When farmers grow the same crop too many years in a row, it can leave their soil depleted of minerals and other nutrients that are vital to the health of their fields.
To avoid this, farmers will often alternate the crops that they grow because some plants will use up different minerals (such as nitrogen) while other plants replenish those minerals. This process is known as “crop rotation.”
So the next time you find that you need to step away from a project to work on something else for a while, don’t beat yourself up for “quitting” that project. Give yourself permission to practice “mental crop rotation” to maintain a healthy brain field.
Because I’ve found that when that unnecessary guilt and pressure are removed from the process, a good mental crop rotation can help you feel more energized and invigorated than ever once you’re ready to rotate back to that project.
: A crucial part of crop rotation is that the field is let fallow sometimes. You plant what’s called a “cover crop”, which is something you don’t expect to harvest– it’s there for its roots to hold the soil in place, and often it’ll be what’s called a nitrogen-fixer, i.e. a plant that can pull nitrogen out of the air and fix it into the soil with its roots (but sometimes it won’t, sometimes it’s really just there to shelter the soil surface), and then you’ll till in that cover crop, or let the frost kill it and the stalks lie as mulch, and then you’ll rotate productive crops back into that field the next season.Â
It’s important, though, to understand that during the fallow period, no nutrients are removed from that ground, and nothing is expected of it. Whatever the land grows then, it keeps, and it gets tilled back in or decomposes in place, to return its energy to the earth.
We’re not allowed, in our current society, to just let our minds be fallow for a bit, to produce nothing for export, to make nothing that can be sold. But it’s part of good land stewardship, to give every field time when it doesn’t need to give you anything back.Â
So yes, grow and produce different things from time to time, rotate them around your mind and exercise different mental muscles, take different things from your creative processes, yes– but also, give yourself a fallow spell now and again, and let the field of your mind grow things for itself to keep, to break down and save for later.Â
Because smallpox used to kill about 30% of everyone who caught it. The successful vaccine program run by the world’s medical community means that no one will ever die of smallpox ever again.
Because rabies is 100% fatal without a vaccine. No one needs to die of rabies ever again. It is entirely preventable.
Because 1-2 in 1000 who get measles, die. Vaccines let us contain outbreaks or fully wipe them out. There is no specific treatment for the disease once you have it. Your immune system either wins or you die.
We like vaccines because vaccines save lives and raise our standard of living.
My mother, now in her 70s, talks about how her mother wept for joy when her children received the polio vaccine. Because she didn’t have to be afraid of polio anymore.
A 2019 study found that measles can cause “immune amnesia”, cutting your antibodies by 10%, up to almost 75%. Meaning, you’ve become that much more vulnerable to a whole slew of illnesses that you used to be protected from, and it doesn’t matter if you acquired the antibodies via a vaccine or recovering from an illnesses - they are gone. All those shots you got as a baby? The boosters you got through grade school and as an adult, including the annual flu shot? Guess what: measles most likely wiped your body’s immune memory of those and you’ll have to get them all. Over. Again.
This is one of those posts that always prompts me to remind folks- many of the vaccines you received as a child need adult boosters! It’s worth checking to make sure you’re up to date on these!
See I did not know this in my 20s, and I didn’t have health insurance so I never saw doctors.
As a result of this and goddamn antivaxxers I got whooping cough in goddamn 2010. Now, this is less dangerous than many things you will get vaccinated for if you stay on top of things. But I am dead serious when I tell you I broke one of my ribs from coughing too hard. Did you know that was a thing? Because I hadn’t till it happened to me, and friend it was not a good time.
Vaccines save lives. And they save you from other miserable things as well. Please check to see if you’re up to date.
Oh, no question you broke a rib from whooping cough. I've never had it, but I had a tremendous histamine cough after an allergy test and busted a rib doing that.
Whooping cough is always the vaccine I think of when people like, "Why are you into vaccines?"
Because when I was nine years old, Mrs. Evans, the fourth-grade teacher next door to my classroom, had to hold up her wrist if she wrote on the board for a sentence because she'd survived polio but had muscle weakness the rest of her life.
Because Mrs. Pangle, MY fourth-grade teacher, described in horrifying detail watching her little brother pull ropes of phlegm out of his throat because he had whooping cough.
Because diphtheria grows a membrane over your windpipe, and you die slowly from lack of oxygen.
Because measles can make you blind or deaf or give you immune amnesia.
Because chicken pox only shows up once if it's a strong enough case. Otherwise, you can have multiple mild cases. My mother had 2 children and dealt with 8 cases of chicken pox.
Because a bad chest cold or flu can turn into pneumonia without a whole lot of effort and that shit hurts.
Because it used to be normal to have at least one kid in each classroom contract Polio. Because whooping cough is terrible for adults, but still kill babies that are too young to get vaccinated and it spreads easily. Because watching someone slowly choke to death from tetanus in writhing pain with no pain relievers working is something that will haunt you forever. If you didn't get vaccinated, get your ass down there right now.
BARRY, BOND, AND THE BLUES (a jily week fic)
day 4: the magic in a first touch // muggle summer job au
He and his friends beeline for the rock section, which is strategically placed up front, directly in her eye line. She gets a closer look at him, this way. Messy hair, a strand or two curling behind his specs. The lean shoulders of a boy still in the midst of filling out his frame. Long fingers flicking through the bin of records, the light snick sound filtering through the hum of the fan blowing by her ear.
this got Numbers on twitter so i’m posting here cause i literally have nothing else going on but working on my webcomic which you can read here and support here
“Mr Potter, it’s my responsability to tell you… you are not allowed to apparate without a proper licence. You must do it within two weeks, otherwise…”
“Oh. I must have forgotten to take it. School was quite stressful that time. Being Quidditch captain and all that… Dreaming of snogging Ginny Weasley, the most popular girl… Thank you for the reminder seventeen years later.”
“Got it.”
The ink fell over the parchment. Ginny looked at the black dot with a frown before resting the quill. Words hadn’t come for the last ten minutes and she doubted she would feel inspiration any time soon to write back the letter.
And if there was something that Ginny hated was doing things because she was supposed to. She would write to Dean when she felt like it.
But without the letter to distract her, there wasn’t anything else. Not for the first time that week, she wished summer would be over already; at least at Hogwarts she would have things to distract her, and she would be far away from prying eyes—
“There you are,” a voice said, and she raised her head to meet Harry. He was grinning at her; his black hair was windswept as if he had just gone down from his broomstick—which he had, she realised, noticing the Firebolt that Harry let rest against the tree trunk. She couldn’t help but think that Harry should fly more; there was something charming in the way he looked afterwards, and he shone as if he were bringing all the warmth from the sun with him. Or, at least, the scent of his cologne when he sat next to her on the ground. “Not fancy flying today?”
Ginny shrugged.
“Hermione wasn’t up to it.”
“She never is.”
“I wasn’t either.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Are you sick?” She shook her head, and Harry let out a breath, as if he had been truly concerned about her health; Ginny almost smiled with it. “Then—” He lifted his hands as if to get away from her. “There is only one explanation for that. You are not Ginny.”
The corner of her lips trembled. “Is that so?”
“I have everything figured out. Polyjuice Potion.”
“Oh, no, nobody grabbed any strand of my hair.”
“They might have taken while you were distracted—you lose a lot of hair, did you know that?”
“I do not!”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry to break this to you, but—” He jerked forward, his hand running through the extension of her hair, fingertips brushing her face; she couldn’t help the goosebumps that arose on her skin, jumping to get away from him.
“Oh, sorry.” He looked suddenly embarrassed. “I just—look, hair?”
It came out more as a question than anything. Ginny looked down to see Harry was holding a few strands of her hair that had fallen from her head indeed. Her skin still felt too raw, but she forced herself to ignore this.
“Fine, maybe someone could have taken my hair,” she said placatingly. Harry breathed out evenly now, clearly glad that she wasn’t mad with him. “I guess you need to ask me the security question we previously agreed upon for situations like this.”
“Oh, that question,” Harry agreed, nodding with a fake somberness that almost made her laugh. “I remember the question, of course.”
“I’m waiting.”
“Oh, right—what’s your signature spell?”
“That’s a terrible question. Draco Malfoy could answer you this question, trust me.”
Harry smirked for a moment, as if imagining that scene. “Fair enough. Wait, let me think—at least there isn’t a pet secret name—”
“What—oh, no.” She threw him a sympathetic glance. “You heard Mum’s security question from Dad?”
Harry gulped. “Yeah, and I would trade anything in the world to forget it.”
“You and I, Harry, you and I.”
He smirked suddenly. “No fun of pet names, are you? Dean never called you Gin-Gin?”
“Only if he didn’t want a girlfriend anymore,” she snorted, eyes narrowed, which only made his smirk increase. “Ginny is all I can accept.”
Harry rolled his eyes. “Ginny is already your name, that doesn’t count.”
Ginny sighed heavily. “No, it’s not, prat.”
“What is it then?”
“Ugh. It’s Ginevra.”
“Ginevra,” he repeated, the word sounding foreign in his voice as it always did when someone would say it aloud. “Ginevra,” he tried again, a smile curving up his lips now.
Annoyance flooded her. “I need to remind you I have a signature spell—”
Harry raised his hands in defence. “I wasn’t making fun of you! It’s—it’s nice, actually.”
“No, it’s not,” insisted Ginny. Harry was frowning now, not looking as if he agreed with her. “You still owe me a security question, come on.”
He mouthed her name once again, smiled once again, but relented. “Er—what did Fred and George send you before you started Hogwarts?”
She laughed with the memory. “A toilet seat. Mum confiscated it, though.”
“Madam Pomfrey confiscated mine, they tried sending me one also.”
“Repeating the same idea? Tsch tsch.”
Harry was still smiling; it was a nice smile, carefree and easy, the kind he has most favoured ever since coming to the Burrow. If anyone would ask her, Ginny would sincerely say that Harry was made to smile like that, without any gloomy cloud over his head.
If he had smiled in her presence like this, a few years ago, she’d have taken it as a sign of fate, certain that Harry was finally starting to reciprocate her feelings, and then—then Ginny would have done nothing, because she would blush and her ability to talk would be gone.
She sighed. She had moved on, and if Harry’s smile was a sign of anything, it was of how great they worked as friends.
“Ginny?”
She glanced back at him. The concern was back at Harry’s eyes, and she couldn’t help but notice how more attentive he was, especially to her; last year she had talked him down when he’d forgotten about her possession by Voldemort, unable to look past his own problems. In a way, Harry had really matured since then.
“What’s wrong?”
If they were friends — and they were, Ginny told herself sternly, just friends and she was glad about this, she was —, she knew like she ought to be honest with him.
“I’ve been feeling a little down since the letters from Hogwarts came,” she admitted, biting her lip.
“The booklist annoyed you?” he tried, looking at her to gather her reaction. Ginny gave him a small smile.
“No, not exactly. I’m just… a little disappointed, I guess.”
“Then—” He glanced at his broomstick, suddenly flustered. “You wanted to be Quidditch captain?”
Mortification filled her. “No, I mean, yes, someday, not—I knew you would be the captain, of course, it was you or Katie, there was no way it could be Kirke or Sloper, and Angelina and Alicia have graduated so the only reasonable choice was—”
“Ginny?”
She pressed her mouth shut for a moment. “I’m babbling, right?”
He nodded somberly. Ginny fought an urge to hide her face between her hands.
“Anyway, no quarrels about captainship, you truly deserve it.”
Harry frowned. “I didn’t even play last year.”
“You did, you won a match, and I told you that your ban would lift as soon as Umbridge was out.”
He tried for a smile. “I guess Professor McGonagall doesn’t care for Umbridge’s decrees.”
“No,” she agreed, but the mention to Professor McGonagall sent that doubt through her anyway. Harry probably saw in her face, for he sat closer, watching her intensely. He was really close, his pinky finger touching hers; it was only a brush, not really as if he was aiming to hold her hand, but Ginny felt warmth spreading through her cheeks anyway, and she found herself blurting out: “I’m upset over not being made a prefect.”
“Oh.”
He straightened his back, pushing himself a bit far from her; Ginny let out a breath she didn’t know she had been holding.
“You wanted to be a prefect?”
“That’s it—no. Fred and George would tease me non-stop, it seems a bit boring from what I’ve seen from Percy and Ron, and I swear I can deal with Mum’s obvious disappointment, but also—Bill was one, so prefects can be cool, right? And I may get in a little trouble because of my temper, sure, and I’m not a perfect model student like Hermione, but then—”
“Then neither Ron nor Hermione have a clean record and yet they were both made prefects,” Harry finished for her with a strange smile.
“Yeah,” she agreed, a little baffled. “How did you know?”
“It’s what I thought last year,” admitted Harry. “I never knew whether I wanted to be prefect or not—never really thought about it—until I saw the letter and there was no badge for me.”
“Oh, I didn’t know.”
“It was one of the few things I didn’t yell about last year.” His attempt at self-depreciation was met with a hard unimpressed stare by Ginny. Harry shrugged. “I wouldn’t be a good prefect. I usually have… other things in mind."
"So you are okay with it now?"
"Yeah." Harry nodded, watching something she couldn’t. “It helped to find out that my father wasn’t one.”
“Well, Dad wasn’t either.” Ginny bit her lip for a moment, hesitating for a heartbeat. “From what Sirius told us, I got the idea that he and your father were like Fred and George.”
“That’s a good definition.”
She glanced at him; Harry looked wistful, but not unwilling to discuss the subject as he always seemed to be when Hermione mentioned Sirius around him.
“Pranks, detentions and just making everyone laugh?”
“A little bit, though I saw… I heard they could get a bit carried away sometimes. But they got over it, they became… better people.”
“So there is hope for Fred and George also?” she teased.
“They are not that bad.” Harry looked at his Firebolt for a moment, and Ginny suddenly remembered it had been Sirius who had gifted it to Harry. “He was a Quidditch player also. My dad, I mean. Sirius—Sirius once said I fly as well as my father did.”
“Well, Sirius always said you look just like him.” She smiled, waiting until Harry returned it. “Was he a Seeker also?”
“I—I know he played with a Snitch, but no, I never… I never asked—”
“That’s okay,” said Ginny reassuringly. “When we get back to school, we can search through the records.” She lowered her voice. “Don’t tell Hermione we are planning to go to the library before school has ever started.”
Harry joined her conspiracy. “Only if you don’t tell Ron, he would never forgive me.”
Ginny laughed heartily. Harry’s eyes sparked as he watched her reaction, his fingers twitching as if he were refraining a movement.
“I think my dad would have liked to meet you,” he said, voice warm, and then there was a flush in his cheeks. “Not just you, I mean, Ron and Hermione, and certainly Fred and George.”
“They would be best pals,” agreed Ginny. “Mum might not approve, though.”
“She seems to be okay with the twins now.” He bit his lips. “Between us, they are the kind of example I wanna follow.”
“Fancy opening a joke shop?”
Harry laughed. “Maybe not, but they are doing what they love, right? They didn’t care about grades or badges at Hogwarts, and I guess it doesn’t really matter afterwards.”
“Hmmm.” She thought about it for a moment, strangely aware that Harry was watching her. “I’d rather be the girl sending toilet seats than forbidding others from doing it.”
He grinned, satisfied. “You and I both.”
They fell in silence then, but Ginny thought it was a nice silence then. For some reason, when she was with Harry, there never seemed to be any tension in the air, nothing heavy between them.
She let her gaze wander to the garden, enjoying the peacefulness of that summer day, and regretted ever wishing that the summer would end sooner.
“Do you wanna fly?” she asked.
Harry nodded eagerly. “Always.”
“Good. You better watch out. I might not want to be a prefect — but I'm setting my goals to steal your Captain badge next year."
