I originally started this blog to document my garden and follow other gardeners, but in reality I reblog anything remotely plant- or animal- or bug- or science-related. Queue currently spits out 10 posts a day.
Started my garden in 2019 on a sunny dry third floor balcony. This year I moved to a new place on a slope with shade and some irrigation, so I'm figuring everything out from scratch again!
Original posts are tagged #my garden
I reblog a LOT here and I don't tag consistently, but let me know if you need a trigger tagged and I'll do my best. Currently spiders or similar-looking arachnids are tagged #spiders. I probably won't tag for bugs in general, I post too many of those.
Other people's gardens are tagged #gardens or #garden design or #harvest when I remember to do so.
You can find me as lamiafaae on Instagram and iNaturalist
I also run @identifying-ladybugs-in-posts
About my garden: Zone 10b, Southern California. East facing, on a hillside, largely shaded by trees. Scarce rainfall. Poor local soil, most growing done in containers. Local animals: coyotes, raccoons, squirrels, finches, towhees.
Original text of my bio: she/her. 29. struggling intermittently with a south-facing balcony container garden in a hot sunny dry big city. absolutely love observing a super common thing/bug/plant and going to research it online digging for hours through blatant seo-bait misinformation to find basic accurate facts. syrphid flies my beloved. mint family my beloved. i don't tag reliably. content includes lots of insects, plant facts, art and ~aesthetics~, and sustainability musings. personal posts are tagged #my garden regardless of whether they're strictly about my garden. posts tagged #ai are relevant to a story that's been knocking around my head a while, not necessarily actual ai.
@sherbertilluminated there's a line somewhere in Ursula Vernon's Digger that goes something like "it is difficult to be metaphysical around the truly geologically minded"
Each human body contains a complex community of trillions of microorganisms that are important for your health while you're alive.
I'm working on clearing out some old tabs, and ran across this piece from last fall. The short version is that your gut microbiome and other microbes that accompany you in a series of symbiotic relationships throughout your lifetime persist even after you die. While you might assume that these bacteria and other little beings would perish along with you once you're no longer warm and living, it turns out that they shift gears upon your death, being part of the massive effort to return your remains en masse to the nutrient cycle.
There's honestly something rather poetic about that. Here you've spent a lifetime being the center of a holobiont--a sort of miniature, migratory ecosystem. And these many millions of life forms that you have given safe harbor to for thousands upon thousands of their generations are among the funerary vanguard caring for your remains after you're gone. They pour forth from their ancestral lands--the gut, the skin, and other discrete places--and spread out through even the most protected regions of your form.
And then, just as you constructed your body, molecule by molecule, from a lifetime of nutrients you consumed, so do these microbes go through the process of returning everything you borrowed back to the wider cycles of food and growth and life and death. The ancient halls where their ancestors lived in relative stability are now taken apart in the open air, and their descendants will disperse their inheritance into the soil and the water through the perpetual process of decomposition.
I've always wanted a green burial, and I find it comforting that when my remains are laid in the ground, they'll be accompanied by the tiny ecosystems I spent a lifetime tending, and who will return the favor by sending my molecules off in a billion new directions.
don't go into the humanities because they're unprofitable and don't go into stem cuz its getting torn apart right now and don't go into buisness because it's competetive and speculative and don't go into education because it pays like shit. Just lay on thr ground. Just lay on the ground.
a lil tomato soup made from roast tomato, onion, garlic and bell pepper with a lil grill ches. regular marble cheddar, some farmers market truffle cheddar, and a lil pickle for the filling. bread is a sourdough pullman's loaf recipe of my own design
man it is SO funny that everyone's still cycling this post considering that the meal poisoned the shit out of me
turns out the bread i baked there had started to mold, the cheddar cheese had started to mold, and the chicken stock I used for the soup's best before date was over a year ago. I found all of this out a day or so later and I'm now still dealing with the gastroenteritis symptoms
i know the way people talk about their pets now is probably how we’ve been doing it for all of history. a cat owner in ancient rome saw their cat lounging on the dining pillows and commented “he thinks himself to be the senator claudius 🤣”
EXCUSE ME THERE IS A PLANT THAT CAN MIMIC FAKE PLANTS?????
IT'S CALLED A BOQUILA TRIOFOLIOLATA AND IT'S FUCKING WITH MY BRAIN
IT APPARENTLY CAN MIMIC OTHER PLANTS AND AT FIRST I WAS LIKE "oh cool man it must take it's genetic code and copy it or feel the roots or something like that!! :3"
AND THEN I READ AN ARTICLE ON IT AND THESE FUCKING PARAGRAPHS HIT ME LIKE A BUS
In retrospect, consider the number 1 thing every grade-schooler knows about plants is they take in light, the idea they might be able to see should not wreck my shit as hard as it does
Fountains decorated for the ou com balla tradition in Barcelona, Catalonia. Photos from Cultura Popular Barcelona.
On the festivity of Corpus, some towns and cities in Catalonia have a curious tradition. Fountains are decorated with flowers and cherries, and then an empty egg is placed on top of the water source to make it spin. In the Catalan language, this tradition is called l'ou com balla ("the dancing egg").
It's unknown how this tradition got started, we only know for sure that it started in Barcelona. The oldest written proof of it is a document from the year 1636 where the Barcelona cathedral buys eggs for the Corpus festivity. Some historians claim another source from 1440 could also be talking about it but it's unsure.
There are three theories on what it could mean. Take into account that the Feast of Corpus Christi is one of the most important Catholic religious holidays, celebrated in May or June (moves according to the moon calendar) to celebrate Christ's presence in the Eucharist. The Eucharist is a part of the religious service where believers eat a bread and drink a wine that is believed to be Christ's body and blood, respectively. Here are the three theories:
The most widespread interpretation is that the egg represents the sacramental bread and the fountain with water represents the cup with Christ's blood. The cherries and other fruit that decorate it would be Christ's blood.
Others believe it's a representation of the fullness of spring, because the egg, the water and the abundance of flowers and fruits are a symbol of the fecundity and regeneration that takes place in spring.
Some historians theorize that its origin is more simple: the nobles of Montcada street in Barcelona were bored while waiting for the Corpus procession to start, and they did this like a game.
🐉 An epitome of the natural history of the insects of China: London: Printed for the author, by T. Bensley, and sold by White, Fleet-Street, Faulder, Bond-Street, Bell, Oxford-Street, &c., 1798.
Original source
Image description: Illustration from an 18th-century entomology book depicting four detailed dragonflies labeled as “Aeshna clavata,” “Libellula indica,” and “Libellula 6 maculata.” The insects show intricate wing venation and body patterns in shades of yellow, blue, black, and red. The largest dragonfly has translucent wings and a slender black and yellow striped body. Two smaller dragonflies feature blue and brown bodies with similarly delicate wings, and the fourth displays vibrant red and yellow patterned wings. The image is titled “Neuroptera,” highlighting these dragonflies as part of the insect natural history of China.
they are sexually mature at ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS OLD.
their (live!) young gestate for. wait for it. eight to eighteen (??) YEARS. can have up to 10 at a time. good grief.
longest lifespan of any vertebrate, up to five hundred years
toxic flesh
has giant eyes but is usually blind because of a weird little crustacean that's evolved to live on and eat their eyes. this doesn't seem to bother them much.
lives in deep cold water and has the lowest swim speed and tail-beat frequency for its size across all fish species. just generally lives life in extreme slow motion
largest genome of any shark
eats everything including moose and polar bears
ma'am you are delightfully strange and I'm privileged to share a planet with you
This was a man, dressed as a plant, making pigeon noises at people walking by. I said hello, asked if it was okay to take his picture, and then asked why he was dressed as a plant. He said, “I’m just working through some stuff. Thank you for asking. No ones asked yet.”
