#garden ramblings

[sunflowergardens-world]

Sith Obi Wan

Ok, so I've seen plenty of the Sith!ObiWan AUs floating around out there, and honestly they're super cool, but am I the only one who thinks they are all just OOC? Like, I genuinely think that there is no possible way to write an in-character Sith!Obi Wan, mainly because one of his defining characteristics throughout all of SW is that he actively chooses to stay in the light! It is literally the foundation of his character, and while I appreciate wanting to see that alternate universe, it never feels right to me, because Obi Wan has been faced time and time again with plenty of opportunities to give in to his fear, his anger, his hatred, his suffering, and he just HASN'T! He lost everything he held dear, and still retained his trust in the force, and his compassion for those around him, and I can't help but wonder, if losing everything and everyone you love to the hand of someone who you once considered a brother isn't enough to turn you to the dark side, what is?

[anipgarden]

Some of you may have heard about Monarch butterflies being added to the Threatened species list in the US and be planning to immediately rush out in spring and buy all the milkweed you can manage to do your part and help the species.

And that's fantastic!! Starting a pollinator garden and/or encouraging people and businesses around you to do the same is an excellent way to help not just Monarchs but many other threatened and at-risk pollinator species!

However.

Please please PLEASE do not obtain Tropical Milkweed for this purpose!

Tropical milkweed (Asclepias curassavica)--also commonly known as bloodflower, Mexican butterflyweed, and scarlet milkweed--will likely be the first species of milkweed you find for sale at most nurseries. It'll be fairly cheap, too, and it grows and propagates so easily you'll just want to grab it! But do not do that!

Tropical milkweed can cause a host of issues that can ultimately harm the butterflies you're trying to help, such as--

Harboring a protozoan parasite called OE (which has been linked to lower migration success, reductions in body mass, lifespan, mating success, and flight ability) for long periods of time

Remaining alive for longer periods, encouraging breeding during migration time/overwintering time as well as keeping monarchs in an area until a hard freeze wherein which they die

Actually becoming toxic to monarch caterpillars when exposed to warmer temperatures associated with climate change

However--do not be discouraged!! There are over 100 species of milkweed native to the United States, and plenty of resources on which are native to your state specifically! From there, you can find the nurseries dedicated to selling native milkweeds, or buy/trade for/collect seeds to grow them yourself!!

The world of native milkweeds is vast and enchanting, and I'm sure you'll soon find a favorite species native to your area that suits your growing space! There's tons of amazing options--whether you choose the beautiful pink vanilla-smelling swamp milkweed, the sophisticated redring milkweed, the elusive purple milkweed, the alluring green antelopehorn milkweed, or the charming heartleaf milkweed, or even something I didn't list!

And there's tons of resources and lots of people willing to help you on your native milkweed journey! Like me! Feel free to shoot me an ask if you have any questions!

Just. PLEASE. Leave the tropical milkweed alone. Stay away.

TLDR: Start a pollinator garden to help the monarchs! Just don't plant tropical milkweed. There's hundreds of other milkweeds to grow instead!

[aesethewitch]

When I was a kid, we moved into a house that had a huge lilac tree out front. It was mostly rotten, and it needed to be taken down before it fell. It took a while, but eventually, it was gone.

Mostly. A couple years later, little lilac babies popped out of the ground in its place. My mom was determined to get rid of them, because she'd planted a beautiful flower garden there, and the lilac trees would overshadow and kill the whole garden. I insisted on saving at least a few saplings. She said fine, but I had to dig them out and put them in pots myself.

So, I did. I spent days digging little lilac bushes out of the ground and putting them into pots. Some couldn't be saved, but some could. When all was said and done, I had five brand-new lilac saplings. Seven or eight years old, and it was my absolute pride and joy.

Three died due to sun scorching, severe drought that no amount of watering could save, and perhaps just being moved from their place in the ground. But two survived, and I was awfully proud of them! I'd go out and talk to them every single day. I watered them by hand and made sure they were fertilized properly. I learned all about their favored environments, and I was determined to make sure they lived.

One of my mom's friends saw what I was doing with the lilacs. She asked if she could have one to put in her backyard, and I agreed on the condition that she take very, very good care of it.

It's now fucking enormous. I'm talking ten feet tall and bursting with beautiful purple flowers every spring. My mom still gets updates each year as they start to bloom, which she forwards to me. And all I can think is, "That's my friend! Thriving some twenty years on, there it is."

The other tree nearly died, too. It lived in a pot for far, far too long. I wanted to plant it somewhere in my parents' yard, but my mom was reluctant. Eventually, we agreed to put it in the far back garden. It grew okay for many years, despite the shade, but in all these years, it's never bloomed.

Last year, the massive tree casting massive shadows over the lilac and the garden cracked in half and fell. It tumbled into the garden, crushing part of the nearby shed and destroying a few plants beneath it.

It missed my lilac by inches.

The clean-up is long done. The rest of the tree has been cut down, and my lilac has full sunlight for the first time in fifteen years. It won't bloom this year, I know. But it's got new shoots up. It's taller than ever. I spent half an hour a few weeks ago praising it for surviving all this time, dreaming about its future and telling it how I believe it'll become the tall beauty it's always been meant to be.

I think next year, I'll see flowers.

[cygnetbrown]

Rambling in the Garden

Last Year’s Garden During the past couple of weeks, we have been planting potatoes, onions, lettuce, and brassicas in the garden. One of the ways that we grow potatoes is in fabric bags. We used the same bags that we used last year and put different soil in the bags. Another way that we planted potatoes was directly in the ground. Right now we don’t have a lot of mulching material with which is…

[sunflowergardens-world]

This is something I've had to work with as a music teacher, in that I am naturally a fast learner, and especially so when it comes to music. But when all you have to go on when you're teaching someone else is your own experience, it means that, in my case, I often am left scrambling for ways to try and communicate with my students that work for them, and it often is slower than what works for me. That's honestly a big reason why I enjoy teaching as much as I do. Because it challenges me in a way that my own learning can't!

I used to do cross country in high school, and there was this guy on the team that was wonderful. Great guy. But his advice to everyone that asked how to get good was to run 20k a day.

If you don't run, I'll just tell you, most people's bodies cannot take that kind of abuse. No matter how much you train, you will not be able to run 20k a day. It's like how you can't train to make your cuts heal faster. You recover as fast as you recover. So while a big part of what made this guy so succesful was the dedication and mental toughness needed to actually run 20k a day, an equally big part was that he healed like fucking Wolverine. And that's fine, but it would've been nice if he knew that and stopped telling new guys to commit suicide by jogging.

Different guy on the team ran like, 5-6k a day, which actually isn't all that much. His problem when he gave advice was that he didn't really get that 5-6k a day doesn't generally produce elite results for most people. He was lucky in the sense that he didn't have to work all that hard to get great results, and unlucky in the sense that if he pushed himself much further than that, he fell apart.

I think about those two whenever I get advice from succesful people. The very things that make them outliers also make their advice useless to most people. Worse, they're often outliers on totally separate ends of the same spectrum, so their advice will be contradictory.

[sunflowergardens-world]

Happy National Hobbit Day

"I've found it is the small things, everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keeps the darkness away; simple acts of kindness and love." -Gandalf Greyhame, The Lord of the Rings

In appreciation of all things Hobbit. May you have a merry and cozy day of good food and good company! (And possibly even a Pippin day.)

[bluerosefox]

Kidnapped Persephone Style

Me: *tossing prompt idea up and down in the air before chucking it into the Void we call the internet*

Jason is dating Ghost Prince (not yet King) Danny and goes on a really awesome and romantic date on his day off. He forgot to tell the fam though. So when Red Robin comes to give Jason an update on some entil, he watches in muted horror as Jason is 'kidnapped' by a glowing entity in black armor and a nightmare looking horse (Danny is a bit busy doing paperwork, so he had his Fright Knight pick Jason up) off of a Gotham rooftop and into a green portal, while the knight had proclaimed Jason as their future Kings 'intended'..

No one on coms is ready for Tim to yell out

"I THINK JASON JUST GOT KIDNAPPED PERSEPHONE STYLE!!"

[solarpunkani]

Listen I’m not saying that *I* have the balls to buy a reflective vest and go off on a roadside or retention pond somewhere and start fucking around guerrilla gardening

But I am saying that the past week I’ve driven past many MANY people in reflective vests either doing roadwork or maintaining roadside shrubbery or whatever and the amount of times I considered questioning what the fuck they were doing is zero and the amount of times I would’ve even had the TIME to question what the fuck they were doing is zero

I saw groups of people I saw someone solo I didn’t question it I just figured ‘eh they’re doing SOMETHING and carried on. Depending on the location you pick, anyone who WOULD Karen up and interrogate you won’t even have the time space or ability to

[purrfectlycontent]

till’s pupils reflecting red only when he’s looking directly at ivan

[anipgarden]

Hot take but HGTV needs more of the G

Like you’re telling me you’re renovating a house, renovating a backyard, and all you can do is mention one (1) of the 12+ plants you’re putting in and be like ‘heehee pretty leaf’ and nothing else?

Give me more gardening on the home and gardening channel dammit

[sunflowergardens-world]

Not to be all Christian on main here, but what if humans weren't always like this? What if we used to think in the same language one, a long time ago? What if that changed one day? Say, around the same time as the languages of the nations were confused? What if God didn't just confuse the language of our spoken word?

if we could read minds I still don't think we'd understand them.

[sea-lanterns]

God…I love disheveled women who look like they just woke up after a 3 hour nap….

Top: Hyewon from Moonlight Garden

Bottom: Seju from What Does the Fox Say

[eggonthemoon]

What's a dangit grandpa? Dammit bongos? Jamming rompas?

Anyways Project Eden's Garden is pretty good I'm normal about this fangan (is very not normal abt it, how is it so good?)

Have some kaimon chibis the world needs to see them

[sunflowergardens-world]

Saw a post from @o-lei-o-lai-o-lord about dream adventures, and had to include my own from last night, where I was shopping at a Walmart. The highlight of this was finding, in a Walmart, some of the loveliest dresses I can remember (long sleeve, A line skirts) in some of my favorite colors (white, light blue, and a beautiful blue and white floral). The situation improved when dream!me realized that they were, in fact, on sale! I somehow also recognized these dresses as ones that I'd previously (not irl, but in the dream (occurring off-screen if you will)) been looking at while shopping at Old Navy, but had not purchased because of the price ($50). It is also worth noting that these lovely dresses were made from real, good quality linen. Now, dream!me, hoping to perhaps catch a bargain, looks at the price tag. Now, what do you think these lovely linen dresses cost?

$2.99. For real linen. For good quality linen.

AT A WALMART.

I then woke up.

I am still fuming hours later. I have never wanted a dream to be real so much in my life, including several lovely and romantic dreams which I've had in the past. I am about to go learn how to draft sewing patterns just to recreate these dresses.

[sunflowergardens-world]

Is it odd that I find this comforting? At the end of the day, I'm just a speck of dust, loved by God. And nothing else seems to matter much in light of that.

[your-unfriendlyghost]

Outsiders x Over the Garden Wall au pt.2

Part 1 So to make things more “Oklahoma”, instead of the Woodsman, I think it’ll be the Ranger?

In terms of arcs, idk yet who will be the one who’s tempted by the Beast- to stay in the woods forever to keep the other alive but stuck in Edlewood. I think thematically it makes the most sense for it to be Dally who follows Wirt’s arc…buuuut I also think Johnny would look so cool saving Dallas with an ax (@dallasgallant lemme know your thoughts on the arcs, your takes on these two are so good man)

also ignore how inconsistent Johnny’s hair is compared to the last OTGW post. I wanted it to be shorter than I usually draw it because this is post-Ponyboy’s haircut (normally I draw it falling over his right eye because that’s pre-haircut) and idk how to translate that into this simpler cartoon network-y art style? I think I’ve mostly figured it out but I hadn’t at the time of posting the last one lol

original pics under the cut- I didn’t paint the backgrounds myself this time, just edited them a bit so everyone would fit in place lol