Community Care Creative

Is this LiveJournal?

[desireeceleste]

Today’s garden check in!

I harvested 2 of my adult kale plants for a hominy based green chili soup today. The kales stunted out because of the heat so I had to pull them before they fried. I also grabbed the baby kales that I had densely planted in a planter box and some chives for an omelette this morning.

The potato plants are thriving so hard that one is setting flowers. I also moved one of my basil baby pots to the potato side to see if they’d like that spot better. The arugula in the pots behind the potatoes finally sprouted and are popping up with some fervor. Those pots went from seeing only dirt to seeing a ton of sprouts in a day.

The side that is almost entering shaded by the tree. My hollyhocks are blooming and the babies seeded last fall are growing steadily against the right side fence despite never seeing the sun over there.

I transplanted some bush bean starts from pots to the ground and they had a rough time adapting but are starting to push out new leaves now. And the bush bean pods I direct planted a couple of weeks ago just start coming up! So let’s see if we get any bean production from over here.

Aside from the green, I laid down a layer of kitchen veggie waste and shredded junk mail then topped with wood chips to help amend this side before trying to plant again once the leaves drop from the tree in fall. I’m debating building protective hoops to try to extend the growing season so I can grow on this side when it sees the sun again in fall. The mustard greens and spinach LOVED this spot in spring when the tree was still bare.

The salad greens are almost ready! And the arugula I set in the little green planters and in ground are finally sprouting. Everything takes much longer to grow back here since I get only a few hours of sun, but I’m excited that stuff is coming up! I start everything from seed so it’s less of a waste if things don’t grow and the seeds that can tolerate germinating in low sun tend to have a good success rate staying in low sun.

The chives are still going strong, the basil and cilantro are doing ok given that they get maybe 2 hours a day, and the beans are all just hanging out. Even if I don’t get a harvest from the in ground beans, they’re helping to amend and aerate this packed, clay soil. I have succession planted salad greens, as well.

This is the hollyhock on the back fence’s first year blooming and it’s having a rough go of it but it does have little tiny baby hollyhocks coming up around it so even if it doesn’t come back heartier next year, we have fresh ones that might thrive a little better already lined up. The hollyhocks that are going wild on the other side also had a rough first year of blooming so we’ll see that happens with this one.

We’ve been trying to figure out watering cadence back here. I put down a bunch of seeds after mulching so we’re sprinkling those areas twice a day but trying to not overwater (or underwater) the rest. Some of the pots drain better than others, so the basil and cilantro pots hold a ton of water while the bean pots need their twice daily sprinkles. We carry around a hydrometer every morning and evening to help guide us but are finding what each plant/pot likes and doesn’t like in real time.

And, finally, here is me showing off my kale bouquet because I love kale and am proud of how large these got despite their growing conditions.

[depsidase]

[vadergf]

I feel like someone is standing next to me talking about how I'm dead

[rudolphsboyfriend]

The chemical they put on ants and all the other ants think they're dead that's what happened to tumblr except the chemical is unmarketability

[bisexualalexmercer]

tumblr may have censored porn but check this out

i hope Elon musk KILLS himself and DIES a thousand DEATHS. and i hope every other billionaire a very merry DIE DIE DEATH KILL MURDER DEATH KILL

[the-trash-eating-llama]

[desireeceleste]

Working retail is wild, I’ve been casually logging customers for over two decades now.

For many, the second someone enters a store they are no longer a person. They are now a customer. And the level of entitlement that comes with being a customer knows no bounds. I, as a customer or employee, get reached over, pushed past, parked in front of, etc. It’s like no other people exist once a person becomes a customer. Just 10 minutes ago a couple quite literally pushed me out of the way to grab a bag of tortillas. They said, ‘excuse me,’ once I’d remarked, ‘hey now!’

But this is the norm. Thanks to my job, which is no longer retail but is retail adjacent, I’m at an average of 3 grocery stores per day, 5 days a week. I get this treatment in rich neighborhoods more than lower income neighborhoods, for sure. The two rich neighborhoods I visit for work, I brace myself before entering a store.

I once had to elbow a woman off of me during the holidays when she tried to physically move me. I deflect cellphones stuck within inches of my face. I get one word demands for products almost daily (‘pasta.’ What? Is this really how adults treat other adults?’

I help customers who treat me like a human, when they treat me poorly I state the fact, ‘I don’t work here.’ Then they’ll frequently tell me why they thought I worked there, as though it’s my fault that they have no idea that all the employees wear uniforms.

‘Well, your keys make you look like you work here.’ They’re my car keys, I was in a middle school a few miles from Columbine when IT happened. I make sure I can safely get away from any unsafe situation.

‘Your blazer makes you look official.’ It’s a jean jacket, my Jean jacket with a massive spider broach makes me look official.

‘You look like you know where you’re going.’ This one I find hilarious, the majority of people shop at the same grocery store every week and still lack any sort of awareness that would help them find the same items they buy every week. I worked grocery for over a decade, I say this from experience.

I had one guy YELL at me down an aisle while I was reading a package, I wasn’t even working. ‘Barbecue sauce!’ So I looked at him puzzled and said, ‘rice noodles!’ Then he paused and said more gently, ‘oh I thought you worked here.’ So I yelled loud enough for anyone around to hear, ‘that’s not an acceptable way to talk to someone who works here, either!’

I had a guy reach past me so closely he shoved my arm, so I told him he needs to say excuse me or wait his turn. He told me, ‘shut up, bitch.’ A woman was with him, I raised my eyebrows at her in hopes to communicate, ‘this is not acceptable behavior, please don’t accept this from him.’ And I told him I’m happy to take it outside and we can see who the bitch is. He tossed the protein bar back to the shelf and walked out.

I had another guy lean his body over mine as a crouched trying to get a bottle of kombucha. This man laid his chest over my back to reach over me. I shoved him off and said with some volume, ‘don’t touch strangers!’ And he was very smug when he told me, ‘stop being so dramatic, I didn’t touch you.’ Of course I kept hurling insults about him apparently touching women without their consent enough that he probably doesn’t even register it anymore.

I had a lady slam a cooler door into the back of my head because she didn’t want to take the two steps to get around me. I followed her to the parking lot and pointed out exactly what she did. As she tried to say, ‘you were in my way,’ I kept talking louder about assault and how she’s old enough to know that she shouldn’t make her bad day everyone else’s bad day.

My friends who don’t work retail wonder why I deal with hyper vigilance. I’m always on guard. And yeah, part of that is being trans, part is walking through the world perceived as a woman, part is growing up in the state leading the country in school shootings, part is my mother constantly telling me that I’ll be kidnapped. But the hyper vigilance set in post 2020 when the entitlement soared. When people suddenly decided personal space equated to the days of social distancing. I miss the days of 6 feet, but right now I’d settle for 2. In an almost completely empty store, people will still act like where I am is there only place in the store they want to be.

So, when you enter a store and become a customer, please remember to use full sentences, manners, and provide people their personal space. Start observing your own behavior and ask yourself if that’s really how you want to show up in the world.

And for those of you who come in with your massive headphones on, avoiding eye contact with people: you’re probably my favorite. You generally say excuse me, wait your turn, do a lap for the other items on your list until that space is free, and you don’t say out of line shit.

[desireeceleste]

Garden check in time.

I finally got mulch since temps are reaching mid 90s already. The snap peas are slowly producing, the red noodle beans are growing steadily, my kale babies and adults have decided to THRIVE, the spinach I seeded a few weeks ago bolted thanks to this heat, and my arugula, basil, and cilantro are plooping up. I decided to not thin the green onions in the planter and instead eat them as chives, since I’m impatient and greedy. The salad greens are coming at stages and I have some that will be lunch today! Every time I tie up the pea plants I have to make a comment about my Blair Witch ass backyard.

And my potato bag garden got their bags rolled the rest of the way up today and topped off with soil. No more rolling potato bags this season! Now I can stop annoying the sweet spiders who inhabit the bags and let them live their lives. I love using these grocery bags and the rice bag, it feels like I’m ensuring they fill up with taters.

And, of course, these hollyhocks are MASSIVE. I’ve come to terms that the dirt closest to the fence is too shaded and too damaged from our neighbors leaking, chemical ridden kiddie pool to grow anything but rogue hollyhocks don’t seem to mind that. We have a bunch of baby hollyhocks coming up despite the challenges, so I’ll leave them there and have a full fence line of flowers next year. I was super disappointed about it a few weeks ago, now I’m stoked about it.

Finally, my partner and I discussed the possibility of starting a Bokashi compost bin using our extra refillable cat litter buckets. I’ve tried different compost methods before and failed miserably with them, so I kept telling him to not let me try compost again. It’s too smelly and there’s too many bugs and I get too grossed out to keep them going. But I did weeks of research on Bokashi and feel like we can give it a try with very little start up involved. We already have a lot of litter buckets and the only purchase I’d need to make is the Bokashi grain stuff. I know I’ll need to fret about this for another week or so before committing.

[alphauke]

you can always tell how little people actually care about art based on how much they hate modern/contemporary art

[alphauke]

''bring back renaissance art'' I bet your ass you can't even definitively tell that movement apart from others

[alphauke]

"posing next to art we think we can do'' can you though. can you

[bixels]

>sees a post about the superiority of renaissance art.

>it's baroque.

[desireeceleste]

#this is why I say that I like art for arts sake #even art that I hate #sometimes I just like the process of art being created but I hate the actual art #keep humanity in art #show me your art

[background-character-341]

For all its faults Tumblr has truly ruined all other social media for me because my friends all have Instagram and are all trying to get me on Instagram more but every time I open Instagram there are like fifteen things screaming for my attention and when I get over myself long enough to start scrolling it's like. Where is my chronological dash. Where is the following-only option. Who are these people. Why are there so many videos. Everyone is screaming at me. And then before I know it I'm thirty minutes into scrolling and I haven't seen a single thing that I actually care about. At least on Tumblr when I see stuff I don't care about I know someone I follow has found a new interest.

[rederiswrites]

I have once again been spotted by a friend escaping containment. Which is especially wild when I'm just saying basically what someone way more famous said.

Quality edit, though. Props for that I guess.

[guerrillatech]

[literary-sparks]

“Why don’t you use ai” idk man beyond the obvious environmental and “this machine causes psychosis and encourages people to kill themselves” thing I think asking the equivalent of a solid D student who is also a pathological liar if they can answer my question/do the work for me seems pretty fucking stupid

[desireeceleste]

#everything I see people using AI for are things we’ve never needed AI for #i can update my own calendar thanks #i can write my own emails thanks #i can research my own topics thanks #i like knowing how to do things for myself even if they’re done in a very strange a human way unique to my abilities

[desireeceleste]

I had a very cute, super sweet anxiety melt down yesterday.

I have been organizing community events for a long time. I have very low energy and spend a lot of time emotionally recuperating from having to self regulate and protect my brain. So I tend to organize my own things around my capabilities and my own needs, then offer that out to others who would also benefit from my limitations. So far I’ve done a ton of one-off events, I host a monthly stuff swap with my friends, and I host a monthly queer club for people who value masking and want to play board games at a local library. I’ve also done book swap events at a local park, communicated by paper flyers on lamp poles and Facebook local groups.

I also do not-social-at-all community based things like turning abandoned pamphlet boxes into cute book/ food/ resource sharing boxes, repurposing campaign lawn signs into signs of love for my community, and spreading native flower seeds on my walks.

But I want local community that I can work with on a regular basis so badly. I want to have a weekly thing I attend that’s close to home, surrounded by people with similar motivations as myself, where we work together for a bigger purpose.

It’s hard because I live in a city on the outskirts of a major city, so most volunteer opportunities are further from my home than I feel comfortable. I have major anxiety around being out of the house for too long, and working outside the house is already so taxing on me. There’s not many volunteer opportunities near enough by my home for me to feel safe attending, and most of these volunteer things are surrounded by an older crowd who just cannot wrap their heads around my pronouns. I currently volunteer as social media manager for a local nonprofit book store that raises money for the library and every time I go into the store I have to brace myself for not being seen. I feel a little selfish counting out local volunteer opportunities because of this, but I already have to tamp down my identity with work, I don’t want to add to that stress.

I was sobbing in my kitchen, wrapped into the tightest ball my dining chairs would allow, wailing about how lonely in my outreach I feel. Choosing to organize little pop up events on my own, not having any luck finding co hosts for these events, and being so afraid of slotting into someone else’s outreach because I’m sure I’ll let them down with my stints of deep fatigue, my fluctuations in anxiety and capabilities.

I know that the more privilege people have, the less they are willing to make themselves uncomfortable for the communal good. I struggle between feeling like my fears over slotting into someone else’s groups are borne of the privilege, and feeling justified in needing to care for my health, since my generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and BPD do truly limit my life.

My friends all live at least 20 min away and have their own lives going on with their own limitations. We prioritize our monthly hang outs but I want to see people more than that. I want local friends in my city, I want a volunteer group that we stick our hands into mud with dreams of growing food for our neighbors, I want to walk to the light rail station with a couple of people on a hot summer day to hand out cold waters. But when I think of the work it takes to make that happen, I get scared that I don’t have the sustained energy for it. That’s why I tend to do a lot of community care from my home, like painting and giving away the pamphlet boxes and refilling the ones I keep out front.

I found a food sovereignty group that operates within 15 minutes of my home that grows food to sell at events for ‘pay-what-you-can’ and they also do cooked meals with the same sale structure. They have an event this weekend that I’m going to attend, alone, to see if I can do it. The event is like 20min away and the thought of going is really challenging my anxiety, but I bought a bunch of books yesterday for their book exchange portion of the event. Seeing that stack of 12 books on my table is a reminder that if I don’t go to the event I’m wasting the time and money spent getting these books specifically for this event, and I’d be withholding these books from people who might want them. The books are bullying me. But it was a step in committing to going.

In my dream world, I go to the event and have a good time, talk to people, feel more comfortable. Then I go to another of their events, feeling braver and more confident. At that event, maybe I talk to an organizer about my desires to volunteer with them and express my concerns related to my exhaustion. Maybe it’s not as limiting as I assume it is, maybe that organizer is ok with me doing what I can. Then I do a day volunteering and find that it causes me less anxiety than I’ve been thinking it would, so I start going a little more often. All of a sudden I make connections with people that make me look forward to going, maybe even make friends I see outside of volunteering and our hobbies together include walking to the light rail station to hand out cold water to people.

[desireeceleste]

Relearning to knit has given me so much POWER.

My Grama taught me to knit through the back loop and trying to find patterns or tutorials on doing anything more than knit and purl has felt impossible. That hasn’t stopped me from knitting pot scrubbers, ear warmers, scarves, hand towels, face towels, and now a steering wheel cover.

My steering wheel cover that I’ve been using gets too cold in winter and too hot in summer. I love the color, hate the sticky feel of the plastic. Weirdly, I was given the exact same color in an acrylic yarn by a woman who still has her late mother’s stash. I spent 3 days knitting a long, flat piece similar to a scarf. Then I hand washed and air dried it. Then I sewed the ends together to make it something like an infinity scarf. And this morning I sewed it onto my steering wheel.

Growing up, I remember my mother having a woven plastic steering wheel cover that she also sewed onto her wheel. I remember thinking it looked so beautiful (but felt so gross). Now, with a sewn on cover of my own, I feel so happy and proud. I love getting to use what my Grama has taught me, add my own creativity, and end up with a practical item I can use all the time.

The nice part, too, is that I can cut the yarn I used to sew it on and take the cover off to wash it whenever I want. Then I can just sew it back on. It took about 15 minutes to sew it on and I enjoyed the process.

I’m now knitting a little sleeve for my emergency brake. Maybe I’ll knit sleeves for my oh-shit handles later.

If anyone has seen tutorials or book focusing on knitting through the back loop, let me know! I’d love to learn ribbing.

[desireeceleste]

Today I pulled out the last few radishes, since they were shading my little sprouts. And moved two potato sacks from the front to join their thriving potato buddies in the backyard area.

Getting up at 6am on my day off to crouch for an hour, pulling out the only weed I hate (the vining one that grows like 5 inches a day and suffocates my plants), talking to spider friends, sticking my hands in dirt, and then running from wasps promptly at 7:20am is what I look forward to all week. The backyard is very shaded, very small, and this is my experiment year, and I love everything about it.

The tomato plants will migrate to join their friends by the front door. They just don’t get enough sun back here.

While I absolutely love living in a townhome, I love being close with my neighbors and knowing someone I care about is always around, I wish I had more space and more sun. I started a garden journal and take weekly notes about what I’ve seeded where, what date I seed, what date they sprout, what date they get harvested. I know these notes will be hella valuable next year but I’m impatient to know what will work now! Sometimes I worry that I’m wasting my time with the work I do this season. What if the harvest’s not worth the work? But the reality is that in learning and having fun and this is so effin good for my mental health that it doesn’t matter if the garden stays exactly like this all season. It’s already been worth it.

Thinking about this garden and my time in it makes me so introspective and full of love. I’ve already dragged one of my neighbors into my yard to show him what I’m growing. I excitedly told him that when things come up I’ll be at their door to share. Now I’m like, ‘what if nothing comes up and I disappoint him?’ As if he and his family would be disappointed that my garden didn’t produce enough arugula to share? Silly. I just like worrying about things. Like my indoor plants, my cat, my partner, and my haunted dolls. Worrying, for me, is love. And it’s nice to get another reminder of how I love my neighbors.

[goodbyecorpocracy]

TED - Ron Finley: A guerilla gardener in South Central LA

[desireeceleste]

First snap pea of the season. After months of helping these vines along and monitoring their progress, I’ve got a baby snap pea!

My first season trying to grow food in my very small, very shaded yard and I still maintain low hopes. This is truly an experiment year. So this feel huge to me!

[carlosmarcosapproved]

[desireeceleste]

I keep making full sheets of what I’m thinking, printing them for free at the local library, cutting them into singles, and leaving them everywhere I go. Public restrooms? Yes. Grocery store shelves? Yes.

I do love writing zines, but this is much easier to get into the world. I always keep a stack in my pocket and am building the habit to always pull one out wherever I go.