#not just for that i mean it was just a good summer anyway

[adara-of-the-flame]

the-name-is-hoggle

Hoggle cringes slightly as the red head actually calls him a "dead cave”. Wow. No matter how far he was from his childhood home, the more things did not change.

This feeling increased as the other dwarves approached, practically closing in around him and the somewhat clueless Mars - oft. He suddenly remembered she would definitely be super lost about what was going on - and made their opinions known. At least it looked like more were trying for the common tongue instead of Khudzul? Though that arguably just meant that Mars could be dragged into the discussion as well.

“Really, it’s nothin’ ta make a scene over. The apology is already more than appreciated….”

Of course being in the Summer Queen’s good graces really seemed to pull at the dwarves want to “right” things for Hoggle. Ugh. He rather preferred when no one thought twice about the words thrown his way. It was weird for anyone to care….

It was with relief - and a little trepidation - when Hoggle heard none other than Sir Didymus approaching them. He, Dumpling, and Yumika being led by Hickory over to where the Spring Prince and his bard stood. As soon as the knight saw his friends , Didymus hailed to them. Waving his staff about to get their attention while they were still a ways away.

“Sir Hoggle! My Lady Mars! There you two are! We knew you would return unharmed!”

And off the little fox-terrier creature bounced, making his way through the crowd of dwarves with some polite exclamations of “Pardon Me!, "Coming through!” and so forth. Both in common tongue and Khudzul, as a matter of fact. Which took Hoggle by surprise, he had no idea Didymus knew any at all!

What the -?!

“My, my! And new attire as well! I must say, a much better fit for the type of quest we are on at least!”

He grins as he finally reaches the dwarf and Urru, clapping Hoggle on the shoulder before grinning up at Mars. The smile going a bit slanted as he spoke,

“We spent a rousing night with Hickory playing Scrabble! Lady Yumika is still in a huff about how well she did at the game, but for a first time player it was not bad at all! You two seemed to have had a much more interesting night, yes?”

He turned to regard the redhead, their grandparent, and the rest of the assembled dwarves with bright curiosity.

“What is going on?”

Hoggled sighs lightly. Explaining for the whole group now.

“Short answer: our red headed friend over here commented on my lack of beard yesterday. ”

And other things.

“Their grandparent caught wind of this and was unhappy. A beardless dwarf means someone in mourning in older circles so they thought I’d been highly insulted and wanted to make amends. I wasn’t. I appreciate the apology I got anyway…It’s fine.”

Didymus hums lightly at this before commenting idly,

“…I admit I have wondered if you shaved everyday…”

Another sigh from Hoggle.

“No, Didymus. I’m just like this.”

adara-of-the-flame

Not for the first time in her life, Mars found herself wading around in a sea of short people. She had no problem with this. When you're seven feet tall, and have generally been on the tall side all of one's life, it's a useful, addaptive strategy to learn to look down and make sure you're not stepping on anyone.

...Or, sitting on anyone, since no sooner had Hoggle dryly confessed to always being different, then the half-Urru promptly folded one long leg over the other and sat cross-legged on the ground next to the dwarf. They still weren't eye-level. Close enough, though.

"You know, it's not so bad being different. Beleive it not, I'm not normal, either." She grinned, brushing some long hair behind an inhuman ear. "And, I've had a lot of people tell me it's not okay for someone to have four arms, but I don't let it bother me. It has it's advantages. Just like having no beard." Were the other Dwarves still arguing? It's almost like the whole, hairy mob had forgotten Hoggle, and thus why they were arguing to begin with.

"I mean, it's really hot here, right?" Mars continued. "Having a beard and all that hair would just make you overheated and sweaty. Not being hairy is practical; it's cooler. And, your hair doesn't get stuck on trees, and branches, and stuff." How her literal yards of hair never got stuck or tangled itself was anyone's guess. Mars always said it had something to do with the conditioner she used. "And, I think you look good either way, beard or no beard."

Was it just her, or were the other people besides she and Hoggle suddenly shorter than they were a moment before?

...And, getting shorter!

Mars looked down. The ground at her feet had been replaced with a leaf and petals seat for the two of them, a large stem rising the pair up from below. "...Are we on a flower? Hoggle, are you doing this?"

"No, but by the time I'm done with him, he should be able to do even more." The pair continued to rise until they were eye to enormous eye with Selva Roja. "Last Dwarf on Their Feet doesn't start till sundown. Until then, you're mine for Spring Training, Little Prince."

“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the stench of this terrible blog…bleck!”

[meta-sequoia]

Rose genetics and the law of unintended consequences (or, ten rose bushes, reviewed)

I have a number of longposts in the backlog, including updates on a number of garden improvement projects I undertook over the winter, but I kept putting off posting them because there kept being Horrors. However, spring is here - in California anyway - and plants wait for no one.

Over the winter of 2025, as a coping mechanism for the aforementioned Horrors, I got really into roses. Because of who I am as a person, deciding what roses I wanted to buy also made me feel obliged to reconstruct the history of rose breeding, just to make sense of the teeming confusion of the tens of thousands of named rose varieties. Humans have been raising roses for food, medicine, and beauty for untold centuries, and so they've really grown up with us. The history of the development of roses, it turns out, is the history of the development of humanity in miniature.

This post has it all: history, some light phylogeny discussion, material analysis of English folk ballads, a conceptual framework for understanding how different kinds of roses vary and why, a #haul breakdown of what bare-root roses I got and what I thought of them, and some philosophical musings on what it means for an organism to be subjected to a long-term selective breeding process, to be remade wholly in the image of human desire. All that, and pictures of roses, under the cut.

My general region of California is considered to have a good climate for roses, much good may it do us. It never gets too hot or too cold, so they essentially never go out of season, and even though our winters are wet, the rest of the year is fairly dry. This is absolutely critical, because the main problem that makes garden roses hard to grow is fungal disease. Modern roses are incredibly susceptible to fungal diseases, which are caused, roughly, by Damp. This has typically been combated with toxic sprays (though there are now less-toxic options) and aggressive pruning regimens.

Needless to say, this is a ridiculous fucking problem for a plant to have. California natives, by comparison, hate irrigation - they have a natural life cycle involving being dry in summer and wet in winter, like California itself, so if you grow them in a climate resembling their natural range, without too much added water, they will be mostly OK. Roses, as far as I can tell, actually hate all water, including rain and humidity, which is much worse because gardeners do not control the weather. If it rains too often after, say, noon, the rose's leaves might get wet, fail to dry off, get a fungal disease, and die. If there is too much fog, or it is humid, as it is in most of the country in the summer, the rose's leaves might get wet &c. If you have a sprinkler system - you get the idea.

Fungal disease can also weaken roses and make them more prone to insect infestations. This is bad because modern garden roses are, without any help from The Weather, already incredibly prone to infestations from aphids, mites, beetles, and a mite-borne disease undescriptively called "rose rosette disease", which produces a habitus that I can only describe as "rose bush eldritch horror".

Now, this may all have you asking one question. Probably, that question is "why are you so obsessed with a plant that wants so badly to die?" I will not be answering this question today. Instead, I will be answering a different question, which is "Why do modern garden roses suck so bad?"

Now, if roses are subject to some manner of curse, then it isn't a family curse, phylogenically speaking. Roses - genus Rosa species extremely miscellaneous - are a member of the family Rosaceae, which contains a massive number of useful and delightful plants. It is possibly the most economically important family of plants next to the brassicas. The rose family brings us not just roses, but apples, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, plums, peaches, apricots, and almonds. And the wild rose, untouched by human efforts, is a lot like a raspberry, actually.

Its flowers have only five petals, in pink or white. It’s got thorny stems that form thickets, and oval (or, technically, lanceolate) leaves with lightly serrated edges. Its flowers are fragrant, which is an adaptation to their long and necessary coexistence with pollinators and other insects - fragrance serves as a chemical signal for insects to "come here" or "go away", depending. The wild rose is hardy, like all wild plants, tolerant of various environmental problems that would kill a garden rose: shade, salt, normal levels of ambient insect and fungal disease pressure, drought, being consistently rained on in the afternoon or evening. It may reproduce asexually from suckers - strong shoots from near the base of the plant - and this makes it able to withstand browsing pressure from e.g. deer. (Put a pin in that.) It also can reproduce in the normal way, by having its flowers pollinated and forming seeds, which are borne in prominent reddish-orange fruits called "hips".

This is not a rose I bought, but here’s Rosa gymnocarpa, a California native rose. It’s a wood rose, so it’s shade-tolerant, and it’s often found in redwood forests specifically, so it tolerates relatively dry soil and very acidic soil.

Honorable mention: Rosa gymnocarpa (wood rose)

Source: Calscape

A raspberry plant in flower, for comparison. Source

The wild rose has another trait, which may be surprising to those who have only ever seen garden roses: it blooms once, usually in the summer. This is typical of flowers, which almost always have a season, for the exact same reason fresh fruit has a season. Flowering plants are on a tight schedule: they need to finish up their blooming, so they can set fruit, so they can get their seeds out before winter, in case the frost kills them off. And mostly we’re used to that: tulips are for spring, so you don't expect a tulip to make a second showing in fall, or to flower continuously throughout the summer. But roses have been bred to do this, and have done it for centuries, for so long we barely remember what it was like when "roses blooming" was a time of year, an event.

It's possible that for most of human history, roses were all the more treasured for being fleeting, which simply isn't an aspect of how we moderns understand roses. I am constantly subjected to traditional ballads at home, both in English and German, so I am very aware that multiple Child ballads mention roses as a way of placing the events of the ballad at a particular time of year. In 'Lady Isobel and the Elf-Knight', a song traditionally associated with May Day, one version of the chorus references the events as occurring 'as the rose is blown'. And at the start of 'Tam Lin', the protagonist meets her fairy lover while plucking a double rose, is "laid down among... the roses red" by him, and finishes the ballad on Halloween night heavily pregnant with his child. The course of the ballad is inextricably intertwined with the course of the seasons, and the bloom of roses is synonymous with early summer. (There's so much symbolism in 'Tam Lin', but especially around roses. Can I interest you in tam-lin.org at this time?)

European religious literature even uses "a rose e'er blooming" as a purely figurative phrase, something impossible and magical enough to be a metonym for the Virgin Mary - but in the modern era, most garden roses are ever-blooming. The perpetual-blooming rose is not the natural state of the rose plant, but a kind of technology that had to be developed. And I don't know, I just think that's neat.

So what have we learned? The wild rose is: once-blooming, tough, possibly shade-tolerant depending on species, very thorny, bearing simple pink or white five-petaled flowers, that are fragrant, pollinator-friendly, and produce fruit readily enough. In short, a practical, normal sort of plant.

The garden rose is…not that. There’s no other way to put this: the modern garden rose is the wild rose, but bimboified.

Now, in case today is your first day on the Internet - well, first of all, welcome, it’s bad here - but secondly, bimboification is a niche fetish where someone is transformed into a hypersexualized version of themselves that is also very stupid. Plant domestication is obviously analogous. I didn’t originate this joke; in fact, I reblogged a joke like this just last week.

Roses are like this but even more so. Like, wheat is clearly bimboified. Its sexual parts (seeds) have been remade, swollen to ludicrous proportions, and wheat is probably worse at being a plant than wild grasses. But we created modern wheat from wild grass because it was more useful that way, and wheat could in theory survive and spread without human cultivation. Roses are Like That purely because we wanted to make them a more perfect decorative object. Centuries of intensive selection pressure for appearance have rendered roses useless as an independent plant: they are so disease-prone they need extensive intervention to even survive, and they are often physically incapable of propagating themselves - one of the basic features of plants! - without human aid. That’s plant bimboification.

Source: Heirloom Roses. This one is called 'Oranges 'n' Lemons. Hardly seems like the same plant!

Here are just a few examples, of what we've done to roses. Humans love rose petals - eating them, distilling them into perfume, smelling them, just looking at them - so the garden rose has massive flowers that are so stuffed with petals that pollinators cannot get at their centers, rendering the rose incapable of reproducing except possibly with the help of a human equipped with a paintbrush. Humans love bright colors, so modern roses come in every color their natural pigments allow. Garden roses are often - though not always - less thorny than their wild cousins, because thorns are inconvenient to humans, and so have been somewhat bred out.

And what’s just as important is what was bred out of wild roses in the process of becoming modern roses - by accident. As mentioned above, modern roses are often useless to pollinators, and, not unrelatedly, can’t reproduce without human help. They often lose their fragrance, if not specifically bred for it. They are very susceptible to disease, because gardeners can keep alive, through sheer stubbornness, plants that natural selection would have culled. Likewise, they need full sun where many wild roses can get by even in the shade of big evergreens, and they can't tolerate nearly as much cold, heat, or salt exposure as their wild relatives.

This 'use it or lose it' thing, by the way, is a general principle of selective processes like plant breeding, or like evolution. If you have two independent traits, A and B, and you select hard for A, then B is likely to gradually drop out of the population, simply because the subset of A carriers that also have B is likely to be small. It's pure statistics. (It essentially is a human-created population bottleneck.) The more intense and ruthless the selection pressure, the stronger the effect. Evolution cares a lot about seed production and hardly at all about color, so wild roses are plain but make enormous rose hips; humans like beautiful roses the color of sunsets, and are indifferent to seed production, so modern roses don’t make hips at all. The failure to select for eventually becomes an implicit selection pressure against.

(Highly-bred organisms are thus less, I guess, well-rounded genetically even before you get to issues of inbreeding, and if you assume there is no biological link between your selected-for traits and other ridealong traits, e.g. domestication syndrome. Genetics is complicated!)

One adapted wild-type trait that - I speculate - was not bred out, due to its direct usefulness to humans, was the ability of roses to grow back vigorously from having leaves or branches removed. This is, it seems to me, an adaptation to herbivore browsing - if you are a rose with minimal regrowth ability, and a deer chews on half your canes, it’s curtains for you. But humans also fully remove half of the canes of their garden roses every winter - it’s critical to controlling the fungal disease that so plagues them. Specifically, pruning improves airflow through the plant, which evaporates the water that keeps falling on the leaves from the sky. (You know. The rain, that roses both hate and need to live.) In some sense, we are acting as caretakers here, shaping the plant in inscrutable ways for its own good. But to the plant, we are basically deer: just another in a long line of animals that want to steal its leaves. Unbelievable! It needs those! Fuck you too, buddy: here’s a faceful of thorns.

Truly, a tale as old as time.

This brings me to my first actual rose review, a kind of bridge between wild roses and the world of cultivated roses.

#1: Rosa rugosa, probably "Hansa"

Source: the author's yard.

This is a sucker - a vigorous young ground-level shoot - from an unnamed rosebush from my mother's house. I say "probably 'Hansa'" because we have no idea what this actually is, only that it is a rugosa hybrid, purchased from an unknown nursery in the Midwest sometime during the Bush administration.

'Hybrid rugosas' are crosses between garden-type roses and a wild rose species called Rosa rugosa, which is native to much of Asia. This particular rose bush has many traits carried over from its wild parent: it's violently fragrant, a glorious sweet-spicy combo that smells to me like childhood and home; it has wrinkly leaves (characteristic of Rosa rugosa in particular); its stems are practically coated in prickles; and it's quite tolerant of shade, drought, and salt (Rosa rugosa is a beach rose).

The main virtue evinced by this rose, derived from its wild parent, is the same reason that it is still here in my garden: it is extremely difficult to kill. My mother, after hearing me say I wanted this specific rose bush at my house the same way it had been at my childhood home, dug up a sucker from her instance, put it in a bag with some wet dirt, carried it by hand on a multi-hour cross-country plane flight, and handed it off to me. Once I received it, I stuck it in a pot, because I was ripping up my lawn and had nowhere to plant it, and mostly forgot about it, because I was busy ripping up my entire lawn. It lost its leaves suspiciously early in the fall. ("That's not good," my mother said, over FaceTime, brow furrowed. "Are the rest of your roses doing that?")

But as the saying doesn't go, "where there's green cambium, there's hope", and I continued to take care of it throughout the winter. I eventually even remembered to put it in the ground. It is now March, and in defiance of the mockery of certain judgemental housemates, who said things like "why do you have a stick in a pot?" and "it's giving 'dead', my guy", this "stick" has now decided to become a rosebush, and has a grand total of (approximately) twenty-five leaves.

Like I said: extremely difficult to kill. It is currently planted 10-ish feet from the base of a redwood tree, a tough environment where some hardy garden-style roses have nonetheless been known to thrive. Given that its resurrection has occurred entirely while it was planted under the redwood, it doesn't seem too mad about its environment.

Review: holy shit, it’s alive???

#2: Zéphirine Drouhin, the "old garden rose"

Source: Heirloom Roses

Rosarians have conceived of many groupings of garden roses, based on known ancestry, phenotype, genetic studies, and Vibes, but one major breakpoint is those bred before 1867, the "old garden roses", and after 1867, the "modern garden roses".

The old garden roses were derived mostly from ancient European and Middle Eastern stock, which had themselves been created from wild roses centuries prior. For example, this is Rosa x alba, an ancient European rose strain; it was used as the heraldic badge of the medieval House of York during the English conflict known as the War of the Roses.

Source: not mine

Some of these roses are perpetual-blooming, a trait introduced as late as the eighteenth century, and which is entirely due to trade contact with China: as far as I can tell, the genes for strong reblooming only come from the Chinese rose-breeding tradition, which was itself centuries old by that point. So the modern Western concept of perpetual-blooming roses as the default kind of rose - like so many other aspects of modernity - is a direct result of Europeans cribbing from everybody else.

Interestingly, France was a major center for rose development during the early modern period. You can see it in the way old garden roses are named: overwhelmingly after some eminent madame or monsieur. This is probably connected to the fact that Josephine, Napoleon Bonaparte’s empress, was a rose fiend: she had two hundred and fifty new varieties of rose to be brought to her gardens at Château de Malmaison, which was probably pretty much all the named varieties of rose that existed then, and many of which were new to European cultivation at that time. Again, this represented a massive inflow of rose genes that were previously restricted to other countries or continents entirely. Inextricably, these gardens also represent the proceeds of early modern global trade, and of empire: Napoleon, on campaign abroad, himself sent her hundreds of specimens of flowering plants, and the French navy confiscated plants and seeds from ships captured and sea and sent them to her.

Anyway, Zéphirine Drouhin, created at the end of the "old garden rose" period and named for some now-forgotten madame or mademoiselle, is highly fragrant - one of the few roses said to really perfume the air - with a vibrant but old-fashioned color palette. (Apricot and yellow roses were also characteristic of the Chinese rose gene pool, and so were significantly less common in old garden roses.) Zéphirine Drouhin is also thornless, a rare trait that we nonetheless see in some old-fashioned garden roses, and a few modern garden roses as well.

Old garden roses have a variable but generally good level of disease resistance. Zéphirine Drouhin in particular, gets something of a bad rap for poor disease resistance; English rose breeder David Austin Roses says, tactfully, that it "prefers warmer climates" (versus, one must assume, rainy England) and that "controlling disease can be a problem". By this you should understand them to mean that it is a whiny little pissbaby that constantly gets blackspot, a diva that will defoliate at the drop of a hat (or the drop of, uh, water).

However, unlike certain other newer roses I will mention later, I have found Zéphirine Drouhin to be pretty healthy so far. I received this rose, like many in this post, "bare root", basically a stick, dormant in a bag of wood shavings. Upon being planted in a part-sun area, it has leafed out with only a scattering of aphids to show in terms of disease.

Review: So far, so good. Looking forward to the fragrance.

#3 and 4: 'Mister Lincoln' and 'Fragrant Cloud', the hybrid tea brothers

Remember how I mentioned that 1868 is the breakpoint between "old garden roses" and "modern garden roses"? That year marked the invention of a new type of rose, the 'hybrid tea', that is in some sense THE rose, the ARCHETYPE of a rose. If you ask someone who knows nothing about roses to draw 'a rose' - if you look up clipart of a rose - a hybrid tea rose is what you'll get.

Source: Star Nursery

This is Mister Lincoln, and although it was developed as late as the 1960s, it has the classic hybrid tea rose form. Hybrid teas have a very distinctive shape, described as "high-pointed", with a spiral of unfurling petals that curl at the edges, and they're borne singly on long stems, making them great for cutting and putting into vases and bouquets. They are not always strongly fragrant, and they are not generally very disease-resistant. They come in a very wide variety of colors, intense and subtle. They are reblooming.

Hybrid teas were developed by another East-meets-West cross, when the Chinese tea roses, freshly imported from Guangzhou in the early 19th century, were bred with the old garden roses. Tea roses have the same iconic form as the hybrid teas; they have those unique, pastel shades that were previously quite absent from European rose stocks; they smell like a fresh cup of tea. All these traits they impart to hybrid teas. Hybrid teas have been very popular ever since, and have been subject to a great deal of selective breeding for color and form.

Hybrid teas don't generally spark joy, to me. I find the 'cartoon rose' shape kind of twee, honestly. And the reputation for lack of disease tolerance puts me off. But I heard Mister Lincoln was incredibly fragrant, and that drew me in. Likewise Fragrant Cloud (1967), which also has the charming feature of being a violent neon coral that is allegedly very difficult to photograph.

Source: Heirloom Roses

“It'll be fine," I thought. "How much fungal disease can it get? It's not like it's humid here."

Never again. My trust is destroyed; fuck hybrid teas.

please, my son, he is very sick

This is my poor Mister Lincoln, planted from bare-root in mid-December. It has three different fungal diseases, and also an aphid infestation I can't seem to get it to shake. It looks like one of those diagrams of a liver in a medical textbook that has fatty liver and cirrhosis and liver cancer all at once, just so you can see what all the diseases look like. This is a rose that has every problem! No other rose in this flower bed comes close to having every problem! 'Munstead Wood' is also a modern garden rose (though from a very different lineage - see my review below) and it has no fungal diseases and not a single aphid!

Well, maybe the other hybrid tea I bought is doing better... well, nope, it rained last week and Fragrant Cloud has powdery mildew.

Review: Come on, man.

#5 Unidentified ‘sunset’ rose

I didn’t buy these roses; they came with my house. As a consequence, I have no idea what they are, but I am now intimately familiar with their traits, and I think they are very indicative of both the high and low points of modern garden roses.

On the surface level, the fact that these rose bushes are still with us is an impressive proof of their persistence under adversity. When I bought the house, these roses were being choked to death. Lily-of-the-nile had been planted way too close to them, and then permitted to grow unchecked and undivided for many years; their roots were completely infiltrated and surrounded with lily roots. The lily roots had also damaged the irrigation lines, which were dribbling uncontrolled amounts of water into the shared root zone. So when I excavated these roses, the whole area smelled strongly of rot, with visible mold throughout; the roots were fully wet even in the heat of August. The roses were also infested with blackspot, not surprisingly. I wasn’t sure if what I was doing was too little, too late.

But when they finally got some drainage, some direct sunlight, and some relief from the brutal root competition, they did start growing back, and even blooming. Come winter, I pruned hard, defoliated, and applied neem oil consistently. And they’ve made a comeback!

Source: these blooms are actually my roses.

They bloom, and they’re beautiful. They do this ombre thing, where the buds are bright yellow and as they open they go from yellow, to orange, and finally to red.

The growth is fairly vigorous, with no powdery mildew no matter how rainy it gets. But their foliage definitely suffers from blackspot, and occasional rose rust; the spores are probably ambiently present in the soil now, and they can’t quite seem to defend themselves, even with ample help from organic fungicides like neem oil.

They also have no fragrance. They smell like nothing. And that’s the standard modern garden rose in a nutshell, I think: beautiful color and form, shaky disease resistance, little fragrance. It’s a little sad, honestly.

Review: Okay, this one is really pretty, actually.

Interlude: Pesticides and the law of unintended consequences

So, yeah, you can sort of see how roses got a reputation for being picky divas. I can only imagine how bad this sort of thing must get in places that get (gasp!) rain or humidity in the summer.

Now, having created plants that are too disease-ridden to live, rose-lovers came up with practical and effective solutions to the disease problem they created. For the past century or so, the go-to fix for our increasingly disease-prone rose population has been chemicals: regular applications of synthetic insecticide and fungicide sprays, as well as plenty of fertilizer and herbicide to feed the roses and kill any competing weeds.

However, recall the theme of this post: the law of unintended consequences. In agriculture, the development of modern pesticides and fertilizers has been genuinely miraculous; the Green Revolution is estimated to have saved a billion people from starvation in the latter half of the twentieth century. Saving a billion people! Can you even begin to conceive of what it would be like to save a billion people, even grapple with the moral weight of that act? I know I can't; the number is simply too large for our moral intuitions to handle, I think. So I'm hesitant to bad-mouth pesticides and fertilizers too much.

But they do have massive downsides. Chemical fertilizers leach into the groundwater and cause algal blooms that make entire bodies of water go anoxic, rendering them uninhabitable to fish and the rest of the aquatic food chain. Insecticides are probably responsible for colony collapse, which endangers the pollinators that we rely on for our food supply.

And, well, even if you don't give a shit about the natural world - you are a part of the natural world. You are an animal, with all the frailty that implies. Our bodies use many of the same ancient metabolic pathways as insects and plants; the majority of your DNA is shared with a banana. And because you are an animal, it is very difficult indeed to create an insecticide that will poison other animals without poisoning you too, at least a little. Herbicides are somehow still worse, despite the more distant biological relationship between humans and dandelions: Roundup, for instance, is linked to non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, which has led to Monsanto paying out massive legal settlements to cancer patients who used their products.

So if we can't grow roses without coating them in poison, maybe we should just… not do that? Go back to growing super-hardy nearly-wild roses like rugosas, forgoing forever the elegance and sublime color of a modern rose?

Give up this? ‘Glowing Peace’, Heirloom Roses

Not so fast! Maybe this technological problem has a technological solution. If we bred roses so that they sucked, maybe we should just not do that! Make different roses! Make roses that don't suck!

#6-#8, ‘Ebb Tide', 'Eden', and 'Lavender Crush': roses that don't suck

Over the last fifty years, people have become increasingly aware of the impacts of modern lifestyles upon our health and the health of the planet and its ecosystems. So maybe this has made the public less willing to buy roses that need to be treated constantly with toxic sprays. Or maybe it's just that growing disease-prone roses is an enormous pain in the ass. Spray, prune, spray, defoliate, fertilize, spray, fertilize, spray, water - but not too much! Oops, powdery mildew. Defoliate and spray some more.

So the genetic health of the newer varieties of garden roses is greatly improved. The two hybrid teas I struggled with above were bred in the 1960s. All the named rose varieties in this section were bred since the 1990s or later: Eden in 1997, Ebb Tide in 2004, and Lavender Crush, the baby of the group, was introduced in 2016. All of them are vibrantly healthy and quite vigorous; Ebb Tide and Eden are shade-tolerant too, and Lavender Crush is allegedly very winter-hardy. After a scant two months in the ground, they've started to put out flower buds. And they keep some of the glorious color and form of older roses. Look at them!

Source: Heirloom Roses.

I don't mean to say all 20th century roses are bad and disease-ridden. I also have purchased 'New Dawn' (introduced 1930), due to it being the fifteen-dollarest rose at the Home Depot. (My toxic trait is that I am an absolute sucker for a good deal. I don't go into TJ Maxx anymore; it's too dangerous.) 'New Dawn' has all the ancestral, throwback traits I laud here: shade-tolerance, fragrance, disease resistance. It even brings in the pollinators! But it seems to me there's been a noticeable uptick in the quality of newer rose introductions, particularly when it comes to disease resistance. I'm not wired into the professional rose world to know what that is; I'm Literally Just Some Guy. But it's a good trend.

Review: I am so excited for the buds to open, you have no idea.

#9: 'Double Knockout': the 'landscape' rose

Wait, no, I take that back. These roses have too much ease of care. Put some back.

The Knockout rose has one virtue: you cannot kill it with an axe. Literally.

This rose was planted right at the foot of a redwood tree in my garden, because the previous owner of my house was an idiot. This is a terrifically bad setup for roses and redwoods: redwoods acidify the soil, and suck up water and nutrients aggressively, leaving little for surrounding plants, and of course they provide dense shade. Roses hate the acid, the dry and low-nutrient soil, and the shade; this plant never bloomed all last summer. For their part, the redwoods hate having anything planted in their inner root zone - their roots are relatively shallow for such a large tree. This is not a good situation for anyone, so I hacked this rose back to the ground, dug out as much of the root ball as I dared, and in my naivete thought that would be the end of it. Well, it has grown back. Now I am faced with the dilemma of whether to risk root injury to my redwood tree, or just let the rose be, bloomless as it is. Probably the latter is better for the redwood tree, on the whole. Maybe it’ll get choked out if I don’t water it? Anyone’s guess, really.

Knockout roses, introduced in 2006, are the product of an amateur rose breeder whose main goal was to produce easy-care roses that flower generously and repeatedly. They are the archetypal member of a group of roses called “landscape roses”, so named because instead of being demanding prima donnas suited only to those who love roses enough to take on the Rose Tasks, they’re just another pretty shrub in the landscape.

And I will say this for them: in that bad, fungal spore–inundated flower bed I mentioned, the landscape roses (plus Munstead Wood, see below) are notably free of fungal disease.

Also, I think that's leaf tissue proliferating at the center of the bottom left bloom?? A rare but harmless growth disorder of flowering plants.

This comes at a cost, of course, at least if you’re a snob like me. I don’t think landscape roses are very interesting-looking - though of course they come in a wide variety of colors, the better to coordinate with the color scheme of your house! - and they are generally, tragically, without fragrance. While I can’t complain about anything that gets US gardeners to use less pesticides, they are barely roses to me. They are, in fact, the closest roses come to being an inanimate object, a decorative thing you can just plonk down in your garden wherever, like a tacky concrete statue. They’re a commodity; the enchantment is gone. I wouldn’t rip them out where they’re well-sited, but I sure wouldn’t plant more.

Now, this is incredibly mean to people who love landscape roses, but here goes. I’m reminded of a thread from r/Ceanothus, the California native gardening subreddit, that is now burned into my brain. OP asks for a native shrub recommendation, but not just any native shrub. OP wants a native shrub that will grow very tall, but also stay very narrow - 1’ wide in places. OP needs a native shrub that will grow thick and vigorous, to block out their view of the neighbors. OP needs this thing to be evergreen; OP presumably wants low water inputs. And OP needs all this, in a shrub that will grow in full shade.

In fairness, OP was polite about it, and this is a common problem for urban gardeners. The dark, untended canyon between buildings is a very common phenomenon in Californian cities. I too have a narrow, shaded side yard containing a tiny strip of crappy, gravelly dirt, that I’d love to grow something in: how do you think I found this post? Dear reader, I am very much at that devil's sacrament.

And the ceanothusheads of r/Ceanothus tried gamely. But one commenter replied with something that fully changed how I think about gardening:

Source: Reddit

Sometimes, what you need is not a living organism, with its own needs, that will change over time in ways you may not endorse, that interacts with the world around it. Sometimes what you really want is a man-made object. Sometimes what you want to grow in your tall, narrow, lightless, bone-dry side yard, for your privacy requirements, is a fence. And that’s what I think about landscape roses. In Mediterranean and desert climates, as long as there's enough sun, you can always fall back on planting a succulent. But not every location can grow succulents outdoors year-round. In temperate climates, landscape roses could probably be successfully replaced with a particularly attractive boulder. Or, if what you want is a smart-looking, easy-care hedge: consider a fence.

Review: I’d maybe rather plant a fence a succulent.

#10: 'Munstead Wood': the old English rose, reloaded

‘Munstead Wood’, my final acquisition, is a credit to another major modern rose breeding program, this time out of England: David Austin Roses. The main idea of the David Austin rose-breeding project seems to be combining the particular charms of traditional English old garden roses - their fragrance, their romantic, sophisticated forms - with the virtues of modern roses - continuous blooming, a wide range of highly Instagrammable colors - plus disease-tolerance that twenty-first century gardeners now expect. And judging by their singular impact on the contemporary rose market, they seem to have been very successful at that goal. The Reddit reviews are glowing, the forums are abuzz for their hottest new releases (Dannahue restock wen?), their most popular roses are often sold out, and other rose sellers have catalog filters for 'English shrub roses' that allegedly share the looks and fragrance of David Austin's best.

From the author's camera roll. 'I can't believe it's not Dave [sic] Austin!'

Their marketing is also very slick. Their website is very informative, with separate filters for various kinds of roses you might want to buy ('Best for fragrance', 'For a shady spot', 'Thornless or nearly so'), all the rose varieties have literary or historical names or else are named after charming British locations, and are all beautifully photographed in their idyllic show garden, and the prose is carefully engineered to incite lust in the winter-weary gardener. They even do periodic drops of new roses, like a sneaker company.

So last November, I allowed myself to buy one David Austin rose, 'Munstead Wood'.

Source: David Austin Roses

'Munstead Wood' is really gorgeous, I think, blooming in a deep burgundy color. The website claims the fragrance is "Old Rose, with fruity notes of blackberry, blueberry and damson".

An interesting fact about 'Munstead Wood' is that it is actually region-locked. David Austin Roses sells roses in both the US and UK (and maybe other places; sorry I am so American), but the climate of the UK has been changing, with more extreme weather events and even more rain. And you know how it is with roses and the rain. 'Munstead Wood' was no longer able to thrive, and has packed up its little rucksack and gone out to explore the world as a lone vagabond - specifically, America.

So how is it doing here? Great, actually. It may have been rained on every day for the past week, but at least it's not in England, I guess.

'Munstead Wood' has no fungal disease. It looks like it's never even heard of fungal disease. I'm pretty impressed! I can't actually tell you whether the roses are good, but this is a pretty good plant, which is a good start.

Review: I'm holding myself back from buying more David Austin roses right now. God help me, I have two more open full- to part-sun spots in my garden right now.

David Austin, "Lady of Shalott". Call me the Lady of Shalott the way I'm languishing in my tower, gazing only at the mere reflections of the real world (stuck inside, looking at my phone, because of the rain) and am about to throw myself in the river with longing (to be out in the garden)

[bitchinbarzal]

Happy Birthday | T Meier

You never expected Timo to be the one who remembered your birthday.

It’s not that he doesn’t care—it’s just… he’s a little oblivious. Big-hearted, yes. Loyal, sweet, dependable in ways that matter. But birthdays? Not exactly in his top five love languages.

Which is why, when you unlock your apartment door after a long dinner with friends and find Timo sitting on your couch with a small cake, two forks, and a crooked smile—your brain takes a second to catch up.

“You’re home earlier than I thought,” he says, standing like he might suddenly second-guess the whole thing. “I, uh… didn’t wanna crash your plans, but I figured I could maybe still see you tonight?”

You blink at him. Then at the cake. Then back at him.

“You baked that?”

He gives you an offended look. “Okay, no. I bought it. But I picked your favorite. And I made the icing look messy on purpose, so you’d think I tried.”

You laugh, stepping inside and closing the door behind you. Your heart is doing this weird fluttery thing—somewhere between this is the nicest thing anyone’s done all day and I need to stop falling in love with him like this.

He holds up the cake. “You wanna do the candle thing?”

You bite your lip. “Only if you sing.”

He groans. “You’re cruel.”

“C’mon, Meier. Commit.”

So he sings. Badly. With a stupid grin on his face, dragging your name out like he’s drunk on the sound of it. And when he finishes and gestures dramatically, you close your eyes, make a wish, and blow out the candle.

(It’s him. Of course it is.)

The cake is rich and sweet and slightly melted from sitting out too long, but you eat it anyway, passing the forks back and forth and leaning into each other on the couch.

Somewhere between the second bite and the second beer, his fingers brush yours. You don’t pull away. Neither does he.

“You looked good tonight,” he says, suddenly too quiet.

You glance at him, heart thudding. “You mean that?”

He nods. “I always think you look good. I just… never say it out loud.”

The air shifts.

It’s no longer birthday cake and comfortable silences—it’s charged. Like the air before a summer storm.

You whisper, “Why not?”

He exhales like that question breaks something open in him.

“Because if I say it out loud, I’ll start saying everything else I feel. And I didn’t know if you were ready for that.”

You blink. “Try me.”

He leans in.

Kisses you.

Soft at first—like a question. Then deeper, like an answer. His hand cradles your cheek, thumb brushing your jaw. Your body melts into him like you were always meant to end the day right here—in his arms, breath tangled, mouths meeting in long-overdue heat.

Later—hours later—you’ll remember the way he carried you to bed like you were something precious. The way he touched you like a gift he never thought he’d get to unwrap. The way he murmured “Happy birthday, baby” against your skin, right before he made you come for the first time that night.

But for now, it’s just him. And you. And the quiet realization that your birthday wish came true.

His mouth is hot against yours—urgent but controlled, like he’s been waiting for this moment forever and doesn’t want to mess it up. His hands slide up under your shirt, fingers spreading across your back as you arch into him.

“Timo,” you whisper, breathless, and the way your voice breaks on his name makes him groan.

“Tell me if you want me to stop,” he murmurs, lips grazing your jaw.

You don’t. God, you don’t.

You shake your head. “Don’t stop.”

He kisses you again, deeper this time, and you feel him shift, gently guiding you backward toward your bedroom. He moves like he’s afraid to break you, like every step is a prayer. But the look in his eyes—dark, hungry, reverent—makes your knees go weak.

Once you’re in your room, he pauses.

“Can I take this off you?” he asks, fingers curling under the hem of your shirt.

You nod, and he helps you out of it with infuriating slowness. His hands trace the new skin like it’s sacred. And when you reach for his shirt, he lets you tug it over his head, revealing tan skin and muscle and a soft trail of hair that disappears below his waistband.

You stare for a second too long, and he grins.

“Enjoying your birthday so far?”

You laugh—then moan as his mouth closes around your neck, sucking gently until your laugh dissolves into heat. He lays you back on the bed and kisses down your body like he’s unwrapping the best gift he’s ever been given.

He takes his time with you. Worships you.

Fingers first—gentle and teasing, curling inside you until your hips lift off the bed. Then his mouth, devastatingly slow, until you’re shaking, clutching at his hair, begging with every breath.

“Timo—please—”

He comes up with a slick smile, licking his lips. “Happy birthday, baby.”

You’re so far gone you could cry.

And when he finally pushes inside you—slow, deep, unhurried—you feel everything. The years of tension, the longing, the missed moments that brought you here. He holds your hand as he moves, whispering filthy praise and soft confessions in your ear:

“You’re so perfect like this.”

“I’ve wanted you for so long.”

“Happy Birthday, baby”

[kedreeva]

I forget why I followed you (I feel like it was for art reasons but I honestly forget whether or not I've seen you post art recently) but I definitely stuck around for the birds. Any big plans this year you're super excited about?

considering I don't do art I have to believe it wasn't for art! Maybe for writing, or stranger things stuff.

There's actually a lot I'm super excited about!

The MOST exciting is the European violet project. If all things go according to plan (hahahasobs), Earl will produce a handful of european violet hens for me this year! This will be very exciting, as I've dreamed of having EV for years.

Sometime in April, I am hopping a ride with another peafowl keeper that's heading to kansas to pick up birds from a friend of mine. She wanted to go anyway but doesn't like driving, so I'll be driving and she'll be paying the way! It means a chance to see Bill again, and maybe get some photos of certain mutations for the calculator project (particularly the hens, I am missing a lot of Hen colors). I like to see all the different colors in person, and I love hanging out with other peafowl folks.

The calculator project is going.... better than my wildest dreams could have hoped. I'm still a bit dazed and starry eyed it's going at all, but there's a rough UI now, and at least one artist working on the colors (the same artist did the lineart already, it's just a matter of making color layers for all the colors now... "just" i say, like that doesn't take SO much work). I've been working on getting the genetics pages finished on my website so that this can be a part of that section of the site.

The quail are also moving right along.... My goal is wild type celadons, and I'm coming at that problem from 2 different angles to hopefully get it done as thoroughly as possible. I've got roughly 8 more weeks before the second WT line I ordered in will be laying, and then I will be doing crosses with that one and the first one. I've got the WT x Celadon group that's all (currently) rosetta roux birds. That group is producing eggs like you would not believe, and their offspring should have A FEW roux birds in pharaoh pattern. They should produce 25% tibetan (homo EB), 50% rosetta (het EB), and 25% pharaoh (wild type pattern). Of those 25%, only 25% will be full celadons, and only half of those will be hens. So. It will be slow going getting the birds I need from that group, but I'm vibrating with anticipation all the same.

Luckily, summer is a good time for moving babies out! I've got several reptile expos, and several bird swaps. At the end of April there's the first MBGBA swap meet, and I will be staying later than usual in order to attend the association's board meeting, so that I can watch them kick Spicer out answer questions they have about the website, and make suggestions about how to run the club going forward, in order to bring in newer folks that want to get into birds and breeding. I may end up having to take a position on the board if there's no one else to do it, which I don't really want to do BUT I don't want to continue letting that asshole try to run it into the ground on purpose either. The amount of joy it will bring me to see him gone cannot be overstated.

So, it will be a busy year for me, and I will get to work on a bunch of stuff I'm really excited to work on!

[formula1fanfiction]

Title: Everything has changed

Pairing: Lewis Hamilton / George Russell

Characters: Lewis Hamilton, George Russell, Charles Leclerc, Kimi Antonelli, Fernando Alonso, Alex Albon.

Prompt: George thinks that Lewis wants Charles after he transferred to Ferrari George is an omega and jealous (and self-conscious) lots of miscommunication/misunder-standing and oblivious Charles and/or Lewis - good potential for drama and comedy.

AO3 link

"Good morning Lew." George stretches amongst the crumpled bed sheets, watching Lewis' naked, very scratched back from where he's laid amongst the pillows. It's Lewis' first day at Ferrari, he has to be up much earlier than George for PR stuff.

"Good morning George." Lewis finally answers him back, very monotone. He catches George's eyes through the mirror, and unreadable expression on his face. "You still have half an hour right? Time to-" George winks turning back the covers, revealing his very naked body.

"For god sake George, I fucked you last night. Why are you so needy all the time? You shouldn't even be here anyway, Toto isn't stupid man he will know if your bed isn't slept in." George can smell the sadness creeping into his own scent he hopes Lewis can't smell him. It's just yeah, he has been more needy, Lewis is at Ferrari now which means he will spend less time with George and more time with a prettier omega, and really how can he compete with Charles?"

George quickly sniffs back the tears, not quickly enough. "George, are you due your heat or something this is ridiculous." A wave of anger runs through George. "No, we spent my heat together during summer break." Something etches across Lewis' face, his brow ceases ever so slightly. "Fuck you're not pregnant are you?" That does hurt. "Of course not, how stupid do you think I am?"

"I wouldn't put it past you to-" Lewis starts, but seems to think better of it. "What were you going to say?" George snaps. "Nothing, I need to go." Lewis presses a hard kiss onto the top of George's head and leaves.

In his state of upset and confusion, he forgets to put on his scent blocking patches before he leaves for the track. "Is there a reason you stink of Lewis and sadness?" Toto asks with a hand on his hip, he doesn't seem angry at least. "I know you're missing him, but you need to pull yourself together." George nods, and goes find Kimi to do his own PR stuff, which thankfully doesn't take long.

"You're sad." Kimi stares at him with his brown doe eyes looking awfully sad himself. "It doesn't matter, i'm fine." Kimi doesn't say anything, just grabs George by the bicep and pulls him into a nest. It must be Kimi's the whole thing smells like Ollie Bearman, he recognises his own scent, then he sees a stolen hoodie hidden amongst some of Ollie's stuff. He doesn't say anything, it warms his inside's up a little bit.

"It makes me sad, when you are sad." Kimi tells him, quietly scenting him and wrapping his body around George's. "It will be ok, I promise." Kimi coo's softly against his neck. Honestly George should be embarrassed being comforted by a freshly presented omega, but there is something so heart warming about it. George loves his new teammate.

He feels much better about things after nesting with Kimi, testing day one doesn't exactly go badly, but it's obvious they are miles off the pace. George is about to go make his peace with Lewis when he sees it, Lewis looking awfully close with Charles, the omega has his head tucked inside Lewis' neck, while the alpha whispers something into his ear.

Instead of sneaking into the Ferrari hotel that night, he finds himself in the Williams hotel, knocking on Alex's door. The Thai Beta says nothing, just steps to one side and lets the omega into his room. "I just can't compete with him Lex, he's soft and pretty like a stereotypical omega, perfect even. And me, i'm lanky, skinny and i'm- i'm not very attractive am I." And Alex bless him, wraps his arms around George's neck and pulls him close. "You're perfect Georgie, you're so perfect." He spends the night crying in Alex's arms.

He doesn't bother going to find Lewis on day two of testing, but Lewis doesn't bother to find him either. That's why it comes as a complete surprise when finds Lewis waiting for him outside of Mercedes garage at the end of day three.

"Where were you? I missed you yesterday." There is so much George wants to say to him, but he's here now and he's actually made the effort to come and see George, so instead of causing another argument, he leaps into Lewis' arms, who effortlessly catches him and twirls him around. "You missed me too huh?" Toto is somewhere behind them. "Get a room, you two."

"I'm so sorry, George." Lewis throws George back on the bed, crowding George's body with his own. "Fuck, you're gorgeous and you're all mine, my omega." Lewis unzips George's race suit, raising an eyebrow when he finds nothing underneath, but he says nothing, just presses a hard kiss in the middle of George's chest. "I'm going to make you feel so good."

George feeling needy and desperate wraps his hand around Lewis' neck and pulls him close, smashing their lips together, while using his free hand to sneak into Lewis' shorts and wrapping his hand around his cock, pulling a strangulated gasp into George's mouth.

"Let's see how wet you are my needy little omega." Lewis pushes down George's race suit the rest of the way, and nudges two fingers against his hole and slowly sinks them inside. Lewis wastes no time, and finds his prostate instantly, in retaliation George starts to stroke him a little faster.

"Lew please, if you keep that up i'm going to cum, and I want you in me when I do cum." Lewis nibbles at George's mating gland, and presses harder into his prostate, causing George to cry out in pleasure. "You've cum more than once a million times, Georgie." But Lewis lets his fingers slip out all the same.

"Come on, ride me." Lewis roughly flips them over, George smiles down at his mate, well not quite, Lewis hasn't bitten him yet, but he's George's alpha all the same. "fuck i'm so lucky." George groans, taking Lewis cock and nudges the head of his cock against his entrance, and sinks down, his hole swallowing Lewis cock in one swift move, causing the both of them to cry out in pleasure.  

"I love it when you ride me, I get to see you take all of me." There's an obvious bulge in George's stomach, from the sheer size of Lewis' cock. "You always take me so well, perfect omega." Lewis grips George hips. and starts thrusting up into him, filling him with short, quick thrusts. Lewis pulls himself up right, nibbling George's scent gland as he helps George to glide up his cock, only to drop him down again.  

"Please Lew, please." George pants, turning his head to capture Lewis' lips in proper kiss, who in repose starts to fill George with harder and deeper thrusts with every move, slamming into George with such a force that he can only lean back and take it. George moans into Lewis mouth like a needy little Victorian age omega, like he was made for this and only this.

Lewis always has this way of making George think he's the one in control, like letting George ride him, but he never is, not really. Lewis gets a proper rhythm going, and finds George's prostate and slams into it with every thrust, leaving George a gasping, shaking mess. "Lew, Lew i'm cu-" George cuts off throwing his head back, his body shaking uncontrollably as he reaches the point of no return, screaming Lewis' name so loud, that there is no way Charles next door can't hear him, as he spills his load up all over his own body.

Lewis himself is close now, George can barely hold up his own head, he rests heavily on Lewis shoulder, who keeps pounding into him, thrusts becoming much more erratic as he reaches his own climax, whispering filth into George's ear as he paints his insides white.

"Come here baby, i've ruined you." George groans as Lewis slips out him, and very gently lays him down on his back. His neck tingles, from the lack of a bite, but at least he still has his alpha.

He doesn't get to see Lewis again until the race weekend in Australia, Lewis' first race weekend with Ferrari. George has a little surprise for Lewis, but he's not sure when to do it, if the texts are anything to go by he's been blowing hot and cold with George.

Free practice one and two aren't the best for Mercedes, but they are not all that much better for Ferrari either, he decides to do his surprise for Lewis tonight. He changes into the Ferrari red lingerie set and heads over to wait for Lewis.

He finds Lewis awfully close with Charles, a few other drivers are there too, so brushes it off. "Hey." Lewis looks him up and down. The others greet him warmly. "We were just saying." Charles gestures to Lewis. "How good does this gorgeous alpha look in Ferrari red." Lewis stares at Charles like he hung the moon, and that's all it takes for George to blow up, his omega instincts on high.

"That's my alpha stay away from him." George hisses, Charles looks hurt and confused. "I didn't mean anything by it, i'm sorry." Pierre steps in front of Charles, snarling at George. "Your Alpha? I don't see a bite on your neck." Lando giggles uncomfortably, Lewis laughs too and that's it. "I get it, I know where i'm not wanted." George snaps, storming off in a fit of rage, he doesn't even know where he's going until he collides with a hard body.

"George, Lo que está sucediendo?" Someone shakes him. "hablame amor, talk to me George, come on, i've got you." The omega inside of him settles, he' suddenly surrounded by the scent of Fernando, the Spanish omega pulls him close. "You're back now, shhh." George clings to him like his life depends on it. He tells Fernando everything, he regrets it instantly, Fernando has a one sided petty feud with Lewis, and will use anything to gain an advantage on him.  

Lewis looks confused when he opens the door to find Fernando waiting there. "You made your omega cry, you didn't even bother to go after him, he went into a drop, do you know how dangerous that could have been, and to flirt with other omega's in front of him." Fernando rants, not making all that much sense, but George is grateful for him all the same.

"He started on Charles first-" Lewis starts, Fernando hisses at him. "You defend your omega in public at all costs, then you talk about in private. Tan jodidamente estúpido Hamilton." Fernando seems reluctant to give him back to Lewis, until George whines. "I'm sorry Georgie, if he upsets you again come to me ok?" George nods, allowing Fernando to scent him before he leaves.

"Fernando, really George?" George whines again. "I didn't mean to, my omega took over and he found me." Lewis softens. "I'm sorry George, but there was no need to snap at Charles like that." Fuck this. "As long as Charles is ok, that's all that matters." George doesn't wait for Lewis to respond, he gets up and walks out of there.

He bumps into Kimi in hallway, the younger omega whines. "You're sad again." Kimi wrinkles his nose. "And you smell like Fernando, not Lewis,"       Kimi pulls George into his room. "I will make you feel better." George is too upset to protest. He's pulled into the same smelling nest as before.

Again, he should feel embarrassed that Kimi, who is practically a pup is taking care of him, but the younger omega being curled into him, scenting him just feels so right. They spend the night together in Kimi's nest and George feels so much better when he wakes up. "You smell happier, I don't like it when you are sad." Kimi whispers into his neck. "Thank you so much, pup." Kimi playfully growls. "Not a pup."

When George goes back to his own room to get changed, he feels ridiculous pulling off the lingerie set, why did he ever think that was a good idea. You're so fucking stupid Russell.

"I'm sorry if I upset you George, that was never my intention." Charles is hiding behind his red Ferrari cap outside of the Mercedes hospitality. He knows deep down Charles is not to blame, but everything has changed, everything hurts. "I'm sorry too Charles." Charles squeezes his shoulder before, walking away. "Do I need to fight him?" Kimi asks, walking past them. George chuckles, "no we're good."

George manages to put everything behind him and qualify fourth, which he's actually super happy with, he doesn't think he could have gotten anymore out of the car. A small sick part of him is just happy he out qualified both Ferrari's. "Go rub that in to your alpha." Toto laughs, hugging him as he leaves the track.

"I understand why you're upset, if Ollie was like that with Esteban I would be upset too." Kimi tells him as they leave the track, right behind Lewis and Charles looking awfully close again. "I just can't compete with an omega like that Kimi, he's perfect and i'm-" Kimi cuts him off with a growl. "You're perfect, and if Lewis doesn't see that, then he doesn't deserve you." George's heart swells with love for his younger teammate, and not for the first time.

The race goes much better than he expected, thanks to a mistake from Oscar, he gets on the podium. His best ever start to a formula one contest, and yet he has no one to celebrate with. He watches Kimi and Ollie leave hand in hand, both of them have so much to be proud of from their races. Alex leaves with Carlos. It's now George realises just how lonely he is. Lewis and Charles leave together. His alpha doesn't even bother to text him.  

"You need to sort yourself out George, this could bring on a nasty stress heat and you know how bad the last one was" Aleix scolds him, he can't help it he just bursts into tears. "Why doesn't he want me anymore? Well I know of course, i'm not as pretty as Charles." The Spanish beta frowns, pulling him into a hug. "He loves you George, try not to worry."    

Day one of the Chinese grand prix doesn't go well for Mercedes, but it goes amazing for Ferrari, Lewis gets pole position, his alpha. George nearly trips on his own feet when he sees Lewis waiting for him outside of Mercedes hospitality. "i'm sorry George, I can't seem to do anything right at the moment." Lewis pulls him in for a cuddle and scents his neck, and instantly everything that felt wrong in the world now feels right again. "Look, I can't celebrate with you tonight, but we can tomorrow if you like?" George nods, not wanting to pull away from Lewis' chest. "yes of course, whatever you want."

"You seem happier Georgie." Alex finds him. "Yeah, I think we've worked things out, how's you and Carlos?" A small blush creeps on Alex's cheek and makes its way down his neck. "Good, really good. I'm sad it didn't work out with Logan, but I feel more comfortable with another beta, I just couldn't help with Logan's omega urges." George pulls Alex in for a hug. "You deserve to be happy Lex, i'm so happy for you."

The next day goes as close to perfect as possible, Lewis wins the sprint race, his first ever sprint win and George qualifies second for the Grand prix, it's amazing how close to Oscar he is considering they set up for the race.

"Let's go back and celebrate." Lewis takes him by the hand. "We both have something to celebrate tonight baby." Lewis whispers into his ear and pulls him into his hotel room.

Lewis waits until the door softly closes behind them, before taking George's face into his hands and presses a gentle kiss on his forehead. "Fuck i'm sorry, George." George whines. "It's ok, you know how to make it up to me." Lewis chuckles, pulling away from his omega and pulls off his own shirt. "You mean like this." George nods dumbstruck, admiring Lewis' muscles, his perfect body, he can't wait to have it on top of him.

Lewis doesn't waste any more time and strips himself completely naked, only then does he turn his attention to George. He then pulls off George's shirt and shorts. He tugs at the waistband of George's boxers playfully then tugs them down in one swift move.  "How wet are you baby, think you need any lube?"

Lube? He's never needed lube, in fact he has to take a deep breath to calm himself down, he can already feel the sticky wetness of his slick running down the backs of this thighs. "Your fingers should be enough, Lew." Lewis smirks at him, pupils dilating with lust. "Get yourself comfortable on the bed, sweet omega."

George lays back on the bed, pulling his legs back over his shoulder, exposing his dripping wet hole to his alpha. "You are wet for me baby." Lewis kneels between George's spread legs and slowly eases a finger inside.

George whimpers, he doesn't need fingers, not really it's been so long he's had something inside of him, he already needs more. "I know baby, I know." Lewis quickly adds the second finger, and begins to scissor him open, George pants and moans underneath him in desperation he needs a lot more than this. "Lewis please."  

"Needy little omega, how dare I make him wait." Lewis laughs, wrapping George's long legs around his waist, and bumps the head of his cock against George's slickened entrance. He doesn't tease George any longer, and slowly sinks inside of him, reaching the hilt in a matter of seconds.

"Fuck." George groans, arching his back, finally getting what he needs, the omega inside of him, finally at ease. "Naughty boy, swearing don't let the FIA hear you." George is about to make a snarky come back, but at that moment Lewis starts to move, slowly thrusting in and out him, his lips gently teasing at George's mating gland. "Come on Lew, give me more." George pushes his hips up, trying to meet all of Lewis' painfully slowly thrusts.  

"Whatever you need my sweet little, slutty omega." Lewis grabs George's hips for leverage and speeds up his thrusts, snapping up his hips with a rough pace, but it's still not hard enough, George needs more. "Lewis come on." Lewis rolls his eyes, gripping George even harder and slams inside of him, making sure to hit George's prostate with every thrust. "Fuck finally." George throws his head back through the wave of pleasure, gripping tightly onto the bed sheets.

George is seeing stars much sooner than he'd like, he wants to savour the feeling of Lewis pounding inside of him, but it just feels too fucking good, he can't hold on any longer. George's body shudders as he cums, splattering his load all over himself in a messy puddle on his stomach. "Such a good omega, cumming for me. Good boy, such a good boy." George mewls, half delirious with sensitivity. "Alpha." He clamps down tightly around Lewis' cock.  

Lewis lets out a low growl, biting down on George's neck agonizingly close to his mating gland, where George wants him the most, he licks at the bite as he cums, filling up George with his load. Lewis pulls out instantly and pulls George into his arms.

"Are you ok, George?" Lewis gently brushes his sweaty off his face, it's such a soft gentle gesture, it's like having the old Lewis back again, maybe he never really left after all, and it's just George's over thinking brain. "Yeah, congratulations again." Lewis pulls him impossibly closer and gently presses a kiss to George's forehead, then his nose. "You do know how much I love you, yeah?" George nods, cupping Lewis' face and presses his lips against Lewis'. "I love you too, Lew."  

The race goes well for George, well he loses his p2, but he extracts the most from his car and still gets a podium for his efforts, the team is happy, even Toto is happy. Lewis on the other hand got disqualified from his race, even without the disqualification it wasn't the best race. He knows Lewis is going to need all his comfort tonight.

He finds Lewis, his hand wrapped around Charles' neck, his lips pressed against his ear. "I can't do this anymore Lewis, I know I can't compete with him, but you could at least have the decency to tell me you're breaking up with me." George bursts into tears, he looks ridiculous crying in the middle of the paddock, but he's hurt and confused.

Charles pulls away from Lewis looking absolutely mortified. "No Georgie, non. This is not what you think." The other omega pulls his hair in frustration and turns his attention to Lewis. "Just tell him Lewis, I know the situation sucks but you can make a bad day, a good one." Lewis is breaking up with him then.

"Georgie, sweet Georgie I didn't want to do it like this." Lewis walks over, taking George by the hands. "i'm sorry i've been such a dick to you these past couples of weeks, the only reason i've been spending so much time with Charles is because he's been helping me plan the perfect way to-" Lewis cuts off, his eyes switching to Charles who just nods at him. "Ask you to be my omega, I want to bite you George, claim you, make you mine, put my pups in you-" Charles lets out a horrified squeal. "Too much information."

"You want to mate me?" George gasps, voice raspy with emotion, tears are flowing freely down on his face. "I thought you didn't want me anymore." Lewis grunts, not expecting George to come flying at him, but he catches his weight and holds him close. "I didn't want to give anything away, but I ended up pushing you away. I never meant to hurt you, sweetheart." George clings tightly to his alpha. "My alpha, my alpha. I'm so happy." Charles claps excitedly. "I still can't believe you thought I would want him over my Pierre." Charles kisses them both, and quickly hurries off.

"Everything has been taken away from you baby, so I want you to decide. How do you want to do it? Do you want something special? Like a whole ceremony, or we could just plan special sex-" George doesn't let Lewis finish. "Can't we just do it now, why wait any longer? I just want you to be mine."

"Now? If that's what you want, I just think you deserve more than just a quick fuck." George laughs. "I don't care about any of that, I just want you to be my mate, officially."  

They decide to go back to George's room, it has his nest just in case he becomes overwhelmed after. George is sure he'll be fine, but Lewis insists. It's only when they get back, George remembers about the lingerie. "Wait here alpha, I have a surprise for you." George takes the bag and heads into the bathroom.

It's only when George is dressed in the lingerie, the self doubts start creeping back in. Lewis deserves better than this, he's too tall, too skinny, not soft enough to be an omega, he's stupid to think Lewis could ever really want him.

"George can I come in?" Lewis softly knocks on the door. "I can smell you through the door, are you having doubts?" Lewis doesn't knock again, just gently pushes open the door, his eyes turn almost fully black once he sees George in his underwear. "Fuck, fucking fuck." That really should have put George's mind at rest, but it doesn't tears pour out of George's eyes before he can do anything to stop them.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry I know, I understand why you want Charles he's a beautiful soft omega, unlike me. I'm ugly and-" Lewis takes George by the hips and sits him on the sink, pressing their foreheads together. "Listen to me Georgie, I don't want Charles, so stop thinking that right now." George sobs, he can't keep eye contact, instead he stares at the tattoo's on Lewis' hands.  

"Look at me, you are the most beautiful omega and always will be, I am the lucky one to have you, you're the love of my life. I'm sorry I made you feel like that George, you're a perfect omega, I want you and only you." Lewis finishes by pressing a hard kiss onto George's soft lips.

"Lew, I'm sorry for ruining things I love you so much." George snuggles himself into Lewis big strong arms and whines softly. "You haven't ruined anything, come on. You look so fucking hot in this, I want to take it off with my teeth." Lewis growls, carrying George from the bathroom into the bedroom and throws him down on the bed. "You're fucking gorgeous."

Lewis breaks away from George to tear his own clothes off, and stalks his way over to the bed. "Fuck George, I think I want you to wear them when I fuck you." George licks his lips, letting his legs fall open. His cock pokes out of the side a little bit, but omega's cocks are small and the panties conceal most of him. Lewis is staring at him like he wants to eat him up.

"And you think, I didn't want you?" Lewis settles himself down between George's legs, watching the damp patch forming on the red underwear and spreading over the front of George's red panties. "i'm going to fucking devour you." George chuckles happily.

Lewis licks a stripe across the front of George's panties, letting his hand reach behind, and tease at his dripping wet hole. The material feels luxurious and expensive. It almost feels like a shame to ruin it, almost. George groans his hands coming to rest in Lewis' hair, as the alpha takes the covered head of George's cock into his mouth, lightly suckling on him.

"Ah, Lew. I need you inside of me. Please." Lewis ignores him and keeps sucking on the sensitive tip, while letting two fingers slip inside of George, his body accepts them so easily, he's so ready for this. George groans, he has no idea if he should buck up into Lewis' mouth or grind down onto his fingers. George is always so wet and open for his alpha, it's almost like his body has just moulded to the shape of Lewis. He never needs any prep, Lewis just enjoys teasing him.  

"This is torture Lew." George pulls at Lewis' hair, trying to get more from him, Lewis just keeps adding more fingers, a third, then soon a fourth. George half thinks he's going to stick his whole fist in there, when he finally lets his fingers slip out. "Tease." George pants feeling dizzy with pleasure. "I'm sorry baby."  Lewis says, but he doesn't seem sorry at all.

Lewis manoeuvres George's body, wrapping his legs around Lewis' waist, pushing George's panties to one side and presses the head of his cock against George's entrance. "Are you ready for me, sweet omega?" George nods. Lewis lightly pushes inside, then pulls back out again, smirking. The bastard. "Lewis, please."

"Whatever you say baby." Lewis holds George tightly and slams inside of with one swift move, George's body offers no resistance thanks to all the teasing and ungodly amount of slick George's body creates. It feels so fucking good to have his alpha buried inside of him.  

"I'm going to claim you, mate you George Russell, make you all mine." Lewis growls, pulling all the way out, only to slam back inside of him again. George groans in pure pleasure, his back arching as he takes a hand full of bed covers. Lewis doesn't tease anymore after that, he instantly picks up a fast, high tempo pace, giving George what he needs.

It feels so fucking good, George can only cling tightly to the bed sheets from the sheer force of the thrusts, he loves Lewis taking him like this, he wouldn't have it any other way. Lewis changes the angle ever so slightly, in a way which makes George see stars. "Such a good omega, Georgie." Lewis nibbles at George's neck, while slamming into his prostate with every thrust.

"Lew, i'm so close. Please." George blinks up his big blue eyes at Lewis, who understands. "You definitely, want this yeah?" Lewis runs his fingers through George's sweaty hair, pushing it away from his forehead. "More than anything, Lew."

Lewis places his teeth over George's mating gland, while using his hand to stroke George's cock, while making sure he still slams into his prostate with every thrust. It doesn't take long, George's reaches the height of his orgasm, at the same time Lewis bites down on his mating gland, George moans in a mixture of pain and pleasure as he cums into his panties. "Good boy, now you're all mine." Lewis pants, picking up the pace again.

"Need to bite you now." George pants, Lewis cages George's body in with his own, giving George full access to his neck. "I'll tell you when, okay baby?" Lewis thrusts into George with all his might, the sound of skin slapping against his echo's through the room. "Now, now." Lewis pants, George bites down and the taste of Lewis explodes in his mouth, sealing the bond. At that moment he feels the warmth of Lewis' cum filling up his hole.

Lewis pulls out, and pulls George against his chest. "My beautiful little mate, I still think we need to celebrate properly." George hums, not caring, he just happy Lewis is his, all his.

"Smile." Lewis takes a photo of them both and posts the photo to instgram. My new mate. Charles is the first to comment. Does the whole world need to know you fucked?

"Did the whole world need to know we fucked?" George chuckles, burying himself into Lewis' chest. "Yeah I think they did." Lewis laughs pulling George even closer. "my perfect little mate, I can't wait to spend forever with you."

"I love you too, Lew."        

[dropintomanga]

The Green Space That Is Green Yuri

As some of you may already know, I'm a huge fan of Sumiko Arai's The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn't a Guy at All. It's the yuri manga that has taken the manga world by storm. The manga has a cute romance story, some cool characters, and stylish artwork. I want to talk about the artwork and I'm not talking about just the characters and setting. It's how both reflect a central concept - the usage of the color green throughout the manga.

The series is affectionally known as "Green Yuri", which I will use to reference the manga since the title name is pretty long to write out. Green is everywhere in this manga. The covers and background panels are in green alongside the black and white character drawings. This gives the manga a very energetic and rebellious feel that makes it stand out among the crowd.

I did some research about the particular kind of green being used in Green Yuri. It looks similar to a color trend I read about recently. So it's called "brat green." The color blew up in the summer of 2024, thanks to mega pop-star Charli XCX's "Brat" album cover being that particular shade of green. Brat green represents freedom and the energy of being alive, according to the designer who helped with the color. Brat green is noted to be brilliant, intense, and rich.

But even before 2024 and the official international localizations of the manga, Green Yuri blew up online in Japan when it was serialized in pixiv. Green is often associated with all things natural and reflects a sense of calmness in the face of chaos.

If you follow the manga, you know that both main characters, Aya Osawa and Mitsuki Koga, are trying to be themselves in high school where they're not exactly themselves. Aya comes off as a gyaru-type while Mitsuki comes off as a very shy introvert. What's natural to them is their love of rock music. Rock music is what allows them to be calm to a degree. Rock music is the "green" that makes both Aya and Mitsuki feel refreshed to take on the day.

The usage of green in Green Yuri can also mean motivation. You see Aya and Mitsuki make several attempts to talk to each other despite these attempts ending up in awkward fashion. There's a constant green light for the two to connect with one another. Mitsuki is also driven to make music and we see her hard at work in songwriting.

Not all things green are good. Green represents envy. This becomes apparent in Volume 2 of the manga where Aya meets a long-time female associate of Mitsuki's and notices how close they are to one another. Things do get resolved, but there's a interesting conflict growing where Aya notices Mitsuki's attempts to be her true self (i.e. more self-acceptance) and she starts to become jealous of her. Green can also represent greed and from what I've seen, maybe Aya is like this because at times, she wants Mitsuki all for herself.

The positives outweigh the negatives anyway. Green is definitely about growth, but is also about renewal. And this is apparent in a side chapter featured in Volume 1 where the reader learns about Mitsuki's past before she met Aya. Back in junior high, Mitsuki never bothered to wear skirts because of her desire to not fit in as she loved rock music and its themes. Unfortunately, she loses friends as a result due to not following stereotypical norms. Mitsuki was content to just let life drift by without friends because she felt that there was no one out there who really syncs with her. It wasn't until she sees Aya come into the record store she works at and asks about about a CD from the American rock band Nirvana that her opinion changed. In a sense, this encounter brings a newfound sense of renewal in Mitsuki - a renewal in the belief that she can find someone who can match her rhythm.

Finally, I will say one thing about brat green that really brings the manga together. It's a color that reflects both the past and the present. Brat green gives off a classic vibe, but it doesn't feel like it's "old-fashioned" as you can definitely use it in a modern setting. It's a color that blends in perfectly in whatever time period. Green Yuri is basically using the past and present to create a very fun "green space" setting where two characters defined by both to create a future for themselves that takes the best of both worlds. Notable rock songs and acts from the '70s'/80s/'90s are referenced throughout the manga and its promotional material. The girls share Spotify playlists of some of the songs featured to each other. Spotify also has a green logo. This manga is literally going green for the betterment of all.

Green Yuri is a green space series that I hope benefits all of those who read it because in a world where the colors black and white seem to dominate so much thinking, green represents much-needed healing and a sense of optimism that we can grow and bloom naturally into something better for ourselves and those around us.

[kitchensinksurrealism]

that period of time between south park post covid being announced in 2021 to summer 2022 when everyone got obsessed with truffula flu was moderately heavenly

[sainz100]

2024 Hungarian GP | x (edited)

[camellcat]

cat!spuffy doodles <3

[kirisclangen]

Zelda

She/her, 65 moons, cis molly

[which-qsmp-egg-would]

HEY. YOU.

I AM GRIPPING YOU AND EVERYONE ELSE BY THE SHOULDERS. CRINGE IS DEAD. FANWORKS REIGN SUPREME. I LITERALLY JUST FINISHED ANOTHER DRAWING OF MY EGG OC'S WHILE PROCRASTINATING ON THEIR LORE.

Also don't worry, the summer camp event won't be the only event I do, you can join the playdates at any time (and even initiate your own events! I'll be so excited if you do!!!)

aaaand I also would be so super excited to see your eggsona because I'm always excited to see eggsonas :D That's kind of my thing over here lol.

(I hope you don't mind me calling you out, @raineedayss )

[rickybaby]

with all the recent news surrounding checo's performance clause with rbr, it got me wondering about Daniel's deal with McLaren. Did he also receive a similar contract clause from that team? like Ik that he was dropped without his prior knowledge but was he given options beforehand??

Daniel in fact had no such performance clause in his McLaren contract. He had an option to extend for 2023 that only he could trigger, which meant McLaren couldn't unilaterally decide to not extend him for 2023.

This was why Zak Brown went on his media tour criticising him and playing musical chair with his seat until he signed Piastri behind Daniel's back. They wanted Daniel to trigger that exit clause on his own so they wouldn't have to pay him out. In the end, Daniel left $18mil richer

[cinematicnomad]

i've been doing a deep cleaning of my apt today while watching mad men s4 so this has been a pretty successful day tbh.

[perilegs]

i'm in part charge of recruiting people for my department at work, and for our hiring offer we were about to write "minimum of [x years] of experience required," but i remembered how people with audacity will apply regardless of what it says, but that wording will push away potential employees, especially women, who are considerate and value the time of both others and themselves, and think they can't apply if they have, let's say a few months less experience than what we required, so i asked it to be switched to "around [x years] of experience required." and it's such a small change but it makes a big difference. and man idk what my point is but often it's good when you listen to people and their problems, so you might come up with low/no effort ways of helping even if it's just a little bit, instead of going "well that shouldnt be a problem, you should just act/do/etc. different"

[cuteniarose]

Most of the time you can’t really tell that I have a 10 year age difference with the two mutuals/friends I talk with the most, but then @rokurookajima will randomly do something like, idk, post her art from *2013* that DOESN’T look like an elementary schooler’s scribbles and suddenly the gap is very very obvious lmao

For reference, in 2013 I was 6 going on 7 and my artistic capabilities were limited to poorly drawn ponies and cotton-candy-coloured stick humans because I thought the first Equestria Girls movie was an unmatched cinematic masterpiece :P

[ponyrepress]

Smiles placidly. They should make a life that doesn't feel suffocating.