#it does finally feel cold here - I had tomatoes on the vine up until a week ago

[charmwasjess]

E'woww (like 'ello, but uwu)

You like snow?

I have 4 feet. Want a foot or two of snow? So I can make it home and to work? Can we share?

Eyyyyy! <3

This is fucking wonderful. A mysterious figure appears, "pssst, kid," motions into a dim alleyway, "...you want to buy some....?" and opens up the trenchcoat to reveal...... FOUR FOOT OF FLUFFY FRESH SNOW

But actually that sounds miserable - being a snow lover is all fun and games until people can't get home in it. I'm sorry you're dealing with that right now. I'd gladly take a couple feet off your hands. Here in Appalachia, we typically have pretty reliably snowy winters, but the last three or four have been completely dry and even hot at times, which is wrecking havoc on our weird little deciduous rainforest biomes.

[zizygy]

Summertime (and the living is easy)

An Andrey Daddano Character Study A/N: I keep thinking about the can of tomatoes on Andrey’s dresser in the scene leading up to the bathhouse. Everything about Andrey’s room is so meticulous, I know that we’re meant to notice that. I’ve treated the can here as a fetish, a symbol of Andrey, and by extension, Goncharov’s perception of themselves not only as something that has a limited shelf life as part of the dying mafia, but as people who are desperately trying to take themselves out of time, no matter what it costs. Read it on AO3! Andrey picks up the can of tomatoes and admires how it fits in his hand. It’s a sad excuse for a weapon, difficult to conceal, odd to find on one’s person and, most importantly, weak. The aluminum wouldn’t survive contact with a skull, it would bend and crumple before any real damage could be done. Of course, like a glass bottle, it would be sharp when it breaks, sharp enough to cut flesh, but not cleanly, not reliably. Violence was no matter to Andrey but purpose, that was what was important. A hit was like a play, each prop an actor, all with their role, exquisitely crafted for its audience. It was art, not because of how it looked, but because of the emotions it elicited. He throws the can up in the air. Once he could feel that emotion. And when the brutality was the point… Well, that was Morelli’s area of expertise.He sighs and sets the can down to pull a cigarette from his pocket. It’s an automatic gesture, but it makes his fingers cold. A bell tolls. It cuts clear through the cold air and rattles in his ribs. Andrey tucks the can, and with it his hand, back into his warm pocket. His time is almost up here. His next job looms on the horizon, and then the one after that and the one after that. And endless stretch of performances until the actors are too tired, their feet mangled, their throats sore and their makeup running down their face from the harsh lights. They get no rest. The bell tolls. This performance is different, he tells himself. Goncharov. The Mule of Moscow. This will make his name. It will be Enough. But will it? When the deed is done, will anything have changed? The bell tolls. He once killed a man whose last words were about a dream. “When I was little, I dreamed I’d have a garden.” Andrey couldn’t imagine why it was so important to him. There was a gun to his temple. “In the summer I would run outside, to the trellis full of tomatoes. There were so many and they were so plump that they made the wood bend. I’d pluck them right off the vine. Then I’d be scolded for the juice running down my chin.” “It’s a nice fantasy,” Andrey had murmured. And then he shot him in the head.When he died, the blood ran down his temples. It was much redder than tomato juice. The bell tolls. Now, he dreams of ripe tomatoes and a collapsing trellis. But what does that matter? That man is gone. Another mark on the ledger. Another curtain called. The bell tolls. It’s time for his next hit. It’s time, once and for all, to end Goncharov. It’s time, once and for all, to break the cycle. The bell tolls. It begins to snow. It’s too cold for tomatoes. They’re a sensitive plant, and their ripe skin would burst long before the first snowflake. He sighs and stands up. It’s hard to reminisce when a bell constantly tolls. It’s probably for the best. A thinking hitman is a dead hitman. The thinking happens before the pieces are in place, before the gun is in your hand. If you’re pausing during the hit… well. He pats his jacket and instead of feeling his lighter, like he expected, his hand closes around the can of tomatoes. Next summer he’ll pickle some fresh ones. Maybe he’ll finally have the time. As he heads down the street, he realizes that there’s still a flaccid cigarette hanging from his lips. He laughs and it falls, unlit, into the gathering snow. --

I also wanted to shout out that along with rewatching the film (of course) to write this, I was inspired by a few other pieces of media as well. Someone might get something out of checking these out:

Gooseberries by Anton Chekov The Age of Innocence dir. Martin Scorcese Chunking Express dir. Wong Kar-wai

[everlarkbirthdaygifts]

Happy Birthday, jbsaucy!

Today, we wish a Happy belated Birthday to @jbsaucy! We hope you had a wonderful day back on Nov 16, and celebrated in style. To bring the Birthday feels back around, @ally147writes has written a story just for you!

AN: I am so sorry for the delay, @jbsaucy! The ending would just not cooperate with me at all! I took your soulmates au prompt, then found a wonderfully extensive list of soulmate scenarios on one of those OTP prompt blogs on here, and picked one that really tickled me to write - I hope you’ll like it, too, even if it does get a tad dramatic in the middle :)

Unedited and unbeta’d - please forgive any glaring errors.

Katniss

Cool

The plants growing on the trellises on either side of the garden path reach out to her with tiny, curling trails. Not enough to be a hindrance, Katniss thinks as she kicks another tendril off her ankle, but to play. The plants never respond this well to her. That’s more Prim’s thing. They tug at the end of her braid and curl around her fingers. Some tear the ripe fruits from their vines and hold them out to her until she sees fit to take them. Kind of cute, maybe, if she gave a crap.

“Uh, thanks?”

 She stows the plants’ offerings in her satchel bag, alongside the rest of the herbs she foraged from the nearby woods, and trudges up the path towards the small cottage she shares with Prim. A steady plume of smoke billows from the chimney. Lavender, vetivert, and chamomile; a sleeping potion Prim often prescribes her patients.

 She yawns as soon as she steps inside. Has Prim’s sleeping concoction always been so strong?

 “How’d you go?” Prim calls from the kitchen.

 “Fine, I guess. I found the wild strawberries you were after.” She kicks her boots off near the door and makes her way into the kitchen. “The plants are friendly today.”

 “Really? They were kind of quiet when I was—” Prim looks up from her slow, constant stirring, glances out the garden-facing kitchen window, and drops her ladle with a splash. “— Holy crap, Katniss! What did you do to them?”

 “What, nothing!” Katniss scrambles to her sister’s side and follows her gaze. The plants are triple the size they were when she walked up the path, greener and lusher and laden with fruit. Even as she stares at them, some seem to be growing even more, right before her eyes. In the space of seconds, a vine of tiny, green cherry tomatoes grows to size and bloom a bright, cheery red. The flower bed where Prim cultivates the most requested medicinal plants overflows with colour and scent Katniss can pick up form behind the window glass.

 “I didn’t do anything to them,” she says again. “They don’t even like me that much!”

 Prim lets out a little laugh and wipes her hands on a small towel hanging over her shoulder. “I wish they did that for me. I reckon I could have been waiting forever for the pinkroot to bloom, but still. Was it like this in the woods, too?”

 Katniss shakes her head. “I don’t think so. Not that I was really looking back, though. A lot of animals were following me, too.”

 “I bet if you went back out there now, there’d be overgrowth all over the path you took.”

 She leans a little further, over the stove, towards the window. The plants seem to grow a little faster with the gap just barely narrowed. The warm scents of the potion billows over her, and her eyes dip. Her grip on the edge of the bench goes slack. It’s warm… so warm… “Yeah…” she slurs. “Maybe.”

 “Hey, what are you — What the fluff! Katniss, get back!” Prim cries. With surprisingly strong hands, she shoves Katniss out of the kitchen into the small hallway. Katniss lands flat on her back on the firm, unyielding stone floor, more wide awake than ever, and watches as Prim scurries for the lid to slam atop the overflowing pot. The pot Katniss almost just fell in. She furrows her brow; the contents of that pot weren’t so much as simmering before, were they?

 “Jeez, Kat.” Prim holds out a hand and pulls Katniss back to her feet. “Are you all right?”

 “I’m okay, I think.”

 “What did you do?” Prim breathes.

 “I don’t know?” she says, though it sounds more like a question. “I just… it wasn’t boiling like that before, was it?”

 “No! I simmer it down to half its volume before boiling so it doesn’t make a mess. You know, like it just did!” Prim sighs and wipes the spilled with the edge of her apron. “It shouldn’t have hit you so hard so soon, though, and definitely not just by smell. What is up with your magic today?”

 “I don’t know!” She buries her fisted hands in her trouser pockets. “It’s never… the only time it’s ever been this weird is when I was little.”

 “Ooh, maybe you’re about to meet them!” Prim says, nudging Katniss with her bony elbow.

 She scowls. “Meet who?”                    

 “Your soulmate, silly! Your magic’s gone haywire; that only happens when they’re close.”

 “What the hell are you talking about?”

 “And when you meet,” Prim goes on dreamily, “your magic will escape from you in a burst of colour to twine with theirs, binding your souls together forever.” She sighs; Katniss fights the urge to gag. “So beautiful.”

 “You actually believe that crap?” Katniss lets out a barking laugh. “There hasn’t been a confirmed pair of soulmates in centuries, if there ever was at all.”

 “Well, if it’s not your soulmate — and you’re no fun at all, by the way — you’re probably just coming down with the flu.” Prim wrinkles her nose. “I’ll brew you something, just in case.”

 “Medicine or bottled pheromones?”

 “At this rate, I think either would cure you.”

 Prim sighs again and stares down at the pot, the remains of the potion now a thick, gloopy mess stuck to the bottom. “There’s no more vetivert left to make more.”

 “Want me to go to the apothecary and get some?”

 Prim quirks a brow at her. “In your state? You sure that’s a good idea?”

 “Can’t get any worse than staying here, right?”

 “But what if your soulmate gets any closer? You’d be a danger to yourself and everyone else.”

 “I’m sure it’s just a cold, Prim.”

 “In any case…” Prim darts out of the kitchen and down the stairs to the small cellar where all her potions are kept in carefully labelled bottles in neat, orderly rows. Katniss follows a few steps behind, and as soon as she reaches the final step, Prim shoves a small, blue bottle in her hands.

 “You should drink this first,” she says before Katniss can say anything.

 She pops off the lid and sniffs it. Lemon and thyme. “What is it?”

 “A suppressant,” Prim says. “Should keep your magic nicely wrapped up for the next half hour or so.”

 Katniss stares between the bottle and her sister. “And that would be a good thing?”

 “For the time being, I think. You won’t be able to actively cast anything, either.” Prim trails off, thoughtful. “Although, if it’s leaking out of you like this…”

 Katniss snorts and tips the potion back in a single, neat motion. “I’ll be quick, then.”

Peeta

Warm

 It’s not that unusual, he tells himself, his soaked arms crossed over his equally damp chest.

 It’s a bakery where woodfire ovens are used every day. It’s not that far outside the realms of possibility that the fires might shoot clean through the chimney like a gigantic birthday candle. It’s a fire in a fireplace; where else is it meant to go?

 It’s also not that strange that, because of said fires, the dough would rise so much and so fast that it would spill out over the sides of the bowls and land on the benchtops in soft, sticky lumps.

 Or that whole batches would burns after only seconds in the oven, that yeast would literally die, and that sweat would drop off him at a rate quick enough to fill a swimming pool in seconds.

 Okay, Maybe it’s a little bit weird.

 There’s not even anything he can do about it. Once the dough is on the ground, not even the most thorough spell-work in the country could make Peeta think it fit to serve to the magical public. Even if he takes the breads out of the oven before they become a charred mess, the insides are still sticky and raw. And the fires? Well, the only thing he can do about that is put them out, and that’s not an option, considering they’re kept stoked by the combined efforts of the Mellark family powers.

 “Er, Peeta?”

 His father stands in the doorway of the kitchen, looking about as great as Peeta feels. His greying hair is matted against his head, and his jolly pink cheeks are flushed so red and his panting breaths so hard that Peeta might be concerned if he wasn’t convinced he was a mirror image.

 Peeta swipes futilely at his forehead. “Yeah, Dad?”

 “Do you, ah…have any idea what’s going on?”

 He shakes his head; the movement makes the room spin. He clutches the edge of the bench, but his hands slip too much to gain any purchase. “I have no idea what’s going on.”

 His father quirks a brow. “Peeta, if this is your magic playing up again like last week —”

 “— I’m not doing this!” Peeta furrows his brows and glances at the steam rising from his hands. Were they doing that before? He thinks he would remember them doing that before. “Not… not consciously, anyway.”

 His father frowns. “Are you feeling sick?”

 He almost laughs. “I don’t think I’d be able to tell in here anymore.”

 “Maybe you should head home, just to be on the safe side.”

 “Then it’ll just be you all afternoon.”

 His father waves him off. “I’ll close early. It’s not like there’s anything to sell, and that massive flame shooting out the top is certainly doing its part to keep customers out.”

 Peeta waves at the sticky counters. “The cleaning, though?” God, he’s delirious. “It’s so much mess?”

 His father’s eyes almost twinkle. “Are we magic, or are we magic? I’ll be fine, Peeta.”

 “But I can help?”

 “Peeta, the fire, and the heat, and everything else that has gone wrong with the bakery this morning only started when you arrived. Pardon my saying so, son, but I don’t particularly want any more of your help today.”

 He says it all with a wry smile, which only looks a little out of place of his father’s bright red, glistening face. Peeta nods, braces himself against the edge of the bench once more, and pulls the apron from around his head.

 “Peeta?” his father calls as he’s heading for the door.

 “Yeah?”

 “Might be best to avoid the car today, what with this crazy fever you’re running.”

 “I’m not sick!”

 “You’re certainly something. Head home, Peeta. I’ll check in on you later.”

 As soon as the door closes behind him, a cool breeze douses Peeta’s face. He lets out a sigh, and the jet of flames shooting through the chimney stops, leaving only a thick trail of smoke in its wake.

 He’d be almost relieved if his hands weren’t still steaming.

Katniss

Warmer

 Though she doubts (hopes?) anything will happen, Katniss walks to the nearby town. The suppressant Prim gave her hurts something deep within her with every step she takes, but at least there’s not another jungle growing in her wake. Only a few flowers bloom before her eyes, along with a pair of chubby-cheeked chipmunks which stare at her like she’s the moon, sun and stars all wrapped into one. Katniss scowls and walks straight past all of them.

 A tall plume of smoke billows on the horizon from the town, wafting out and around like a massive toadstool. The air is thick with the smell of it, and something else like burned bread.

 The bakery, maybe? That’d suck. The cheese-buns from there are to die for, and she’s not the only one who thinks so. Just last week, Katniss went in and almost got into a fight with the little old lady behind her when she bought the last half dozen. She sure hadn’t meant to make the fox stole around the woman’s neck come back to life. And she hadn’t meant to get so rage-filled at the woman’s audacity to come between Katniss and her cheese-buns, either, but something shot through her that day. Might have been the ridiculous heat in there that day, making everyone a bit crazy.

 Kind of like today.

 She could have sworn it wasn’t this hot when she left. At least, not magma-levels of hot, anyway. Each step towards town feels like she’s heading towards an active, gurgling volcano. Her braid sticks to the back of her neck, and even shedding her jacket does nothing to stop the sweat dripping and pooling down her back. If anything, the heat gets worse and worse alongside the pain inside her. It’s like being lanced through the gut with a white-hot skewer.

 There’s not enough time to panic. She collapses face-first to the grass. It turns from dry and crisp to green and cool beneath her. A few shy violets peek through the dirt as though to check if she’s okay, but she’s got no words; they’ve boiled and dried on her tongue.

 Before she closes her eyes, though, something even more horrifying greets her: a human figure engulfed in flames. Is she delirious? Is it real? Not real? They lumber closer, and her boiling world goes black.

Peeta

Hot

 Peeta gives his car a wide berth and shoves his hands in his pockets as he darts down the street. Smoke rises out of the sides like he’s stashing lit cigarettes in there. He keeps his head down and refuses to meet anyone’s eye. The sooner he gets home and douses himself in ice water, the better.

 God, he’s still so hot! The bottoms of his boots melt into the pavement and leave great, sticky prints in his wake. His finger prickle with a weird sort of heat he can’t understand until he pulls his hands from his pockets and finds tiny flames dancing over his fingertips.

 “Holy shi —!” He whacks his hand against his leg and waves it through the air, but it only seems to encourage them. They aren’t painful — a little tingly, maybe — but it doesn’t stop him panicking when they spread over him like a robe.

 Someone screams. Somewhere. Behind him, maybe, or all around. He’s not sure what else to do. His boots melt off him completely, and his clothes aren’t far behind. Peeta sprints for the nearest exit out of town and runs until he can’t see life anymore.

 Until, he thinks, he finds death.

 A slight figure, a girl, he thinks with inky-black hair, lies face-first on the ground. Her shoulders aren’t moving, and in a perfect circle around her is a patch of bright grass with small, colourful flowers. As Peeta gets closer, the grass grows higher, the flowers bloom larger, all while the flames coating his body reach further and further to the sky.

 He drops to his knees beside her. The grass doesn’t so much as flinch away from the heat of him.

 He can’t begin to explain why it feels like everything in his life has led up to this moment as he reaches out with a flame-covered hand. “Hey, miss? Are you all —”

 It’s like an explosion within him, like all the heat was a catalyst for his own personal, magical Armageddon. His magic erupts and spills out in a flash of flame and colour, swirling with something calm and green that smells a little like lavender. It’s like the very best fireworks show, full of colours he’s never seen before. He feels it all in the powerful rush of his blood, in the firing synapses of his brain, the happiness wending its way through him now… he could die at this very moment and be absolutely content.

 He’s got no idea how long it lasts, but when it’s over, so is he. He chokes out a gasping breath and collapses beside her.

 XXX

 Peeta doesn’t know how long he’s been lying there. He almost expects to be lying in a crater, but a cursory pat of the ground proves it’s all intact. And less green than before, too. Even the flowers that were there before are gone.

 But the girl is still there, her head propped up on her hand as she surveys him with eyes like shiny silver coins. She jumps when she sees him watching her back. She’s a little pale from their ordeal — so is he, he’d guess — but a blush blooms bright on her cheeks at being caught staring. He grins at her. She’s gorgeous. And she’s… he doesn’t know how to describe how natural her presence is beside his. Like she was meant to be there the entire time. His head and heart are so calm just watching her, whoever she is.

 “Who are you?” she asks.

 “Peeta.” He coughs and moves so he’s sitting up. “You?”

 She follows him. “Katniss.”

 “Katniss,” he repeats. He smiles at her. “Pretty name.”

 “Thanks.”

 “Do you have any idea why… I mean, you were out when I found you.”

 She nods. “And you were on fire.”

 “Yeah, that’s… yeah, I was.”

 “And then, after…”

 “You saw all that?”

 “No, I just kind of felt it. Like all the magic in me just exploded.”

 “It was the same for me, too. But I feel… great, actually. Stronger. Better than ever.”

 “Me, too. I feel… incredibly peaceful. Strong, too, like I could do anything.”

 “Any idea what it all was?”

 She opens her mouth, closes it, stares at the ground where another tiny flower, a dandelion, peeks through. She smiles at it and says, “Peeta, you wouldn’t happen to believe in soulmates, would you?”

 He watches her for a long, immeasurable moment before telling her, “I don’t know,” He takes her hand, thrilled that she lets him, and it sparks in his. “But I think I might now.”

[wineanddinosaur]

A Deep Dive Into the Many, Verifiably False Claims of ‘Clean Wine’ Companies

The light striking the courtyard’s sandstone walls gave a golden haze to the evening. Guests seated at wooden benches chatted quietly, enjoying plates of fresh summer food.

But there was nothing welcoming about the server. “There is nothing wrong with the wine,” she said, loudly enough for heads to turn.

My boyfriend and I had just arrived in Germany and were having a romantic dinner. I’d ordered a glass of Spätburgunder, the local Pinot Noir.

But when I raised the glass, all I smelled was moldy dishrag. It wasn’t exactly like TCA, the compound responsible for cork taint, but what else could do that to a wine? I quietly asked for another glass.

“If you want another, you’ll have to pay for both,” said the woman.

I felt my face flush. “It’s corked.”

She marched back into the bar at a rapid clip and came back, bearing the bottle. It had a screwcap, not a cork.

“There is no cork taint in that wine,” she said. By now, everyone was staring. We finished our dinner at top speed, feeling the sting of public humiliation. When the bill came, it included the musty red wine, as promised.

Later, a wine writer told me that the wine came from a difficult, wet vintage. “Some people bottled rotten grapes,” he said.

Coming from Australia, where wineries pride themselves on technical perfection, it was a shock. But in the next few years, I encountered lots of wine problems, particularly at European wine competitions, where many wines with “off” smells or flavors would appear.

That was 14 years ago. Since then, world wine quality has skyrocketed to the point that faulty wines are rare. Not only are even the cheapest wines well made, there’s a stunning diversity of styles and grapes available.

Yet at the very moment that wine quality is through the roof, ads are appearing across social media claiming that wine is suspect. “Clean wine” marketers compete to create memes about how terrifying wine is; one will post that people should count chemicals, not calories, and the next will claim that wine has “250 commonly added additives” (false). My favorite is the skeleton clutching a wine bottle. “Mass produced wines are scary!” says the caption. Over on Facebook, ads show white sugar being dumped into a wine glass.

Where are all these lurid wine tales wine coming from?

A dive into social media reveals they’re coming from people with wine to sell; on Instagram, the memes are often the work of Scout & Cellar consultants, who take a commission on the “Clean-Crafted” wine they sell. The Facebook ads showcasing wine glasses with sugar are from Dry Farm Wines, an online store selling natural wines.

It’s marketing by disparagement, but the claims are difficult to rebut because of Brandolini’s Law: “The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.”

But here goes.

The first way to cast doubt on something is to position it as all or nothing. Here, the implication is that if you’re not drinking their wines, then you’re drinking industrial, factory-made products. These marketers avoid mentioning that wine is a joyfully diverse category, offering everything from homogenous, focus-group-tested products to handmade, artisanal wines — and everything in between.

Second, while wine is a natural product, it’s also a marvel of complex chemistry. Because most people associate chemistry with industrial sorcery, it’s easy to freak them out by calling something by its scientific name. Wine lovers who are used to hearing about beneficial chemicals like polyphenols can be shocked by references to ammonium phosphate — until they find out its other name is “yeast food.”

ADDITIVES

So how many additives are there? If you include processing aids, which don’t stay in the final wine, there are 69, including elements found naturally in the grape. The register is being updated right now; some vegan fining aids are being added. Ferrocyanide, which Scout & Cellar claims is a common additive, is being removed. Not only does nobody use it, it’s not even available on the market.

Just because something is listed doesn’t mean it’s used, because winemakers prefer to let the grapes speak for themselves.

SUGAR

Another way to introduce doubt about any product is to claim it’s full of added sugar.

There are only really two times when sugar can legally be added to wine. The first is chaptalization, when limited amounts can be poured into fermentation vats to get higher alcohols. The technique was traditionally used in cold climates like Champagne and Burgundy, but it’s becoming redundant thanks to climate change. Chaptalization is illegal in California.

Sugar is also added by anyone using the Champagne method to make a sparkling wine; along with yeast, it’s what gets a secondary fermentation going. Otherwise, sugar can’t be added.

MEGA PURPLE

One ingredient that is legal in California is grape concentrate, which adds sweetness and color to red wines; using ‘teinturier’ or black-juiced varieties like Alicante Bouschet to add color is a very old technique that was still used in Europe in the 1970s.

Today there is a commercial concentrate available called Mega Purple, which has become a shorthand for mass-market, confected red wines; it’s not a winemaking tool that serious winemakers use, and it’s illegal in EU appellations, where nothing can be added to change the essential nature of the wine.

COLOR DYES

Adding dyes to wines? Illegal.

SULFITES

Sulfites are used to preserve and protect wine from bacteria, spoilage, and oxidation. While the legal limit in the U.S. is 350 milligrams per liter, the average is well under 100 milligrams per liter. According to Wired, the FDA identified sulfites as an allergen in 1986, “and that’s how the hysteria over sulfites in wine started,” with people blaming sulfites in wine for headaches; no definitive link has ever been established.

PESTICIDES

Pesticides — both synthetic and the copper sulphate used by organic growers — are indeed sprayed on grapes to prevent rot and mildew; the application and timing are regulated to ensure as little residue as possible by the time the fruit is picked. One of the world’s biggest wine buyers, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, has its own laboratory and tests every wine that enters the province for heavy metals and pesticides. Thousands of these wines come from the United States, including many of the big, commercial wine brands. “From the 22,600 wines tested in 2019-2020,” a press officer wrote to me, only 20 exceeded the LCBO’s limits. For the math uninclined, that’s less than one-tenth of 1 percent — hardly skull-and-crossbones-worthy quantities.

GMO YEASTS

Dry Farm Wines claims: “Instead of native yeasts found on vines, US wine companies use genetically modified (GMO) yeasts during fermentation.” While GMO yeasts are illegal in the EU, there are two GMO yeasts that winemakers in North America could theoretically use — except that neither is on the market any longer. The man who developed them, Professor Hennie van Vuuren of the University of British Columbia Wine Research Centre, is now retired. He wrote to me that he engineered one of the yeast strains to “prevent the production of ethyl carbamate, a carcinogen present in wines,” and the other to prevent the production of allergens during fermentation, because “I am allergic to bioamines in wines and I love wine.”

ALCOHOL

Dry Farm Wines might claim that its wines are “Hangover-Free,” but no such thing exists. If it’s wine, then it’s capable of giving you a hangover if you drink too much. That’s an undisputed fact.

ALLERGIC REACTIONS

Biogenic amines, the compounds almost single-handedly responsible for most wine conspiracy theories, are sometimes produced as a byproduct of fermentation — ironically, the thing that can stop them is sulfites.

Many people who get involved with “clean wine” companies tell origin stories that go like this: They used to drink wine with no problem, until they suddenly noticed that a single glass or two was making them feel sick and headache-y. After reading up about winemaking, they realized it was all the additives and toxins in the wine making them feel lousy — and they then resolved to start selling pure, clean wine (sound familiar?).

The true culprit is generally either the alcohol or the biogenic amines, one of which is histamine; others include the fabulously named putrescine and cadaverine. They’re also found in some foods, like charcuterie, cheese, vinegar, spinach, and tomatoes, among others, and it’s the cumulative effect of ingesting them that causes problems.

“The way I describe it to consumers is that you have an internal limit or threshold for a chemical compound such as histamine — everybody’s threshold is different,” says pharmacologist Dr. Creina Stockley of the University of Adelaide in Australia. One day you might be eating food with histamines and feel fine, “but on the second day, you have a glass of wine which raises your level of histamine above the threshold, and you can feel unwell. Because wine was the last food you were exposed to, you automatically blame the wine.”

The real problem with wine isn’t that it’s full of toxins (apart from alcohol) but that there’s almost nothing on the label to indicate how it’s been made. This will change in the next five years, as ingredient labelling is coming to the EU by end of 2022, which will push other wine-producing countries to follow suit.

In the meantime, anybody interested in low-intervention wine has a whole world of artisanal and natural wine to choose from — and you don’t have to buy them from someone using scare tactics as a sales technique. If anybody approaches you trying to sell you “clean” or “clean-crafted” wine, ask them to tell you exactly how it was made. Because if it’s not a natural wine, then it was made using additives — and if they can’t tell you what those are? They have something to hide.

To get hold of a bottle of delicious, low-intervention wine, just ask your local independent retailer for recommendations. If there really is something wrong with the wine, like cork taint, you have the right to take it back. But the chances of a bad bottle are, fortunately, extremely rare these days.

The article A Deep Dive Into the Many, Verifiably False Claims of ‘Clean Wine’ Companies appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/clean-wine-false-claims/

[johnboothus]

A Deep Dive Into the Many Verifiably False Claims of Clean Wine Companies

The light striking the courtyard’s sandstone walls gave a golden haze to the evening. Guests seated at wooden benches chatted quietly, enjoying plates of fresh summer food.

But there was nothing welcoming about the server. “There is nothing wrong with the wine,” she said, loudly enough for heads to turn.

My boyfriend and I had just arrived in Germany and were having a romantic dinner. I’d ordered a glass of Spätburgunder, the local Pinot Noir.

But when I raised the glass, all I smelled was moldy dishrag. It wasn’t exactly like TCA, the compound responsible for cork taint, but what else could do that to a wine? I quietly asked for another glass.

“If you want another, you’ll have to pay for both,” said the woman.

I felt my face flush. “It’s corked.”

She marched back into the bar at a rapid clip and came back, bearing the bottle. It had a screwcap, not a cork.

“There is no cork taint in that wine,” she said. By now, everyone was staring. We finished our dinner at top speed, feeling the sting of public humiliation. When the bill came, it included the musty red wine, as promised.

Later, a wine writer told me that the wine came from a difficult, wet vintage. “Some people bottled rotten grapes,” he said.

Coming from Australia, where wineries pride themselves on technical perfection, it was a shock. But in the next few years, I encountered lots of wine problems, particularly at European wine competitions, where many wines with “off” smells or flavors would appear.

That was 14 years ago. Since then, world wine quality has skyrocketed to the point that faulty wines are rare. Not only are even the cheapest wines well made, there’s a stunning diversity of styles and grapes available.

Yet at the very moment that wine quality is through the roof, ads are appearing across social media claiming that wine is suspect. “Clean wine” marketers compete to create memes about how terrifying wine is; one will post that people should count chemicals, not calories, and the next will claim that wine has “250 commonly added additives” (false). My favorite is the skeleton clutching a wine bottle. “Mass produced wines are scary!” says the caption. Over on Facebook, ads show white sugar being dumped into a wine glass.

Where are all these lurid wine tales wine coming from?

A dive into social media reveals they’re coming from people with wine to sell; on Instagram, the memes are often the work of Scout & Cellar consultants, who take a commission on the “Clean-Crafted” wine they sell. The Facebook ads showcasing wine glasses with sugar are from Dry Farm Wines, an online store selling natural wines.

It’s marketing by disparagement, but the claims are difficult to rebut because of Brandolini’s Law: “The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.”

But here goes.

The first way to cast doubt on something is to position it as all or nothing. Here, the implication is that if you’re not drinking their wines, then you’re drinking industrial, factory-made products. These marketers avoid mentioning that wine is a joyfully diverse category, offering everything from homogenous, focus-group-tested products to handmade, artisanal wines — and everything in between.

Second, while wine is a natural product, it’s also a marvel of complex chemistry. Because most people associate chemistry with industrial sorcery, it’s easy to freak them out by calling something by its scientific name. Wine lovers who are used to hearing about beneficial chemicals like polyphenols can be shocked by references to ammonium phosphate — until they find out its other name is “yeast food.”

ADDITIVES

So how many additives are there? If you include processing aids, which don’t stay in the final wine, there are 69, including elements found naturally in the grape. The register is being updated right now; some vegan fining aids are being added. Ferrocyanide, which Scout & Cellar claims is a common additive, is being removed. Not only does nobody use it, it’s not even available on the market.

Just because something is listed doesn’t mean it’s used, because winemakers prefer to let the grapes speak for themselves.

SUGAR

Another way to introduce doubt about any product is to claim it’s full of added sugar.

There are only really two times when sugar can legally be added to wine. The first is chaptalization, when limited amounts can be poured into fermentation vats to get higher alcohols. The technique was traditionally used in cold climates like Champagne and Burgundy, but it’s becoming redundant thanks to climate change. Chaptalization is illegal in California.

Sugar is also added by anyone using the Champagne method to make a sparkling wine; along with yeast, it’s what gets a secondary fermentation going. Otherwise, sugar can’t be added.

MEGA PURPLE

One ingredient that is legal in California is grape concentrate, which adds sweetness and color to red wines; using ‘teinturier’ or black-juiced varieties like Alicante Bouschet to add color is a very old technique that was still used in Europe in the 1970s.

Today there is a commercial concentrate available called Mega Purple, which has become a shorthand for mass-market, confected red wines; it’s not a winemaking tool that serious winemakers use, and it’s illegal in EU appellations, where nothing can be added to change the essential nature of the wine.

COLOR DYES

Adding dyes to wines? Illegal.

SULFITES

Sulfites are used to preserve and protect wine from bacteria, spoilage, and oxidation. While the legal limit in the U.S. is 350 milligrams per liter, the average is well under 100 milligrams per liter. According to Wired, the FDA identified sulfites as an allergen in 1986, “and that’s how the hysteria over sulfites in wine started,” with people blaming sulfites in wine for headaches; no definitive link has ever been established.

PESTICIDES

Pesticides — both synthetic and the copper sulphate used by organic growers — are indeed sprayed on grapes to prevent rot and mildew; the application and timing are regulated to ensure as little residue as possible by the time the fruit is picked. One of the world’s biggest wine buyers, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, has its own laboratory and tests every wine that enters the province for heavy metals and pesticides. Thousands of these wines come from the United States, including many of the big, commercial wine brands. “From the 22,600 wines tested in 2019-2020,” a press officer wrote to me, only 20 exceeded the LCBO’s limits. For the math uninclined, that’s less than one-tenth of 1 percent — hardly skull-and-crossbones-worthy quantities.

GMO YEASTS

Dry Farm Wines claims: “Instead of native yeasts found on vines, US wine companies use genetically modified (GMO) yeasts during fermentation.” While GMO yeasts are illegal in the EU, there are two GMO yeasts that winemakers in North America could theoretically use — except that neither is on the market any longer. The man who developed them, Professor Hennie van Vuuren of the University of British Columbia Wine Research Centre, is now retired. He wrote to me that he engineered one of the yeast strains to “prevent the production of ethyl carbamate, a carcinogen present in wines,” and the other to prevent the production of allergens during fermentation, because “I am allergic to bioamines in wines and I love wine.”

ALCOHOL

Dry Farm Wines might claim that its wines are “Hangover-Free,” but no such thing exists. If it’s wine, then it’s capable of giving you a hangover if you drink too much. That’s an undisputed fact.

ALLERGIC REACTIONS

Biogenic amines, the compounds almost single-handedly responsible for most wine conspiracy theories, are sometimes produced as a byproduct of fermentation — ironically, the thing that can stop them is sulfites.

Many people who get involved with “clean wine” companies tell origin stories that go like this: They used to drink wine with no problem, until they suddenly noticed that a single glass or two was making them feel sick and headache-y. After reading up about winemaking, they realized it was all the additives and toxins in the wine making them feel lousy — and they then resolved to start selling pure, clean wine (sound familiar?).

The true culprit is generally either the alcohol or the biogenic amines, one of which is histamine; others include the fabulously named putrescine and cadaverine. They’re also found in some foods, like charcuterie, cheese, vinegar, spinach, and tomatoes, among others, and it’s the cumulative effect of ingesting them that causes problems.

“The way I describe it to consumers is that you have an internal limit or threshold for a chemical compound such as histamine — everybody’s threshold is different,” says pharmacologist Dr. Creina Stockley of the University of Adelaide in Australia. One day you might be eating food with histamines and feel fine, “but on the second day, you have a glass of wine which raises your level of histamine above the threshold, and you can feel unwell. Because wine was the last food you were exposed to, you automatically blame the wine.”

The real problem with wine isn’t that it’s full of toxins (apart from alcohol) but that there’s almost nothing on the label to indicate how it’s been made. This will change in the next five years, as ingredient labelling is coming to the EU by end of 2022, which will push other wine-producing countries to follow suit.

In the meantime, anybody interested in low-intervention wine has a whole world of artisanal and natural wine to choose from — and you don’t have to buy them from someone using scare tactics as a sales technique. If anybody approaches you trying to sell you “clean” or “clean-crafted” wine, ask them to tell you exactly how it was made. Because if it’s not a natural wine, then it was made using additives — and if they can’t tell you what those are? They have something to hide.

To get hold of a bottle of delicious, low-intervention wine, just ask your local independent retailer for recommendations. If there really is something wrong with the wine, like cork taint, you have the right to take it back. But the chances of a bad bottle are, fortunately, extremely rare these days.

The article A Deep Dive Into the Many, Verifiably False Claims of ‘Clean Wine’ Companies appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/clean-wine-false-claims/

source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/a-deep-dive-into-the-many-verifiably-false-claims-of-clean-wine-companies

[isaiahrippinus]

A Deep Dive Into the Many, Verifiably False Claims of ‘Clean Wine’ Companies

The light striking the courtyard’s sandstone walls gave a golden haze to the evening. Guests seated at wooden benches chatted quietly, enjoying plates of fresh summer food.

But there was nothing welcoming about the server. “There is nothing wrong with the wine,” she said, loudly enough for heads to turn.

My boyfriend and I had just arrived in Germany and were having a romantic dinner. I’d ordered a glass of Spätburgunder, the local Pinot Noir.

But when I raised the glass, all I smelled was moldy dishrag. It wasn’t exactly like TCA, the compound responsible for cork taint, but what else could do that to a wine? I quietly asked for another glass.

“If you want another, you’ll have to pay for both,” said the woman.

I felt my face flush. “It’s corked.”

She marched back into the bar at a rapid clip and came back, bearing the bottle. It had a screwcap, not a cork.

“There is no cork taint in that wine,” she said. By now, everyone was staring. We finished our dinner at top speed, feeling the sting of public humiliation. When the bill came, it included the musty red wine, as promised.

Later, a wine writer told me that the wine came from a difficult, wet vintage. “Some people bottled rotten grapes,” he said.

Coming from Australia, where wineries pride themselves on technical perfection, it was a shock. But in the next few years, I encountered lots of wine problems, particularly at European wine competitions, where many wines with “off” smells or flavors would appear.

That was 14 years ago. Since then, world wine quality has skyrocketed to the point that faulty wines are rare. Not only are even the cheapest wines well made, there’s a stunning diversity of styles and grapes available.

Yet at the very moment that wine quality is through the roof, ads are appearing across social media claiming that wine is suspect. “Clean wine” marketers compete to create memes about how terrifying wine is; one will post that people should count chemicals, not calories, and the next will claim that wine has “250 commonly added additives” (false). My favorite is the skeleton clutching a wine bottle. “Mass produced wines are scary!” says the caption. Over on Facebook, ads show white sugar being dumped into a wine glass.

Where are all these lurid wine tales wine coming from?

A dive into social media reveals they’re coming from people with wine to sell; on Instagram, the memes are often the work of Scout & Cellar consultants, who take a commission on the “Clean-Crafted” wine they sell. The Facebook ads showcasing wine glasses with sugar are from Dry Farm Wines, an online store selling natural wines.

It’s marketing by disparagement, but the claims are difficult to rebut because of Brandolini’s Law: “The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.”

But here goes.

The first way to cast doubt on something is to position it as all or nothing. Here, the implication is that if you’re not drinking their wines, then you’re drinking industrial, factory-made products. These marketers avoid mentioning that wine is a joyfully diverse category, offering everything from homogenous, focus-group-tested products to handmade, artisanal wines — and everything in between.

Second, while wine is a natural product, it’s also a marvel of complex chemistry. Because most people associate chemistry with industrial sorcery, it’s easy to freak them out by calling something by its scientific name. Wine lovers who are used to hearing about beneficial chemicals like polyphenols can be shocked by references to ammonium phosphate — until they find out its other name is “yeast food.”

ADDITIVES

So how many additives are there? If you include processing aids, which don’t stay in the final wine, there are 69, including elements found naturally in the grape. The register is being updated right now; some vegan fining aids are being added. Ferrocyanide, which Scout & Cellar claims is a common additive, is being removed. Not only does nobody use it, it’s not even available on the market.

Just because something is listed doesn’t mean it’s used, because winemakers prefer to let the grapes speak for themselves.

SUGAR

Another way to introduce doubt about any product is to claim it’s full of added sugar.

There are only really two times when sugar can legally be added to wine. The first is chaptalization, when limited amounts can be poured into fermentation vats to get higher alcohols. The technique was traditionally used in cold climates like Champagne and Burgundy, but it’s becoming redundant thanks to climate change. Chaptalization is illegal in California.

Sugar is also added by anyone using the Champagne method to make a sparkling wine; along with yeast, it’s what gets a secondary fermentation going. Otherwise, sugar can’t be added.

MEGA PURPLE

One ingredient that is legal in California is grape concentrate, which adds sweetness and color to red wines; using ‘teinturier’ or black-juiced varieties like Alicante Bouschet to add color is a very old technique that was still used in Europe in the 1970s.

Today there is a commercial concentrate available called Mega Purple, which has become a shorthand for mass-market, confected red wines; it’s not a winemaking tool that serious winemakers use, and it’s illegal in EU appellations, where nothing can be added to change the essential nature of the wine.

COLOR DYES

Adding dyes to wines? Illegal.

SULFITES

Sulfites are used to preserve and protect wine from bacteria, spoilage, and oxidation. While the legal limit in the U.S. is 350 milligrams per liter, the average is well under 100 milligrams per liter. According to Wired, the FDA identified sulfites as an allergen in 1986, “and that’s how the hysteria over sulfites in wine started,” with people blaming sulfites in wine for headaches; no definitive link has ever been established.

PESTICIDES

Pesticides — both synthetic and the copper sulphate used by organic growers — are indeed sprayed on grapes to prevent rot and mildew; the application and timing are regulated to ensure as little residue as possible by the time the fruit is picked. One of the world’s biggest wine buyers, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, has its own laboratory and tests every wine that enters the province for heavy metals and pesticides. Thousands of these wines come from the United States, including many of the big, commercial wine brands. “From the 22,600 wines tested in 2019-2020,” a press officer wrote to me, only 20 exceeded the LCBO’s limits. For the math uninclined, that’s less than one-tenth of 1 percent — hardly skull-and-crossbones-worthy quantities.

GMO YEASTS

Dry Farm Wines claims: “Instead of native yeasts found on vines, US wine companies use genetically modified (GMO) yeasts during fermentation.” While GMO yeasts are illegal in the EU, there are two GMO yeasts that winemakers in North America could theoretically use — except that neither is on the market any longer. The man who developed them, Professor Hennie van Vuuren of the University of British Columbia Wine Research Centre, is now retired. He wrote to me that he engineered one of the yeast strains to “prevent the production of ethyl carbamate, a carcinogen present in wines,” and the other to prevent the production of allergens during fermentation, because “I am allergic to bioamines in wines and I love wine.”

ALCOHOL

Dry Farm Wines might claim that its wines are “Hangover-Free,” but no such thing exists. If it’s wine, then it’s capable of giving you a hangover if you drink too much. That’s an undisputed fact.

ALLERGIC REACTIONS

Biogenic amines, the compounds almost single-handedly responsible for most wine conspiracy theories, are sometimes produced as a byproduct of fermentation — ironically, the thing that can stop them is sulfites.

Many people who get involved with “clean wine” companies tell origin stories that go like this: They used to drink wine with no problem, until they suddenly noticed that a single glass or two was making them feel sick and headache-y. After reading up about winemaking, they realized it was all the additives and toxins in the wine making them feel lousy — and they then resolved to start selling pure, clean wine (sound familiar?).

The true culprit is generally either the alcohol or the biogenic amines, one of which is histamine; others include the fabulously named putrescine and cadaverine. They’re also found in some foods, like charcuterie, cheese, vinegar, spinach, and tomatoes, among others, and it’s the cumulative effect of ingesting them that causes problems.

“The way I describe it to consumers is that you have an internal limit or threshold for a chemical compound such as histamine — everybody’s threshold is different,” says pharmacologist Dr. Creina Stockley of the University of Adelaide in Australia. One day you might be eating food with histamines and feel fine, “but on the second day, you have a glass of wine which raises your level of histamine above the threshold, and you can feel unwell. Because wine was the last food you were exposed to, you automatically blame the wine.”

The real problem with wine isn’t that it’s full of toxins (apart from alcohol) but that there’s almost nothing on the label to indicate how it’s been made. This will change in the next five years, as ingredient labelling is coming to the EU by end of 2022, which will push other wine-producing countries to follow suit.

In the meantime, anybody interested in low-intervention wine has a whole world of artisanal and natural wine to choose from — and you don’t have to buy them from someone using scare tactics as a sales technique. If anybody approaches you trying to sell you “clean” or “clean-crafted” wine, ask them to tell you exactly how it was made. Because if it’s not a natural wine, then it was made using additives — and if they can’t tell you what those are? They have something to hide.

To get hold of a bottle of delicious, low-intervention wine, just ask your local independent retailer for recommendations. If there really is something wrong with the wine, like cork taint, you have the right to take it back. But the chances of a bad bottle are, fortunately, extremely rare these days.

The article A Deep Dive Into the Many, Verifiably False Claims of ‘Clean Wine’ Companies appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/clean-wine-false-claims/ source https://vinology1.tumblr.com/post/627338748708962304

[wendyimmiller]

Gardening When You Really Don’t Wanna

The most dreaded thing I’ve ever had to face was to be dragged along while my mom took my sisters shopping. Any time this happened, it was beyond awful. A purgatory of boredom and sadness that could last anywhere from endless to eternal.

Picture it this way: I’m an otherwise happy, well-adjusted 5-8 year old boy, but I’m being held hostage in a cavern of clothes racks at some store for the 6th or 7th hour and my arm is being held straight up above my head. All the blood it ever contained has drained from it hours ago, my wrist is gripped white-knuckled tight by an unbelievably strong, terrifyingly frustrated, and appallingly unsympathetic mother, and she is yanking my arm right and left to emphasize each and every syllable–my whole body violently following each yank–from some variation of a sentence that starts with “Mister, you had…” and ends with …”something to cry about.”

Any expedition to go buy clothes was like this. Totally unendurable. But the worst of the worst death marches were treks for Easter outfits. Worse than that? Shoes. Easter outfits? I want to cry right now just thinking about it. What absolute zero is to physics about describes the absolute misery caused by Easter shopping. But, somehow, shopping for shoes was even worse.

There is no telling the amount of pain that went into making this photograph possible.

If I remember right, the main issue with shoes was that one of my sisters had skinny little feet and, for her, there were always several choices of adorably cute shoes. Amazing how much time could leave the universe while deciding exactly which pair, but at the end of the day she went home with nice shoes. On the other hand, my other sister had wide feet and needed “corrective” shoes. This was the double whammy of terrible luck for her and me. The best she ever found were shoes that nuns wouldn’t even wear. Me? A fate that consigned me to dangle from one arm in store after store after store as my mother led us all–wild in sorrow–in an ever widening migration of despair, shoe store to shoe store in what we all knew was a vain pursuit of a cute pair of wide “corrective” shoes.

The sound of this misery–moaning, whining, complaining, crying, and my mother’s hissing, cursing attempts to make it stop–steadily built to a crescendo of unhappiness that–thinking about it–NASA should have recorded and then perpetually beamed into space so as to deter hostile aliens from having any interest in our planet.

Anyway, this is how I spent somewhere around a quarter of my childhood.

And this same level of misery about describes a quarter of my gardening chores. That’s right. Gardening ain’t all wine and roses. You see, I’m not in it for the motions. I don’t garden because I like to push a mower around the yard in a certain pattern. I never have a hankering to go turn a compost heap, or haul brush to the woods, or spread 15-20 yards of mulch. I don’t like trying to figure out why my well-pump isn’t working, and it’s been a very long time since I found anything compelling about digging a hole.

Those activities are merely a means to an end, and the end is a beautiful garden with all the benefits therein: a backyard oasis, a refuge for wildlife, and a safe place to enjoy the sweetest kind of peace on Earth. Bonus credits for a contented wife, adulation from strangers during garden tours, and for a green vegetative kind of privacy that allows open, carefree peeing in the middle of the backyard at any time on any given day during the growing season.

Indeed. All this, not pulling weeds, is why I garden.

And yet even as we speak, here in football season, I have sacks and sacks of bulbs to plant before the ground freezes. It’s been a hard year, I’m kind of gardened out, and no matter how much I try to focus any ESP powers I’ve got, those bulbs just are not going to plant themselves. This, all because I heard Brent Heath speak back in May, got all excited, and placed a big order.

So I will do what I’ve always done: make excuses, put the task off, and try not to think about it too much. And I will do these things for week after week. In certain times when I’m feeling the urgency more greatly, I’ll quietly wish for an injury or a breakdown that will serve as an adequate excuse for failing to get them planted. Eventually however, the day will inevitably come when there’s no room for even one more second of procrastination.

And there I’ll be, on my knees, cold, slimy soil chilling me to my bones, a bitter wind rasping at my face, trying not to smell the dog crap that got on my jeans because it was camouflaged in the leaves, and suffering strange, phantom jerking motions in my right arm. Inside, on TV, The Ohio State Buckeyes are defeating Michigan again. There’s guacamole on the counter. Beer in the fridge. But I’m not inside. I’m outside, and cursing the hell out of that smooth talking Brent Heath.

Another time it’ll be summer. 100 degrees out. And I’ll be cutting down a skanky old crabapple and every single twisty, pokey, gnarly, and ugly branch will have made up its mind to fight me every step of the way. Whatever I want, they’ll want the opposite. They’ll gouge at my eyes. They’ll gash my skin. Nasty, itchy stuff will fall down the back of my shirt. I’ll be sweating, bleeding, and pissed off. There will be no easy angle to position for any single cut. Brush will tangle underfoot. Each of a hundred logs will not stack without a brute force battle of wills, and not one piece of brush will go into the truck and stay there until I’ve discovered–by endless repetition only–the mystical combination of cuss words that will unlock the system. And it’ll suck.

A crabapple displaying full on winter interest in the middle of summer.

Or, it’s mid spring in Ohio and like a complete freakin’ idiot I again jumped the gun and planted out a bunch of tender stuff. I get home from work after dark, it’s 35F and raining, and they’re calling for a hard frost. And, like a damned soul in a Renaissance painting, I’ll inconsolably drag myself outside, and for the next fours hours I will–in fits and starts–construct the world’s twelfth largest shanty town in the backyard from whatever little bits of scrap wood, chunks of rock and rubble, some string, tape, old sheets, blankets, and filthy leftover plastic sheeting I can find in a panicked effort to save a bunch of annuals, tropicals, vegetables, and some expensive fern that Tony Avent said was hardy to Zone 7b, (at least) from a cold, lonely, continental, Z6a, untimely death.

Fun times.

Here’s what follows that: You drag yourself back inside, take a forever long hot shower, down a few shots, and, sitting there as surly as sin, you think really dark and dirty thoughts. Other people aren’t doing this shit. Other people live in condos. They have their thermostats set at “Giant-Ass Carbon Footprint.” So warm they’ve been forced to strip down to teddies and speedos. They’ve over-eaten a fabulous dinner and drank a bottle of wine they don’t even know enough to appreciate. Yep, you were having a cold, wet piece of plastic that smelled mind-blowingly bad whipping back and forth across your face as you, both hands engaged, tried to tack it down over a row of tomato plants, and those condo people were living a bacchanalian existence. And you loathe them.

And, yet, you garden on.

Honestly, I’m mystified. Where does the fortitude come from that gets gardeners outside to suffer through odious tasks under miserable circumstances simply because they need to be done? I don’t know. Really don’t. But I’ve done it. Over and over and over again. And my gardening friends have all done it too. I don’t know, reminds me of something that parents used to toss off at you with a smirk: “Hey, it builds character.” Maybe gardeners have that.

But, I will say this. Winter is long and it dies hard. It rears its ugly head again and again before it’s finally defeated, and there ain’t no better tonic for that than the almost tearful joy a garden full of blooming bulbs brings. They fill the heart, God bless them, combating cold and gray with color and fragrance.

And then comes summer. Hot and humid. Sometimes you just want to run from the house to the car, from the car to the office, and then back again. A/C to A/C. An inside, artificial existence devoid of anything that stokes our human nature. But under a shade tree you’ve tended for years, you can enjoy a tall drink and the hordes of butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds that come to visit that Lantana you saved. And then can pick some of your own tomatoes right from the vine and bring them in for the BLTs you’ll have for supper.

Some other time you’ll find yourself looking at the empty space where a scabby, rusty crabapple once lived, and you will take huge and vicious satisfaction in knowing that it was living its hideous existence and then you sawed it down. It was ugly and now it’s not. It’s gone. And you’re totally responsible. And, yet, you live as a free man. You feel no guilt. Nope. You feel joy. It poked your eyes. It raked your skin. It hurt your back. But all that’s over now. You’ve got a drink, and you’re smiling almost fiendishly as you enjoy the lovely aromas of ribs roasting in its smoldering wood.

You just try not to think too much about the stump you chose not to grub out. Nor that day sometime in the future when you’ll roll in a 400-pound, balled and burlaped, plant du jour that some speaker at some conference got you all excited about. Yeah. Sure enough. That day will come, and it will be woeful. But that’s just how it is. That’s how it’s meant to be. To have this, you gotta do that. And you’d have it no other way.

Gardening When You Really Don’t Wanna originally appeared on GardenRant on September 25, 2019.

from Gardening https://www.gardenrant.com/2019/09/gardening-when-you-really-dont-wanna.html via http://www.rssmix.com/

[turfandlawncare]

Gardening When You Really Don’t Wanna

The most dreaded thing I’ve ever had to face was to be dragged along while my mom took my sisters shopping. Any time this happened, it was beyond awful. A purgatory of boredom and sadness, it could last anywhere from endless to eternal.

Picture it this way: I’m an otherwise happy, well-adjusted 6-8 year old boy, but I’m being held hostage in a cavern of clothes racks at some store for the 6th or 7th hour and my arm is being held straight up above my head. All the blood it ever contained has drained from it hours ago, my wrist is gripped white-knuckled tight by an unbelievably strong, terrifyingly frustrated, and appallingly unsympathetic mother, and she is yanking my arm right and left to emphasize each and every syllable–my whole body violently following each yank–as she repeats some variation of a sentence that starts with “Mister, you had…” and ends with …”something to cry about.”

Any expedition to go buy clothes was like this. Totally unendurable. But the worst of the worst death marches were treks for Easter outfits and shoes. Easter outfits? I want to cry right now just thinking about it. What absolute zero is to physics about describes the absolute misery caused by Easter shopping. But shopping for shoes was even worse.

There is no telling the amount of pain that went into making this photograph possible.

If I remember right, the main issue with shoes was that one of my sisters had skinny little feet and, for her, there were always several choices of adorably cute shoes. Amazing how much time could leave the universe deciding which pair. Ridiculous. But so much worse was this. My other sister had wide feet and needed “corrective” shoes. This was the double whammy that consigned me to dangle from one arm in store after store after store as my mother led us all–wild in sorrow–in an ever widening migration of despair, shoe store to shoe store in what we all knew was a vain pursuit of a cute pair of wide “corrective” shoes.

The sound of this misery–moaning, whining, complaining, crying, and my mother’s hissing, cursing attempts to make it stop–steadily built to a crescendo of unhappiness that NASA should have recorded and then perpetually beamed into space so as to deter hostile aliens from ever having any interest in our planet.

Anyway, this is how I spent somewhere around a quarter of my childhood.

And this same level of misery about describes a quarter of my gardening chores. That’s right. Gardening ain’t all wine and roses. You see, I’m not in it for the motions. I don’t garden because I like to push a mower around the yard in a certain pattern. I never have a hankering to go turn a compost heap, or haul brush to the woods, or spread 15-20 yards of mulch. I don’t like trying to figure out why my well-pump isn’t working, and it’s been a very long time since I found something compelling about digging a hole.

Those activities are merely a means to an end, and the end is a beautiful garden with all the benefits therein: a backyard oasis, a refuge for wildlife, and a safe place to enjoy the sweetest kind of peace on Earth. Bonus credits for a contented wife, adulation from strangers during garden tours, and for a green vegetative kind of privacy that allows open, carefree peeing in the middle of the backyard at any time on any given day during the growing season.

Yes. All this, not pulling weeds, is why I garden.

And yet even as we speak I have sacks and sacks of bulbs to plant before the ground freezes. And it’s football season. It’s been a hard year, I’m kind of gardened out, and no matter how much I try to focus any ESP powers I’ve got, those bulbs just are not going to plant themselves. This, all because I heard Brent Heath speak back in May, got all excited, and placed a big order.

So I will do what I’ve always done: make excuses, put the task off, and try not to think about it too much. And I will do these things for week after week. In certain times when I’m feeling the urgency more greatly, I’ll quietly wish for an injury or a breakdown that will serve as an adequate excuse for failing to get them planted. Eventually however, the day will inevitably come when there’s no room for even one more second of procrastination.

And there I’ll be, on my knees, cold, slimy soil chilling me to my bones, a bitter wind rasping at my face, trying not to smell the dog crap that got on my jeans because it was camouflaged in the leaves, and suffering strange, phantom jerking motions in my right arm. Inside, on TV, The Ohio State Buckeyes are defeating Michigan again. There’s guacamole on the counter. Beer in the fridge. But I’m outside, cursing that smooth talking Brent Heath.

Another time it’ll be summer. 100 degrees out. And I’ll be cutting down a skanky old crabapple and every single twisty, pokey, gnarly, and ugly branch will have made up its mind to fight me every step of the way. Whatever I want, they’ll want the opposite. They’ll gouge at my eyes. They’ll gash my skin. Nasty, itchy stuff will fall down the back of my shirt. I’ll be sweating, bleeding, and pissed off. There will be no easy angle to position for any single cut. Brush will tangle underfoot. Each of a hundred logs will not stack without a brute force battle of wills, and not one piece of brush will go into the truck and stay there until I’ve discovered–by endless repetition only–the mystical combination of cuss words that will unlock the kingdom. And it’ll suck.

A crabapple displaying full on winter interest in the middle of summer.

Or, it’s mid spring in Ohio and like a complete freakin’ idiot I again jumped the gun and planted out a bunch of tender stuff. I get home from work after dark, it’s 35F and raining, and they’re calling for a hard frost. And, like a damned soul in a Renaissance painting, I’ll inconsolably drag myself outside, and for the next fours hours I will–in fits and starts–construct the world’s twelfth largest shanty town in the backyard from whatever little bits of scrap wood, chunks of rock and rubble, some string, tape, old sheets, blankets, and filthy leftover plastic sheeting I can find in a panicked effort to save a bunch of annuals, tropicals, vegetables, and some expensive fern that Tony Avent said was hardy to Zone 7b, (at least) from a cold, lonely, continental, Z6a, untimely death.

Fun times.

Here’s what follows that: You drag yourself back inside, take a forever long hot shower, down a few shots, and, sitting there as surly as sin, you think really dark and dirty thoughts. Other people aren’t doing this shit. Other people live in condos. They have their thermostats set at “Giant-Ass Carbon Footprint.” So warm they’ve been forced to strip down to teddies and speedos. They’ve over-eaten a fabulous dinner and drank a bottle of wine they don’t even know enough to appreciate. Yep, you were having a cold, wet piece of plastic that smelled mind-blowingly bad whipping back and forth across your face as you, both hands engaged, tried to tack it down over a row of tomato plants, and those condo people were doing that. And you loathe them.

And, yet, you garden on.

Honestly, I’m mystified. Where does the fortitude come from that gets gardeners outside to suffer through odious tasks under miserable circumstances simply because they need to be done? I don’t know. Really don’t. But I’ve done it. Over and over and over again. And my gardening friends have all done it too. I don’t know, reminds me of something that parents used to toss off at you with a smirk: “Hey, it builds character.” Maybe gardeners have that.

But, I will say this. Winter is long and it dies hard. It rears its ugly head again and again before it’s finally defeated, and there ain’t no better tonic for that than the almost tearful joy a garden full of blooming bulbs brings. They fill the heart, God bless them, combating cold and gray with color and fragrance.

And then comes summer. Hot and humid. Sometimes you just want to run from the house to the car, from the car to the office, and then back again. A/C to A/C. An inside, artificial existence devoid of anything that stokes our human nature. But under a shade tree you’ve tended for years, you can enjoy a tall drink and the hordes of butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds that come to visit that Lantana you saved. And then can pick some of your own tomatoes right from the vine and bring them in for the BLTs you’ll have for supper.

Some other time you’ll find yourself looking at the empty space where a scabby, rusty crabapple once lived, and you will take huge and vicious satisfaction in knowing that it was living its hideous existence and then you sawed it down. It was ugly and now it’s not. It’s gone. And you’re totally responsible. And, yet, you live as a free man. You feel no guilt. Nope. You feel joy. It poked your eyes. It raked your skin. It hurt your back. But all that’s over now. You’ve got a drink, and you’re smiling almost fiendishly as you enjoy the lovely aromas of ribs smoking in the crab’s smoldering wood.

You just try not to think too much about the stump you chose not to grub out. Nor that day sometime in the future when you’ll roll in a 400-pound, balled and burlaped, plant du jour that some speaker at some conference got you all excited about. Yeah. Sure enough. That day will come, and it will be woeful. But that’s just how it is. That’s how it’s meant to be. To have this, you gotta do that. And you’d have it no other way.

Gardening When You Really Don’t Wanna originally appeared on GardenRant on September 25, 2019.

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