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a-cupof-jo · 3 years ago

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Love Under Firelight

Pairing: Royal Adviser!Taeyong x Queen!Fem!Reader

Genre: Fluff, Royalty AU

WC: 1.5k

Warnings: one curse word

Summary: On the night of the princesses 20th birthday, the castle caught fire. She became queen the next morning. Palace guards gave reports of an accidental gas leak that caught a spark igniting the royal sleeping quarters of the palace. Really it was pure luck that kept the princess from dying in that fire. For the kingdom wouldn’t have survived without her.

For @ficscafe fic scenario event

Prompt: 13

“Dance with me.”

“But… there’s no music.”

“I don’t mind. Do you?

A/n: This will eventually be apart of a longer fic, but I didn’t want to rush the fic. This prompt made me get more inspiration for this fic so I wanted to put this snippet out as part of ficscafe’s scenario event!

Moonlight lit the pathway through the garden as you trekked on further into the night. It has always been your escape and your lens to true beauty, for the garden at night was forever the most ethereal thing you had witnessed. Frogs croaked at the ponds and the owls kept the night from growing so still.

Hedges hid you as you weaved from flower bed to flower bed until you reached a small entrance way that opened to a small area. A fountain sat in the center of it and you hoped that other than the palace gardeners that you were the only one who remembered this place. You had to have been as the gardener had always been the one to find you here when you would escape as a child.

A night breeze carried the light scent of moonflowers through the area and you wandered over to the large flower bed. Stepping carefully through the moonflowers you stepped up to the Datura that grew in behind it. You spent much of your childhood in studies and took up an interest in the flowers of the garden and the Datura flower had always been one of the most interesting flowers to you. The gardener had spent hours teaching you about plants and different uses and purposes they served. When she had gotten to the Datura not much was to be said. It was often confused for a moonflower and past ancestors had used it as a nearly undetectable poison.

You took a light sniff of it and wondered if the gardener had realized that it wasn’t even a week later that 16 year old you had planted the first Datura plant in this secluded part of the castle garden. She probably had, the woman was too observant.

You sighed as you walked back over to the short fountain that had three paths of water flowing out of it. The advisors weren’t going to give up on Dehale. They wanted you to give up your throne, your crown, and be the bride to the heir of another kingdom all under the guise that it would strengthen bonds and tie alliances. Bullshit if you asked her. The most ridiculous of excuses. Those withering old men want to put one of their cronies on the throne and run the kingdom. Like you would let that happen. You scoffed at the words of Lord Soo Man this evening. If he thinks that you will give up your throne so easily, worries of how you got the crown are no longer a concern of yours. “Should have put the Datura in his tea.”

“My queen,” your head snapped up to the figure standing in the arched hedge leading into your space. “Datura is quite the poisonous plant. I would not advise you to give it to any living creature.” You sighed as Taeyong stepped into the shining light. He was always handsome and strong. You had known that for years and just when you thought he couldn’t get any more attractive, he proved you wrong.

You smiled as he walked closer to you, “Lord Taeyong, I think you are well aware of my knowledge on all the plants in the palace gardens.”

He gave you a knowing smirk, “You have proved yourself a very knowledgeable botanist. I myself would love to learn more about the wonders of your gardens. For example, did you know that it took me nearly 30 minutes to track you down here?” He looked around the area in wonder. Tall vines reached up arches and pink creeping phloxes trailed around bush edges.

“30 minutes,” you were surprised. Truly no one had found you here before. Even Johnny who had grown up in the palace with you. “You found my haven in 30 minutes?”

Taeyong looked sheepish as he reached a hand out for you to grab, “To be fair, I may have been following you through the garden and lost you around ten yards from there.” He pointed to the entrance hedge. “I was just pushing on the hedge for 30 minutes trying to figure out where you slipped through.

You threw your head back in a laugh as he hesitantly told you the truth to his adventure here. “And here I thought I would have to kill you. No one finds my hiding spot and lives.”

Taeyong raised an eyebrow at you, “So how many intruders have you had that it warrants instant death?”

You knew he was joking around and you grinned as he sat next to you, “Too many. So many suitors and knights waiting to find me at my most vulnerable.” His smile dampened as the words left your lips. You reached up and cupped his jaw, “None. My haven has been seen by two, now three, sets eyes. Me, you, and the gardener. Our whereabouts are known by no one.”

Taeyong let out a shaky breath, “Then, I guess it would be okay if I did this.” He leaned forward, capturing your lips with his. His kiss was long and deep, leaving you breathless and wanting more. “I have been waiting to do that all day.”

“You couldn't wait until tonight?”

“If you haven’t noticed, it is well past sunset, my queen.”

“Please, Taeyong, you know I hate when you use that title.”

He gave you an impish grin, “I know, my queen”

You rolled your eyes and gave him a light shove, “Did you follow me just to tease me or do you have a reason for our late night rendezvous?”

Taeyong wrapped his arms around you, “I just wanted to be with you. Lately, things have been…”

“A disaster?” You looked back at him.

He gave you a light grin, “To put it lightly.” You sighed leaning into him as the night drew on. He traced small patterns on your arms as you began to doze off. “Dance with me.”

“What,” you sat up. You glanced around the grounds. The glow of the moon illuminated his face, “But… there’s no music.”

“I don’t mind,” he shrugged. “Do you? Cause if I am recalling correctly, I remember rosy cheeked newly twenty year old asking me to dance in that quiet corridor during her birthday ceremony.”

“Is that what we are calling that now? Dancing?” You tried to cover the smile that pressed at your lips.

Taeyong grinned as he pulled you from the bench, “Love, it was dancing. You just thought there was more because you were so drunk.”

“Drunk on you.” You laughed as he gripped your hands leading you to the grass on the other side of the pebble stone walkway. “Okay, so there may have been dancing, but you know that night can’t just be pinned on me. Plus, I couldn’t have been that drunk.”

“Of course not,” he stepped in close to you. Swaying as a low hum rang from his throat. You sighed as he slowly began to sing soft words and lyrics to a song he had created just moments ago. He held you tight and you couldn’t help but think that this may be the last night that you would be able to do this for a long time. You closed your eyes as he kissed the top of your head, “What’s wrong, Love?”

You tucked your head into his shoulder. His adam's apples bobbed as you stayed silent longer, “I’m scared.” You didn’t want to admit it, but the council was starting to feel like an immovable force. “What if they actually find a way to make me marry him? What if they take me away from you?”

He gripped you tighter, “That’s not going to happen.” You looked up into his eyes. “I won’t let it happen. It’s not just me on your side. Doyoung, Johnny, Ten, Yuta, and more are here to fully support you. Those old hags aren’t going to be shipping you off to Dehale anytime soon. Besides, my queen will not bow to a man of any nation. She rules with kindness, grace, and fiery passion. A king could only hope to be half the ruler she is.” He spoke softly, his words caressing you like a mother's lullaby.

“I love you,” you spoke into his neck. The cologne he had put on this morning barely clung to skin anymore leaving way for the scent of light musk and a midday sweat.

He kissed the top of your head again before trailing kisses down your face. He paused for a moment leaving only a sliver of room between your lips, “Not as much as I love you.” You pressed into him. Breathing in his scent and letting his body comfort you. All worries you had disappeared as he deepened the kiss and you let out a low hum.

The kiss broke apart as a yell pierced the night. Both of your heads snapped toward the palace as another voice rang out. You could feel dread fill your body as the voices words met your ears, “Fire in the royal quarters!”

tag list: @qianinterprises @stayctday @infnteen

#taeyong fic #ficscafe scenario event #ficscafe #taeyong x reader #taeyong fluff #taeyong scenarios #nct fic #nct scenarios #nct fluff

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unioncolours · 4 years ago

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Yamanaka Week Day 6: Fanfiction 💗🌺

@yamanaka-week Day 6, prompt: espionage

Fanfiction: The best spy there ever was.

Length: 1,5k

Genre: Fluff and cute

⚔ My AO3 username is Majsasaurus

Read below ⬇💜

The best spy there ever was

Shikadai crossed his arms over his stomach and stared at Inojin with an grimace of irritation smacked on his face.

“You are stupid”, he said, face scrunching together in a way he only did when he was turning more and more angry.

Inojin stared back at him with a little wrinkle between his brows.

“No, I’m not”, he retorted. “You are just scared we’ll get caught.”

The two boys were crouching behind the corner of the house of the Yamanaka residence. They were at the backside of the house, in the protection among shadows and bushes, the part of the garden Ino referred as ‘the hopeless part’. The hopeless part of the garden was filled with nettles and weed, ready to be ripped out of the soil, but neither Ino nor Sai had had time for gardening that part of their garden. They liked to put their focus on the front yard, on the rose bushes and myriad of colourful flowers that needed their care and attention, instead of the weed and shadowy part.

It was the perfect hiding place for two six-year-old spies.

Or ‘spies’. This title was exactly the root of the disagreement between the boys.

“Your Mom is a psychic ninja”, Shikadai said, intending to serve waterproof arguments. “She will catch us immediately. And it’s not fun to play if we can’t win.”

Inojin puffed out his cheeks.

“You are the worst spy I’ve ever seen”, he said, poking a needle in Shikadai’s ego. “And you fail as a shinobi. Shinobi do not give up.”

“I don’t fail”, Shikadai said.

“Then prove it”, Inojin shot back and the wrinkle between his eyebrows had grew in size, because now he was irritated at his friend for not sharing his ambitious plan. Who cared if ‘Mom was a psychic ninja’, when he was the best spy there ever was and could well sneak up behind her?

“Okay”, Shikadai said, took a step forward and a stringy leaf of a nettle stroked by his exposed calf. He winced at the sudden pain and seemed to grow more insecure at the reminder he was not as big and powerful as he maybe wanted to think. “But only up until nap time, okay? I’m tired.”

Inojin smiled at him, knowing that ‘I’m tired’ was Shikadai’s way of saying he was unsure what to do.

“Follow me”, Inojin said, bent down on all four, and began crawling around the corner, towards the front part of the garden. The unaware parents, who were having a nice time taking care of the flowers, were blissfully unaware two dangerous spies made their way towards them.

Sai and Ino had just finished plucking away the bad leaves and dried out branches of some of their parade bushes by the road, the first thing visitors see when they curve down the road past the flower shop and see the house the family lived in. These bushes had beautiful roses; blue to their colour, Ino’s pride after cultivating generations of bushes, slowly getting the petals into a beautiful blue shade from the white she had started from.

Sai meant the colour is the same as Ino’s eyes, Ino claimed they are more like Inojin’s eyes, which are a shade greener than her own.

They looked over their craft, fingers a bit sore after thorns had penetrated through the gardening gloves and poked their skins, but they felt satisfied by the result.

And they were not deaf either. Inojin was still unaware to which degree his voice could rise when he was in a disagreement, and disagreements with Shikadai were never settled with low voices.

The two spies made their way over cobble stone placed into grass, through bushes and heaps of flowers and a around a little man-made pond. Ino’s mother had made that pond together with Inoichi years and years back. Inojin liked to complain over the lack of koi fish in the pond, but Ino took his complaints with grain of salt, since Inojin wasn’t just appreciating the frogs which lived there.

“Let’s go behind this bush”, Inojin suggested and pointed towards the bush closest to his parents.

“No way!” Shikadai disagreed, mouth in frown. “We need to attack from multiple different angles.”

“But we are only two”, Inojin said and shoved two fingers close to Shikadai’s face. “We strike were we are strongest – together!”

“We would need Chocho, that’s when we are strongest”, Shikadai complained, thinking about the gymnastics they were training together. Since they were still so small and largely were unable to exploit chakra, they practised gymnastics to better their skills in motoric, coordination and strength. But Inojin wasn’t listening to his whining today and grabbed Shikadai’s arm, manhandling him closer to the bush of Inojin’s choice.

“No”, Inojin said. “We are strong on our own. Let’s find out what they are talking about.”

Sai turned to look at Ino when the boys came closer.

“What are we going to talk about?”

Ino smirked.

“Let’s talk about the medicine we are going to give Inojin.” There was no medicine in question. Ino was just going to tease her son. They were well aware of where the boys were, and they were not particularly had to spot either. Shikadai’s fluffy, black ponytail was sticking up above the top part of the bush – he had to be sitting on his knees, while Inojin’s feet were visible from the side, probably sitting on his bum, leaning against one of his hands.

“Let’s spy on them”, Inojin said again and the boys fell silent, listening eagerly.

“Well, Sai”, Ino said loudly, almost as in overacting. “When Inojin is done playing with Shikadai we’ll give him his medicine.”

Sai stared at Ino, eyes begging her to please do not make me play in an act, I don’t know how and Ino took his hand.

“He was coughing this morning, wasn’t he?” Ino asked. “Then it’s best to give him his cough medicine, you know, the one that tastes really bad.”

Inojin stared at Shikadai, who stared back in mutual mortification. Medicine time. The worst nightmare of a six-year-old.

“Oh no”, Shikadai whispered.

“I don’t wanna”, Inojin whined back.

“Let’s not give away our position”, Shikadai said when Inojin raised his voice.

“But I don’t wanna take medicine, it was a single cough because I got dust in my nose”, Inojin said.

“That was a sneeze.”

“You don’t understand!” Inojin yelled back. “They’ll give me medicine!”

Ino and Sai stood on the other side of the bush, snickering a bit to their son’s panic. He had grown up sheltered in cotton, protected from the dangers of the outer world, their little sunshine boy, so a once in a while scare would only do him good.

“Inojin”, Ino finally said. “I know you are there. You can come out. We won’t give you medicine. Mommy and Daddy were just teasing you.”

Inojin sprang to his feet and stumbled around the bush into his mother’s arms.

“Moo-o-om”, he whined against her stomach as his big crocodile tears fell down his cheek. “I don’t wanna take medicine.”

“Oh, by little boy, you don’t have to, Mommy just teased you”, Ino said. “We heard you were a spy, so we gave you a little lead to listen to.”

“And we were the worst spies ever!” Shikadai added, peeking out from the bush. “Next time we need to do my tactic.”

“You always want us to do your tactic”, Inojin muttered against Ino’s hip.

Ino smiled to him.

“Come on, little one”, she said. “It’s okay, you don’t have to take medicine.”

“It was dusty”, Inojin pouted. “I coughed because it was dusty.”

Ino looked over at Sai.

“Sounds like a good reason to vacuum, doesn’t it, darling?” she asked and raised her eyebrows in a meaningful way. “Right?”

“Yes, yes”, Sai said in defeat. “Inojin, go back and play now. You were a fantastic spy. Soon enough you can be a shinobi too, and then you’ll be the best spy there ever is.”

Inojin looked at him with big, blue eyes.

“Really?”

“Really”, Sai said. “I am sure you will surpass us both when you are big and strong.”

Inojin almost blushed.

Ino and Sai went back inside, to vacuum clean and to begin prepping for lunch. Shikadai was going to stay at theirs for the whole evening, so they had a second child to entertain for the evening. Entertaining Shikadai was never an issue, so they didn’t fret and happily left the two boys in the garden.

“They were fooling us”, Shikadai said.

“I know”, Inojin said. His tears from the abrupt emotional tantrum at the fear of getting medicine had tried in an instant, just as the tantrum had faded away. “What should we do now?”

Shikadai mulled for a while.

“Continue spying?”

“Yes!”

The two boys hurried inside, not having learned their mistakes.

There was a dinner to supervise and parents to stalk. And who knew, maybe they would get to learn actual secrets this time?

Little did they know of the future far off beyond the horizon, when they would spy in dangerous temples, when they would slay enemies and lose faith in the world as chaos and war would reign around them. Little did they know.

And now, there was no time to think of such times.

Now they were the greatest spies there ever were.

#yamanakaweek2021 #yamanakaweek #inojin yamanaka #saiino #shikadai nara #fanfiction

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bethestaryouareradio · 3 years ago

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Sacred Spaces

“Nature is the original church. Worship there daily.” Alan Cohen

If we have learned anything from the pandemic of the past eighteen months, it is that our greatest blessing is to be able to go outdoors to breathe fresh air. Many people choose to hike the hills, walk the reservoir, or take a jaunt to the ocean to calm nerves and preserve sanity. For those of us fortunate enough to have a garden, balcony, porch, or patio, we can open a door to escape the confines of lockdown.

The majesty of Mother Nature rivals the most exquisite man-made cathedral. Throughout my landscape, I have designed special areas that stimulate my senses, inducing a sense of tranquility and connectivity with the natural world. I have dubbed these my “sacred spaces”, places where I can meditate, watch the wildlife, listen to birdsong, commune with the breeze, rest my weary legs, take a nap, or just sit and contemplate life. My “sacred spaces” provide a structure amidst the chaos, a respite against the turmoil of the times.

We can expand our living environment by crafting outdoor elements that nurture our spirits, emotions, and bodies. Here are a few of my favorite strategies to help gardeners recast their yards into a serene, yet lush oasis.

Water

The sound of water is immensely soothing. Listening to the gurgling of a fountain or the rippling of a stream heightens my creativity. Birds splashing in a birdbath bring a smile to my face. A pond with a recirculating pump provides a happy home for frogs, and if deep enough, fish.

Hammock

Hanging a hammock from two trees is the ultimate in shaded relaxation. I have double hammocks strung between a giant magnolia and Japanese maples. There is nothing quite like swaying in the hammock looking up at the light as it dances between the branches. The colors of the leaves are forever changing. For an afternoon nap on a hot day, a hammock provides a piece of paradise.

Swing

I’ve installed a metal garden swing behind my pond flanked by orange Birds of Paradise and midnight blue agapanthus. By adding comfy cushions, I can silently swing while listening to the aerating pond and watching the aerial antics of squirrels spiraling through the loquat tree.

Tables, Chairs, and Benches

Throughout my landscape, I have placed multiple tables, chairs, and benches in specific areas to encourage me to take a break from the hard labor. A wooden picnic table under an apple tree begs me to take a lunch period. A bench facing the hills beckons me to behold a doting doe with her twin fawns as they forage. A small rocking chair in a cozy nook allows me to remove my mud boots and watch the sunset.

Paths and Walls

Whether you use gravel, bricks, decomposed granite, pavers, or flagstone, creating paths throughout the garden allows for interesting patterns and yard exploration. Because I believe in recycling, upcycling, and repurposing, I always utilize whatever materials are available when I’m building stairs, paths, or walls. A former built-in redwood bench is turned on its side to be reused as a retaining planter box. Used bricks add a separation element to the revamped below-deck walkway bordering the tangled wisteria forest.

Pergolas, Gazebos, Decks

A deck is always a great gathering spot. A gazebo or pavilion is a stately structure to sit, embrace the view, and offer gratitude for outdoor rooms. On my deck, under my grape, wisteria, and bower vine-covered pergola, I unwind after a long day by soaking in the hot tub. This is my prayer place as I gaze at the twinkling stars above.

Plantings

The selection of specific plants is critical to the overall color and scale of any garden. My goal is always to witness botanical interest 365 days a year through express attention to the trees, flowers, shrubs, bulbs, vegetables, herbs, and bushes. Every season brings a change to the landscape. Roses bloom for nine or ten months when regularly dead-headed. Perennial sweet peas flourish with their pretty purple pea heads from spring until autumn. Pink naked ladies pop up to smarten the summer soils when most other plants find it too hot to shine. Deciduous trees such a Japanese maple, pistache, crape myrtle, and liquid amber offer spectacular autumn colors.

When you think about creating your sacred spaces, make sure you are bringing the indoors out and the outdoors in. Expand your home environment by mimicking and mingling colors, patterns, themes, and shapes through both areas. Great design amplifies your emotional well-being. Rediscover forgotten or overlooked spots. Feel the vibes as you develop your scheme keeping comfort and safety at the forefront. Use your imagination to unearth the endless possibilities.

Mother Nature is the original church. When we honor Her, we will attain a more balanced life with peace as a bonus gift, no matter what is happening around us. As this latest Delta variant spreads its dangerous virus tendrils, I urge everyone to talk with their physicians, listen to the science, and get vaccinated. Discover your sacred space, breathe, and spend as much time outdoors as possible.

A Be the Star You Are!® volunteer from Minnesota emailed me “I go for walks on our nearby trail as often as I can because it’s a way to escape to nature, and I know how you feel about that! So off I go.”

Off you go!

MARK YOUR CALENDARS!

Saturday, September 25th, Be the Star You Are!® will participate in the first live event at the Pear and Wine Festival with a booth sponsored by the Lamorinda Weekly(www.Lamorindaweekly.com) and MB Jessee painting (www.MBJessee.com). Wear your mask and visit us! Details at https://www.bethestaryouare.org/copy-of-events

Phots and more: https://www.lamorindaweekly.com/archive/issue1513/Digging-Deep-with-Goddess-Gardener-Cynthia-Brian-Sacred-spaces.html

Press Pass: https://blog.voiceamerica.com/2021/08/18/sacred-spaces/

Happy Gardening. Happy Growing.

Cynthia Brian, The Goddess Gardener, is available for hire to help you prepare for your spring garden. Raised in the vineyards of Napa County, Cynthia is a New York Times best-selling author, actor, radio personality, speaker, media and writing coach as well as the Founder and Executive Director of Be the Star You Are!® 501 c3. Tune into Cynthia’s StarStyle® Radio Broadcast at www.StarStyleRadio.com.

Buy copies of her books, including, Chicken Soup for the Gardener’s Soul, Growing with the Goddess Gardener, and Be the Star You Are! www.cynthiabrian.com/online-store. Receive a FREE inspirational music DVD and special savings.

Hire Cynthia for writing projects, garden consults, and inspirational lectures.

[email protected]

www.GoddessGardener.com

#sacredspaceswaterbirdsbeespergolasgazebossummer cynthiabrian starstyle goddessGardener growingwiththegoddessgardener

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vannahfanfics · 4 years ago

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So Many Things

Category: General Fluff

Fandom: Atlantis- The Lost Empire

Characters: Kida

Kida’s toes kissed the mirror-smooth surface of the pond, causing little ripples to appear in the otherwise flat sheet of water with every tiny movement of her body. The dampness of the algae-coated rock seeped into the thick fabric of her clothes, keeping her body pleasantly cool as the humidity of the dense jungle trapped the volcanic heat in the artificial atmosphere. Her fingers hugged the stone edge of the cleft overlooking the idyllic cove nestled within the network of broad-leaved ferns and twisting green trees hugging the circumference of the lost city. Kida breathed in the fresh air, then sighed deeply. Blue eyes sad, she turned her face upward towards the vast stone dome that separated their city from the outside world.

[Matim,] she mourned quietly. So many thousands of years it had been, and yet, Kida missed her mother just as much as the day she had been swallowed by the light. Kida’s father had never explained what had occurred, at least no further than the ancestors had chosen her mother to protect their people from the great cataclysm. Kida supposed that she ought to consider it an owner on her mother’s part, to be fused with the spirit energy of her ancestors to see Atlantis through the greatest catastrophe of their lifetimes. Yet, the bitter child locked away inside the princess could not help but feel that she was robbed.

Kida exhaled again, hand curling over her heart. She always wondered if her mother could see her. Would she be proud of her? Kida dearly hoped so. She had strived endlessly to serve her people and bear the burden of royalty both proudly and properly. Yet, Kida knew in her heart that she was still painfully naïve and ignorant of many things.

Kida clicked her tongue against her front teeth as her eyes bored into the distant stone ceiling. So long it had been since they had seen the world above, so many thousands upon thousands of years. Kida wondered what had become of the planet. Did the great flood obliterate the entire world, transforming it into an endless ocean? Were the Atlanteans, secluded deep beneath the ocean bedrock, the only living creatures sequestered to land? Or had the human race evolved into something unrecognizable and strange? Kida wondered this, among many things pertaining to the world above the stone, quite often. Her young, spirited heart, despite how much she loved Atlantis and her people, craved the unknown. That was why Kida pushed the borders of patrols to their absolute limits, creeping forward day by day despite the hesitations of the other members of the guard. One day, Kida hoped, some strange miracle would be discovered on those ventures, something foreign and exciting and new.

[Is that selfish?] she asked aloud, though she knew her long-lost mother couldn’t answer. The Atlantean words dripped sorrowfully from her tongue in place of the mournful tears she could no longer shed. [I know that your sacrifice saved us from extinction, but…] She chewed on the inside of her cheek as she contemplated aloud. [I cannot help but admit this endless existence bores me.] Was that normal, to find complacency stifling? For her spirit to wither on the repetitive ins and outs of immortal life thriving away from the rest of the earth? In her heart, she felt that it was not so, but she still couldn’t help but feel guilty for entertaining such thoughts. Her father would surely remind her that their people are alive and thriving because of the secrecy, and searching for adventure or outsiders could only invite ruin.

And yet… Kida gazed longingly at the mist wafting through the stalactites clinging to the cavern roof, pretending that they were instead the white, fluffy clouds she vaguely remembered meandering across the clear blue sky. She had always wondered if they were like mist, incorporeal with water droplets bursting against her skin as she waded through it, or actually of solid form, soft and yielding. She’d never know now. With a small groan, Kida pushed her cheek into her hand. She’d gone and depressed herself. She tore her eyes away from the stone heavens to focus instead on the pond, trying to cheer herself up by observing a frog on a lily pad. It licked its glassy black-and-yellow eye, croaked, and leaped into the water to vanish from sight. Kida tutted, thinking it only par for the course for how the day was progressing.

The gentle rustling of ferns captured Kida’s attention. She turned to see a few of the other Atlantean guards pressing through the jungle, holding their elongated, wood-carved, grass-frond-covered masks at their sides.

[Princess,] one of them addressed her with a polite dip of his head. He gestured with his spear into the tangles of ferns and vines and bushes. [We are going to patrol the perimeter. Would you like to join us?] Kida nodded in affirmation and stood, retrieving her own spear and throwing her mask over her face. She tromped past them to lead the patrol party into the denseness of the jungle, trekking confidently over thin, well-worn intertwined paths to the edge of the city. With every step she took, the distant cascading of several waterfalls grew in volume, until it filled the air with a consistent, steady gushing. They strode along one of the many rivers carving through the jungle to the edge of their world, where the water would spill over the precipice to cascade down into the dizzying chasm to disappear into the thick sheet of water vapor.

Kida’s sure feet expertly navigated over the protruding tree roots, checking the edge of the void for any signs of concerning erosion. The watery atmosphere slowly ate away at the rock, chipping it away in small places. In several instances, large chunks of the landscape had just caved in, sliding into the abyss to leave a gaping hole, like a giant had taken a bite out of the platformed city. The Atlanteans had reinforced the edges of the chasm with concrete, but even that was only temporary; as time pressed on, the water wormed its way into the pores to spread cracks and fissures across the light gray stone constructs.

Thankfully, Kida didn’t note any alarming progression of the erosion. They tracked a swift, purposeful path to what used to be the entrance of their city, which was now a collection of large stony steppes budded with large ferns and a few small shrubby trees. Kida froze when a strange noise greeted her ears, and she quickly raised a hand to order the small scouting party to stop. Kida narrowed her eyes behind the mask when she recognized the sounds as distinctly human.

[But how can that be?] She wondered aloud, crawly forward on all fours to lower a broad purple leaf. Several yards away, a medium-sized group of very distinct people were talking animatedly about something. Kida found herself drawn to the skinny, gangly young man with orange-brown hair and spectacles framing his eyes. Kida cocked her head to the side slightly as she regarded him, strangely fascinated by him.

Kida jumped slightly as her fellow Atlanteans crouched down beside her and whispered feverishly, asking her what she intended to do. As fascinating as the newcomers- the answers to her prayers, really- were, she had to apprehend them before they could get into too much trouble in this new and strange land. Kida instructed the group as to how to proceed, and then, in a flash, they had the strangers surrounded.

[Who are you strangers and where did you come from?] she demanded while brandishing her spear, pouring more malice into her tone than she felt.

Someone shoved the skinny boy forward. He fumbled with a small, leather-bound journal and stammered a few incoherent words. Kida cocked her head slightly, watching as he struggled to regain his composure before clearing his throat. Kida’s eyes blew wide behind the carved wood as he timidly uttered a few broken phrases in Atlantean.

[Who... are you strangers and where... do you come from?]

[He speaks our language?] She wondered incredulously, eyes widening behind the mask. How would a surface-dweller have any knowledge of their ancient, lost culture? The man jerked and flipped open the book to hastily flip through the pages, stumbling over his words. Kida slowly lowered her spear, growing increasingly intrigued. A few enunciations and pronunciations were off, but she could largely understand what he was saying. Making a hasty decision, she removed her mask, watching as the man’s eyes widened and a blush blossomed on his cheeks.

[Your manner of speech is strange to me,] she told him with a curious look. The man grabbed his forehead as he struggled to retrieve the proper words, hand whirling in unconscious gestures as he forced out, [I… travel… friend!] Kida repeated his words softly, a bit confused as she struggled to understand him. Inhaling deeply, he suddenly crossed his arms and flashed her a smile. He suddenly switched to a strange dialect, yet one Kida could understand perfectly.

[So, my friend, I am a traveler!] He clarified with raised eyebrows.

[You speak the language of the Romans!] she realized with an almost accusatory look, fascinated by the sudden switch. Grinning now that he was finally getting somewhere, he keened while leaning forward, “Parlez-vous français?” Kida smiled amusedly and agreed with an impressed, “Oui, monsieur!” The others standing behind the linguist watched with various degrees of shock and confusion as the two communicated. Finally, the man exhaled satisfactorily.

“We’re friendly travelers,” he explained with a hand splayed graciously over his small chest. “We’ve come from the surface world.” Behind her, her guards exchanged galvanized but concerned whispers. Kida ignored them, enthralled at the golden opportunity she’d literally stumbled upon. I can finally learn everything about the surface world! She thought, automatically switching to English as the group began introducing themselves. By matter of protocol, Kida would have to deliver them to her father, the King; she would take all the time she had to squeeze as much information as she could out of them.

“Come with me,” she addressed them with a smile. “I will take you to my home. Please, follow us,” she said, gesturing into the brush with her spear. The others led the way, while Kida fell in step with them at a small distance, absorbing the peculiarities of their persons with bright, glimmering blue eyes.

Matim, she thought with a quick glance up at the dome. There are so many things I have yet to learn, but… I think after today, I shall be a little less ignorant, no?

Enjoy this oneshot? Feel free to peruse my Table of Contents!

Tag List: @deliathedork

#kida #atlantis #atlantis the lost empire #atlantis: the lost empire

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iampikachuhearmeroar · 4 years ago

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tumblr users always go on about wanting their gardens to look like meadows or like idek urban forests/jungles or whatever, with loads of climbing plants and vines and plants for diversity and Saving The Bees™️, all of which i support tbh. but have you ever tried to fucking battle to maintain a garden like that? have you ever lost two fucking pairs of smaller handheld gardening shears like these ones:

while gardening your said urban garden jungle/forest???? just bc the sheer fucking volumes of vines, climbing plants, underbrush and other stuff in the garden have just decided to turn into a fucking void and eat them up so that you can’t fucking find them???? bc it’s happened to me fucking twice now.... in both my back and front yards, in the space of a fucking fortnight.... and it’s driving me up the fucking wall NOT being able to fucking find these two pairs of small garden shears (one lost in my backyard somewhere near an overgrown jasmine plant that i was working on a week ago.... and the other one my dad bought to replace the lost one is lost in the front yard god knows where that i was using yesterday) lost in the fucking void of plant life. all because i’ve either thrown them somewhere fucking dumb in all the overgrown plants or i’ve put them down mid-cut and now i can’t fucking find them.

anyway the moral of the story is, if you want to turn your garden into an urban meadow/jungle/forest, tend to them pretty frequently so then you don’t lose your fucking gardening stuff lmao. and how do i know? because we’ve let our backyard and front yard overgrow to the point that they are literally like urban jungles/forests, because neither me or my dad like gardening.... and it’s only since self isolation this year that i had the brain streak to think about buying gardening gloves etc to finally tend to our overgrown yards. but fuck. the fact that i’ve lost two fucking pairs of gardening shears (not that theyre expensive, like $10 aldi ones but still).... is incredibly irritating.... bc I FUCKING KNOW that i either put them down right beside me while working or have thrown them a few/placed them a few metres away from where i was working..... but now they’re probably fucking lost forever in the sheer amount of plants and undergrowth that our yards have.

and although i do like our overgrown yards bc they house frogs in the spring & summer months and attract kookaburras and ibises (ok that’s more of our ruined pool that’s turned into a pond, bc we can’t afford to run it anymore and stuff) and other animals like stray cats use it as a refuge from people who let their dogs out to roam the streets and stuff..... but god it’s fucking irritating that i have to cut it away because:

(A.) my neighbours don’t like it (and i understand why in a sense, especially when the frogs get L O U D during spring/summer nights).....

AND

(B). the council and other government bodies like the electricity board who have to check our power box every so often don’t like it bc it restricts their access to the power box etc bc our front yard is just too overgrown to move through.

but yeah. if you ever want to have an overgrown yard or are yearning to turn your future garden into an urban jungle/forest or whatever the fuck, just know it’s A LOT OF FUCKING WORK and you will probably routinely lose things in your garden while working on it... despite all the wildlife that you attract with it and despite Saving The Bees™️ and a few other positive things that i can’t think of.... having an overgrown forest like/jungle like garden comes with many negative aspects as well.

#life #about me #shut up ilona

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manda-kat · 4 years ago

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Day Twenty Seven

I went swimming again!

It was already dark when I went out but I haven't had the chance and I'm not letting a complete lack of light and strange things bumping into me underwater stop me

I caught three frogs (and relocated them to clean water) I heard two more but couldn't catch them and I met a toad on my way back inside and he had a lovely voice.

Do you ever swim in a pool and there's a frog in it?

There's a really small creature in the water with you and you can just scoop em up in your hands and look at their little eyes

And then you have to struggle to get out of the pool without using your hands because both hands are clasped around the frog

And then you have to walk to a close by body of water and stick the frog in a tree by the water so it won't go back to the chlorinated pool

Frogs should not swim in chemicals but I'm beginning to wonder if the frogs in our yard are now immune, since they spend so much time in the pool

I used to get really sick looking frogs from the pool, but now they're always active and healthy looking

Are they growing stronger? Or am I just removing them earlier?

We have a pond in our back yard and these frogs love the poisonous swimming pool

I think that could be a statement on the human condition

#mandalogs

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gardenassist · 3 years ago

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In this article, we will explain How to Natural Pest and Disease Management? Gardening beginners. In a previous article, we reviewed in detail How to Planning, Planting, and Tending Your Garden?.

The organic gardener who adds compost to their soil, avoids toxins, and uses natural methods of pest and disease prevention will enjoy a healthier garden than those who reach for synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.

However, even the most vigorous plants are sure to have occasional issues with pests and disease. Before you reach for a quick fix, take time to identify the problem and learn how to deal with it as naturally and safely as possible.

Try the least toxic solution to avoid killing the beneficial insects and microbes so important to plant health. Keep your vegetables, fruits, and herbs free from stress to help prevent serious damage.

When a problem does arise, it will be easier to treat if your garden is a healthy ecosystem instead of a monoculture dependent on synthetic chemicals.

THE BEST DEFENSE IS A HAPPY PLANT

Every plant needs sunlight, water, and nutrients to support photosynthesis, the process by which they create simple sugars to fuel their growth. If any of these basic needs are not met, plants become stressed and release chemicals that attract pests to an all-you-can-eat buffet.

We’ve already discussed the importance of feeding beneficial soil life with compost to encourage healthy root systems and uptake of available nutrients. Keep in mind that applying too many fertilizers or pesticides (even some natural ones) reduces root growth and destroys helpful insects and microbes, leaving your plants more susceptible to drought, pests, and disease.

Your garden must also have enough water to support plant growth without waterlogging the soil or leaching nutrients. Water only when needed and keep leaves dry to prevent fungal diseases. For the same reason, space plants properly to allow air circulation around leaves.

Keep your garden healthy and plant a wide variety of crops and landscape plants and you’ll have fewer issues with pests and disease.

HOW TO BUILDING YOUR GARDEN’S NATURAL DEFENSES

As your second line of defense against pests and disease, provide habitat to attract your natural allies: the insects, arachnids, birds, toads, and bats that pollinate crops and patrol your garden, happily gobbling up pests.

Include sources of food, water, and shelter, as well as places to rear their young and, in time, you could have an army of beneficial creatures in residence.

Predatory and Parasitic Insects

Sometimes it seems that bugs are intent on destroying our gardens. However, there are plenty of beneficial insects and arachnids that consume those annoying garden pests. Predatory insects and spiders consume aphids, grubs, slugs, and thrips.

Parasitic species lay their eggs on a host to provide for their young. If you see a caterpillar with small white egg sacs on its back, leave it alone so the parasitic wasp eggs may hatch and patrol your garden in the future.

Here are some helpful insects and arachnids and the “bad guys” they control:

Attract these insects and spiders to your landscape by planting a variety of nectar-producing plants, providing water sources, and including habitat where they may lay eggs, overwinter, and seek shelter from their own predators.

Shallow pans of water or mud puddles are great sources of drinking water for birds and other helpful wildlife. Small insects usually get the moisture they need from dew or from the juicy insects and eggs they consume. Butterflies, bees, and larger insects benefit from a dish of wet sand where they can land and get a drink.

Place pieces of cut fruit—such as apples, bananas, and oranges—in your garden to provide insects with an “energy drink” that is helpful when they are migrating or when there are few food sources nearby.

Insectary Plants

Insectary plants provide habitat and a food source, such as pollen and nectar, for beneficial insects and arachnids that offer biological pest control in your garden. Include a wide variety of plants with small compound flowers (having many small flower-lets such as cilantro, dill, and yarrow) that attract predatory and parasitic insects.

Including some of these plants in your garden is a great way to encourage adult insects to come for the free food and stay to lay their eggs. Some species provide pest control during their larval stage, so be sure to attract the adults to lay their eggs near the pests you’d like to control, such as an infestation of aphids.

If beneficial insects visit your yard but don’t find a food source, water, shelter, or places to lay eggs, they will move on to look for a more suitable ecosystem.

Encourage them to stay by planting a border of wildflowers, herbs, and native plants. Provide a source of water and plant native trees and shrubs when possible. Check out the table of insectary plants for common species that provide food for these helpful creatures.

Pollinator Plants

Flowers that provide food sources for pollinators are an important part of a healthy garden. Pollinator plants increase visits from bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds that flit from flower to flower, drinking nectar and transporting pollen as they go.

Some of our most important food crops won’t produce a harvest without pollination. Happily, many insectary plants also attract pollinators, so you can encourage all sorts of beneficial creatures by choosing a variety of species from our pollinator and insectary plant lists.

In addition to the small, nectar-rich compound flowers in the insectary list, include tubular flowers that attract hummingbirds as well as bees and other pollinators. Coral bells, foxglove, and heirloom petunias are great choices.

Keep in mind that hybrid flowers are usually bred to delight the human eye instead of feeding pollinators. Select heirloom and native flower varieties that produce nectar and pollen over showy petals.

Be aware that using systemic insecticides on plants can kill pollinators when they sip the insecticide-laced nectar. Never use these poisons on any plant, even if you don’t intend to eat the plant.

Best Planting Practices for Insectary and Pollinator Plants

There is an art to attracting beneficial insects to your home landscape and encouraging them to take up residence. Start by including as many different species of plants for them as possible.

Make sure there is a succession of nectar- and pollen-producing plants available throughout the gardening season so they need never leave.

Include several plants from each species so there is enough food in a small space to keep your beneficial creatures well fed. Planting in clusters of three, five, or seven plants also provides structural design, so you’ll enjoy these groupings almost as much as the wildlife will.

In addition, it’s helpful to put some space between species from the same plant family to prevent disease and pest problems. Beds of pollinator and insectary plants are very pleasing to look at.

Try incorporating them into a cottage garden, flower bed, or herb garden, or interplant them in your main garden. Many culinary herbs provide nectar for beneficial insects when they flower, so plant a selection of basil, borage, chives, cilantro, sage, and other herbs. Allow some plants to flower and your insect helpers will find them, too.

Toads and Other Helpful Creatures

In addition to beneficial insects, a variety of other creatures provide natural pest control in the garden. Bats, birds, frogs, opossums, salamanders, and toads can all put a big dent in pest populations.

Although some birds can be a nuisance by digging up newly planted seeds and eating your fruit, many songbirds search all day for caterpillars, flies, and grubs. Bats flit about at night, catching gnats, mosquitoes, and moths.

Frogs, salamanders, and toads all feast on flies, larvae, mosquitoes, and slugs. Opossums are notorious for searching out grubs, slugs, and ticks, but keep in mind that they also like to raid compost bins for kitchen scraps. Provide trees and shrubs in your landscape for birds to perch on and nest in.

Birdhouses and bat houses are a great investment for your garden; just be sure to site them properly and clean them yearly. Toad houses and cool, moist spots attract toads and salamanders for a siesta in the heat of the day.

Provide a small pond or other source of water for frogs, salamanders, and toads to lay their eggs or they will leave in search of breeding grounds elsewhere.

HOW TO NATURAL PEST AND DISEASE CONTROL

Even the most robust garden is susceptible to occasional damage from harmful insects, microbes, and fungi. Keep your garden healthy and productive by preventing problems before they occur and checking regularly for symptoms of pests and disease.

When an insect or disease becomes a problem, be ready to handpick the pests or treat the plants with a nontoxic solution quickly, before your harvest is affected.

Keep in mind that not all organic or natural means of pest control are safe for beneficial insects, and some can even be detrimental to our own health. Always read the labels of purchased pesticides and be meticulous about following the directions.

Handpicking

Handpicking insects off plants is the safest method available to gardeners because it allows you to kill only pests and leave the good guys alone, without any side effects.

This method works well for slow-moving insects, such as Colorado potato beetle larvae and cabbage worms. By picking insects off by hand, you can collect a sample in a jar, research the species, and determine whether it’s a threat to the health of your plant or actually beneficial.

If you’re squeamish about removing the insects, put on a pair of garden gloves and grab a jar of soapy water before you head out for handpicking duties. Flick the pest into the soapy water to drown.

For gardeners who also keep poultry, ducks love to eat slugs and guinea fowl consume ticks and other creepy crawlies. Chickens tend to do more damage to veggies than pests, so keep them out of the garden.

What are Pest Control Sprays? INSECTICIDAL SOAPS

Insecticidal soaps are a popular option for organic control of soft-bodied pests, such as aphids, mealybugs, and whiteflies.

These sprays kill insects by coating their bodies with a soapy residue that suffocates them. Purchased products are more effective than homemade versions; however, the cost and plastic waste can be a concern for home gardeners.

Make your own insecticidal sprays with common household ingredients and test on one or two leaves of affected plants to check for safety. Don’t use dish soap with degreasers, disinfectants, fragrances, or moisturizers that may harm plants and beneficial microbes.

Here’s a recipe for homemade insecticidal soap:

1 teaspoon plain dish soap

1 quart water

Place ingredients in a clean spray bottle and shake vigorously before spraying plants. Insects must be completely coated for best results.

You may also create your own spray to treat powdery mildew:

1 tablespoon milk

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 or 3 drops plain dish soap

Place ingredients in a clean spray bottle and shake vigorously before spraying plants. Do not apply insecticidal soaps to plants that are stressed by drought, in full sunlight, or under hot conditions.

Do not spray the plants with other pesticides until the soap is washed off, and use this concoction sparingly to prevent a buildup of salts in the soil from the baking soda (sodium bicarbonate).

GARLIC SPRAY

Researchers have found that garlic interplanted with cabbage helps reduce damage from diamondback moths by repelling adults from laying eggs on plants.

Although much information about the effectiveness of garlic spray as a pest repellent is anecdotal, this homemade remedy may help prevent damage to brassicas and other crops by repelling aphids, cabbage worms, spider mites, and even rabbits.

Here’s how to make your own garlic spray pest repellent:

1 quart (4 cups) water, divided

3 or 4 garlic cloves

1 to 2 teaspoons plain dish soap

Blend 2 cups of water and the garlic in a blender on high. Add the remaining 2 cups of water and the dish soap and mix thoroughly.

Strain this mixture through several layers of cheesecloth to remove bits of garlic that could clog your sprayer. Before you spray the entire plant, test this mixture on one or two leaves to make sure the plant is not adversely affected.

The soap in this spray will kill insects by coating their bodies, so avoid spraying beneficial insects and pollinators. The dish soap also acts as a sticking agent to coat leaves with the garlic compounds, increasing the effectiveness of its repellent qualities.

HOT PEPPER SPRAY

Safely repel mammals such as deer, squirrels, and rabbits by planting hot peppers around the edges of your garden or in beds prone to damage. Hot pepper spray offers another option for small spaces with damage from these cute pests.

The active ingredient in hot peppers is a compound called capsaicin. This chemical also repels some insects; however, it’s unlikely to remove infestations.

Here’s a recipe for hot pepper spray:

1 quart water

2 tablespoons crushed red pepper or cayenne pepper flakes

1 teaspoon plain dish soap

Combine the water and crushed red pepper in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Remove the pan from the heat and allow it to sit overnight. Strain the liquid through several layers of cheesecloth to remove solids that might clog your sprayer.

Add the dish soap and shake vigorously before spraying. Test this spray on a few leaves before applying to the entire plant.

Always wear a mask and gloves when handling this spray and be careful not to breathe in the fumes or get it in your eyes. To deter more pests, add 2 cloves of crushed garlic to the liquid before heating.

Row Covers and Other Barriers

Floating row covers (protective lightweight, breathable fabric covers) are a great way to keep flying insects from laying eggs on your cabbage, summer squash, and other vegetables.

Protect crops with row covers after the plants have sprouted but before the pests show up in your garden. Make sure the edges of the material are weighted down to keep the cover from blowing in the wind.

For crops that require pollination, remove the cover to allow pollinators to do their job, or hand-pollinate the flowers yourself, then reposition the row cover or leave it off.

Brussels sprouts and broccoli do not need to be pollinated to provide a harvest, but peppers, pumpkins, and summer squash (to name a few) do. Waxy coatings on leaves, such as hot pepper wax, also work by creating a barrier that pests can’t chew through to reach their meal.

Cardboard collars around seedlings prevent cutworms from killing your little plants at their most vulnerable stage. Recycle paper towel tubes or aluminum foil into barriers around your seedlings for this purpose.

Traps and Baits

These forms of control lure pests to their untimely death with a color, food, or scent they can’t resist. Pheromone traps include a natural hormone that attracts specific insects looking for mates.

These traps are often used to alert gardeners to the presence of mating insects so they may be controlled with insecticides. Use natural solutions whenever possible.

Yellow sticky traps are helpful for reducing whiteflies; you can make your own by coating yellow paper with petroleum jelly. Reduce thrip populations with white sticky traps.

Keep in mind that beneficial insects can inadvertently be killed in these traps, too. Slugs can cause a lot of damage to your garden, especially overnight.

You can try a cup of beer sunken with the top at ground level to entice these pests to their demise, or purchase an organic slug bait if the infestation is severe.

This product is usually composed of a small dose of iron phosphate mixed into pellet form with tasty wheat gluten or bran that slugs love to eat.

Diatomaceous Earth

Diatomaceous earth (DE) is a powder made from the shells of tiny marine creatures called diatoms. It works by causing microscopic cuts in soft-bodied insects, slugs, and snails. Always wear a mask when using DE to prevent irritation to your nose, throat, and lungs.

Create a natural barrier by sprinkling DE around plants to protect them from cutworms, flea beetle larvae, and slugs. Treat insects on leaves and stems by misting the plant with water then dusting immediately with DE so the powder sticks.

This method kills aphids, Colorado potato beetle larvae, and other soft-bodied insects. You’ll need to reapply after rain or irrigation washes away the last application.

Keep in mind that DE can also kill beneficial insects, such as bees and lady beetle larvae, by causing lacerations to their bodies. To avoid eliminating garden helpers, do not apply DE to flowers where bees are likely to be affected or to any plants where beneficial insects may be present.

Milky Spore Disease

When Japanese beetles and their grubs are causing serious damage to your turf or garden, consider using milky spore disease to reduce their populations. This disease is caused by Paenibacillus popilliae, a type of bacteria that attacks only Japanese beetle grubs.

A powdered form of the bacteria is applied to your lawn or garden soil when temperatures are between 60°F and 70°F. The bacterium infects the gut of a Japanese beetle grub and turns it to mush. Infected grubs will have a brownish or reddish color and should be left in the soil to infect the next generation of grubs.

Milky spore bacteria may remain viable in the soil for several years after application. Treating your entire lawn can be costly and the bacteria doesn’t affect adult beetles.

These beetles are able to fly several miles to find sources of food, so treating your lawn won’t prevent damage from adults. Use this biological pest control when grubs are causing damage to your lawn and to reduce future populations.

Beneficial Nematodes

Nematodes are tiny, unsegmented roundworms that live in the soil and feed on plants, insects, or animals, depending on the species. Dormant beneficial nematodes may be purchased at garden centers or online in a powdered form to mix with water and spray onto your garden soil or lawn.

Nematodes enter the body of a grub, caterpillar, or other insect through the mouth or another opening. It then secretes a toxic bacterium that kills the host and allows the nematode to feed on its body. There are many different species that live at different soil depths and feed on a variety of hosts.

If armyworms, cutworms, Japanese beetles, root worms, or other grubs and larvae are a problem in your garden, beneficial nematodes are a safe, organic option to control them. Be sure to follow the directions on the package for the best results.

Natural Doesn’t Always Mean Safe

Choosing an organic insecticide over a synthetic chemical product doesn’t necessarily mean there aren’t any harmful repercussions for your health or for the environment.

The term “insecticide” describes a compound that kills insects, even if the compound is extracted from natural materials.

Rotenone, a naturally occurring insecticide made from several species of tropical plants, is now recognized as harmful to humans and other mammals and has been implicated in the development of Parkinson’s disease.

Other natural or certified organic pesticides to use with caution include (but are not limited to):

copper sulfate

neem oil

nicotine

pyrethrins (or their synthetic alternative, pyrethroids)

sabadilla

spinosad

Although these products are less toxic than many synthetic pesticides, they may kill beneficial insects, and the runoff from overapplication can pollute waterways and cause crustaceans, fish, and other wildlife to die. Some of these products also cause health issues for humans when they are not used properly.

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veryfineday · 4 years ago

Text

Friday 8 April 1825

7 1/4

1 50/60

Vc Vc

Breakfast at 9 – the waiter having got me a nice hacKney chariot for 4 hours certain, and as much longer as I pleased, tooK Cordingley with me, and was off at 9 1/4 – got out at the College at 10 – Left Cordingley to wait for me, and, having driven first to the house, found the professor had come down immediately and was ready for me at the college – I met him in the stable on the left of the entrance – which opens on a pretty quadrangle laid out in grass, and enclosed with stables, and sheds on one side, the museum etc. –

we stood talKing in the stable a considerable time – It was lofty, the stalls about 6 feet wide, the common depth – the professor said, if he had now the building of these stables, they should be very different – the stalls should be... (vide line 3 et sequentes of this page) – it was not necessary to have a stable so lofty – § 8 feet high was enough – he would nt have then higher – the great art was in ventilation which had never been properly understood – they had just expended £1400 on ventilating their church on the plan of — : it did not answer – To economise heat, as it was called, the good air was properly let in at the bottom of the building; but then the apertures for the escape of the bad were only about a feet-and-a half or 2 feet above those to admit the good air, and therefore the plan could not answer, and ladies were still obliged to go out fainting; for the bad air always rises to the top, and ought to be let out there – the stable was for 5 or 6 horses (I thinK 5 but am not certain) – I observed 3 holes on a level with the ground (perhaps 6 inches by 4 inches) for the admission of fresh air, and ‘exactly over the nose of each horse’, as he stood at his hay-racK

(that sort of oval iron racK placed lengthwise upwards) was an aperture in the top of the ceiling (close to the edge of the wall) about 3 inches by 2 inches ‘the size of a bricK-end’ – for the escape of the foul air as emitted from the nostrils of the horse – They suited the buildings to this as well they could – sometimes they tooK off a ridge stone, and put a little contrivance at the top to Keep out rain, and let the air escape at the sides –

He had been employed to ventilate all our dragoon barracK-stables – had done those at yorK – not a good thing for the stalls to fall towards the bacK – § threw too much weight on the hind legs – all the horse-stalls leaned a little towards a grate in the centre of the stall, thro’ which the urine passed away by a channel underneath – the marc-stalls were, of course, obliged to have the grate at the foot of the stall, and the stall must lean sufficiently towards it – the stable was washed a light blueish gray or drab – the stalls the same, or yellowish stone colour – the horses never suffered to stand on litter during the day – the stalls paved with round gravel or moderate sized pebbles, as large as a large hen’s-egg –

then the professor said a great deal about the nature of colds and catarrhs and complaints of the lungs § – and on the necessity of the frog having pressure – when a horse came in very hot, the perspiration was an effort to cool – why shut all the doors, make the stable as close as possible, and sheet the horse, and do all to prevent this effort of nature – the best plan, to sponge a horse dry with cold water – §§ sponge him all over, and wipe him dry – he would be dry in a few minutes – It was not cold that gave a horse cold – if out all weathers, his coat would stare, and and he might be thin and starved – but he would be free from pulmonary complaints – it was heat, – exertion that determined too much blood to the heart and lungs that gave these complaints, – and he argued for sponging – said post-horses were taKen to ponds – the Russians plunged from hot baths into cold – If I myself was much heated sponging (wiping myself dry) and putting on dry linen would be best for me – he would not advocate for firing – it created a great deal of inflammation – he preferred the effect produced by bandaging – §§ 3 KnucKles-broad, four-feet-long bandages wrapped very tight round the part (while the leg was dry) then throwing cold water on the bandage, the cold produced by the evaporation of the water in drying contracted the muscles in a better way than firing without producing inflammation – grease never heard of now – a sure proof of a bad stable or bad grooming – § they generally used a mild solution of sulphate of zinc – §§ Poultices required so much care, they should always be used with caution – the effect should be to produce cold by evaporation, consequently tho’ did good while moist, they did harm when dry, and required constant attention in being changed sufficiently often – the best month to take a horse up is May §§ – when the horse has had the benefit of the spring grass, when he can have green meat in the stable, and when the temperature of the stable becomes nearly the same, as the tempreture out of doors – finds that warm stable do best, but then they should be properly ventilated § –

after standing perhaps 1/2 hour talKing in the stable, – went into the museum, small, maKing no shew compared with the French one, but excellently furnished with models of shoes, and all sorts of feet – If this room contained all the museum, there was perhaps a want of the others parts of the horse, – of the sKeleton at large – there seemed a good collection of the different interior parts ogans organs of the animal –

Here our attention turned entirely on the feet and on shoeing – the necessity of pressure to the frog – § Xenophon in his retreat of the ten thousand preferred a horse with a frog high from the ground – but this was accounted for, because the art of shoeing was then unKnown – his horses have a yard to run in paved with pebbles – §§ no nails should be near the heels, because they prevented the expansion of them on the frog having pressure and endeavoring to squeeze them out – the frog should never be touched in shoeing, unless unsound, and to cut the bits off and leave it clean – there ought to be room for a picKer between the heel of the shoe, and the crust of the horse’s heel – the sole ought always to be hollow – it was a general rule, it ought to be cut clean – that is always a guide, for it becomes clean (cleanhorn) sooner or later in proportion to its quality, and is a certain index §§ – the shoes ought to go to the end of the heel – when turned out, the forefeet (the hind feet should have no shoes) should be only tipped – ironed round the toe, and a bar from the middle of the toe to the outside quarter – the effect of this may be in time a little contraction of the inside quarter, then remove the bar to the inside – but the inside has always more weight to bear, and is more delicate –

Xenophon says choose horses with blacK hoofs – he is right – he was a philosopher – no stones, nor cut glass wears or hurts their horses hoofs so long as ity it is dry – it is moisture that wears away the horn – and therefore tips only do in dry weather § – from may to September – always bear this in mind, that it is moisture that wears the hood §§ – clay the best stopping – moisture is the thing to be produced by stopping – cowdung is only added to Keep up this moisture, but nothing does better than clay which is just as good without the cow dung – white a pupil of the Professors – a great deal of humbug in him § – so said they at Clarenton (the veterinary college near Paris) –

altogethr 1 1/2 hour with the professor – asKed if he had published written much – he said he talKed more than he wrote – probable enough – he talKed to me all the while as if he was lecturing – a middle sized (perhaps 5 feet 6 inches) stoutish, or, rather, portly man – neat in his person – but evidently a man who had risen by his merit – He had written on the foot of the horse and on shoeing – said I must have his booK, and on giving him my address (at webbe’s hotel) he promised to send it –

on leaving the college drove direct to sir Hector Maclean’s 1 Allan’s Terrace Kensington, to call on old Coll and Breadalbane McL-[MacLean] Found they had gone the Saturday before – In returning drove round the bacK of Kensington gardens (by the gravel pits as the coachman called it), and so direct to mrs. Partington’s, 16 Orchard street (near Portland Place) to call on miss Hall, general whartons sister, and Mr. wharton’s of Skelton castle – she was at home – very glad to see me – sat with her an hour – she had lately heard from Eliza Belcombe talKed a great deal about the B-s[Belcombes] –

Severe upon miss marsh – her dictatorial manner she had learnt at the spinning school, and which made her disagreeable – old Wallis said her grand father (marsh) Kept a little public house – she under restraint before her sister’s marriage (mrs. greenup always pretty and vulgar) and mrs. Salmond had Kept her in order, but the Norcliffes brought her out – she had had a handsome vulgar niece with her whom she would be glad to get off – for the G-s[Greenups] had been banKrupt – § Miss M[arsh] had done all she could to marry Mr Duffin was right to have a nieice to live with him § I said I had heard (π [Mariana] told me) Mr Henry Chaloner said the niece was handsome but as coarse in mind as body I thought Miss M[arsh] had brought her too forward Mrs Greenup had behaved unlike a gentlewoman to me and I knew nothing about her we were not on speaking terms § Mrs MacKs[MacKenzie’s] father was one § of the Yorkshire Dawsons sspent his fortune was master of the ceremonies at Bath after Nash left his wife there and ran off with Miss Fitz Herbert with whom he lived till her death the people at Bath pitied the poor wife she had some share in the profits of the rooms continued to her and Miss H[erbert] seemed to insinuate that they made a sort of subscription for her – Miss H[erbert] did not illnaturedly volunteer this about the MacK[enzie]s but the manner in which she spoke of Miss Marsh made me come away saying to myself she was grown a scandalizing old maid § – miss Hall said that manner Kept ladies, and ladies of patched up characters lived in Sloane street – had warned mrs. mcK-[MacKenzie] not to let miss mcK-[MacKenzie] walK about with the Miss Saundersons mrs. Saunderson not a gentle woman –

From Miss Hall’s drove to the Blue boar Holborn – tooK 2 inside places for Sunday morning – the man told me to be there at 6 3/4 – then drove to Hewitt’s, straw hat manufacturer, 96 curtain road, near worship street – on Mrs William Priestleys account a first cousin of hers she wanted to know what sort of man he was I pretended a recommendation for hats from a family of Smith of Halifax in Yorkshire the man caught at this made inquiries about the πs [Mariana’s] mentioned the relationship and I promised to say I had seen him he seemed respectable supplied the city straw hat sellers made chiefly black willow bonnets and English leghorn –

From curtain road drove to no.94 Pall mall, got out there at 3 50/60 – § gave Cordingley money to give mr. webbe to pay the man for the hacKney Chariot (from 9 1/4 to 4) and went in (the Apollo Saloon, 94 Pall mall) to hear the infant Lyra – a child apparently about 5 years old, play the harp – no notes – from ear – different airs with variations – a pretty little g child – fine blacK eyes – speaKing, interesting, pensive cast of countenance – the performance, certainly wonderful lasted about 1/2 hour – the room full – I was rather too late, but heard her 20 minutes –

returned home – spoke to Leuliette at the coach office, about the mistake made in Dover as I went – charging me 18 francs too much – spoke, too, about sending parcels to Paris or receiving them from there – he would take care it should be done safely – § each parcel however small would be charged 5/9 from London to P-[Paris] or P-[Paris] to London – and a largish parcel would only be the same – Duties, of course, not included –

§§ while I was out Professor Coleman had sent the booK, 1 volume 4to [quarto] London 1802. ‘Observation on the Structure, œconomy, and diseases of the foot of the horse’ and on shoeing – Read a little of it – 2 or 3 of the first pp.[pages] – Dinner at 6 – hair curled at eight – for about an hour before dinner and between 2 and 3 hours afterwards (till 10) writing out my accounts from march 30 up tonight – then till one copying the fir[s]t page of and half of the third and the ends of my letter to Mrs Barlow – Very fine day – a very little discharge having no syringe unpacked merely washed with cold water

#anne lister code breaker #1825

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mama-orion · 7 years ago

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Sacre Coeur B Sides: pond stomp

As promised, here’s the first of the Sacre Coeur B sides! Enjoy this little bit of parentlock fluff to soothe the soul. Back when SC reached 1,000 hits, I celebrated by asking for a writing prompt. @shirleycarlton kindly gave me "cold rainy spring day. And frogs." I've been holding this particular 'memory' in my mind for months. I'm happy to finally bring it forth as summer fades into autumn. I was getting the blues. This helped. This is an entry from Sherlock's scrap book of mind palace memories. __________________

“I’ve got one!” Lissa squealed, holding up the frog triumphantly, knee-deep in the pond. “Dada, look how big she is!”

Sherlock stepped off the bank into the shallow pond, the muddy bottom sucking at his tall black wellies as he stepped with care toward his daughter. A light spring rain pattered on their raincoats, bright flashes of yellow in the gray afternoon light.

“A fine specimen of amphibian, order of Anura.” He chuckled. “You hold that frog any closer, Bee, you’ll soon find out if it’s a prince.”

“Or princess. Let’s keep her,” Lissa said thoughtfully, holding her squirming frog at eye level, close to her nose. “I’ll call her Anura. That’s lovely.”

Sherlock sucked in his breath, preparing himself for a fierce battle of wills. “She’ll be happier here, Bee, where she has everything she needs.” Lissa scowled, a tremor suddenly quaking her lower lip. “You can visit Anura every day, and you’ll hear her singing from your bedroom window.”

Lissa stared longingly at the frog. Then, with a sudden shuddery breath, she nodded. “Right. I wouldn’t want someone taking me out of the cottage. Or the flat. I bet she has dads in the pond who would miss her, just like me.”

Sherlock felt a pang deep in his gut. Five years later and it was still his greatest fear that Lissa might be somehow spirited away from them, though the threat of Rosamund was gone. Though he and John didn’t speak of it, Sherlock found it very interesting that Lissa had come to this conclusion so quickly on her own.

“Well done, love, that wasn’t easy. But it was very kind.” He bent down to kiss her damp hair. “Study her a bit, see if you can find something about her you’ll recognize next time.” Lissa squinted at her wriggling frog, turning on her considerable six-year-old powers of observation.

Sherlock took a deep breath to steady his nerves. Be present, he reminded himself. The rain smelled good. It was so green, the ferns already towering over Bee’s head, the drooping elms and shaggy conifers making a little haven beneath their bows where a trickling stream fed the pond. The trill of frogs had silenced as they’d approached, but as they stood quietly, his child studying the frog as if it were the first of its kind, a few brave anura began to chirrup again. A little more of the tension in his chest loosened.

Sherlock thought fondly of their first summer here five years ago, when it had been John who had so badly needed the solace of the cottage. Each summer found them back, pottering in the garden, running into the hedge maze after their increasingly mobile daughter, caring for the bees. There was never a question about coming, but some years, like this one, it became too easy to put off.

Sherlock’s work on the serum, now as senior researcher with a considerable team at his beck and call, had been at a fever pitch that spring. It had been John who sat him down and firmly announced that for the sake of all their health, their marriage and their daughter, they head to Sussex. Immediately. Sherlock, fixated on his goal of the first round of human trails, had protested, but John would have none of it.

“They’ll all still be here when you get back, I promise you.” He’d smirked. “Don’t worry, most of the subjects won’t even realize you’ve gone.”

“Unless it does work,” Sherlock had pressed. “All of the rats regain their memories.”

“Then you’ll want your excellent interns pulling their weight, gathering lots of data, and compiling it all into reports for you to review. This is what senior researchers do, love.”

“Dada? Dada! I think I’m stuck.” Lissa’s voice pulled him back to the pond beneath the pine copse, his child, his husband just up the hill making tea.

John had been right, of course.

Still clutching her frog, Lissa tugged at her own little wellies, well-submerged and full of murky water. She was well and truly stuck in the pond muck.

“Hold tight, Bee, I’ll give you a tug.”

Sherlock steadied his daughter’s shoulder, the frog seeming resigned to its captivity, and plunged a hand into the cold water to fish around for her little green boot. He located a pull-ring and with a satisfying slurch, freed each boot. Lissa giggled.

“That sounded rude.”

“Come, let’s get Anura back to her two hundred cousins for her tea. Papa’s making chowder and he’ll not be pleased if I keep you out in the rain too long.”

“Dada, I’m already wet. To my knees!” She pressed her nose to the frog’s little pointed olive-green head and gently eased it back into the water. They watched it swim away with graceful kicks.

“She had a red spot.”

“Pardon?”

Lissa threaded a cold, damp hand into his own. “A spot, just below her left eye. That’s how I’ll know. When I see her again. I’ll know it’s Anura.”

“Ah. Well done, Bee.”

Together they splashed back through the shallow pond, water-striders skating around their calves. As they made their way through the reeds and into the little copse of trees, Lissa’s boots sloshed comically.

“Wait, sit here a moment on this log. Let’s leave some of the pond here for the frogs, hm?” Lissa sat on the log humming while he tugged off each little boot, dumping a small pond’s worth of water into the pine needles.

“Look, Dada, jumper beans!” Before he could get the boots back onto her feet, Lissa dashed off the log, impervious to the prickly forest floor. She’d gotten solid callouses running half-wild during their holiday.

Sherlock followed, boots dangling from his fingers, and crouched next to her by a bushy hedge of jewel weed. The little orange snap-dragon flowers were bright in the gray light. Together they hunted for the fattest seed pods, crowing as the slightest pressure of a fingertip set the pod springing open, flinging the seed in a very satisfying way.

The sodden afternoon light was fading and Lissa had scoured the patch for every last seedpod when he heard John calling from the cottage yard.

“Let’s bring one to Papa!”

Sherlock grinned. No roses at this cottage. Here, we bring our beloveds self-propagating marsh weeds.

With Lissa’s eagle eye, they found one untouched pod and, as if the thing were a stick of unstable dynamite, pulled up the plant. Lissa delegated the tricky job of transport to Sherlock and ran ahead through the damp grass toward the cottage, the soles of her pale little bare feet flashing.

Sherlock watched as John caught sight of her bright yellow raincoat sprinting from the woods and ran out to intercept her. Boots in one hand, explosive plant in the other, Sherlock followed slowly, taking in the sight of John swinging their daughter around and around in the fading dusk, then gathering her up tight and crying in mock-dismay as he, too, was covered in pond muck.

Sherlock’s heart squeezed. Another thin layer of tension melted away as he carefully tucked the memory into the expansive topiary of his mind palace that held so many cottage moments.

When Sherlock finally reached them, John was holding Lissa, a heavy armful, snuggled close to his jumpered-chest as she bubbled with her story of Anura.

“And we brought you a hopper bean! Just for you!” Sherlock reverently held out the plant for John. Their eyes met, crinkling into knowing smiles. John ceremoniously squeezed the little pod and they all cried out as it sprung into a perfect projectile, the seed flying up over their heads.

“Thank you, Bee,” John said. “My day was missing a jumper bean. Is your day missing ginger nuts? Because I’ve just taken some from the oven.”

Cheering, Lissa squirmed out of his arms and ran across the garden, disappearing into the cottage, singing about biscuits.

Following more slowly, John and Sherlock snaked their arms around one another. John gave him a squeeze.

“Good pond stomp?”

“Yes. It was… peaceful.”

“You look refreshed. We always do seem to find our rhythm here.”

“Yes, but I was still feeling incomplete.” He pressed a kiss to John’s temple as they walked through the dripping garden toward the warm glow of the cottage. “My day was missing ginger nuts, too.”

_________

@gobacktobakerstreet @ineedhugz

#sacrecoeurfic #sacrecoeurbsides #fanfic #johnlock #parentlock #fluff #so fluffy #i needed this #not sad anymore

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beckasblog-blog · 6 years ago

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People who go out of their way to help random creatures are the best people.

We weren't allowed to bring random animals home. (Also no snakes or bugs)

Things we did do:

Hand feed the local toads so they would wait in the same spot everynight

adopt a gecko from a neighbor kid and realize I had no idea what I was doing (RIP Jumper, sorry I was an ignorant owner, but I learned to throughly research all future pets)

Adopted a series of Guinea pigs. Adorable, but so much more difficult than hamsters. We ended up building a custom enclosure and buying high-quality hay and good pellets from Amazon (Small Pet Select has excellent hay and perservitive-free food for rabbits & Guinea pigs). They got floor time every day with romaine and select edible grasses for snacks. We also took them outside and let them have (closely supervised) grazing time in the back yard. The were so spoiled and happy.

Received a female African clawed frog in the mail by mistake. It was supposed to be a dwarf clawed frog, but they look almost identical as froglets. Although where did the get their frogs from that they could screw up that badly? That horrible thing lived forever and we were all slightly terrified of it.

Ended up with so many Golfish from the fair that we built a fishpond in the back yard for them to live in. They liked it so much that they ended up breeding. The baby fish had some of the most beautiful color combinations

a parakeet who was perpetually sick and passed away despite our best efforts numerous vet visits (don't buy birds from chain petstores kids, they all have yeast infections)

Had a bearded dragon, who was just adorable and cuddly and super chill. He got time outside to sum himself on the rocks by the fishpond, nibbled on a few plants (which we then frantically Googled to see if they were toxic), swim in the pond all puffed up like a toad, instead of alligator style like on youtube, and gobble down bumblebees before we could grab him (outside bugs are a no-no because of parasites and pesticides, and he shouldn't be eating stinging insects anyway) Unfortunately, he was not always closely supervised, and disappeared one day. My poor brother still feels guilty, he forgot that the Beardie was outside, but things happen. I dropped my first hamster on the driveway (I forget why I was outside with him, I didn't really think things through) and that little bigger still lived for 3 years, until all his fur fell out from mites in the wood bedding and I had to get his cardboard instead, then he died a few months later.

Started a Dubia Roach colony (look them up, they are the future of feeder insects), because I just absolutely hate petstore crickets. At least one would always escape and then I'd wake to the evil thing sitting on the wall by my head, just -staring- straight at me. This happened several times with different batches of crickets. It was the most disturbing thing that has ever happened to me.

My brother adopted a red-eared slider that somehow survived an Ohio winter in a pond before we got it. Didn't have a big tank so he would winter in the tank and get to swim in the fishpond (he didn't seem to bother the big fish but he did eat some minnows and probably a few baby fish, but the pond was a bit over populated anyway) My brother couldn't get him out and he ended up wintering in the fish pond. He survived, but later left the pond and is roaming free.

We modified a Midwest Guinea pig cage so our hamsters had a minimum of 4 Sq ft each. We also discovered that almost all hamster food is too low in protein or fiber, so we made a special balance mix with the best hamster food and rodent blocks.

I also have, on numerous occasions, safely relocated outside:

Wolf spiders (they don't make webs and they run across the floor too much)

Crickets (I only hate the petstore ones, wild ones are ok, but are still. Annoying when there's just 1)

House centipedes (they don't deserve to die just because they creep me out)

Shield or stink bugs (they like hide under sink handles and also freak me out whenever they fly because my brain goes "flying spider wasp!!" no matter how many times I tell myself that's not a thing)

My proudest moment though, was when I rescued a baby Killdeer that was trapped in a storm drain in the parking lot where I worked. The mom was nearby and kept calling him, but he couldn't get out on him own, and judging by amount of droppings he'd been there awhile.

I got someone to use a forklift to pick up the heavy grate and tried to get him out.

I ended up using a flattened box to block his escape so I could scoop him out.

The mom was flying around worried, and tried to warn me off a few times, but as soon as her baby was free, she rejoined him and they scampered off.

Her distress calls were just so heartbreaking, I had to help.

An Incomplete List of the Animals my Grandpa brought home over the course of his 67-year marriage to Gandma:

Annabell, a solid white and completely deaf pit bull that used to let mom draw on her belly

The World’s Ugliest Tom Cat, who turned out to be the cuddiest teddy bear of an animal

Cocker spaniel named “Captain”

Stupid, the Cat

Litter of baby raccoons

Three more cats

A completely bald and extremely anxious canary that sang beautifully, but only at 4 AM

Baby Squirrel that grew up in the house and then refused to move out

A Genuine Thoroughbred Racehorse who was a spectacular athelete but had a habit of running races in the wrong direction. Benny turned out to be a terrific trail horse instead.

Turtle

Snapping Turtle

A bucket full of 43 goldfish left over from the fair. Mom counted once they were all in the bathtub in the backyard with the snapping turtle.

Another cocker spaniel named “Major”, who had the tremendous talent of eating green beans silently

Red-tailed hawk he found on the highway, and sucessfully nursed back to health and released.

Dummy, Son of Stupid

Strange, the dog that lived under the porch and only came into the house at night.

An “abandoned” baby deer.

Spooky, an alleged dog.

Joey the parakeet whose tricks were 1. drinking tea out of a tiny cup 2. threatening to peck out people’s eyes 3. wearing hats

A Really Big Toad he found behind the factory, because the other auto workers were discussing using it for target practice. Mr. Grumpity was guardian of the rosebed for several years and granny’s (his mother) favorite animal he ever brought home.

Gretchen, a St. Bernard that had to be shaved from her prior owner’s neglect, and spent a week hiding from sight with such success in the house that they thought she’d run away.

Arson, Burglary and Murder, three frankly adorable little kittens. They did not change the names, much to the regret of the cop who lived three doors down.

Yet another Cocker Spaniel, named “Colonel”

Cardinal (bird)

Canada Goose (Demon)

Once in the nursing home, he had a “pet” 12-point whitetail buck that would come to his window to be fed corn and get headskritches, inexplicably named “Florence”

The marriage only ended because thier time on earth did. He never kept an animal Grandma wouldn’t allow and if anything she was worse about it. She was the one who brought home a tarantula.

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thecoroutfitters · 7 years ago

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Written by R. Ann Parris on The Prepper Journal.

Editors Note: Another contribution from R. Ann Parris to The Prepper Journal. As always, if you have information for Preppers that you would like to share and possibly receive a $25 cash award, as well as being entered into the Prepper Writing Contest AND have a chance to win one of three Amazon Gift Cards with the top prize being a $300 card to purchase your own prepping supplies, then enter today!

Something that can be of value to any prepper at any stage of development, even urban preppers in tight dwellings, is planning. Permaculture’s sectors and zone maps are two of the most powerful tools for developing a plan, both for assessing risks, identifying resources, and developing efficient plans for a site.

Usually sectors gets covered first. I’m going to cover Zones instead. I highly endorse doing a search for “permaculture sectors” – that’s where risks and resources are going to be found. Research it with an eye for defensive and evacuation potential as well.

Zone mapping in permaculture is where we define areas by our presence, using activity and energy input level. By consolidating things that need the same amount of interaction, or even each other, we can greatly increase our efficiency. With a map that actually shows our patterns, and our goals, we can move or site things to maximize that efficiency.

Permie Zones

Permaculture zones are abstract geographic areas delineated from the other areas of our property – or our habitual paths – by the amount of time we spend in that area. The zones are based on access, not geographic nearness to our homes and beds. Many zone map examples are shown in concentric rings, but actual zones are drawn and defined by our energy and presence, not distance.

Permaculture universally recognizes 5 zones, in ascending order based on the time we spend there. Sometimes there’s a Zone 0 for the self or the home. The primary-activity and most-visited zones are Zones 1 and 2.

1 – Very intensive presence – Most active, usually multiple trips/passes daily

2 – Intensive use – Active, possibly still multiple visits per day, but not quite as frequent as Zone 1

Zone 1 is where your paths most frequently take you. It’s based almost entirely on our human environment.

Things like kitchen herbs and table gardens that need irrigation or are harvested from daily, pets and livestock that are visited daily for care or entertainment, and daily waste and composting areas are located in Zone 1.

Our kitchens and bathrooms are pretty automatic on a household/apartment level, although in permaculture, most will automatically stick the whole house in Zone 0-1.

I don’t, because I have a front stoop I almost never go in/on/through, a spare bedroom I’m only in one part of the year, only pass through my den, and on a daily basis, I usually only poke my head into the living room if I’m looking for a person or a dog. On the other hand, my father spends far more time in the living room. He rarely uses his kitchen porch, whereas my mother and I are on ours ten to fifteen times a day for access to the yard, gardens, or letting animals in and out.

The inclinations between the back and kitchen doors and-or time spent in different rooms change the views and the opportunities our presence offers. For us, it matters. For others, maybe not as much.

Zone 1 sometimes includes livestock, or sometimes they’re bumped to Zone 2, even if they’re livestock we bed down and release, milk, collect eggs from, or feed twice daily.

Zone 2 includes those areas that may not see quite as much human interaction. Regularly permies will include things like perennials with longer seasons between harvests and less daily and weekly care needed, and some livestock like foraging cattle or meat goats.

Zones 3 and 4 see increasingly less human interaction and fewer human inputs (or will, once established).

Zone 3 is larger elements, usually – the bulk foods like grains and orchards, animal pastures, ponds. They are things we may only see weekly, monthly or quarterly.

Zone 4 gets even less interaction. Usually this is managed land, tailored for foraging, livestock fodder and crop trees, timber, and longer-term grazing.

Zone 5 is an area that humans largely leave alone. Some will define this as an entirely wild area. Some will define it as a managed wild area.

To some, it’s for nature and only nature – left as a green-way – while to others, periodic hunting or foraging in this area is expected. For others, Zone 5 might be brush piles, frog houses, owl and dove and bat houses, little native patches of weeds, and other things we scatter through a yard and garden and affix to buildings to encourage helpful wildlife.

This site http://deepgreenpermaculture.com/permaculture/permaculture-design-principles/4-zones-and-sectors-efficient-energy-planning/ has a more detailed set of examples and some graphics of Zone definitions. It also has some subsections about common zone sizes.

Permaculture Research Institute – Urban farm rabbits located over composting bins, near water catchment, and along path between house, shed and garage.

Urban & Suburban Sites

There’s nothing wrong with taking a set of known factors and twitching it. Zone definitions can be rearranged and relisted, tailoring them to fit our lifestyles.

For an apartment, condo, or a single-family home on less than a half-acre, zones shrink and include our floorplan. When we turn to sector mapping, we zoom out and include more of our neighborhood with condos and small yards, but that “zoom” can apply to zones as well.

Regardless of where we’re going, or what’s around us as we putter through the day, our habits tend to change by season, and what’s around us changes. There may be areas we can “expand” into besides our own property.

That’s really worthy of its own article, but some examples would be any areas we can hit with seed bombs for wild edibles or for plants that can be improving the soil now for use in a crisis. We might have parks, verges, ditches and other areas that are untapped resources but are on some of our daily, weekly and monthly beaten paths. We might also find landowners (or absent landowners) to talk to about growing space, or have rooftops or fire escape landings that we can use for planters and water catchment, now or “after”.

Knowing where we go most frequently will help even the tiniest studio prepper identify places that have the most potential with the least effort – and that’s really what efficiency is all about, with efficiency one of the major gods of the permies.

Multiple Maps

What I recommend and what I do for clients is to actually print three identical maps. Two are for “right now”, and are going to be our habitual activity maps, one for the “high season” when we’re outside the most and one for the “slow season” when we’re outside least.

The third map is going to be our “ideal” map – what we’re about to work to make happen.

See, we’re going to use these maps to identify existing zones using our current activity. However, going back to efficiency, we’re also going to use them as a planning tool. Some of the trends we identify will lead to changes, hopefully consolidating our zones of activity for better efficiency.

We can also nab a wider view for our neighborhoods, even as home- and landowners.

Those with significant acreage might want to do one map set with just the house and the 0.5-1 acre it sits on and a second set with the whole property and a margin around it.

Supplies for Mapping

Printing and drawing really is the easiest way to make this happen. You can use computer programs to trace lines that will progressively darken or lighten with every pass. That’s not crazy talk, since it offers opportunities to make multiple-scale maps at once, then just zoom in and out. For the average client, it’s a black-and-white drawing or Google map of their property, regularly with a chunk of the surrounding area that’s going to leave some margin for additional notes.

I really like the Google Earth maps that are nice and up-to-date, and that you can adjust by season and time of day. They let you pick noon in the barest of winter, which lets you “see” more of your property. If you can’t get a free submission to Google Earth, find out if a local library has it, do some screen grabs at various zooms/scales and print them off wherever it’s cheapest.

For paper, standard letter 8.5×11” is fine, or we can go up to 11×17 or even 17×24” if we want.

We’ll also want some coloring supplies.

A couple of sharpened crayons or colored pencils are fine. Markers also work, although you either want really fine points or really big maps. Aim for colors that are easy to see on a simple map, that you’ll be able to see the map through (no dark Sharpies or pens), and that will darken as you overlap lines. Red, orange, blue, and pale purple tend to work really well.

One Map

If you only want to print one map, no big there. Hit the dollar store for some of that thin notebook or copy paper that you can trace through. You can shine a light through some plastic or use a bright window to help see better. Call it an overlay.

You can also create a larger map and make overlays of your zones and sectors using contact paper and map pens or grease pencils.

Overlays will also help reduce printing in case you decide you want to add seasonal maps, do maps for each member of the family, or combine everything into a single map.

It’s also a backup against an ill-timed sneeze, doggy nose-bump, or a beloved’s alarm going off and making us jump with a marker in our hand. Hey, we’re preppers. Prepare for crazy things.

The Process of Activity Mapping

This is where the “darkens as we overlap lines, but not too dark” comes into play. Observe, then color.

Start with your first work-day wake-up, and trace your tracks through the house, then outside it. Back and forth, bathroom, coffee, paper, animals, meals, vehicles, back and forth, all through your day until you tuck yourself in at night. To and from the bus, trash can, walking the dogs, as we hang out and retrace steps from vehicles or gardens to sheds and garages, the hose, indoor faucets, all the way down our rows and around our flower/garden beds.

Don’t draw bird-flies straight lines. Trace the actual path everyone takes. Then repeat for the work week, and the weekend.

Remember, it’s the overlaps – resulting in darker colors – that give us our current intensity of use. Be honest with yourself. You’re the one who does or doesn’t benefit.

Zone Map

Your existing zone map just drew itself.

The darkest areas are your 0-1-2 zones. Your palest and untouched areas are your Zone 4 and really, really excellent places to expand that Zone 4 or develop your Zone 5.

Now we go through, and kind of divide those spaces into blobs and blurbs and modern art. We can re-draw or trace our map and give them different colors now, or make them more uniform shades, or just more clearly delineate edges.

You should be able to identify some of the areas you only hit a couple of times a year, like pruning, or places we inspect and repair only as needed.

We should also be observant enough to know those wide, looping, lightly-drawn areas are only us mowing – and maybe we keep those in our map in their apparent zones, or maybe we go back and remove those, or lighten them to more accurately reflect how much attention they actually get while they’re getting mowed. Otherwise, especially for us Southerners, our summer map is going to show our twice-weekly or 2-6 times-monthly sing-along ride or teenager’s slave labor as getting more attention than our workshop and laundry room.

Shoveling snow and raking leaves has some impact on applying the information we just gathered, but not really a ton, so you can go light there, too, if you like.

Applying the Zone Map

Our map doesn’t just sit there. It’s a tool, one of many.

Most of us are likely to have some of our darker/intense areas out there on their own, and many of us likely have dark lines like a drunken spider’s web hooking and criss-crossing.

Those oddball dark jags are places where we can consolidate some of our activities, instead of leaving them suspended and isolated. That will save us time and effort, which will make us more efficient.

When we plan to expand gardens or even change where we keep the tools we use, consult the existing zone map. Places we’re already passing make excellent locations for those.

If we’re passing them regularly, they get more attention and we see that they’re dry, being eaten by critters, sick and sad, or ready to harvest. Being faster to respond to them, and able to respond immediately with tools if necessary, will result in better yields.

Worm bin composter located near the source of feed and easy access to water.

Sometimes we might look at our plan and actively renovate things we already have in place – especially if those things don’t get the attention they should. The extra attention and ease may make it worth it to switch from conventional beds to a series of trash cans turned into vertical gardens, from hot composting piles kept across the yard to a pipe composter in a keyhole bed or a worm composter near the kitchen or the trash.

We may move livestock so it’s faster and easier to get them into gardens for pest control or tilling, or to get composted manure onto large plots. We might move them somewhere else so they’re easier to toss kitchen scraps to.

We might eschew the usual advice of sticking an orchard out-out so we can put small livestock under it, or to make some additional use of our dog runs and kids’ play areas.

Things like the sectors that affect our property, stacking elements and stacking functions, mapping water movement, and switching to low- or lower-labor growing styles that fit into our busy lives can all help make our properties, big or small, more efficient and productive.

A zone map will help us further analyze where we can increase our efficiency and help us visualize how the puzzle pieces of our production and resources can best fit together. We can then play with the map, marking future expansions to see how they’ll fit in with our current traffic flows and patterns, and make our properties more versatile, resilient and productive all over again.

The post Permaculture Zone Planning for When Winter is Coming appeared first on The Prepper Journal.

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ntrending · 5 years ago

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Are we killing off all the wild buffalo that still know how to roam?

New Post has been published on https://nexcraft.co/are-we-killing-off-all-the-wild-buffalo-that-still-know-how-to-roam/

Are we killing off all the wild buffalo that still know how to roam?

In the late winter sun, Yellowstone National Park’s blanket of snow is blindingly white. The great shaggy beasts—bison, in their thick, burnished winter coats—thrive in the glare. A few yards from where I stand on the road, a small group is gathered, sweeping their upturned horns from side to side, grunting softly as they plow away the snow to graze. I’m transfixed, so it takes a minute to notice the hundred or so more scattered in the valley ahead of me. Across the steep rise of the Gallatin Range, bushes dotting the ridge come into focus; each, I realize, is a buffalo, lumbering out of the mountains toward lower elevation.

Each winter, Yellowstone’s bison move from the high country in groups of a few dozen, seeking better feeding grounds. The evidence of wild bison migration is etched into our continent, where the movement of vast herds shaped the land. The countless pounding hooves formed wide passages called buffalo traces, as the beasts followed watersheds and ridgelines to new territory. The early pioneers followed these paths—through the Cumberland Gap in the Blue Ridge Mountains, across the Ohio River near Louisville, and the Vincennes trace through Indiana and Illinois—to settle the West.

Of course, these places have long been purged of wild buffalo. By the 20th century, westward-moving colonizers, a thriving hide-hunting trade, and efforts to wipe out native populations by diminishing their primary food source had reduced a teeming mass of tens of millions of bison to just 23 fugitives, holed up in a valley a few miles south of where I glimpsed my first Yellowstone grazer.

Today, the American buffalo is one of the environmentalist movements’ great success stories. Thanks to more than a century of conservation efforts, there are roughly half a million bison in the United States, though they live strikingly different lives than their ancestors. More than 96 percent are livestock, raised for meat. The remainder, about 19,000, are mostly behind fences, in managed herds across the country.

Yellowstone’s bison are different. The animals that occupy the park are the last of their kind. They exist as their forebears did, in this tiny sliver of the U.S. where they’ve never been extirpated. They fight, graze, and repopulate without the help of humans. They fall through thin ice and drown in lakes and rivers. They lose their old and sick to grizzly bears and wolves. And in winter, when the grass dwindles, they get going, roaming across the reserve’s 2.2 million acres, an area far less than 1 percent of their historic range. They are America’s last truly wild bison.

That wildness is what makes them iconic. In 2016, President Obama named the bison our first national mammal. They appear on the seals and flags of five states, and bring in hundreds of millions in tourism dollars every year. But scientists and conservationists warn that the Yellowstone bison are approaching a precipice—a moment that may make it nearly impossible to preserve their untamed nature.

For the ranchers and civilians who live on the park’s outskirts, migrating bison have never been convenient, but an infectious disease has heightened tensions. Scientists estimate that more than half of Yellowstone’s female bison herd carry brucellosis, a bacterial infection that causes domestic cows to abort their fetal calves. Though there’s never been a documented case of transfer from bison to cattle, theoretically the disease could spread to the herds that graze on public lands outside the park. Since 2000, the Department of Livestock for the state of Montana, which controls the land north of the park, has had an agreement with Yellowstone officials, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and tribal entities: Inside the park, the bison are free to move as they please; once they go beyond the boundary, they’re fair game. Some are killed by hunters and local tribes. More are captured by wildlife managers and sent to slaughter. Almost none of the bison that attempt to migrate beyond Yellowstone’s borders survive.

Humans have played a role in natural selection since the first hunter threw a spear. But wildlife biologist and retired Colorado State professor James Bailey warns that by culling the migrating bison, and therefore selecting for the trait of staying put, we might be “disorganizing and diminishing the wild, adaptive genome.” He acknowledges that the proximity of people to places like Yellowstone makes some intervention necessary, though he calls the field he taught for 20 years—wildlife management—an oxymoron. But already, there are serious consequences.

“People are always looking for a number,” he says. “How many do we need? How much genetic diversity? How much natural selection? All these lines are largely arbitrary, so there’s no value in waiting for an absolute answer. Meanwhile, it’s business as usual, which is degrading the wildness of our herd.”

The animals in conservation herds will keep the species safe from extinction, but if we domesticate the mobility out of this last wild group, the ecology of the landscape will suffer, perhaps irretrievably, and we will have lost our wild buffalo after all.

In the American imagination, the West has often been a cattleman’s paradise. In reality, that land has always belonged to the bison. Within their habitat—a range that once stretched across at least 40 states—the bison is a keystone species, on which nearly everything else in the ecosystem depends.

At Stephens Creek Capture Facility, staff send straying bison to slaughter.

As they graze, their hooves and horns turn the soil, planting seeds and creating pockets of moisture that encourage growth. When they shed hair, small mammals and grassland birds use it to insulate their nests. Wallows, the depressions bison form by rolling in the dirt, fill with water and create miniature pond habitats for insects and frogs. Over millennia this mutually beneficial coevolution has built an ecosystem in which the buffalo—and their ability to roam—are vital.

Then, we nearly wiped them out, and replaced them with cows.

In the late 19th century, after tanneries developed a process for making hides into leather, bison slaughter peaked. Hunters killed an estimated 2 million in 1870. For the next three years, hide hunters took down roughly 5,000 buffalo every day. By mid-1883, almost every single bison in the U.S. was dead.

Once the buffalo were gone from the plains, ranchers took advantage of all that grazing land to drive in their cattle. In truth, cattle aren’t built for the ecosystem. They are indiscriminate eaters who will chew a summer pasture down to its roots, decimating native grasses and promoting fast-growing invasive species, some with little nutritional value. They struggle to survive harsh winters; they can’t dig through heavy snow to reach surviving foliage. If they wander more than a half-day’s walk from a permanent water source, they risk death from dehydration.

In contrast, bison are built to survive. They “will eat snow, search out tiny springs, even paw the earth for water,” writes Dan O’Brien, a rancher in South Dakota, in his book, Buffalo for the Broken Heart, a memoir about converting his cattle operation to a free-range bison ranch. The diversity of their diet “allows them to roam many miles from major sources of water. That difference between cattle and buffalo is obvious enough for anyone to see.”

We’ll never glimpse our nation’s landscape as it might have looked had the bison survived, but thanks to Yellowstone, we can make a pretty good guess. Chris Geremia, the park’s soft-spoken, bespectacled lead bison biologist, says the herd shapes the local ecology in a way other large ungulates—pronghorn, deer, sheep, and elk—do not. As temperatures begin to climb in the spring, all the animals “surf the green wave,” moving from low to high elevations as grasses and plants emerge. Unlike the other species, though, buffalo stop surfing in mid-spring, gathering in huge numbers in central areas they turn into grazing lawns.

“They look just like a lawn in the suburbs,” Geremia says. At the end of the season, pastures where domestic cattle graze are nearly barren. The places where bison wander and feed, on the other hand, stay lush and abundant with life. Prevent buffalo from migrating, Geremia tells me, and you remove the landscape’s ability to renew itself.

Preventing bison from migrating is part of his job, though. In 1995, the state of Montana sued Yellowstone National Park, arguing that the wandering buffalo were a business handicap. Livestock interest groups and local ranchers asserted that in addition to competing with cattle for grass and causing property damage, the bison could transmit the brucellosis pathogen to their herds.

Five years later, a drawn-out court battle resulted in the Interagency Bison Management Plan, a collective that meets each November to set a culling target for the coming winter. The group includes the Montana Department of Livestock; Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks; the National Park Service; the USDA Animal and Plant Inspection Service; the U.S. Forest Service; and three tribal entities. They manage an annual slaughter aimed at keeping the Yellowstone buffalo population between 3,000 and 4,200, just barely enough to maintain genetic diversity.

A young bison thrashes against the cold steel of a squeeze chute, bucking and tossing its head in a panic. It takes two National Park Service employees, wielding electrified cattle prods, several attempts to close the hydraulic-powered sides of the stall around the animal. The immobilized yearling’s eyes open wide as Geremia and his colleagues examine its teeth, draw a syringe full of blood to test for brucellosis, and stick a numbered tag to its woolly flank. After a few minutes, they release it to a holding pen, where it joins several other unlucky buffalo.

This is Stephens Creek Capture Facility, a complex of corrals nestled in a valley along Yellowstone’s northern border. The site handles wild bison like livestock: Most of them, including some that test negative for brucellosis, board trailers and head to slaughter. The IBMP considers this the best way to mitigate risk.

It was cattle that first infected bison and elk with brucellosis, almost a century ago, when they were free to graze within the park. By the mid-20th century, brucellosis was the most common zoonotic disease in the world, affecting an estimated 124,000 U.S. cattle herds.

The illness, which could sweep through large swaths of livestock, delivered a financial hit to ranchers. But the risk to humans dealt a larger blow: Transferred through unpasteurized milk, the illness didn’t cause spontaneous abortion in people—just joint pain, night sweats, and headaches. But it did spread widely: In 1947, there were 6,400 reported cases of brucellosis in humans. These spurred a nationwide effort to eradicate the disease, which meant culling entire herds if a single animal showed evidence of infection. The strategy eventually evolved to include a vaccine for cattle that, while only 65 percent effective, at least eliminated the need to kill whole stocks.

By all accounts these measures succeeded. Today, the number of affected cattle herds is in the single digits, and fewer than 100 human cases get diagnosed annually. But because culling every bison and elk in a national park was never an option, and because there’s no effective method for vaccinating wild animals, 50 percent of the bison herd still carries brucellosis. The greater Yellowstone area is the last reservoir of the disease in the country.

The danger of brucellosis is how effectively it spreads. “When an infected cow aborts a fetus, the other members of the herd get curious,” Marty Zaluski, Montana’s state veterinarian, tells me. “They come to investigate, and they sniff, lick, and nibble the tissue.” For ranchers, allowing Brucella-carrying buffalo anywhere near domestic cows is a risk they are just not willing to take.

The handful of documented brucellosis transmissions to cattle in recent decades have been tied to elk. Yet there are no constraints on the movement of elk outside the park. Some argue that’s due to breeding habits. Bison congregate during calving, when the risk of transmission is highest, while elk tend to separate their newborns from other animals. Others, like wildlife biologist Bailey, argue that the issue of brucellosis is just a straw man for a cultural clash. “This politically successful tactic,” he writes in his book American Plains Bison: Rewilding an Icon, “has been used to avoid the embarrassing argument that public bison will compete with private livestock for public forage on public land.”

Zaluski doesn’t embrace the slaughter, but he’s also against relaxing the rules. “It’s like saying, ‘My dog never gets out of my yard, so I don’t need to keep this fence.’ In that regard, we’re victims of our own success.”

Bison learn migration paths from the previous generation. When nearly all of them that take a certain route die, are we inadvertently selecting for the trait of staying put?

The consequences, Bailey explains, are a slow but steady domestication of the genome through disease management, and demonstrable changes to the way bison move throughout the park. Hunting and capture operations on Yellowstone’s western boundary over several generations might explain why fewer bison now head that way each year. Buffalo learn migration paths from the previous generation. “Mobility, which gave bison the opportunity to utilize a large diversity of habitats in response to seasons and weather,” is part of what defines their wildness, Bailey says. But when nearly all the animals that try to take a certain route die, that aspect of wild behavior dies with them.

At mile marker 10 on highway 89, near Gardiner, there’s a bend in the Yellowstone River. For 50 years, Hank Rate, an Iowa-born rancher with a Harvard degree and a U.S. Forest Service background, has lived here with his family and a few dozen head of cattle. He came to this place, which he calls “the Serengeti of the temperate zone,” to live among wild things. I have to interrupt our conversation to stand in amazement on his porch, watching two bald eagles fight over a fish.

Rate doesn’t mind being pressed up against the bison, and he’s never worried much about the threat of brucellosis. As he sees it, this is the buffalo’s land; he’s just living on it.

And in recent years, Rate’s actually watched tolerance for bison start to grow in Montana. In late 2015, Governor Steve Bullock designated a year-round buffalo buffer zone outside Yellowstone’s northern and western entrances, where the law says they can’t be picked off or hazed back into the park. The territory includes tracts of public land surrounding Rate’s home, and one by one his neighbors responded by moving their cattle herds away.

Rate recognizes that his inherent comfort with wildness doesn’t work for everyone. Two-thousand-pound animals capable of charging at nearly 40 miles per hour aren’t all that compatible with the highways and housing developments that accompany humanity’s relentless sprawl. But if allowing the Yellowstone bison to roam just a little farther means they hang on to the natural behaviors that make them so special, well, Rate figures that’s an OK compromise.

Alternatively, Geremia, the park biologist, believes the best way to really preserve this wild herd is to use them to start new ones in other places. “Then maybe my son will always be able to see them,” he tells me. He and his colleagues have been trying for years to establish a quarantine program at Stephens Creek. Ideally, an agreement with Montana’s Department of Livestock would allow wild bison that repeatedly test negative for brucellosis to be relocated in the state and around the West, on enormous acreages far from cattle operations, where they can thrive and migrate freely. But progress on all fronts is slow.

Millions pilgrimage to Yellowstone every year to see the bison, their restoration touted as one of the great conservation success stories of the last century. But evolution marches on, and the next generation of visitors may find a herd that’s been intrinsically, irrevocably altered. The people who have dedicated their lives to the buffalo—studying them, conserving them, and, yes, helping to ship them to slaughter—are hopeful we won’t let it get that far.

Because we have Yellowstone, we still have a shot at preserving this animal’s wild nature. To really save them, it’s people who will have to do the evolving: learning to live in concert, not conflict, with the bison. “I hope we can do it,” Geremia says. “I think there are ways, where there’s enough land. There are other places where bison can be bison.” For now, at least, safe in the national park, the last living symbol of America’s Wild West abides.

This article was originally published in the Summer 2019 Make It Last issue of Popular Science.

Written By Kate Morgan

#Animals

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purplesurveys · 4 years ago

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845

Around The House

Exterior/Front Yard/Backyard/Garage

1. What is your house made of? (bricks, siding, etc.) Not sure if I’m answering this right because I don’t normally throw these terms around HAHAHA but uhhhhhhh concrete...? I think...? Final answer? Lmao.

2. What color is your house? It’s a light shade of cream. It used to be a rather dark shade of beige, but my mom didn’t like how strong it looked so she had it repainted to a lighter color.

3. Do you have cement or blacktop as your driveway? Well I googled the second one because I wasn’t sure what it was, and the images I saw look just like our driveway haha so I’ll go with that.

4. Do you live in a corner house or somewhere on the middle of the street? I live in the middle of a street. The corner houses where I live look really lonely whenever I walk by them, so I’m kinda glad my parents chose a house in the middle because it’s nice to hear noise from the neighbors sometimes.

5. Do you have a front yard? What about a backyard? Are they large or small? No front yard. We don’t really call it a backyard but we do have an open area at the back of the house. The size is just right; it’s enough for Kimi to run and roam around considering his age. We also have an outdoor basketball hoop for my dad to exercise with every morning.

6. Do you have a fountain or a bird bath in either your yards? Nope.

7. Does your house have a chimney? No house here needs one of those, hehe.

8. Do you know when the last time your roof was replaced? We have a rooftop, so we technically don’t have a roof. We recently replaced the flooring on it so that it can look more presentable to visitors.

9. Do you have any trees? Bushes/shrubs? Flowers? We have a couple of trees. One of them was a tree my grandpa planted while he was still alive, so it means a lot.

10. Do you grow any of your own fruits or vegetables? Nope, no one would be able to keep at it.

11. Do you live on farmland/do any farming? Nah, I live in a heavily concrete area. The nearest farms are an hour or two away, probs.

12. Do you have a shed or a garage? Is the garage attached or unattached? We have a carport/shed that’s attached to the house.

13. How many cars is your garage? The carport can only fit one, but we maximize the space around our house to fit our two other cars so that we can avoid parking on the street and being an inconvenience to drivers.

14. How many square feet is your house? Not sure, and none of my parents are home so I can’t ask them now, whoops.

15. What type of a house do you live in? (single-story, two-story, etc.) It’s two stories with a rooftop, so technically three stories.

16. What style of house do you have? (ranch, cape cod, etc) I honestly don’t know what to call it. It’s just a normal house, no theme at all lol.

17. Do you have a porch in the front or the back? Or do you have a deck? We don’t have either. I’ve tried asking my parents if we could have one built but it’s just not their priority. Which I’ve learned to accept, because I’ve ended up liking the rooftop and spending alone time here.

18. Do you park your cars in the garage, in the driveway, or on the street? In the carport and in the extra space surrounding the carport. The streets in our village are a little tight, so people who park their cars on the street are a big nuisance. It gets difficult to maneuver when there’s two cars going the opposite directions at the same time because one would have to stop and adjust to give way to the other first. My parents don’t wanna provide the same inconvenience to our neighbors, so we park all our cars within our house’s general space.

19. Do you have any lawn decorations? (ie: gnomes, toadstools, etc) We used to when we were still kids. We had an inflatable frog near our front door for some reason and for Christmas, my mom bought a giant inflatable Santa. Those were gone by the time all three of us siblings got a little older.

20. Do you decorate your yard/the outside of your house for the holidays? What do you put out there? ^ Yeah, just that one. For Christmas also my mom would hang up a wreath on our front door.

21. Is your house fully fenced/gated in or partially? Is it wooden or metal? No gate and it’s always bugged me. I feel like we’re too exposed, but my parents wouldn’t budge.

22. Is your mailbox attached to your house or is it slightly down the pathway? We don’t have a mailbox since we barely get mail lol. If we get bills and stuff, the mail person just hangs it up on our screen door.

23. Do you live in a relatively safe neighborhood? Yes. Enhanced safety is the very purpose of private subdivisions and my family has always lived in one. Security’s tight, you’ll need a car sticker to get in, and guards will roam around on bikes every now and then to check on houses.

24. Do you get along with your neighbors, or do you have any annoying ones? We don’t have annoying neighbors, but I also don’t talk to any of them so we don’t necessarily get along either. Some kids are annoyingly loud and don’t behave well, but they’re kids so they don’t count.

25. Do you have a patio area in your backyard or a sunroom attached to your house? Nopes.

26. What kinds of things do you keep in your garage? A bunch of tools my dad uses that I honestly don’t know about.

27. What kinds of things do you keep in your backyard? My dad’s basketball hoop, our super old couch that idk why we won’t throw it out? and my brother’s similarly really old electric Hummer toy that my parents also won’t throw out for some reason.

28. What kind of car do you drive? (if you drive) Most days I’ll drive my Mitsubishi Mirage, but when I’m coding I borrow my dad’s Suzuki Vitara.

29. Do you have a pool? Is it in-ground, above-ground, or a kiddie pool? We don’t; we just have an inflatable pool that we’ll sometimes whip out for funsies during the summer.

30. Do you have a grill? How often do you have barbecues/cookouts with it? We used to but with my dad never being home and my mom not really a grill person, it didn’t get used until it proceeded to get all rusty and stuff. As for barbecues, they aren’t a thing here.

31. How many windows are around the outside of your house? I can count 15 off the top of my head.

32. How many doors do you have to outside? (front, back, side) Three. A front door, doors in the living room, and a door in the kitchen.

33. Do you live on a busy street or on a side street? I live in a quiet street in a private subdivision.

34. Does your house use any kinds of alternative energy sources (ie: solar panels, wind power, etc) Not to my knowledge.

35. Do you have a greenhouse or a gazebo at all? Nopes.

36. Do you have a pond/woods in your backyard? No, we don’t.

[a-zebra-is-a-striped-horse]

#survey #surveys

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