Feminism Should Definitely Be More Inclusive Of Femininity! 

Hey just a quick psa because I haven’t done one of these in a while IF YOU ARE A TERF GET OFF MY FUCKING BLOG!!! I don’t care what the fuck you call yourself, terf, gender critical, or whatever bullshit, if you don’t support trans people, I want you gone!

TRANS WOMEN ARE WOMEN

TRANS MEN ARE MEN

NON-BINARY IDENTITIES ARE REAL AND VALID

You either stand with the entire lgbt+ community or you stand with none of it. I stand with my trans siblings and if you don’t, get off my blog

Home Mothers & Working Mothers are both valid.

you can do either one and still love your children with all your heart~

Are you. Fucking kidding me

Happy Passover! ~Canary

Chag pesach sameach!

[Image description: A seder plate, with parsley, an egg, horseradish, a shankbone and a beet, charoset, and slices of orange. End ID]

I highly agree with this.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am all for breaking the heteronormative mold and rising above oppression. But one thing that I do idolize about that time was the fact that, for some families (including my great grandparents), a family, dog, vehicle and mortgage (not rent!) could be supported with one person’s income. Of course, this varied person to person due to the fact that there were many other intersectional factors at play, but it was true for some.

Nowadays, in most places, you’re lucky to get a half-decent house or a reasonable apartment with both partners in a relationship working multiple jobs, and even then they have to worry about food and bills, nevermind transportation and pets. 

This is why we need a wealth tax and some serious redistribution.

Maybe the fertility rate for The United States wouldn’t be so dismally low if we had an economy the could support single-earner households.

The basics of growing food

So, growing food sounds very intimidating, and in reality, it’s something people knew how to do thru all history, and it’s made even easier by new methods of ‘no till’ and ‘no dig’ garden. I didn’t know almost anything about it until 3 years ago, when I got a plot in a community garden and started growing food with no experience. Still it went good! Here’s what I learned:

The basics are as simple as 'if you put a seed underground and keep it wet, it’s going to come out.’ If you start off from that, even if you know nothing else, eventually you will succeed. The additional stuff is done to ensure success. The biggest actual issue of gardening isn’t how, but when. When are you supposed to put all the seeds underground to get good harvest? For most of the plants, it can be as simple as 'Spring’. For others, it’s very important just when in the spring you plant it.

Let’s say you want to start your first garden, you want to plant some onions, lettuce, peas, green beans, tomatoes, peppers and zucchini. All of these can be planted in the spring! But these plants are sorted in 2 categories: Those who can survive a frost, and those who cannot. We call these 'frost hardy’ (those who survive the frost) and frost-tender (those plants will die if they’re exposed to lower than 0 temperatures). From the ones I listed, onions, lettuce and peas are frost hardy! It means you can plant them very early in spring, such as February and March, and they can be hit with snow and ice and be just fine. They can also be planted in autumn, and they only really start growing in the spring.

Green beans, tomatoes, peppers, and zucchini are frost-tender, meaning you absolutely can’t grow them before the chance of freezing temperatures is gone. This is known in gardening as 'the last frost date’. Every area has a different last-frost date, so it’s good to google yours to be sure you’re planting these when it’s safe to do so. For me it’s mid-April.

Now, since it’s a long time to wait for your plants to grow if you’ve only planted the seeds in mid April, people have found a way around it by planting the seeds in little containers inside of their house, or in a greenhouse, so they grow in a nice warm place on a windowsill, and are moved out in the ground when it’s warm and safe. This is a very fun thing to do as you will have bunch of little plants growing in your home. Important thing to know about it is to use really light and airy soil, not garden soil, (you can use forest soil!) and to make sure you’re not over-watering them and you give them as much light as possible.

Soil is another big thing in gardening, the grass grows so easily from it, but you can’t exactly plant your seeds into the grass; they will get suffocated. For a long time people have tilled the ground to make it empty of all the weeds and easy to handle; however this isn’t healthy for the soil, because it ruins the quality of top-soil, exposes it to sun and wind erosion, and it dries up very easily. Here are some beneficial methods of gardening: mulching and no-dig. Mulching means adding stuff like hay, straw, tree leaves, woodchips, pine needles on top of the soil. You’re protecting your soil from sun, wind, erosion, drying out, and if your mulch is thick and dark enough, no weeds will grow in your garden. You are gardening by science.

So what does this mean for you, when you’re standing before a patch of grass, thinking of turning it into a garden? You need to do this months before the actual planting, using time to your benefit is the smartest thing a gardener can do. You pick a patch of land and bring in everything you can on top: cut grass, hay, tree leaves you raked or found, straw if you have any, woodchips, anything that will stop the grass from growing. If you really want to build up your soil you can bring in compost too! All that organic material will eventually turn into compost and fertilize your garden as it degrades to soil. It’s important to not mix it with the soil, and to only keep it on top of the plants. Mixing it will deplete the soil of nitrogen, and you need nitrogen to grow anything green. If you keep bringing in organic material for years of gardening, and on top of that put some compost as well, in 3-5 years your soil will become so rich and soft you will no longer have to use tools to plant in it.

But, hey, if it’s your first time, you don’t need to aim for perfection. If you didn’t prepare your soil in the fall, whatever! You can still pull the weeds, dig around a little to make some clear soil, and plant your stuff! I’ve done this last-minute planting and it works just fine. Mulching and adding organic material is only the easiest, most scienc-y way to garden.

The next big thing in gardening is spacing and depth: how far apart should your plants be? And how deep to plant them? For depth, the rule of the thumb is 'twice as deep as the seed is tall’. But I’ve seen people pull various shit in this area and succeed so do what you want. As of spacing, I would also say, try out what fits for you. It takes a year of gardening to get a sense of just how big the plants get, and what would be ideal spacing for each of them. I decided only on my third year to plant tomatoes VERY far apart, because I realized in this case, one plant will give me more than 8kg tomatoes and it’s much less work than planting 3 times as many plants that are close together. Peas seem to like to grow close tho, for some reason. Sometimes you can decide you want a bunch of tiny plants because you’ll eat them young, so you don’t space them on purpose, people do that with lettuce, leeks, spinach. If you want your plants as big as possible with as much yield as possible, give them half a meter and see what happens.

Fertilization is another big thing in gardening; if you add a lot of compost and mulch your garden consistently, you won’t need a lot more; however there’s a cool free trick you can do (if you’re not currently sick): you can mix your urine with 10x water, and water your plants with that. And I really mean mix it with 10x water! Plants can get very fried by it and start to wilt if they’re bombed with too much fertilizer at once! There are rules for this: use it when you want your plants to grow a lot of greenery, not if you want them to flower or produce fruit. This fertilizer is rich in nitrogen, and nitrogen inspires plants to grow more leaves! If you wanna fertilize them later in their growth, put a lot of nettle plants in a big container with water, leave it in the sun for 10 days; when it starts to smell real bad, it’s ready. (you can also do this with comfrey). Also dilute it with 10x water! Don’t use these fertilizers on bean or pea plants, or any legume, they don’t like it.

Now I’ve given you so much info at once, you’re probably struggling to take it all in, so here’s a good youtube channel where I learned all I know: Roots and Refuge. If you watch this lady garden for long enough, she will tell you all of the secrets.

I remember being a first time gardener overwhelmed with worry; what if I fail, what if nothing grows, what if I kill all the plants, what if I have a black thumb, what if the plants die because I am stupid, what if I put all of this work in and get nothing, what if people make fun of me, what if I run into problems I won’t be able to solve. Here are some of the answers to these!

A part of what you grow will DEFINITELY DIE. I can guarantee it, it happens to everyone, every single garden in the world has had plants die, sometimes for no reason at all, but in no case will EVERYTHING die. We all count on a part of our plants dying, becoming slug food, not doing well in general, and we always plant 30% more than we absolutely need. Even if you are personally responsible for killing the plants, the plants will not hold it against you! Plants appreciate you spreading their seed regardless of success, they understand that by trying multiple times you will eventually succeed and they absolutely want you to learn thru occasional failure. The answer is again to plant a lot, and it never ever happened that nothing came out of it. Most often, it’s not going to be your fault at all. Sometimes the year will be good for tomatoes and carrots, and bad for peas. It’s all okay! Because you just planted extra peas, and you’ll get more tomatoes than you expected to have.

If you have the desire to plant food, you do not have a black thumb; the green thumb is in the heart that yearns to grow. You’re not stupid if your plants die, plants die for everyone. And people are likely to come at you with million advice; listen to no one, try everything yourself. If they make fun of you, they’re gonna look real stupid when you have home-grown food. Any problem you might run into while gardening is google-able! Or you can join a page of gardeners and they’ll be happy to identify the issue.

The real main issue with gardening are slugs and bug-type pests, and that is a problem for another day because all I know to do is to yeet those away by hand and shake my finger very sternly at them. Hope this helps!

For my Christian, Catholic, and general Jesus-believing people on here. 

I like Easter as much as the next person and I still celebrate it in a different capacity, but honestly? Jesus would be disappointed if everyone ignored his sacrifice and only focused on his coming back to life.

For years I have walked into near empty sanctuaries on Good Friday. While the church is packed on Easter, as people spill into folding chairs. This is something that causes me deep grief. People come to see the victorious Christ without even understanding the depth of his miracle. Now this year, the church is empty on both Good Friday and Easter. These are strange times.

At the last Good Friday service I attended at my old church, the pastor  proclaimed at the very beginning of his sermon “no one wants to be here.” He then rambled on about how it was important to be optimistic for the coming Sunday. I remember how anger rose up from deep within me, threatening to spill out from my mouth: “Pastor, we need to be here. It is imperative we be here at this moment.” I am not necessarily a fan of atonement theology, however, it is worse to turn our eyes and hearts away from the horror of Jesus’ death.

Easter is meaningless without Good Friday. Light has no meaning without darkness.

Jesus was murdered. Easter is a story about a criminal preaching of an alternative kingdom. Seen as a terrorist, he was murdered by the Roman Empire. We cannot nor should not ignore this injustice. Jesus could not rise from the grave without being executed by the state. His resurrection would be meaningless if he was not killed by the government.

I don’t like optimistic platitudes. Easter is not a story of optimism. The words that Jesus cried “Eli, Eli, Lema Sabachthani!” are proof of this. It is important to acknowledge that we are in pain, that it is okay to feel abandoned and lost… just like Jesus. Rather, we should approach Easter as a story of hope. The Hope of Jesus Christ. This hope is not empty words of positivity. It is radical. This hope shines through the darkness like a lighthouse in a raging storm. 

In the hours in between the crucifixion and the resurrection, the Apostle’s Creed proclaims that Jesus “descended into hell.” There are early theological ideas that explain how Jesus went deep into the darkness to save souls before rising on Sunday. Many of these theologies depict Jesus fighting Death during His time in the afterlife. An Orthodox idea that I particularly like is that Jesus defeated death with death. 

We cannot ignore that the world is suffering right now. Especially those on the margins of society. The people most affected by this pandemic are the disabled, the chronically ill, the poor, the “essential,” the indigenous, the elderly. People are suffering financial burdens. People are losing their jobs. People are enduring being trapped in homes that have no love. People are in pain, unable to breathe. People are dying. For so many people, this is Hell. 

Hope will be our guide in this Hell. Hope will lead us into confronting and fighting this pandemic as well as the corrupt institutions that enable it to spread. Hope will guide us into the resurrection.

Jesus eternally dies on the cross of this world. Jesus eternally rises from the grave. Wherever Jesus is, let us be. Amen.

cruising 💐 spring

http://www.instagram.com/loithai/

Courtney Dunkel in the Boston Globe, Massachusetts, November 10, 1950