They’re lovely, but they MUST be kept in a pot, or a raised bed, or on a good-quality leash with a chest harness, because mint and its cousins spread like… IDEK, like a rash. Like dandelions. They’re tough, hardy and highly motivated. Even a tiny root fragment will suddenly turn into a Mint Tree if you don’t tear it up. I swear I’ve seen new plants popping up from BURIED SCRAPS OF LEAF. Once they’re in the ground they establish a beachhead and spawn secretly, possibly through osmosis. I cannot advise you to stick a mint plant in the ground unless you are a bold and unconventional disciplinarian.
The joke is that after running around after the mint like a spaniel chasing a whack-a-mole for a year, Dr Glass then planted a plant that would do the same thing.
Great plants, hard to kill, keep them in a pot (ESPECIALLY where invasive)
I would really recommend against planting mint in raised beds, and also, if in a pot, DO NOT PUT THE POT ON SOIL. The pot needs to be on rock or concrete. Otherwise the roots will head straight for freedom through the drainage holes, and you will Never Be Free.
of course, on the other hand, if you’re at all inclined to pettiness expressed via herbology, mint makes a GREAT vehicle for plant-based vengeance.
i have absolutely thrown mint roots into the perfectly manicured lawns of people i hate.
An ever growing mint plant appearing in my lawn would seem like the opposite of a problem to me?
They’re invasive, which means if they’re anywhere in your garden or manicured areas they could ruin the other plants, I think? But yeah I’d love to have a damn mint plant in my yard sounds ideal.
Has anyone ever thought of just having a lawn of mint instead of grass? Like how you have moss lawns?
… I am not judging!! but I don’t think the people in the notes who are like “oh a mint lawn would be lovely!” have met mint!
You know what would be a lovely herbal lawn? Chamomile. Because it’s a damn compact, densely-growing, hardy, winter-green perennial that’s springy underfoot, smells nice when you walk on it, and has some basic manners. Lawn chamomile is plushy and soft and produces tiny pretty daisy-looking flowers. It naturally stays at pretty much the height you would want grass to be, and then you can cut it and it goes “fair enough.”
Mint is not any of those things. Mint is leggy, patchy, muddy and rampageous. It grows randomly and fitfully. It bullies other plants. It sends runners into the neighbor’s houses and across the street and it barks at the postman. Your mint lawn would look like a poorly tended graveyard AND THEN IN THE WINTER IT WOULD DIE, DRAMATICALLY, and ROT THERE. It would outcompete native plants and eat your vegetable garden alive. It is so wet and stalky that it would be dreadful to trim, and when you trimmed it, it would scab over and sulk. It would refuse to grow where it was put (the lawn) and would instead show up in places you don’t want it (the patio, the sidewalk, your intrusive thoughts.) IT IS AN INVASIVE PLANT, WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS TO YOUR FAMILY
It’s like asking why people don’t make lawns out of cabbages, or hyenas, or the cold virus. BECAUSE THEN IT WOULDN’T BE A LAWN OR A GARDEN
Things are heating up in the herb fandom.
Reblogging because this conversation deserves to be shared with tumblr; Chris Pike would totally give mint as a gift to someone he hated as revenge.
I am really curious as to where @elodieunderglass is from. Because, well, the thing about invasive species is that they are only invasive in some areas.
And I can attest to being able to *kill* mint plants where I live. Ones out in the yard and everything, and they certainly aren’t on my areas list.
I’m from New England, USA. I live in Old England, Europe.
The thing with mint is that it’s not necessarily a lot of Invasive Species watch lists, it’s *an* invasive – an unscientific and loose term for things whose natural history and reproductive habits mean they can quickly outcompete native organisms. It isn’t An Invasive Plant ™ in its native soils, which are around Europe and the MENA region. Instead, it behaves invasively, like bindweed.
Mint’s brilliant, admirable secret is its long runners, or horizontal water-seeking roots. A tiny sprig will produce extremely long underground runners that can be many feet long. If a runner encounters a water source, it can suck it up and feed the host plant (so a mint plant growing in the middle of barren concrete may be slurping up water from a garden across the street, or a leaking pipe under the sidewalk, or possibly Neptune.) and each runner can also pop up a stalk in a new location, creating a new plant. A section of runner or other root is perfectly capable of making a new plant, so a fragment of buried root in a neighbor’s garden could result in a mint popping up in your patio. Mint also spreads by seed, so it disperses very efficiently.
Why is this a problem? Eh, it’s not really. It’s simply doing what’s in its nature. I always advocate for that. But it will outcompete your garden in most conditions – I.e if your other herbs want water, mint will steal it out from under them. It’s a water hog, as simple as that. In dry conditions or climates it will politely limit itself to places where it is given water, but if you start watering another part of the garden – maybe you want to cultivate a rose, or an olive tree – the mint will magically show up there, banging its water dish and looking expectant. And it will say “I had a secret runner that went here, Just In Case.” And you’ll say “fair enough, you mad bastard.”
But you’re right, my terminology was unclear. It’s a confusing way to use it and I won’t do it again
This Mint Discourse is the karmic price I must pay, since two years ago my husband chucked a mint plant into the field of a farmer he didn’t like, and I… Reader, I let him do it
Thank you all for warning me not to plant “a little mint” around the side of the house because it would be “nice to have around”.
Thank you all again for letting me know that this is a credible form of botanical terrorism.
CHOICE EXCERPTS:
they establish a beachhead and spawn secretly, possibly through osmosis
like a spaniel chasing a whack-a-mole for a year
pettiness expressed via herbology,
plant-based vengeance
i have absolutely thrown mint roots into the perfectly manicured lawns of people i hate.
[Chamomile] has some basic manners
Mint is… rampageous. It bullies other plants…. It barks at the postman
like a poorly tended graveyard
It’s like asking why people don’t make lawns out of cabbages, or hyenas, or the cold virus
so a mint plant growing in the middle of barren concrete may be slurping up water from a garden across the street, or a leaking pipe under the sidewalk, or possibly Neptune.
In dry conditions or climates it will politely limit itself to places where it is given water, but if you start watering another part of the garden – maybe you want to cultivate a rose, or an olive tree – the mint will magically show up there,
banging its water dish and looking expectant
“fair enough, you mad bastard.”
This Mint Discourse is the karmic price I must pay, since two years ago my husband chucked a mint plant into the field of a farmer he didn’t like, and I… Reader, I let him do it
credible form of botanical terrorism.
@memprime @elodieunderglass @semianonymity @nehirose @voidbat @hello-hayati @eminenceofiyanola @elodieunderglass @dirtycorzaharkness @naamahdarling I want to thank each and every one of you. The talent and the bright minds behind this post, incredible. We wouldn’t be standing here today without you. This was a group effort, a team play. Y’all came together and gave it your A game and that really shows through in the final product. Good job team, you really did it.
Okay, if anyone is going to read this story, you are legally required to listen to the song “Turbulence” first. Nothing will truly make sense without it. You sit your ass through the entire damn song, if you try to skimp out on it the Elder’s will find you. It’s completely vital to the full experience of this stupid ass story. This ENTIRE story exasperates me
Now, okay, so my high school senior class….was relatively a group of good kids. It was a larger grade then I was used to growing up, so I obviously didn’t know everyone in the school personally, but I could pretty much recognize everyone in my grade, and like okay, there were a lot of class clowns and trouble makers™, but for the most part, no one was really a dick and everyone was generally a Decent Person.
Then, for some ungodly reason, the song ‘turbulence’ gets released.
Now, I think the song actually came out in like, 2011 or something, but it caused Notable Problems with my grade in particular. It was deemed our ‘CLASS SONG’, and every time it played at an event or someone just played it for fun on their phone or something, every single kid in my age group just unexplainably went crazy. You never really knew what was going to happen, and it got worse each and every year- making senior year the year of Worried Faculty, and not without reason.
Senior Year alone, before this Disney incident happened, the song ‘turbulence’ lead directly to the slightly-violent concussion of an unwillingly crowd surfing teacher and a few freshmen at homecoming, and it was also being blasted on a blue tooth speaker when a couple of boys in my class Lowkey Very Politely High-Jacked The Plane We Were On, so, when we got to Disney World, the chaperones made sure to contact whoever was in charge of our party and told them under no circumstances was this song to be played.
Anyway.
So the school does a Disney trip for the seniors every year- they stay in a cheap hotel and shove four or five withering and hormonal teens in a room, they go to the parks during the day, one night they walk through Universal and see the Blue Man Group in concert, and one night they usually have a big dinner and dance party for the kids, usually held in Sea World.
But, you know what came out when they were planning the Disney trip? Blackfish. So, the school board (and a lot of the students) were like “UMM-” and that left them scrambling to find a new location for the party.
The Disney workers, being Disney workers, were super helpful when the school mentioned this issue when they called to make reservations, though. They were like, “Oh, this is great timing! Your school always brings such well-behaved kids every year, and we’ve been thinking about opening up our Fantasia Gardens golf course as a party location! You guys could be our first official party!” and the school was super flattered so they agreed. Disney was providing a dance floor, food, a DJ, and everything else, and it wasn’t going to really cost anything extra, so the faculty was like, Super Excited about it. They thought this was gonna be a great thing, they were the experiment to see if they would try this with other schools, it was an honor, and it meant that they had a great reputation in Disney’s opinion, so maybe they’d be open to providing the school with free/new stuff/opportunities in future years.
Now, let me tell you something- I was Kinda Fucking Miserable for most of this trip. The first day was fine, but the second day saw my friends abandoning me in Magic Kingdom with barely any explanation, so I spent all day roaming MK and Epicot alone, save for occasionally standing next to acquaintances and talking to my different-school friends in a group chat on my phone, and then later that night my friend since third grade like, got a school official and cried to her about how I had instigated a fight and that’s why I was alone all day, which is literally such bullshit and not what happened, it‘s been 3 years and I still cannot believe she actually pulled this fuckery, so even though we made up later in the week I was still pissed the fuck off for the rest of my life the trip. All of my roommates (the deserters) were walking on eggshells around me, except this one control-freak girl who tried to micromanage everything I did (even though literally none of it affected her) and none of us realized how pissed off I was until I apparently physically threw her out of the bed while I was in a deep sleep, multiple times, and also stole her pillow. So the only person who I wasn’t Fully Done with was this tiny girl from a writing class, but she was potentially Half-Hamster, exclusively wore clothes made for seven year olds, couldn’t go on half of the rides because of her glass eye, and 99% of her conversation points was talking about all the plans she had to hang out with one of the other girls I was rooming with (who didn’t actually wanna hang out with her/got mad at me the third day there because the boy she liked was flirting with me), so like…she was sweet but I also wanna go on rides and not hear how great the girls I’m lowkey in a Blood Feud with are, you know? She wasn’t exactly prime hang out material here. So by the time we get to this party at Fantasia Gardens, we’re all lowkey pretending like everything’s fine but like. It wasn’t hard to tell there was fighting going on. And you could just look at all the other students around you and see there was also fighting going on. Shoving so many kids in hot rooms is never a good idea, like YIKE.
Anyway, I needed something at this party to be fun. I needed to be released at this point.
I walk into the place and immediately realize I’m a fucking outlier amongst the girls- every single girl had opted for a sundress, whilst I thought a black skirt and a nice blouse would be enough. This should not have been a problem, but hey. High School. What can ya do. (it just made me more stressed) At this point I was like, this is it, this is it, I hate literally everyone in my high school. There’s nothing holding me back. Graduation take me the fuck away. But I had to make it through this party and then one more day in Disney.
The room was like, a barn, kind off? Or at the very least it had been decorated like one. There was barbecue food, a dance floor, a lake outside, and a mini-golf course that we were told we were allowed to use at any part of the night. The DJ was playing relatively normal dance/club music. After about an hour of strobe lights and watching people dancing, My Friend Who Hath Betrayed Me and I decided to head down to the mini-golf course.
There were these two guys there, and I didn’t really know them but they were clearly those ‘All Our Classmates Are Beneath Us Because We’re Alternative And Like Anime And Heavy Metal Music’ types of guys. They took one look at my ass in a tight black mini-skirt and immediately started flirting with me, and on any other occasion I would have shot them down, but 1) They were both actively focused on me over my friend, who I was still mad at and 2) I was frustrated – so I started flirting back even though I wasn’t interested in the slightest (and I had petty reasoning, of course, but I was 18, it was a bad week, it was 100 degrees, give me a break. I promise 99% of the time I’m not Awful). So anyway, we get caught up in a game of mini-golf with these anti-establishment boys, who spend the entire time dissing our classmates for, like, dancing, and looking for excuses to show off in front of me/touch me. We missed like half the dance because of this.
Right when we were finishing our game, we were contemplating going to the other golf course (I was looking for an excuse to head back to the party tbh we were literally the only four people outside it was starting to feel like the set up to a horror movie) when a girl came up and told us to head back in because the boys™ had busted out the alcohol and we only had a limited amount of time before the chaperones noticed.
(They sold alcohol at our hotel, a bunch of people had fake id’s made before the trip for this very reason). Me and my friend didn’t actually feel like drinking but we took the excuse and the boys followed us back inside (we lost them on the dance floor and I only saw them once again that night). Anyway, we arrived to what we thought was Chaos, but was truly only the Beginning of Chaos.
Right off the bat, I noticed the boys from my Gov class and the boys I knew from detention were huddled around each other, muttering under the music. That, I knew, was not gonna lead to anything good. They see me, and they’re like “Javert! Javert people trust you! Go request that the DJ play turbulence!” and I’m like. No. What are you fucking planning??? But they just keep pressing me. They would not drop it oh my God. One of my roommates overhears this, the one who’s mad at me because her crush she never talks to was slightly flirting with me earlier, and she’s in a petty™ mood so she asks why they want it to play but they still won’t tell her, just keep insisting that it has to happening. So she’s all, ‘I can get it to play’ and struts off to the DJ booth with an exaggerated ponytail snap. I’m left with these boys like. For fucks sake please don’t get anyone killed.
A few boys break off to go tap people and let them know what’s going on. The smell of alcohol is strong. Boys are starting to discreetly take off their shoes and any valuables and hide them under the tables. The chaperones aren‘t noticing any of this.
I broke away from the dance floor to get a soda, and one of the teachers sees me looking mildly distressed and asks if something’s wrong. And I know. I know that I have the power to kill whatever the hell is about to happen. I’m the sole person in this room that’s clued in who’s not whispering in excitement and waiting for the song to play. I still don’t even know what they’re all planning on doing, but I could end this so fast, just say the words ‘turbulence’ or ‘the boys’ or ‘senior prank’, and this would be nipped in the bud immediately. This could be over before it ever started, all because of me.
And then I reflect on how shitty my weeks been going, how I was frustrated with most of the people in the room, how I needed something fun to happen at this party to release me from hell.
I tell the chaperone I’m fine, just getting a little tired, and they drop it and head back to the buffet line.
I head back to the dance floor. Everyone is grinding with baited breath.
The DJ’s voice comes over the microphone: “I hear it’s someone’s birthday tomorrow! Let’s play her favorite song!”
Turbulence begins to play.
The class goes wild, wilder than they’ve ever been before. The building may as well be shaking from all the noise and music.
The teachers are trying to get the DJ’s attention to cut the song. He can’t hear them.
The bass drops.
Almost every boy on the dance floor screams, runs outside, rips off their shirts and jumps into the fucking lake.
It was absolute PANDEMONIUM. This wasn’t even the funniest thing they could have come up with but everyone left on the dance floor was loosing their minds cracking up. The teachers and Disney workers were screaming at the top of their lungs and trying to haul boys back onto the land.
Then the manager of Fantasia Gardens starts screaming that there are alligators in the fucking lake.
Like. FUCKING. IT’S FLORIDA. HOW DID NO ONE THINK THERE WAS GONNA BE AN ALLIGATOR PROBLEM. F L O R I D A.
THESE DUMBASS BOYS JUMPED INTO A FUCKING ALLIGATOR INFESTED LAKE.
A L L I G A T O R S.
FUCK.
All the boys eventually make it back onto land- no one had been bitten or killed or anything, although a few apparently did see ‘shapes moving’ (it was late at night, so nothing clear), and one kid got kicked in the head and knocked out for a few moments and almost drowned, but everyone was intact.
DISNEY WORLD WAS FURIOUS.
And like, you can’t fucking blame them. I’m sure when they were making the principal sign liability papers, they didn’t think to include ‘late night gator attacks in a lake’ on the list, they could’ve been put in serious trouble if something had happened omfg. But there was a LOT of yelling/ranting/cursing. NEVER before have they seen such inappropriate behavior, the school would not be allowed to step foot in the Fantasia Gardens EVER again, yadayada, that sort of thing. The more boys I found soaking wet, the more ridiculous this got- I knew which of them had planned it of course, but this was most of the grade. There were like, geeks and nerds and Good Kids™ who I never expected to do something like wild like this standing around half naked looking torn between proud and about-to-cry omfg.
Every single boy who participated got suspended for three days, but they had to space out which boys were suspended which days because they didn’t trust them to not throw a giant party on the days they weren’t there.
The school is still allowed in Disney World every year, but are banned from Fantasia Gardens and received a fine.
‘Turbulence’ was absolutely banned from being played at senior prom.
I love how groups of friends will end up adopting a group name. like wether it’s something just like “squad” or “meme team” an inside joke or something. and you’ll just refer to the group like one unit like “hey, the meme team is coming over,” and people will just know who that means. I love it. I love these little gangs filled with good pals.
In peacetime, the ruler grows their hair long. In war, they cut it short.
A ruler with long hair is held in great esteem, for defending the peace.
The traditional declaration of war is for the ruler to send their cut-off hair to the enemy ruler. The statement carries greater weight the longer the hair: to receive long hair says that you have angered one who is slow to anger, that you have incurred a wrath not easily woken.
Violent war-mongering leader frantically and aggressively tries to shave just a LITTLE hair off the top of their head into an envelope.
A faraway king receives a heavy wooden crate filled with a coil of the longest hair he has ever seen.
A despised ruler finds hundreds of pounds of cut-off ponytails at her castle entrance, each one belonging to her own people.
A young emperor refuses to cut their hair and insists on trying to make peace with invaders. The enemy leader steps forward, draws their blade, and cuts the emperor’s hair themselves.
Hellen cuts her hair off and throws it in Cathy’s face at her son’s soccer scrimmage.
“Thank you for your latest submission to the Institute, labeled “211-D, layer seven, next to the clothesline post. Hominid skull.” We have gien this specimen a careful and detailed examination and regret to inform you that we disagree with you theory that it represents ‘conclusive proof of the presence of Early Man in Charleston County two million years ago.’ Rather, it appears that what you have found is the head of a Barbie doll, of the variety one of our staff, who has small children, believes to be the ‘Malibu Barbie’. It is evident that you have given a great deal of thought to the analysis of this specimen, and you may be quite certain that those of us who are familiar with your prior work in the field were loathe to come to contradiction with your findings. However, we do feel that there are a number of physical attributes of the specimen which might have tipped you off to it’s modern origin:
The material is molded plastic. Ancient hominid remains are typically fossilized bone.
The cranial capacity of the specimen is approximately 9 cubic centimeters, well below the threshold of even the earliest identified proto-hominids.
The dentition patters evident on the ‘skull’ is more consistent with the common domesticated dog than it is with the ‘ravenous man-eating Pliocene clams’ you speculate roamed the wetlands during that time.This latter finding is certainly one of the most intriguing hypotheses you have submitted in your history with this institution, but the evidence seems to weigh rather heavily against it. Without going into too much detail, let us say that:
A) The specimen looks like the head of a Barbie doll that a dog has chewed on.
Clams don’t have teeth.
It is with feelings tinged with melancholy that we must deny your request to have the specimen carbon dated. This is partially due to the heavy load our lab must bear in it’s normal operation, and partly due to carbon dating’s notorious inaccuracy in fossils of recent geologic record. To the best of our knowledge, no Barbie dolls were produced prior to 1956 AD, and carbon dating is likely to produce wildly inaccurate results. Sadly , we must also deny your request that we approach the National Science Foundation’s Phylogeny Department with the concept of assigning your specimen the scientific name ‘Australopithecus spiff-arino.’ Speaking personally, I for one, fought tenaciously for the acceptance of your proposed taxonomy, but was ultimately voted down because the species name you selected was hyphenated, and didn’t really sound like it might be Latin.
However, we gladly accept your generous donation of this fascinating specimen to the museum. While it is undoubtedly not a hominid fossil, it is, nonetheless, yet another riveting example of the great body of work you seem to accumulate here so effortlessly. You should know that our Director has reserved a special shelf in his own office for the display of the specimens you have previously submitted to the Institution, and the entire staff speculates daily on what you will happen upon next in your digs at the site you have discovered in your back yard. We eagerly anticipate your trip to or nation’s capital that you proposed in you last letter, and several of us are pressing the Director to pay for it. We are particularly interested in hearing you expand on your theories surrounding the ‘trans-positating fillifitation of ferrous ions in a structural matrix’ that makes the excellent juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex femur you recently discovered take on the deceptive appearance of a rusty 9-mm Sears Craftsman automotive crescent wrench.
Yours in Science,
Harvey Rowe
Curator, Antiquities”
—————————————————————————————————-
(sorry if there are misspellings or wrong wordings. this was long and i was reading it off my phone)
“I for one, fought tenaciously for the acceptance of your proposed taxonomy, but was ultimately voted down because the species name you selected was hyphenated, and didn’t really sound like it might be Latin.“
is there ever that one celebrity that no matter what mood youre in, if you feel like crap you just see a picture of them and you just smile and think “thank you for existing” because they have made your day brighter even if you don’t really know them
the correct answer is:
This is the correct answer. Did you know that when she finds out a studio has asked an actress to lose weight she contacts them and yells at them?
I did not know that, but I do remember an interview where she said she keeps her Oscar in her downstairs loo, because that’s the one her guests use, so they can just go use the loo and don’t have to ask if they can hold her Oscar. Plus then they’ve got the mirror so they can practice their acceptance speeches.
First Auror Potter I have ever painted was on his birthday, July 31st, in 2016, and it’s the first of this collection. I think that’s why I started to think of him as an +20 yo auror. Somehow, it’s like he’s growing with me in real time. My vision of Harry Potter has matured over the years. He’s no longer a young boy in my mind as I’m no longer a child or teenager. What motivates me is to think he’s got wiser and more serious and all shit he’s been through since he was a kid made him even more sarcastic then he was. “No need to call me sir, professor” would turn into something like “You need to call me sir”.
sparksoffandommagic 