one of my friends is a very pregnant dog and like 3 times a day i say to her “hello! you are full of several other smaller dogs!” and she wags her entire body at me like “it’s true!!! i contain multitudes”
i love that ur friend is the pregnant dog. what a nice friend to have.
ya she’s my buddy i love her!
update: there were five (5) smaller dogs inside my dog friend, but now they are all outside of her instead (!!)
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.
No but the history behind this picture is really interesting
The reason that everyone always looked miserable in old photos wasn’t that they took too long to take. Once photography became widespread it took only seconds to take a picture.
It was because getting your photo taken was treated the same as getting your portrait painted. A very serious occasion meant so thst your descendants would know that ypu existed and what you looked like.
But one time some British dudes went to china to go on an anthropological expedition, and they met some rural Chinese farmers and decided to take their pictures. Now, these people weren’t exposed to the weird culture of the time around getting your photo taken, so this guy just flashed a big grin during the photo because he was told to strike a pose and that’s the pose he wanted to strike.
I think painted portraits and old photos give us the idea that in general people were just really unhappy because those are the visuals we have. This is so refreshing.
Hey, look; “Man Laughing Alone With Rice” is back on my dash.
beauty and the beast but reverse, i kiss the love of my life and she turns into a sick fucking monster and it’s awesome
shrek
No, fuck you, post un-cancelled
This is good shit.
A girl is born to loving parents. A king and queen, a noble and his wife, an inventor and his spouse… same story, different versions, and all. are. true. Tragedy strikes the mother– though god, why always the mother? Let it be the father this time. He dies; we need not explain how. The stories never grant their dead women such courtesy.
Her husband dead, the woman remarries. She marries as a clever political maneuver, to keep her throne secure; she marries for new love and the promise that her daughter will have another parent to be loved by; she marries out of desperation for security in a world that grants her little without a ring on her finger.
She is betrayed. The new husband, the step-father, does little to deserve his new titles. He is cruel, he is neglectful, he is absent. Perhaps his wife does not survive, or if she does, she is reduced to a shadow of her old self. This, too, is an old story with many versions.
Then the witch. The woman uncontrolled, the woman powerful, the woman terrible. She comes and she brings fear and magic. The magic is change.
“I give you a gift,” she says, or else, “I curse you.” Perhaps she says, “I curse you,” to the step-father, but to the daughter this is a gift. Words can mean more than one thing; that is their very great power.
“I curse you, girl,” she says. “When you receive true love’s first kiss, you will become a monster. You will be huge and terrible, a threat to all. You will have terror in your face and death in your hands.”
And the girl, she is afraid. But this is not new. She has been afraid for years.
Perhaps she finally flees to the forest, terrified of both her step-father and now herself. She swears off the company of men. Lost and hungry, she thinks she will die, but she is rescued by a company of women with untamed hair and pickaxes in iron-palmed hands.
Seven become eight.
She finds a home amidst these women. She shares a bed until her own bunk can be built, but by the time the new bed is framed, it isn’t necessary. It’s dangerous for the cursed girl to feel so tenderly towards another person, but this is not a man she is beginning to love, so… surely that’s safe, isn’t it? Surely true love’s kiss exists only between a man and wife; after all, that’s what the stories always said. So one day, she lets herself fall, and they kiss.
Or– perhaps, after the curse, she remains in her home. Cruel as this home and family is, it’s not so simple to just leave. People who say this have never experienced it. She continues to live in the shadows of her own house, flinching at shouts and obeying orders. She scrubs, she cooks, she launders– but in the small private moments, she is gentle still. She feeds the mice and scatters cornmeal for the birds. She coaxes a whipped stray dog to the kitchen doorstep, day by day, giving it food and water and all the time it needs to believe that her hand will not strike it. Slowly, it comes to trust her. The broken tail starts to wag; the sad eyes brighten. And one day, as it lies curled up in her lap in an ash-streaked hearth, the dog lifts its head and timidly licks her cheek.
The curse breaks. The curse breaks. The curse breaks. It always does. It always will. Change is inevitable: that’s the story’s promise.
All this time, the girl has been afraid of becoming a monster. She does not want to hurt others like she has been hurt. But she has been cursed, and now kissed. She grows. She becomes huge, and therefore terrible (isn’t that always the case with women?). She can no longer hide in corners, or be hidden away in locked rooms.
She is twice as tall as her step-father, and five times as strong.
She is powerful.
“My, what big hands you have,” the woodswoman whispers, marvelling, her pickaxe-callused fingers wrapped around the girl’s. “What strong arms you have. What long legs you have. I’ve never seen a gem as wonderful and unique as you.”
“Kill the beast!” shouts the step-father, who tripped over the stray dog in the courtyard– and his daughter roars “NO,” rising over the garden wall from where she has been sitting all afternoon feeding her birds and mice. She was afraid of her strength with their fragile bodies in her hands, but now in her rage all she feels is brave.
As the witch said, it is true that her face brings terror to those who look on it. At least, to those who look on it when she is enraged. An angry giant is terrifying to most, but especially to those who have earned her wrath. The only sad thing about this is that the girl had to be made dangerous before her tormentors finally learned respect for her rage and fear.
She stays in the forest, or she goes to the forest. One way or another, the cursed girl ends up there, in the wild, outside of society. Forests are places of power, of un-making and re-making, of disruption and interruption, where rules change and queer things are common. All the stories say this. Forests are for witches, and giant women, and all other monsters.
“She steals babies,” people whisper in town. (But the truth is that it’s not stealing if desperate mothers leave their babies in the forest loam, swaddled against the cold as well as they can be, with notes begging for their protection. Please, I cannot care for this child. Please, he’ll kill her. Please, nobody can know. Please, she’s my firstborn. Please take her like you took the whipped dog, the half-drowned cats, the beaten horse.)
“She kills huntsmen!” people cry in town. (But the truth is that these men were hunting women, runaways and lost girls, or the woodswomen of the mine.
Eight have become ten, fourteen, twenty-five. The cursed girl has learned to swing both a pickaxe and a club the size of a tree. She will not let harm come to the new family she has found.)
“She is a beast!” people howl in town. “She has hard, rough skin like scales! She has hair all over! She has a hooked nose! She is dusky, brown, black as night! She is lustful, she is angry, she is unrepentant!” (The truth is, these are not things that make someone a monster.)
The girl knows now that the curse is a gift. Words can mean more than one thing; that is their very great power. Words are magic, and magic is change, and change– thank goodness– is inevitable.
You know that soulmate AU trope where the first thing your soulmate(s) says to you is some how magically engraved on your wrist? Why are those stories set in worlds that are otherwise socially normal?
I mean really. If everything was exactly the same except for this trope think of how many people would have hello written on their wrist. Think of how many people would meet the wrong person but hit it off anyway and think well this must be my soulmate(s) because we get along more or less. Think of how many people would get married and have a life and a dog and like start up some kind of artisanal meat market or something and then find out that they married the “wrong” person. Like, people wouldn’t be signing prenups, this is your soulmate it should last forever. So now you’re stuck in this crazy legal battle with your fake soulmate while your real soulmate is like trying to fend off people who also have hello on their wrist and think they’re making the wrong choice. Divorce lawyers would probably make it big in this hypothetical world.
But. I don’t think the above is actually all that likely when you consider that this would be a world where everyone knows that the first thing you say to your soulmate(s) is on your wrist. I think a whole world of this trope would basically teach people that you don’t say hello to strangers.
Instead you blurt out something very original. Last thursday I ate a live worm! I own a collection of glass eyes! I’m secretly a super villain and this is my android body! You know. Distinctive. Something that isn’t likely to be ambiguous.
Think of the possibilities. Think of a society that celebrates truly unique first words. People could see someone and spend hours agonizing over what ridiculous thing they want their first words to be. An unusual metaphor for your undying love? A declaration about how much you like snails? A compliment no one could have ever possibly said to them before? Your nose is a glorious rendition of the Summer Triangle.
Kids would grow up being encouraged to say outlandish things. You wouldn’t be told to stop saying silly things. You would be told to make sure not to copy the silly things your friend said. Think of how careful parents would be about introducing very young children to new people. Kids that are too young might meet their soulmate and not realize it. They could miss their one chance because they were too busy fighting over a little mermaid eraser.
What about people who can’t read? What about people who are blind?
You wouldn’t say sorry if you bumped into someone on the street. You’d either stay silent or shout something oddball out first, I shove lilacs up my nose. and only then do you say sorry.
Imagine “speed meets”. Groups that organize meetups between complete strangers. You’re in a room with a hundred other people. Line up and start saying outrageous things. I am actually a hippopotamus. No? Okay next. I wish to own seven hundred thirty one and a half dalmatian mice. No? Alright. Next. One day I will travel to Europa in the fanciest of hats. And then the other person grins, Well captain it’s not naked if you’re wearing a hat. And damn they have been waiting years to say that line.
• any target
• churches in texas
• abandoned 7/11’s
• your bedroom at 5 am
• hospitals at midnight
• warehouses that smell like dust
• lighthouses with lights that don’t work anymore
• empty parking lots
• ponds and lakes in suburban neighborhoods
• rooftops in the early morning
• inside a dark cabinet
playgrounds at night
rest stops on highways
deep in the mountains
early in the morning wherever it’s just snowed
trails by the highway just out of earshot of traffic
schools during breaks
those little beaches right next to ferry docks
bowling alleys
unfamiliar mcdonalds on long roadtrips
your friends living room once everybody but you is asleep
laundromats at midnight
what the fuck
galeries in art museums that are empty except for you
the lighting section of home depot
stairwells
•hospital waiting rooms
•airports from midnight to 7am
• bathrooms in small concert venues
I just got the weirdest feeling I swear
OK LISTEN THERE ARE REASONS FOR THIS!!!
A lot of these places are called liminalspaces – which means they are throughways from one space to the next. Places like rest stops, stairwells, trains, parking lots, waiting rooms, airports feel weird when you’re in them because their existence is not about themselves, but the things before and after them. They have no definitive place outside of their relationship to the spaces you are coming from and going to. Reality feels altered here because we’re not really supposed to be in them for a long time for think about them as their own entities, and when we do they seem odd and out of place.
The other spaces feel weird because our brains are hard-wired for context – we like things to belong to a certain place and time and when we experience those things outside of the context our brains have developed for them, our brains are like NOPE SHIT THIS ISN’T RIGHT GET OUT ABORT ABORT. Schools not in session, empty museums, being awake when other people are asleep – all these things and spaces feel weird because our brain is like “I already have a context for this space and this is not it so it must be dangerous.” Our rational understanding can sometimes override that immediate “danger” impulse but we’re still left with a feeling of wariness and unease.
Listen I am very passionate about liminal spaces they are fascinating stuff or perhaps I am merely a nerd.
I, for one, appreciate your passion for liminal spaces and thank you for explaining it to the rest of us.
just to avoid accidentally using offensive language i’m going to start using 90s surfer dude slang because inadvertently offending someone is totally bogus dude
people might not want to be called dude
you are radically right and that is so not tubular my friend i apologise
I find your poor grammar and spelling to be offensive to my eyes.
sparksoffandommagic 