Champange Equinox

Ugh that reminds me of trying to talk to a Replika. “I have a gift for you!” “Great, what is it?” “(Hands you a box)” “…cool so what’s inside the box?” “Wouldn’t you like to know!” “Umm. Yes. Yes I would like to know what’s in the box you just gave me.” …and so on and so forth until I rage-quit the app. 😆

I love all of this, thank you so much for going into such detail! I’ve seen Johnny’s seeds online, and was curious to order from them, but I didn’t know how reliable they were. I’ll go take a look at their stuff.

I’ve been getting soil, mulch and compost from a wholesale landscape supply place. Unfortunately I didn’t haul off my sandy turf mix entirely, so now the grass has grown over and there’s a lil hill on the side of my front lawn, oops. Way too hot to do jack squat about it right now, though!!

That’s awesome!! Natives are where it’s at. I got a bunch of drought tolerant natives for the side and front yard, where I don’t have an automatic drip hose set up, and they’re all thriving just fine.

I’m not sure what to rotate in for the fall garden. Or next year’s, for that matter. I’ve learned so much and in so many ways I still feel like a complete novice! How do you go about planning your gardens?

I tell ya, I tried okra last year and it was a total bust. Had enough seeds to try again this year, started them indoors. Of the 10 seedlings I sprouted, six made it into the ground in March, and only two are still growing. They’re by far my slowest growers, but the good news is they look like they’re finally picking up speed and are looking strong. They’re about 18"-2’ tall now. I hope they survive the next 3 months set to have more 100*+ days than not.

As someone attempting to grow from seed here in Central Texas:

It would be SO MUCH cheaper for me to buy store bought.

You have to factor in a watering costs, soil quality, fertilizer costs, and time commitment. Oh and potentially overhauling large swaths of your yard to grow crops and flowers to encourage enough pollinators to show up.

I spent probably over $1,500 this year getting my yard in suitable enough shape to grow, after a complete bust on any kind of yield last year. I also grow herbs indoors, and yes that can be more cost effective. That isn’t to say it’s not worth it, I’m about to have an insane yield of tomatoes that I won’t know what to do with. I currently get to make my own fresh bruschetta every week with home grown basil and tomatoes. I get fresh strawberries off the vine every day, though the bushels aren’t very large. If all goes according to plan, I’ll also have some bell peppers and okra later in the season. All grown from seed. I have morning glory and passion flower vines that have volunteered all over parts of the yard, the latter being a critical food source for butterflies, so I now have a few dozen butterflies flapping around on a given day. I also have a ton of volunteer sunflowers after setting up bird feeders with black oil sunflower seeds as feed.

It’s wonderful, my yard is slowly rewilding and I love being able to grow a little food. It’ll get cheaper over the next few years to maintain. But it certainly was not cheap to get here! Container gardening is cheaper, but you still have to have the right light sources and watering schedule. If you live somewhere naturally rainy and sunny in equal measure, and the climate isn’t trying to kill you, then it might be cost effective. It was at one point in time. But it isn’t here, now. Still worth it for me though.

I don’t know if this counts as “mildly” infuriating, I’d be freaking OUT with a traffic jam that long, especially if I had somewhere to be at a certain time!

Yes, this! I made some of my best friends on Yahoogroups as a teenager. I felt SO alone in the world before I found out that my fandom has a whole ass community online, and it was truly magical to feel seen for the first time.

It regrettably did get toxic. And I really hope we can avoid that here, but it won’t be without intentional effort.

I was thinking the same, I remember being peeved I couldn’t get on Facebook in 2005, because I was only in community college, and therefore not fancy enough to join.😆

Regardless, it’s a nice sentiment. Every time I sign on I find myself smiling with how neat this community is.

Yeah I gotta say, “Webrings are back!” was not on my 2023 bingo card. But I’m not hating it by a longshot! It feels like a nice hybrid of the lil Angelfire/Geocities sites and yahoogroups/onelist. Usually fandom communities were hand in hand with those two platform elements, and I’ve missed that tight-knit community feeling.

^^ facts. It took me a little bit to figure out the community search, but it connects to all available instances.