Gonna go paint gold betta fish all over my dark green bathroom walls. Posting this as motivation to actually follow through on it.
Progress shot! It’s metallic so it changes with the light a little bit.
Slowly but surely expanding the school!
Added more bettas today! Once I’ve added them all I think I’m going to fill in the gaps with a swirling school of little fish.
Hid the message & two fish behind my husband’s towel to surprise him.
posting and deleting is the most fun a girl can have without taking her clothes off
I love it when dogs try to help but the task at hand requires zero dogs so they just kinda stand in front of you and look serious.
middle aged men do this too
It’s el muchacho monday
accidental communism
The conversation around abortion shouldn’t be “are you absolutely sure you want an abortion” it should be “are you absolutely sure you want a child”. You can get pregnant again. You can adopt. But you can’t half-heartedly raise a child or change your mind midway through parenthood. Children are a huge responsibility and if someone isn’t 110% sure they are willing and able to do it, they shouldn’t. Having a baby shouldn’t be the default because of how extremely demanding and difficult parenthood is and the irreversible damage it does to a kid to be raised by someone who didn’t even fully want parenthood and wasn’t prepared for that level of responsibility.
howl’s moving castle is first and foremost a comedy because sophie breaks into howl’s house and nearly kills the only thing keeping him alive and he’s just like wow can’t believe i scored a girlboss
I don't think it really hits for most people how much topsoil is an incredibly depleted resource that is virtually nonrenewable under current land management practices.
Topsoil you buy at a garden center most likely is not real topsoil, but rather simply compost mixed with sand. Many people have never touched topsoil. In vast swathes of inhabited land, topsoil simply does not exist anymore.
On the lawn care subreddit, people will occasionally be alarmed that their soil feels "mushy" and "soft" after the addition of lots of organic matter, or post something greatly alarmed about the area of "soft" soil in their yard.
These people would shit their pants in awe if they felt the soil in a forest. Their frame of reference for "soil" is so completely, sadly spoiled by compacted, concrete-like lawn dirt. This is a big reason I'm "anti-lawn." Lawns consistently have some of the worst, most devastated soil imaginable.
Topsoil is a LIVING community of microbes, plant roots, decaying organic matter, and perhaps most importantly of all, fungal mycelium. You cannot buy it. You cannot synthesize it. No amount of fertilizer will turn compacted lawn dirt into topsoil. It takes a hundred years to build one inch of topsoil.
In the USA, prairie soil was plowed up to make fields, and we all learned about the Dust Bowl in school, but we don't talk enough about the fact that plowing up the prairies engulfed half the country in devastating dirt storms that turned the sky black and had people choking and coughing up dirt all the time and sweeping deep drifts of dirt out of their houses. Like that happened. Damn.
What we did was something utterly devastating, the near total destruction of hundreds and hundreds of years' worth of an irreplaceable natural resource. And it's happened all over the country. We will never comprehend how much we lost when we lost the topsoil.
Anyone got a resource on rebuilding topsoil? Would like to do my part on my small lawn @systlin @thebibliosphere you have vibes like you’d know about this
I'm not an expert, honestly, @systlin will probably know more than me, but here's what I've learned over the years, and from slowly replacing our lawn.
Bear in mind, a lot of this will depend on your local climate and you should always research your own local area first.
My dad grew all our fruit and vegetables when I was a kid, and he'd routinely be out back replenishing the lot with manure fertilizer (a lot of manure fertilizers need to be matured, you can't just shovel cow shit onto your lawn) and giving the garden time to rest in between growing things. He also swore by vermicomposting, or worm composting. To this day, the soil in their backyard is pitch black and grows monster-sized produce. Their "grass" is also mostly clover and moss, which requires minimal maintenance and works well for their damp climate.
Something else I've since learned is to make mulch out of fallen leaves. If you live in a drier climate, you can let the leaves that fall from your local trees dry out, then chop them up (we run over them with the lawn mower) then spread it out over your yard.
If you live in wetter climes, or you just like to compost things, throwing leaves into your compost mulch is a great way of returning vital nutrients and minerals into the soil that are otherwise depleted as well.
We're also replacing our lawn with clover, which requires less mowing, less watering, and doesn't require fertilizing because it actively replaces nitrogen levels in the soil.
It's great for pollination and also good for local wildlife to munch on (we have so many bunnies) and, as I mentioned above, also helps balance nitrogen in the soil, which can often be stripped away by "traditional" lawns. You also don't have to aerate it because the root structure leaves behind macropores in the soil, which is heaven for our little worm friends who do a fantastic job of keeping soil healthy.
Clover is obviously not best suited to everywhere.
It really does depend on your climate and where you are in the world, but it can be a good place for many people to start moving away from lawn culture and help to replenish some nutrients in the soil in the meantime.
Avoiding pesticides and herbicides is also good, as is researching what used to grow where you are now, and trying to find some native pollinators. I've seen a lot of people here planting native prairie flowers, and it's really heartening to see how well they thrive after a few years.
Also avoid tilling where you can. We now know it breaks up vital root structures. This is more important for farmers, but it doesn't hurt for us to do either.
People who think sheep are killed for their wool are so hilarious to me. Does your barber slit your throat whenever you get a haircut?? Are you a returning customer to Sweeney Todd? Lmao it grows back, fools.
This is completely ignoring the fact that the sheep's soul is stored in its wool. So sure, the body remains, but the spirit, the essence of the sheep, that's gone forever, and then as the wool regrows a new soul moves in.
What
I love talking about the biggest or best thing “this side of the Mississippi” because like hey buddy I can make the best peach cobbler in this half of the continent but god only knows what peach secrets they have over on the other coast. I’m not messing with that.
i asked my dad to make me a hot chocolate and he’s literally sawing something in the kitchen rn
i do feel like.....idk, doggo culture or whatever has made people very comfortable with dogs and like. i obviously love dogs i have dedicated a lot of my life to dogs but dogs.....like, uh, kill people sometimes
there's been this weird shift from like when i was a kid and it was just customary that you didn't approach dogs you didn't know and you didn't touch a stranger's dog without permission to people feeling completely entitled to just touch your dog
to the point of disregarding and even arguing with you when you say no
i have an aggressive dog and the number of people who insist "well, dogs love me" and reach out to touch him anyway is ridiculous
i feel like culturally we've treated dogs so much like children that people have largely forgotten that at the end of the day they're still animals and animals are not always predictable, logical, or even safe
Adjacent point, and possibly unpopular opinion, but it also seems like there’s been a large increase in entitlement from dog-owners too — specifically them assuming that their dog is automatically allowed into every public building or retail space, not even checking if there’s a sign on the door, and having a go at retail workers if they’re not allowed
And no it doesn’t make a difference if they’re “only small” or “well-behaved, not like other dogs”
There are many legitimate reasons that places don’t allow dogs — as stated above, they are still animals, they are unpredictable, even the most well-behaved dog could be provoked. Dogs could have messy fur, many people are allergic to dogs, many young children are scared of dogs — assuming that they should be let in places as default is a dangerous habit which definitely seems to have increased in recent years
Heath Ledger - A Knight's Tale (2001) promo shoot
here’s the link to vote: https://elections.ulstercountyny.gov/i-voted-sticker-contest/
