first chance!”

“You shall have it,” said Voldemort. “And in your family, so in the world … we shall cut away the canker that infects us until only those of the true blood remain.…”

His preference for Bellatrix was reinforced when he made it up to her but not to the Malfoys. He took back the humiliation, but only from her. The Malfoys were still disgraced and humiliated. After she expressed her eagerness to 'prune her family tree', he reassured her further, even referring to them as 'we', implying she had his favour.

The way I see it, he was not just likening the Tonkses to canker but also the Malfoys. Even though they were Pureblood, they were disgraced and although he didn't want her to kill them, he wanted her to stop defending them.

Sadly, she didn't need to defend them at all. She could have left Narcissa and her family to their fate, just like Narcissa did in the Battle of Hogwarts, except she left Bella to a far worse fate than mere humiliation.

[imagine-darksiders]

Do remember when you've written about the desires of Draven & Samael regarding y/n? If it's not too much to ask, would you mind continuing the series by adding Ulthane? I've never seen longing for someone written in a way that was so appealing.

HELLO! Thank you for this ask, I hope you don't mind, I'm going to make this into a 2 part fic because I've got 2 ideas on how to end it, but I'm having trouble deciding which one to write. So...

That said, please enjoy the fic. It's sort of meant to be a part 4 to Family Tree.

Ulthane X Reader.

-------------------------

Ulthane Blackhammer’s soul is damned.

No. More than damned.

If the maker is certain of anything, it’s that his sorry soul is on a collision course straight for Oblivion itself.

He’s already come to terms with the fact that he won’t be joining the Stonefather when his time eventually runs out and he’s kicked off the proverbial coil.

For too long, he’s carried the crushing weight of his sins across his shoulders like a water yoke, and some day – perhaps not today, nor for another hundred years – but some day, he’s going to lose his footing, and all the harm he’s done will spill out for everyone to see.

��Maker’s bones,” the old giant curses into his palm as he scrubs a gargantuan hand slowly down his face, fingers tugging at thick tufts of beard as though he means to rip the whole thing from his chin in a fit of desperation.

As if his involvement in the End War wasn’t atrocious enough… Now he’s… he’s…

With a bone-shuddering groan, the maker tips his chin towards the sky and allows his skull to clunk back against the tree bark that’s digging into his spine.

The Maker tree is vast. Vast enough that it utterly dwarfs Haven’s surrounding skyscrapers both in height and girth… Vast enough to offer ample hiding places within its higher branches for even the largest of its occupants.

A century ago, if one had accused Ulthane Blackhammer of being a coward, they’d have been met with his cheery grin, the flash of tusks, and his knuckles to the underside of their jaw. But a century ago, Ulthane was a very different maker, a maker who would never have hidden away in the uppermost branches of a great tree or tucked himself into a cankerous hole gouged out of the bark.

The maker he used to be wouldn’t be threading one colossal hand into his beard whilst the other fisted itself into his cowl to keep his appendages from venturing south towards a very prominent tent bulging at the front of his leather, blacksmith’s trousers.

That maker hadn’t met you.

Ulthane’s chest heaves in and out, drawing great swathes of air into a set of enormous lungs before expelling it all again in an attempt to ease his thundering heart out of his throat and back between his ribs.

It was an accident… A mistake.

But then, how often has he tried to spin himself a similar spiel?

Agreeing to forge that accursed blade was a mistake.

Trying to help his friend was a mistake.

And look at the consequences. Look at who’s suffered – is still suffering – for his mistake.

To Ulthane, accidents are no longer a negligible offence. They’re simply unforgivable.

What had just occurred down in the hollow of the tree was less an accident at all then, and more an egregious sin worthy of punishment.

Wheezing out another groan, the maker raises a fist up to his mouth where, without hesitation, he sinks his formidable teeth into the skin on his knuckles, feeling the bone shift and creak under the pressure of his bite. His other hand tears from his cowl and thumps down onto the wood at his side, his fingers curling into claws that dig harshly into the flesh of the tree.

He has to keep both hands occupied, deliberately so.

He can’t run the risk of letting them wander down to fumble with the gleaming belt buckle on his trousers.

He had to leave. Staying down there isn’t an option at the moment. He had to take himself and his… urges somewhere far away where he wouldn’t run the risk of disturbing you further than he already has…

Only a few minutes ago, down in the hollow of the tree, the humans had all been laying asleep whilst their ‘great’ guardian stood vigil in the arched opening that serves as a doorway into and out of the little sanctuary.

The mere fact that they trusted him to watch over them while they slept spoke more about their character than it did his own. It also served to twist a poisonous blade into his guts, eating away at him from the inside.

It was as he stood there brooding over his crimes that he happened to lower his gaze to the arms folded firmly across his broad chest.

He’d grimaced at the sight of them.

That day, he’d elected to work gloveless, forgoing cumbersome leather to use his bare hands so he could fix one of the humans’ shotguns that had been firing both barrels at the same time. He couldn’t help but dig a little deeper than necessary into the manmade weapon, admiring it inside and out, from the wood on its stock to the engravings decorating its action.

Once again, human ingenuity had him entranced.

There was, however, a minor consequence to his curiosity. And that was the slippery layer of gun oil that coated his finger tips.

Glowering ineffectually down at the tinted residue, he rubbed his thumb and forefinger together, sighing as they slipped and slid over one another, tractionless.

He needed to find a cloth…

At the back of the central chamber, there lay another ‘room’ of sorts, hidden behind an old, blue tarp you yourself had nailed across its entrance to grant the humans who venture inside a little privacy. And while it's been known to be a little hideaway for the purposes of washing and bathing, its predominant use is for storage, housing an assortment of supplies from ammunition to cardboard boxes full of non-perishable food stuffs to barrels filled to the brim with collected rainwater.

Knowing there’d be some form of cloth or towel inside, Ulthane had stolen across the tree towards the alcove and allowed himself a moment of bemusement at the lightness of his step. Several days prior, one of the humans had made a casual joke about feeling his footfalls reverberating through the whole tree when they were trying to sleep. At the time, Ulthane had laughed it off. It was only when night fell that he started to question if the human’s comment was truly meant in jest.

And so, at the expense of his carefully curated, intimidating presence, the maker had trodden softly towards the storage space, slid his knuckles beneath the tarp and lifted it aside to step underneath it.

He didn’t even make it all the way through before his eyes landed upon a tiny shape lit by the flickering firelight of a wall sconce.

At once, Ulthane’s legs locked up tight, stopping him mid-stride as if he’d been spontaneously and abruptly cast in stone. Not even his chest moved, all the breath stilled in his lungs and was left there to stagnate while he drank in the sight before him.

Wide, startled eyes peered back up into the maker’s face, unblinking, caught by the same trap of shock he’d found himself tangled up in.

Evidently, not all of the humans were asleep.

Ulthane wasn’t sure if a second passed, or an eternity. All he knew was that within the innocuous stretch of time, he bore witness to something he never imagined a brute like him would be privy to. It seemed a miracle to be seeing it at all, as though he could blink, and the moment would fly away from him like words to a forgotten song, and never again would he catch another fleeting glimpse of that same biological artistry, even if he spent the rest of his days trying to find it.

So, he didn’t blink.

For standing before him without a scrap of clothing on, stood the one human who could have brought such an ancient giant to a complete, breathless standstill.

You.

Time seemed to drag its heels as Ulthane watched a wet cloth slip from your fingers to land on the wood below with a sodden ‘plop.’

You were bathing, he realised belatedly, ignoring an odd yet pleasant quiver in his stomach.

Your skin glistened with moisture left behind from the cloth, looking a damn sight cleaner than you had several hours prior after he found you covered elbow to fingertip in oil from your own gun.

While the humans despise using their drinking water for nonessential purposes, if cleaning must be done, they’d either wet a rag and scrub themselves down with a single squeeze of water from a nearby barrel, or they’d use one of their ‘baby wipes.’ The ones you’d been kind enough to deplete on Ulthane yesterday when you cleaned his bloody nose….

Eyes the colour of gun smoke softened with the rarest and gentlest affection as they drifted from the delicate space hidden between your thighs, over the damp skin on your chest, all the way up to the true work of art – your face; the face he’s sworn to one day immortalise in marble so that the Universe might never forget the human who gave a maker like him the time of day, and who opened his eyes to a species he’d previously only known through scriptures and hearsay.

But as he stared numbly down at you, half-oblivious to the soft tingling sensation trickling down from his belly, Ulthane finally, finally, registered the expression on your face.

And just like that, a terrible, gut-wrenching lurch of alarm suddenly crashed into his chest like waves on jagged rocks, and the world fell out from underneath his feet.

Ulthane blinked hard as time caught up to him once again, though he knew by then, it was already far too late.

“U-Ulthane?” he remembers you uttering, and it was only then he realised you’d thrown an arm over your breasts and slipped a hand down to try and protect yourself further from his wandering eyes.

Your brows were pinched, your mouth angled down until a look of abject horror spread across your dainty features.

Horror…

Of course you were horrified.

Of course you would look at him like he’s a monster come to life right in front of you.

He’d just blundered right in on you when you were at your most vulnerable, and then, instead of immediately retreating or averting his eyes to preserve your dignity, what had he done?

He’d simply stood there, gaping at you like some depraved and lecherous beast.

Worse still - worse than stumbling in on you in the first place - was the telltale sensation of skin stretching in the space below his belt buckle, accompanied by a sudden urgency that pooled in his gut as the fly piece of his leather blacksmith’s trousers began to bulge outwards, pressing into the sensitive head of his treacherous anatomy.

He still recalls the moment your eyes had flicked down, and then widened considerably.

It took him another moment to put two and two together to realise what was happening to him. It had, after all, been so long since he’d…

… For Stone’s sake, he’s a maker. Ulthane has been around for far longer than Humanity has even been on the planet. He’s too old and too gruff, and his head is screwed on far too tightly to ever be turned by a member of the fairer sex.

He’s not a youngling anymore. Long gone are the days of his youth when he’d send cocky grins across Tri Stone at maiden warriors or fumble his way through a brief and meaningless romance with one of the forge sisters.

He hasn’t been that maker for millennia.

Until he met you.

And you, he understands without a shadow of a doubt, are not meaningless.

What you are, however, is categorically and unequivocally off limits.

You're a human - a member of the very species his actions had doomed to extinction. You know nothing of the maker who had taken you in, and much to his confusion, you trust him. Hell, you even claim to like him, something that is as equally awful as it is humbling. You should never like him. If you knew what he did, your hatred would rival the kind that demons have for humanity.

You'd want him dead if you knew the truth.

But you don't know.

All you know now, is that Ulthane - a maker you've been relying on to keep you safe and protected - has essentially laid his feelings bare for you to see. Reactions like his are harder to hide when he's several times your size.

All of a sudden, a visceral abhorrence for himself rose like a fanged serpent to coil around his windpipe, squeezing it until he thought he might retch up his own guts onto the floor in front of you.

Ulthane Blackhammer has never retreated from anything in his long, gruelling life. Every adversary, he’s faced head-on. Every battle, he’s gone in swinging. Every hardship, he’s never once given a thought to falling back.

But then again, there are a lot of exceptions to a lot of rules.

And down there in the hollow, Ulthane made such an exception to his longest standing achievement.

He took a step backwards, his shoulder colliding with the side of the tree, and then he turned on his heel and ran.

[precious-little-scoundrel]

Somebody’s Daughter

an Elvis Presley, southern gothic fanfiction dealing with the disappearance of a legend

Note: I wrote this ages ago and intended an entire universe for it but to be honest I’ve run out of motivation. Still, in time for spooky season, here’s my most unreal fic I’ve ever written

Word count: 2k

Some swore he was dead inside that grand ole place. That without gardeners to keep it in check, the kudzu that wove its way up the pale brick like a gnarled shroud was the only consecration provided for the mortal shell of the King of Rock and Roll. Like God alone had cast a leafy covering over his wayward son, a last act of grace like fig leaves were woven for Adam’s shame after The Fall.

Even the musical gates had rusted closed, not unbarred in eons, not even to allow the Grandma’s out of the living sepulcher for their knitting circle and the driveway itself was busted up by age and shifting earth, weeds overtaking asphalt. Gone were the days of verve and bustle, the guard shacks were empty of vigilant relatives and the gates no longer held back a throng of autograph seekers. One look up the decadently long driveway towards the dilapidated mansion was enough to disincline anyone from inviting someone -or something- out of the place.

Not that anyone was in it, there was no way there could be anyone in it. Not anymore.

They were probably dead, too, the grandmas. Or dying inside there themselves, slow as the growth of the vines that grew and grew and blocked out all sunlight into the inside of the mansion. But a house of corpses was too horrible a thought and deserved some investigation which no one was willing to do. It was better to assume they were dead, hopefully they all were, the other option was too unsettling.

But no hearse had passed through those corroded gates. And so folks wondered.

Such speculation was all very wel for the fates of the grandmas, even for Elvis Presley and his laundry list of ailments, narcotic abuses and pathological ticks. But there was the young woman to be considered, none of this explained what she was doing all these years holed up on the estate, only photographed from afar by daring souls who climbed the trees near the back fence line.

Those daring souls got the fright of their lives, buckshot to the asses and blurry photos of a dark haired female of indistinguishable features for all their pains. Civilallians pointed out that the photographed figure could be easily mistaken for a pillar or large planter. Maybe a dog up on its hindlegs. A blob really. And no one knew where the shots came from, not at midnight in a seedy part of Memphis; could have been from anywhere. After a few years they just stopped trying, some saying they found the place too spooky to even be hanging around.

It was very…undead, for such a decaying place.

And so the world speculated and shuddered and then hastily shelved the topic, only wondering whatever became of the most famous man in the world when a magazine would print a new article celebrating his heyday with his fresh and lean young self on the glossy cover, or when his ex wife got in the news while still toting around his surname like monogrammed luggage through the gossip slums, or when folks passed the overgrown wall and cankered gates and wondered, wondered and wondered what became of him until they stopped wondering.

When they stopped wondering it was because they collectively assumed -like he always knew they would- that they’d heard from somewhere that he’d died. A mass misremembered memory, that was what his demise was. But then they could mourn him, and that was far more comfortable than knowing they had driven him to it, driven him to madness and into the arms of sorrow and seclusion -to make a home with her and never show his face again.

No, they collectively liked him dead. He was smaller that way and they felt less guilty, they could write tributes and share anecdotes and feel less horrified by the human proclivity towards self destruction if he were nice and dead. Quite dead. Thoroughly dead.

Elvis Presley was dead, they were sure they’d heard it somewhere.

But Joe Esposita ran outta money. And to make more he opened his big mouth to do what he did best -extemporize some facts. And unfortunately for the storytellers and the tribute makers and the record collectors, George Klein was obliging enough to broadcast Joe’s yacking nationwide over radio waves (anything for an old buddy) and all the sudden folks cared about Elvis Presley again. They cared with the same detached fascination they held for Sasquatch and Mothman. They cared whether the crazy fucker of Joe’s retelling was rotting inside his house and if the ghoulish figure in chiffon, pictured always in a white streak of unnaturally swift movement towards the shadowy figures of the guardian lions of Graceland -ever actually existed.

“You’re saying that he made her up? As an excuse to get rid of you all?” George prodded his by no means bashful guest to speak into the mic.

“Yeah that’s right,” Joe spoke with the confidence of a man who never really knew as much as he wanted to and had been making up the shortfall with embellishments ever since, “EP was already lost to the drugs by then. And he did go out one time and sorta rendezvous with a woman…this lady of the night, you might say…and he didn’t care after. But then later, he did care, and he cleared the whole house out saying he was going to bring her in and redeem her.”

“So there was a woman, a prostitute really,” George pressed the obvious as his listeners clutched on to reveal with talons grown of gruesome fascination with the macabre last days of the King.

“Yes, and it was a funny story, one of a thousand. It was no big deal. Supposed to be no big deal.” Joe was a little put upon to have to divulge any one of those thousands of funnies. Not just for the sake of preserving his old boss’s dignity but because Joe really was a self retiring fella that didn’t like to betray a trust, a nice fella that kept things close to his chest and tried to paint them in their most noble light if they happened to get out. So it was that after an entire quarter of second’s pause to consider his words carefully and measure the weight of his imminent disclosure he revealed, “The boss had been pounding the pills on tour, right? And the last few weeks he got this stiffy and it just wouldn’t go down, gave him trouble pissin’ and walkin’ and preformin’ got so awful he started tellin’ us to bring him anybody or a couple anybodys who might help. And we brought him back a lotta women and he blew through ‘em and they all came out smilin’ but he wasn’t. It wasn’t working’ and he told me and Sonny he was worried he was gonna hurt wanna these groupies if he kept at it. Nothin’ was cuttin’ it. And ya might say “hey Elvis you should go see a softer about that” but of course-“

“-His doctor was the one who had prescribed him the medications with those side effects!” George helpfully added a little professionalism to this locker room anecdote.

“Right!” Joe barreled on, “So we cut the tour a little short and we got him back to Graceland and figured that settlin’ down and weening off the pills and with the help of Miss Candy, he’d find some uh, uh, relief. But he didn’t, Candy seemed to have her period about ten times a month and the rest of the time he said she said he was being too rough. Eventually he told me he needed me to make some calls.”

“For a specialist or something?”

“No, a hooker -escort, whatever.” Joe quite forgot he was on air, or maybe he didn’t, “Talkin’ a lot about the book of Hossea and how god had made the prophet marry a prostitute and all that, to represent uh, umm, well I can’t remember, uh, but he was all into the spiritual shit and really thought he was a messiah or something. The upshot of it was that we moved a grandma and a whole ventilator situation into the big house. But I never saw anyone else, though I heard the upstairs shower running one time when EP was downstairs. But no, there’s no ‘white witch of graceland', hell no. She was an acid trip, man, he dreamed her up and said she’d replace Pricilla, then robbed a nursing home, I guess, to prop up his narrative. The man would cheat over anythin’, he’d cheat to win an Easter egg hunt.”

“So it was a revenge fantasy of sorts.” George supplied a life raft to his floundering friend, “A delusional version of his intended life, you’re saying?”

“Yeah! He was all ‘this one’s never gonna be able to leave me’ and all that stupid, possessive shit. He dreamed her up and wanted us to believe him.”

“You could say she was a figment of a particularly heavy dose?” George put on his most solicitous talk show voice.

“Yeah, yeah exactly, nothing more. Folks need to move on.”

Moving on was not exactly intended or facilitated by the soon after release of his tell-all book, the last five chapters of which were dedicated to suggesting that Joe Esposita and Joe Esposita alone knew a great deal about a woman he had previously said didn’t exist. Fans went nuts, theories flew like confetti and folks camped out at the Graceland gates till the hoot owls scared them away come nightfall.

Not to be outdone, Red West wrote a book of his own, and while he didn’t even pretend to have so much as known about Elvis’ rendezvous with an average Memphian streetwalker, he sure spent a lot of ink about it and talked about how he could feel her presence upstairs the last day he was at Graceland.

Which was the day he got sacked and a loaded gun pointed at his face by his erstwhile boss and friend.

At which point Red’s book really lagged on about betrayal and brotherhood and army days. Readers thumbed through the rest of the sore narrative hoping to read more about the feeling of a mysterious woman upstairs and her strange hold on a man who had spent his life drinking in the admiration of a crowd and now spent his life, or death, like a hermit inside an antebellum tomb. Charmingly self absorbed, Red’s book never did focus back on her after that throwaway mention and after the initial frenzy for his hot take, the sales died down and folks were left again with blurry photos that never quite matched up.

But so it was that people took to eyeing the dilapidated home of the King once more and took to wondering anew. Only his horses, turned feral from neglect and still grazing around the house and occasionally spooked into a fiendish gallop (perhaps by some unseen movement inside the verdant facade) kept a new generation of ghost hunters from climbing over the wall and clearing away the verdure from the front door to see if the lady inside was pale from lack of sun or lack of life.

One soul among a nation’s worth was less impressed by the supernatural aspects of what she termed a macabre pity party. Being intimate with the man, marrying him, bearing him a child and then watching his virulent prowess slowly go to seed before her very eyes had that effect on a child bride.

Once, and only once, Priscilla Presley had pried open the Graceland gates before they had fully melded together in their decay, hell bent on discovering if there was any life left in the place. The grandmas had long since stopped their Wednesday exit, no fans gathering or maimed photographers, nothing to suggest that the place she had once called home and planned on spending forever in was still inhabited. Her Lisa, her baby deserved the place, she deserved to have her inheritance and no folklore legend of a gas station hooker wandering the grounds was going to keep her from getting her due. -Lisa’s due, of course.

Pricilla never was quite the same after that trip. In vain did the ambitious young journalist who sought to write a biography on the King’s one true love attempt to extract from her something resembling a credible narrative. When asked for details of her life, for anecdotes of her famous love affair, she kept mumbling as if in a daze

“I’m not sure, I just don’t know, I can’t say for certain, where am I?”

She never answered to “Pricilla” again.

Pricilla had been a creature crafted in his image, eponymous with his desire, a figment of his fevered ambition for a perfect marriage. When the first fabrication had failed, he had found another, more squalid, more mailable, more pitifully needy -but perfect in her lack of self. In her was no woman to take his beloved child away, to test his patience with her wantonness or ruin his reputation with her deceit.

“You’re not Pricilla,” the figure of the man she once knew told her coldly from between the grand columns of the porch, “I made Pricilla, without me you’re just one a’the crowd. I’ve made myself a Pricilla, and this time she’s gonna stay.”

[teaandinanity]

I am staring at my chestnut tree and like VIBRATING with glee because she's HEALTHY and has NUTS and I am going to fistfight the squirrels and deer and GOD to steal them all so I can germinate them. And then plant them EVERYWHERE.

This mountain really hears every single thing mom or I wish for re: flora and fauna and goes 'yeah, sure, here you go.'

(For context: Chestnut blight has decimated the American Chestnut but I'm pretty sure this one HAS to be a resistant native because she's at least 17 - the people who built the house said she was here when they built it. Hybrids weren't a thing until 2013/2014, and no one planted her, she just volunteered. But I don't see ANY signs of blight on her - the leaves at the ends of the branches aren't twisted or stunted and there aren't any visible cankers on the trunk!)

[the-s1lly-corner]

Little vent under the cut nothing bad happened I'm just upset

Genuinely really disheartening to find out my mom thinks I'm weird for "being obsessed with my tree"

The fuck am I supposed to do? Not tend to its needs and make sure it thrives? I'd get it if I were sitting outside with it for hours or some shit but I'm not. Do I pop outside a few times a day to check on it?

Yes, mostly to move it back into the sunlight because my mom insisted to put it on the back porch- where it would be in the shade for more than half the day if I didnt move it. I didnt need to do that when it was on the front porch

And because I took it inside for a few days? So I could neem it and keep an eye on it while the leaves started looking weird?

I used to never leave my room, and she has stated it bothered her. Now I leave my room and spend a few minutes outside every day, and now she calls me weird? Make up your mind.

Asides from baking this is the first passion I've had that wasnt strictly kept digital (ie. My hyperfixations with media and shit), so this just. Hurts a lot.

She has plants herself, shes the one who got the tree for me. Literally

Mom: hey do you want a tree?

Me: oh idk probably not

And she got it anyway. And now she thinks I'm weird for trying to give it the best care? For doing research to make sure its healthy and can bare fruit when it's ready? Make it make sense

I have no bank account, any money I make it through selling my baked good and even then I sell from home because I don't have a car (and tbh dont trust myself on the road for multiple reasons), I cannot leave the house and anything I could do is not in walking distance. On top of that I have multiple mental health issues going on that either destroy any desire to leave my space (anxiety, agoraphobia) or kill any motivation and energy I have (depression), the tree gives me motivation to leave my room and to go with someone to the store to get things for it (plant food, soil, ect)

Save for the canker scare, the tree has done nothing but good things for me even if it's small improvements. And I'm deemed weird. Okay. Cool, good to know

[specsthespectraldragon]

Oh, there were tree-like objects, and lots of them. It was just that under no circumstances would she have called them trees.

There were no variations in them other than height. There were no conifers or evergreens. They were as uniform as a planted orchard, and spaced just as neatly apart: about the length of a horse and farm wagon, to be precise. Not only were they leafless—which was to be expected, since most of the leaves at this point were on the ground, and those that weren’t belonged to things like holly—their limbs were contorted and twisted like no tree she had ever seen before. Once, before Isla had married Kordas and she and her sister had both shared a tutor, the tutor had taken them out on a bright summer day with glass bowls and a sieve and a dipper and a little, but very strong, pocket magnifying lens to examine the tiny animals in the estate’s ornamental pond. These things looked something like one of the creatures they had seen that day. Except they were big. Big as the oldest apple trees in the Valdemar orchard.

The trunks, covered with a heavy, dark gray bark, sprouted branches that contorted and spiraled in ways that could not possibly have been due to wind and made very little sense in terms of growing things. The only time she had ever seen branches that looked like this was on climbing vines. In fact, they gave the impression of movement that had nothing to do with a breeze. As Hakkon tried to slow the string of barges and they got nearer to this forest, she noticed something else. The trees on both sides of the river were the strange ones, although there were normal trees just at the edge of the forest on the other side. But the closer they got to this “weird forest,” the stranger and more sinister the place looked. Patchy with green moss and sporting odd, transparent fungi, there were places on the trunks that looked less like boles or cankers than open mouths with teeth in them.

And as Hakkon managed to bring the string to a complete halt, she noticed, with a sensation of great unease, that there was something else about the branches of those trees. The underside of each and every twisty, contorted branch sported odd symmetrical round marks. Or were they another kind of fungus? But what fungus grew in regulated, evenly spaced rows, one or two rows per branch, from the base of the branch to the pointed tip?

No one drew the fucked up evil trees, so I guess I have to do it MYSELF.

[murakamijeva-muza]

“The perturbations, anxieties, depravations, deaths, exceptions in the physical or moral order, spirit of negation, brutishness, hallucinations fostered by the will, torments, destruction, confusion, tears, insatiabilities, servitudes, delving imaginations, novels, the unexpected, the forbidden, the chemical singularities of the mysterious vulture which lies in wait for the carrion of some dead illusion, precocious & abortive experiences, the darkness of the mailed bug, the terrible monomania of pride, the inoculation of deep stupor, funeral orations, desires, betrayals, tyrannies, impieties, irritations, acrimonies, aggressive insults, madness, temper, reasoned terrors, strange inquietudes which the reader would prefer not to experience , cants, nervous disorders, bleeding ordeals that drive logic at bay, exaggerations, the absence of sincerity, bores, platitudes, the somber, the lugubrious, childbirths worse than murders, passions, romancers at the Courts of Assize, tragedies,-odes, melodramas, extremes forever presented, reason hissed at with impunity, odor of hens steeped in water, nausea, frogs, devilfish, sharks, simoon of the deserts, that which is somnambulistic, squint-eyed, nocturnal, somniferous, noctambulistic, viscous, equivocal, consumptive, spasmodic, aphrodisiac, anemic, one-eyed, hermaphroditic, bastard, albino, pederast, phenomena of the aquarium, & the bearded woman, hours surfeited with gloomy discouragement, fantasies, acrimonies, monsters, demoralizing syllogisms, ordure, that which does not think like a child, desolation, the intellectual manchineel trees, perfumed cankers, stalks of the camellias, the guilt of a writer rolling down the slope of nothingness & scorning himself with joyous cries, that grind one in their imperceptible gearing, the serious spittles on inviolate maxims, vermin & their insinuating titillations, stupid prefaces like those of Cromwell, Mademoiselle de Maupin & Dumas fils, decaying, helplessness, blasphemies, suffocation, stifling, mania,--before these unclean charnel houses, which I blush to name, it is at last time to react against whatever disgusts us & bows us down.”― Lautréamont, Chants de Maldoror

[treedoctorusasworld]

Effective Treatment Against Botryosphaeria Canker Treatment.

Botryosphaeria Canker Treatment improve the health of your trees and promotes a healthier lifestyle. Consult a finest arborist at Tree doctor in California.

[blackknotbegone]

Black Knot Be Gone is the one-stop solution for all kinds of bacterial diseases found in plants. Bacterial canker usually occurs in plants due to two closely related bacteria that infect the stems and leaves of plums, cherries, and related Prunus species. Flower, leaves, and stem infection can be seen during the mid-spring. Use the black knot fungus spray to get a unique bacterial canker treatment. For more info please contact 607-343-7781.

Visit: https://www.blackknotbegone.com/