#the library saga

[zuppizup]

With the revelation that Rayla likes romantic books, coupled with Callum's love for non-fiction, I am filled with the sudden urge to write a Rayllum bookshop AU.

[project-sekai-facts]

Your blog is getting glued

[morganbritton132]

Eddie’s trying to live-stream when Robin is randomly like, “Remember when we interviewed for that job together and you-

Steve: Scoops?

Robin: We didn’t interview for Scoops together. We didn’t even talk to each other before working there. It was when you-

Steve: Was it the bowling alley?

Robin: No.

Steve: Family Video? Melvald’s? Oh, was it-

Eddie: How many jobs did you interview together for?

Robin: It was when we were office temps

Steve: Oh! That place was the worst.

Robin: Obviously, but anyways. Remember when they asked what your strengths were and you told the interviewer how much you could bench press?

[backwzzds]

#SAINT! let’s have sex in the bank, tell em to open the safe.

99% LOADING…

#RULES! #VALORA!

☆ 9teen. roronoa zoro & trafalgar law’s babymuva. nico robin’s princess. mother of the plug!law, sensei!zoro, plug!zoro & dbf!shanks series.

#HER LOSS! since you’ve been gone:

what you want (r. zoro) plug zoro (r. zoro) choose me (t. law)

#FOR ALL THE DOGS! what’s hot:

love me (c. springer) spoil you (e. jaeger) daddy got you (s. riley)

#MASTERLIST!

☆ all my stories are fem!black readers with chubby readers also in mind. will never be stated otherwise.

one piece

bleach

attack on titan

vinland saga

jujutsu kaisen

gangsta.

crossovers

[literatureaesthetic]

jade city | playlist

[anipgarden]

Adding To or Starting a Garden

AKA, the beginning of the Plants-Related section of this series.

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

Got an area of lawn you’d like to convert to a wildlife haven? An area you can stick some hanging baskets in? Want to know how your garden of tomatoes and zucchinis is already putting in a lot of work? This is the section for you!

It would be dumb of me to not acknowledge that the act of gardening can come with a lot of costs. Buying seeds, buying plants, buying soil, raised bed materials, mulch, etc. … it can all get a bit daunting, let’s be honest! But there’s quite a few ways to get seeds and plants for free or extremely cheap, which I’ll be addressing in this section! The next section will be all about addressing the other Costs in gardening and how to mitigate or eliminate them entirely.

Also, do keep in mind; there’s no need to try and convert a whole area from lawn to garden or unused to garden at once. In fact, it could actually be extremely beneficial to do it a little at a time--maybe four or five square feet to start out.

Front Lawn (or Managing Principles)

If you live in a place where you’re required to have a grass turf lawn (HOA’s come to mind…), try replacing it with native grasses instead! You could even possibly use a low-growing ground cover plant like clover to a similar effect! Reseeding/replacing an entire lawn can be a big upfront cost, but even just letting the lawn be a little messy and tall helps. If the lawn gets patchy, leave the bare spots for a little while and something different will likely pop up! Pioneer species will fill the gaps and provide benefits to other plants around them, support animals, and more! If you want to take the guesswork out of it, you could always research what the pioneer species are in your area and plant the ones you like most. 

Obtaining Seeds for Cheap or Free

The cheapest way to start a garden is by far via seeds. However, seeds can be a bit complicated to grow, and some sources make them… way overpriced. Fortunately there are ways to get seeds for little to no cost! 

Some places sell seeds for as low as a dollar, 50 cents, or 25 cents! The packets may not have a lot of seeds, but it’s definitely a good start for a low budget! I’ve personally bought cheap seed packets at Walmart--the Ferry-Morse and Burpee brands are not what we’re looking for here. Typically the cheaper ones I’ve found are American Seed (which is owned by Green Garden Products, which also owns Ferry-Morse, Livingston Seed, McKenzie Seed, and Seeds of Change. Do with that information what you will), but they’re rarely stocked near the Ferry-Morse ones in the Formal Gardening Section. I’ve most often found them on end caps near the gardening section, so you may have to weave through a few aisles to find them, but once you do there’s an array of flower and vegetable seeds to select from! Alternatively, I’ve found seeds at Dollar Tree sold 2 or 4 for a dollar in Spring as part of their seasonal product; however, when they’re out of stock, they’re typically out of stock for the year. Try to check them out early in the year!

Otherwise, other seed companies like Urban Farmer or Botanical Interests will often have semi-frequent sales in spring and fall, when people are stocking up on seeds--joining their email lists can help you be the first to know when a good sale is going on!

Some foods from grocery stores will provide seeds that you can use in the garden as well. I’ve had the most luck with store-bought bagged beans, peppers, and tomatoes. Some people have had luck with watermelons, apples, citrus, squash, and more. Do keep in mind that you likely won’t get the same variety of fruit/vegetable as the one you bought--the resulting plant may look different and taste different.

Give it a shot! Pick some beans you like--if they don't grow well, at least you can eat the rest!

If you live in the US, food-producing live plants, bare roots, and seeds can often be purchased with SNAP benefits. But what does growing fruits, veggies, and herbs have to do with boosting biodiversity? While food crops aren’t typically native, they still provide valuable shelter for native insects. Some plants even have intricate relationships with native fauna--like the squash bee, a solitary bee which exclusively pollinates cucurbits like pumpkins, squash, and zucchini. And we get to benefit more directly as well! If you’re planting a diverse range of foods in your garden (as opposed to the swaths of single-plant farms that typically produce what’s sent to grocery stores), you’re supporting high levels of biodiversity by providing a variety of plants for creatures to live and hunt around.

Most of the time, when we think of boosting biodiversity with a garden, we think of a colorful flower garden teeming with pollinator species. However, if we’re striving to use native species, it can be a bit difficult to find some species in stores. I can say from experience that trying to find any wildflower seeds other than butterfly weed, purple coneflowers, and black-eyed-susans is… challenging, if you limit yourself to stores like Walmart, Home Depot, and Lowe’s. You might occasionally get lucky with an ACE Hardware or a local nursery, but even then sometimes it can be hard to track down who in your area is selling what--let alone if you live in an area where no one really is selling native plants or their seeds. Not to mention, even once you find a local or online store selling the seeds you want, they can sometimes cost a pretty penny. So what do you do?

If you have the option to, consider gathering native seeds yourself! Get good at identifying the native flora and fauna--or at least, a few target plants and their lookalikes--and get ready to go! Learn where they tend to grow, when they’ll be seeding, etc. Try to identify the plant before it goes to seed (for most plants, it's easiest to identify when flowering), then check back regularly to gather seeds. Typically, if I want to learn how to collect seed from a specific plant, I just search it on Google or YouTube--oftentimes, I'm lead to the GrowItBuildIt Youtube page, so it may be a helpful resource for you as well! Of course, make sure to leave plenty of seed behind so the wild population can repopulate, and seed can feed other creatures in the area. A good rule of thumb is to take no more than 1/3rd of what's available.

Buying seed in bulk is an option if you can afford the upfront cost. Try teaming up with a few friends to buy some bulk seeds and split them amongst yourselves--you’ll get tons of seed! Prairie Moon is a popular site that'll sell seeds by the pound if you can afford the price--though they're in the US, and I believe they focus on Midwest and East Coast natives.

If you want to cheat the system, don’t buy bulk sunflower seeds--buy bags of sunflower seeds being sold as birdseed. They’re typically all black oil sunflower seeds, but they’ll sprout, and they’re fairly cheap for the amount you get!

However, beware generic wildflower seed mixes! Many brands like to sell wildflower seed mixes in big box stores like Home Depot, Target, or even Dollar Tree, but they’ll often include flowers that aren’t native or possibly even invasive in your region! Before you make any purchases, double check to make sure the contained seeds won’t do more harm than good! A quality source of native seeds will provide English and Latin names for all seeds included, and will be native to the region or at least non-invasive. 

See this? I don't trust this.

There’s a good handful of programs online that’ll send you free seeds if you’re planning to start a native habitat project! Poke around online and see what you can find; you might get lucky! The best time to start looking for these is fall and winter, I find--by early spring, many of them are either done or beginning to wind down... though some also start up in spring. Ultimately--just check regularly! You never know what you can find!

Other Ways to Get Plants

Don’t want to start from seed? That’s fair! You can try cuttings! Just be sure not to take too much of the plant while you do so. Make sure you’ve gotten a few leaf nodes on your cutting, and cut any flowers you may have gotten. Make sure to leave some blooms and foliage on the original plant for the creatures in the current habitat--you don’t want to destroy one habitat to make another in your garden. There’s tons of methods of rooting cuttings, many of which have different efficacy rates for different plants, but that’s a topic for another post.

If you find seedlings growing in a place where they won’t be able to sustain themselves long-term, or are in danger of being destroyed, consider relocating them! You may be able to gently dig up and transplant the seedling to your garden. Don’t do this if they’re in a place where they can easily survive--ideally, you’ll be taking plants from sidewalk cracks, heavily maintained public gardens, roadsides, etc. Do be careful while doing this--ensure your safety first!  

You’re totally allowed to join gardening communities like clubs, facebook groups, and more before you’ve even put a trowel to the dirt. These are great places to learn information and advice! Many gardeners are more than happy to help out a new gardener, and will eagerly provide seeds, cuttings, or even baby plants! Talk to some people about your gardening journey and what you’re hoping to do, and you just might find some kindred spirits--or at least get more people interested in the topic! 

Seed and plant giveaways and trades happen all the time in gardening clubs, as well as online! Just poke around and see what you can find! Some are explicitly trades, meaning you’re expected to send something in return, but once you get your feet on the ground with some plant knowledge you’ll be stellar! You may be able to explain you’re just starting out, and someone may send you seeds without expecting a trade, but I’d suggest trying giveaways first. 

Poke around online and see if there’s a local chapter of your state’s native plant society. From there, you’ll likely be able to find a calendar of events--many of them will host plant sales in the spring, with a bunch of native plant seedlings ripe for the pickings if you can make it out and have some money to spare! Fair warning, though, you’ll want to get there early if you can. If they say they’re starting at 10, try to get there by 9:45. Year after year, there’s always record turnout, and they sell out of plants faster than ever. Just trust me on this. I’ve been let down; hopefully you won’t have to be.

Some libraries are beginning to host seed libraries! Check around and see if your library has one! Ideally, the system works best if you also have seeds to contribute in return, but if you’re just starting out I’m sure they won’t mind you taking some seeds! Just consider saving some seeds to contribute in the future and pay it forward. If your library doesn’t have a seed library? Consider asking if they’d be willing to start one! Community interest is a great way to get the ball rolling on projects like these, but they’ll only know the community is interested if the community tells them they’re interested!

Volunteer to Garden for/with Someone Else

Maybe someone in your area wants to garden, but is struggling to find the time/energy. Many elderly people who used to garden simply can’t anymore but still would like a garden. Other people may love to have a helping hand in their garden. You might even find a few people in your area interested in renting and sharing a community garden plot with others, so they don't have to handle it all on their own! They may be interested in increasing biodiversity right now, or may be willing to if it’s brought up to them. You might be just the kind of person someone needs! Since it won't be your garden, you’ll likely need a bit of permission and collaboration to get anything in particular going, but it’s worth a shot and a way to maybe even make friends! 

Again, your mileage may vary with some of these. You may not know where there's a bunch of wildflowers growing in your area, or maybe your local library doesn't have a free seed library. That's okay! Do what you're able to, find what you can find, get what you can get! And there's never any shame with starting small--in fact, starting small can make the project easier to manage and expand when you're able!

That's the end of this post! My next post is gonna be about ways to start growing plants cheaply--low cost seed starting set ups, essentially. There's a lot of good options, many of which I've used myself even! Until then, I hope this advice is helpful! Feel free to reply with any questions, success stories, or anything you think I may have forgotten to add in!

[tiny-knife-friend]

Y’all I feel like I’m losing my marbles. Any help is appreciated because I CANNOT REMEMBER THE NAME OF ONE SPECIFIC BOOK FOR THE LIFE OF ME! It’s a retelling of the Odyssey but it focuses on Telemachus.

(Some of the following details might be wrong in my half crazed summary, but I swear the major plot beats are there)

Does anyone remember that novel where Penelope was given a prophecy that Odysseus wouldn’t return until Telemachus started to grow a beard or something? And she would look every day and would have a blank face but Telemachus thought she was sad so he went on his journey to find information and stuff.

But - PLOT TWIST - Penelope was actually relived because in this version Odysseus is the FREAKING WORST. So Odysseus comes back and he and Telemachus totally destroy all of the suitors but after that Telemachus stands up to him and basically says ��Hey dude, you suck and you have to leave now” and Odysseus is all “Nah bro, I own you” and I think they fight and idk how but Telemachus wins and Odysseus is banished or something?

I remember reading it when I was younger and liking it up to the point where I found out Odysseus was the bad guy. But now that I’m an adult and not in my mid-teens I have a greater appreciation of the hot mess of Odysseus’s morality and how he can be interpreted.

(Especially after listening to EPIC and re-assessing the Odyssey with the crew in mind. If you haven’t listened to it yet what the heck are you doing with your life)

I swear this book exists, I have it in my collection but my books are all in boxes in the middle of my parent’s basement and there is no way in the world that I am getting into them in the next two years. I spent all day googling anything I could think of and it is not coming up in any of my searches. If anyone could give me the name of it I would literally cry from the sheer relief of someone else knowing it exists AND knowing what the heck to look for online so that I can get an ebook of it.

[shannoneichorn]

Pardon my silence. I'm binge reading Vorkosigan, because my library has the audiobooks and DragonCon was A LOT.

[platoapproved]

i am seriously enjoying the hell out of the vorkosigan saga. miles vorkosigan has a similar vibe - imho - to gen from the queen's thief series. obnoxious twerp too clever for his own good who gets into Situations™ but manages to muddle through with a mixture of luck, trickery, and inspiring undying loyalty in the people around him.

[live-from-vampire-mountain]

look as much as I love bat broth I’m gonna have to ban it from the library if you fuckers can’t be more careful I have had THREE BOOKS get covered in it THIS WEEK

[fairysteve]

steve was five years old when he swallowed a sun. not the sun, not the big one in the sky, but a small golden orb that shone between his fingers when he hid it in his hands.

swallowing it had been an accident.

the tiny thing had reminded him of a baby bird, and surely it needed to go to the big sun in the sky, and surely his mum - who knew everything - would know what to do. steve was as sure of it as he was that the sun wouldn't burn him, for he didn't know yet that suns are dangerous things. so he cupped his hands around the small sun, and carefully made his way towards his mum.

he was so focused on not dropping the small thing he was carrying in his small hands that he didn't realise he had tripped until his hands were against his mouth, and the sun was falling down his throat, settling in his chest.

he had never felt so warm, but it didn't burn, and when his mum came rushing over to help him, she said that he must been having fun for he looked as if he was shining.

when steve tried telling her about the sun, she simply laughed it off as parents tend to do when their children say impossible things, and ruffled his hair, not minding the sparks that could have proven that he was telling the truth.

[troythecatfish]

Conservatives: 'Don't politicise Dune! it has nothing to say about capitalism 🤬'

Meanwhile at the start of the book: (CHOAM is a corporate monopoly)

[lalalaugenbrot]

Musst keine Angst haben. Jeder hat mal so angefangen.

Coming Out (1989), dir. Heiner Carow

[jiangshinigami]

Poll to decide which character from my hyperfixations that my friend @lvvcat will draw (and they'll also do one for me on their blog so go there!) (my art will be posted on @jiangshi-art)

Characters down below (in order):

[literatureaesthetic]

my most recent read — jade war by fonda lee

i've been really struggling with fantasy this past year (i blame wheel of time for putting me into a slump😵‍💫), but i finally feel my sff mood returning and picking up jade war was the perfect re-entry into the genre.

i surprisingly LOVED this book. the characters are absolute perfection, the slow and intricate politics worked so well for me, and this series is so propelling. there's never a dull moment. everyone always pitches this series as 'the godfather but asian and fantasy', and i absolutely agree. beyond excited to continue!!

[gh0stgirlzx]

raining days🧛