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Sustaining a garden required me to get very comfortable with killing plants. I did not expect that going in - if any one warned me, I missed it.

And it's not just the weeds that are constantly intruding and need to be fought back. Sometimes it's the plant that the previous person placed precisely in that portion of the plot that gets the good sunlight and it's just the wrong plant to be taking that space. Sometimes it's the plant that was the right plant but was let grow so wild that it's suckers are going to destroy the rest of the garden unless it is removed. Often it's the many seedlings that were started because, hey, some of them will fail, but now you've gotten good enough that twice as many survived as last year and you don't have room for twice as many.

Plants grow. It's great and rewarding to watch them live out their cycle over the course of a season or years. I work hard to keep them alive and thriving when they're young and not yet established. But there's still so much killing.

cat-mermaid

listen man, u wanna know a great truth of the universe?

every plant person stands upon a mountain of plant corpses

i have killed endless plants, and once i've mastered one type i inevitably will kill a new type because so many plants have so many different requirements

headspace-hotel

y'all have no idea how true this is

I am a plant mass murderer

You have to try, and fail, and fail, and fail again. You have to try lots and lots of variations of different things until something works.

It's not even just the learning process, though. I'm trapped in an endless loop of: plant seeds or gather transplants-> plants grow-> too many plants-> some of them die of neglect-> need more plants -> and so on.

I usually lose about half my stock to overwintering cause I can never get arrangements for all my potted plants before the hard freezes hit...

I'm getting it under control though. I have lots of plant recipients now that are more skilled and don't kill my adoptees as much.

Right now my trouble is with the seeds. I launched a huge personal seed starting project this winter and I got HUGE success with some species (jack-in-the-pulpit had near 100% germination!) and huge failure with others (Not a single Scutellaria...)

If you plant 100 seeds you gathered from the wild, it's a reasonable estimate to expect maybe, like, 10-20 plants. BUT you might get 100 plants. Or 1 plant. Or none.

You don't want to be like "Dammit! I wish I had planted more seeds!" But you might end up like "FUCK FUCK FUCK WHY DID I PLANT SO MANY SEEDS"

nemospecific

Fun fact:

This can be applied to pretty much every endeavor.

"How did you get to be such a good artist?" I drew a hundred pictures and hid or burned 99 of them.

"You're such a talented knitter!" No, I've just unraveled these same socks twenty times.

"I could never bake like that." I had to throw out so many biscuits, they were literally hazardous to eat.

And so on and so on.

clandestinegardenias

I’m at a sociology conference and just attended a memorial for one of the giants of our field, and one of the panelists told this story…he was at a meeting with this guy, who he got his PhD under and had a long standing relationship with, and he was bemoaning the current state of the world, and he asked this old professor, “how can you be so optimistic? I can’t ever be anything but a pessimist.”

and the old professor said, “you little fucker, I’m going to make a statement and then I’m going to take you out to the parking lot and beat your ass. What good does your pessimism do?”

and that really struck me. not the least because I also knew this old professor and he very rarely swore, so I know this was something he was really worked up about. what good does your pessimism do? What GOOD does your pessimism DO. I’ll be thinking about that for awhile.

gossyreblogs

“Now there's this about cynicism, Sergeant. It's the universe's most supine moral position. Real comfortable. If nothing can be done, then you're not some kind of shit for not doing it, and you can lie there and stink to yourself in perfect peace.”

- Lois McMaster Bujold, Borders of Infinity (1989)

naamahdarling

"It helps me be prepared!"

As a recovered pessimist raised by a horrendously toxic pessimist: No, it doesn't.

Foresight and practicality are completely separate qualities that can exist without pessimism. You can acknowledge the worst that might happen and prepare for it without having a completely negative worldview.

And pessimism can absolutely exist without those qualities. Which is a miserable way to live.

funny-tik-toks

prideandprejudiceandknuckles

strialternatives

aj-moment-deactivated20260416

So rn the US government is starting to defund the National Parks Service, and while this is a bad thing largely because it's mainly being done to open up the possibility of oil drilling in a lot of those areas, I think it also needs to be said that no the National Parks Service was not just there to "protect natural wonders" or whatever. It was there because a lot of those places are incredibly important land to a lot of Indigenous Peoples and if you give it special status that means you can't live on it you can make the natives leave easier because they get arrested if they don't. Like I am very much not in favor of this change as it is being done but I don't think we should respond to it with wholehearted praise of the National Parks System either. Please know the history of the land you live on and visit.

aj-moment-deactivated20260416

The problem here is not that the national parks service is losing funding, it was a tool of ethnic cleansing, forced removal, and genocide from its inception. It deserves to be talked about as such. The problem here is that that land still does not belong to the native people who inhabited it for thousands of years before colonial intervention. We need to protest the area being claimed by companies that want to exploit their natural resources, and get it back in the hands of the people who once and always should've owned it. We should not let things go back to what they were like under the current National Parks System.

letsmeetinourdreams

“Some years ago, I was stuck on a crosstown bus in New York City during rush hour. Traffic was barely moving. The bus was filled with cold, tired people who were deeply irritated—with one another; with the rainy, sleety weather; with the world itself. Two men barked at each other about a shove that might or might not have been intentional. A pregnant woman got on, and nobody offered her a seat. Rage was in the air; no mercy would be found here.

But as the bus approached Seventh Avenue, the driver got on the intercom. “Folks,” he said, “I know you’ve had a rough day and you’re frustrated. I can’t do anything about the weather or traffic, but here’s what I can do. As each one of you gets off the bus, I will reach out my hand to you. As you walk by, drop your troubles into the palm of my hand, okay? Don’t take your problems home to your families tonight—just leave ‘em with me. My route goes right by the Hudson River, and when I drive by there later, I’ll open the window and throw your troubles in the water. Sound good?”

It was as if a spell had lifted. Everyone burst out laughing. Faces gleamed with surprised delight. People who’d been pretending for the past hour not to notice each other’s existence were suddenly grinning at each other like, is this guy serious?

Oh, he was serious.

At the next stop—just as promised—the driver reached out his hand, palm up, and waited. One by one, all the exiting commuters placed their hand just above his and mimed the gesture of dropping something into his palm. Some people laughed as they did this, some teared up—but everyone did it. The driver repeated the same lovely ritual at the next stop, too. And the next. All the way to the river.

We live in a hard world, my friends. Sometimes it’s extra difficult to be a human being. Sometimes you have a bad day. Sometimes you have a bad day that lasts for several years. You struggle and fail. You lose jobs, money, friends, faith, and love. You witness horrible events unfolding in the news, and you become fearful and withdrawn. There are times when everything seems cloaked in darkness. You long for the light but don’t know where to find it.

But what if you are the light? What if you’re the very agent of illumination that a dark situation begs for?

That’s what this bus driver taught me—that anyone can be the light, at any moment. This guy wasn’t some big power player. He wasn’t a spiritual leader. He wasn’t some media-savvy “influencer.” He was a bus driver—one of society’s most invisible workers. But he possessed real power, and he used it beautifully for our benefit.

When life feels especially grim, or when I feel particularly powerless in the face of the world’s troubles, I think of this man and ask myself, What can I do, right now, to be the light? Of course, I can’t personally end all wars, or solve global warming, or transform vexing people into entirely different creatures. I definitely can’t control traffic. But I do have some influence on everyone I brush up against, even if we never speak or learn each other’s name. How we behave matters because within human society everything is contagious—sadness and anger, yes, but also patience and generosity. Which means we all have more influence than we realize.

No matter who you are, or where you are, or how mundane or tough your situation may seem, I believe you can illuminate your world. In fact, I believe this is the only way the world will ever be illuminated—one bright act of grace at a time, all the way to the river.“

–Elizabeth Gilbert

honourablejester

I don’t know why that affected me so strongly, but I’m watching a youtube video on disasters on Lake Huron, and the first one involves a coal freighter that was lost in the White Hurricane of 1913 called the SS Argus. Everyone on the ship was lost. But it’s mentioned that the captain’s body washed up later, and was found without a life jacket. So they thought, based partly on testimony of another ship that thought they saw them go down, that it just happened too fast for him to have time to get his jacket. But then another body was found, that of the second cook, and she was found wearing the life jacket marked ‘captain’. And that’s …

It didn’t work. It didn’t save her. But it’s so very possible that he spent his last moments alive trying to save someone else, one of his crew, and they probably both knew that it wouldn’t work, that there wasn’t a lot of hope in a blizzard on the lakes in November, but he tried … he tried anyway. Even if it did nothing but maybe make her body easier for her family to find.

You know that Mr Rogers thing of ‘look for the helpers’? How many times has someone, facing the end, done something tiny and fragile and maybe hopeless just to try and help someone else? Whether it works or not. How many people went to their graves at least trying?

That has to say something about us. As a people. As monstrous as we sometimes (perhaps often) are, so many times we were also …

Whoever saves one life, saves the whole world.

And sometimes you can’t save one life, sometimes it doesn’t work, sometimes there’s no getting out of this for anyone, but … try anyway. Because it matters anyway.

And maybe no one will ever know. But maybe also some day more than a century down the line, maybe some idiot will be crying into her coffee because of what you died trying.

mortalityplays

hi, a lot of you need a perspective reset

the average human lifespan globally is 70+ years

taking the threshold of adulthood as 18, you are likely to spend at least 52 years as a fully grown adult

at the age of 30 you have lived less than one quarter of your adult life (12/52 years)

'middle age' is typically considered to be between 45-65

it is extremely common to switch careers, start new relationships, emigrate, go to college for the first or second time, or make other life-changing decisions in middle age

it's wild that I even have to spell it out, but older adults (60+) still have social lives and hobbies and interests.

you can still date when you get old. you can still fuck. you can still learn new skills, be fashionable, be competitive. you can still gossip, you can still travel, you can still read. you can still transition. you can still come out.

young doesn't mean peaked. you're inexperienced in your 20s! you're still learning and practicing! you're developing social skills and muscle memory that will last decades!

there are a million things to do in the world, and they don't vanish overnight because an imaginary number gets too big

silvermoon424

Bro absolutely COOKED with this.

ohnoitstbskyen

If you ever hear the phrase "fascism is aesthetics as politics," that's what this post is talking about.

It's not about being tough on crime, because the absolute toughest most brutal measure you could take against "crime" as a social problem is to alleviate poverty, and increase access to education, healthcare and social mobility.

It's about performing "tough on crime" as an aesthetic by enacting violence against a prop, i.e. minorities and the impoverished, who are fetishized and objectified to represent "crime." They are brutalized as punishment for crime, but never with the purpose of alleviating the problem of crime.

This is why a lot of conservatives and other right wingers can get straight up angry when you suggest things like reform or social measures to reduce crime. They don't want crime to be reduced, they want an eternal war against "crime" because it provides an arena for the righteous to demonstrate virtue by brutalizing their enemies.

crustacean-warlock

Reminder:

quietwingsinthesky

all the “peer pressure is bad” education we give kids is practically useless because all it cares about is telling them that Drugs Are Evil rather than the much more useful lesson of ‘the person who responds to you saying you don’t drink by telling you they’ll find a way to get you to is also going to be shitty about all your other boundaries’.

quietwingsinthesky

god forbid you teach kids that their consent should be respected rather than about the inherent immorality of all the sinful actions of their peers

martindykewood

not to sound like a christian facebook mom but some of yall need to have grace in your hearts for the people in your lives or the people you pass once on the road and never see again like you literally need to stop assuming the worst of everyone and their intentions it is poisoning your brain. you can be careful and responsible without being a miserable person. it is possible i promise

odinsblog

Leaked hospital records reveal huge, automated markups for healthcare

A former nurse at Scripps Memorial Hospital showed columnist David Lazarus screenshots of the facility’s electronic health record system. The screenshots show price hikes ranging from 575% to 675% being automatically generated by the hospital’s software.

👉🏿 https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-12-10/column-healthcare-billing-markups

liberalsarecool

For-profit healthcare is a death panel.

For-profit healthcare will kill people to make more money for shareholders and provide less health care.

thepromiscuousfinger

disgruntled-foreign-patriarch

May he plow the Lord’s fields in heaven

en-shaedn

Dave Brandt was probably the longest running no-till farmer in the state; he'd been running his land no-till since 1971. He experimented with fertilizers, cover crops, and different irrigation techniques and he'd been doing all of that for a very long time.

The guy was an institution all on his own; look at this.

The “A” profile in his soil is now 47 inches deep compared to less than 6 inches in 1971 and acts like a giant sponge for water infiltration and retention.

From 1971 through 1989 David used an average of 150-250 pounds of nitrogen fertilizer per acre to grow his corn crops. After adding peas and radishes as a cover crop mix, he cut his nitrogen needs in half and was able to get it down to 125 pounds per acre.

When he added multiple species and became more aggressive with his cover crop mixes, he was able to achieve an additional drop in applied fertility. His starter fertilizer is now just 2 lbs of N, 4 lbs of P, and 5 lbs of K. His corn crop now only requires 20-30 lbs of N throughout the entire growing season. He requires no fertility for his soybeans, relying on fertility gained solely through his cover crops. He uses only 40 lbs of 10 N – 10 P – 10 K for his small grains.

Ten years ago (source study published 2019) David stopped using any fungicides and insecticides. This occurred at a time when fungicide and insecticide use has increased significantly with the average commodity farmer.

Four years ago he stopped using any seed treatment, including neonicotinoids.

His cash crop yields have been increasing by an average of 5% annually for the past 5-6 years, with far less fertilizer and no fungicides, insecticides or seed treatment.

What started as a basic heavy clay soils when David purchased the farm in 1971 have been officially re-classified by Ohio State University soil scientists as a highly fertile silty loam soil.

fox-bright

I know I've said it before, but--that first point, there, about the "A" profile of his soil? Every time I think of it, I am taken aback with genuine awe.

So this is a picture of the soil horizons. The O profile/O horizon is stuff like fallen leaves, sticks, and so on, which are biodegrading into the A profile. A fair amount of soils might have no O profile at all.

If you are a gardener, the A profile is what you're concerned with most of the time; it's what we also call "topsoil." Your seeds germinate into it, and shallower plants might root into it alone without ever reaching the B profile. Worms and other small delvers live in it. It's what you're amending, what you're testing, what you're tilling, what you're trying to fill up with good microorganisms to work with your plants and provide you with food or flowers or cover.

I see this quote around sometimes, attributed to radioman Paul Harvey: Man — despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication, and his many accomplishments — owes his existence to a six inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.

Without the topsoil, bluntly, we starve. And there are other problems, in places with a lack of it; without the topsoil, when the rains come, the water strikes hard soil. Hard soil doesn't accept water easily, so instead it pools and runs downhill. That action makes flooding, makes flash floods, makes standing water that carries disease, it contaminates the water table. Cholera is a huge problem in places with a low A profile that receive too much water at once.

We are seeing topsoil depletion across the US. I can't speak for other countries, but the heavy-tilling agricultural habits we've adopted here have obliterated inch after inch of our topsoil; in the 1800s the average depth was fourteen inches! Today it is six. Many suburban lawns have even less. This has knock-on effects we don't even consider on the day-to-day (for instance, there's some suggestion that the lower amounts of various minerals in vegetables and fruits today in comparison with earlier decades might be because of the lower amount of minerals in the soil for the plants to take up into themselves).

And this gentleman took soil that had been that abused and not only returned it to what it had been before the aggressive, destructive European agricultural policy had its way, but trebled that earlier depth.

His land protects the land around it from flooding. His land grows plants less susceptible to disease, because of all the various stressors and pressures those plants aren't confronted with. His land almost certainly has a considerably higher concentration of microorganisms and it would follow that we'd also see greater diversity of macroorganisms thereby.

Honestly, it just takes my breath away.

anarchistmemedistro

it’s honest work, and by god he did a lot

gaylor-moon

grippy3000

fun fact one of the world champions in pepper-eating contests is a trans woman and she actually faced significant backlash because people somehow thought she had a biological advantage. to eating spicy pepper

grippy3000

update bc i went back and checked: her name is brianna “the chilli queen” skinner and she set a record in 2017 by slamming back 23 carolina reapers consecutively. she only stopped when told to by the referees, and the next year she stepped down out of boredom. queen

pettyartist

Here's a picture of her, by the way

And her super supportive wife

nentuaby

The championship, it should be noted, is unisex. Apparently being a trans woman gives you an innate biological advantage over both cis men and cis women.

vexwerewolf

The innate biological advantage of being cool as fuck

roycohn

something i've noticed that has become really annoying in the past 10 years or so is this fad of what i've been calling, for lack of a better word, "structural whataboutism." it's that thing where, when faced with a concrete, resolvable problem in your community, your answer is to blame it on a vast, unsolvable issue of structural inequality and then throw up your hands. "there's trash all over the ground in this corner of the park" becomes "well, that's where MEN OF COLOR congregate after their 12-HOUR GRAVEYARD SHIFTS and i'm not going to support a CARCERAL SOLUTION to a CAPITALISTIC PROBLEM. WE NEED TO ELIMINATE POVERTY AND THE SUBJUGATION OF THE WORKING CLASS" and it's like okay but sis. someone still has to go pick up the trash. we don't need a carceral solution, we need more trash cans. you're not going to eliminate poverty and the subjugation of the working class and even if ya did, there would still be trash on the ground. how any of this passes for radicalism within their peer groups i simply don't understand. it's radical laziness more than anything else

figtreeandvine

I was on a canoe trip once with a river biologist who worked for the county. After we found and removed a car tire, she started talking about the annual river cleanup her department organized. From a water quality or ecological standpoint, removing shopping carts, car tires, and other macro trash from the river really wasn't that important, she said. The real threat to the river was industrial and agricultural runoff.

"But!" she said:

People who see a clean, trash-free river are more likely support laws to curb more harmful "systemic" forms of pollution. People who participate in river cleanups take pride in their work--their river!--and become evangelists for protecting it.

Immediate action leads to systemic awareness, which leads to systemic change.

sanguinifex

You gotta read and watch some old books and films that aren’t 100% modern politically correct. I’m not saying you should agree with everything in them but you need to learn where genres came from to understand what those genres are doing today and where media deconstructing old tropes is coming from.

Also, more often than you might think, they’re not actually promoting bigotry so much as “didn’t consider all the implications of something” or just used words that were polite then but considered offensive now.

Kill the censor in your head.

ashintheairlikesnow

When we choose to avoid history because it's Problematic or Says Bad Things, we are choosing to divorce ourselves from understanding how we came from that time to this one, which makes it even more likely for the cycle to repeat, with no one but a few people with shelves of old books aware that it's happened before.

towlerknows

Target is facing a 40-day consumer boycott starting Wednesday over the company’s shift away from diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) polic

I wasn't aware of this one, so I'm trying to spread the word.

shadoedseptmbr

Black faith leaders have called for a 40-day "fast" from Target for Lent in response to their compliance with Trump's resegregation agenda.

witchaj

Now this is an effective boycott. It is targeting (ha) a specific company with a clearly stated goal. The amount of time is long enough to be noticed, and could be extended if needed. Anything that can be purchased at Target can also be obtained elsewhere, so it is actually possible to boycott this specific company for a very long time. Target is caving to fascism and rolling back their diversity and inclusion policies. The goal is for them to reverse that decision. This is an achievable goal.

Boycotting everything all at once, for one day or for as long as you can, because everything is terrible and we’re mad about it…does nothing. It’s vague, disorganized, and frankly impossible. We have to buy things sometimes. You can’t just target the economy as a whole. You have to be specific.

If you want to start a boycott, use this one as an example. Choose one target. Provide one (simple, clear, easy to explain) reason why that company deserves to be boycotted. Explain what you want them to do differently. Make sure that it is something that can actually be done. Then tell people about it.

molotovblogtail

Fuckin hell. Lets gooooooooo

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