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Yellow- Sunlight

by Brie Thomson

these are very wise (and very real) words. believe me.

God didn't give me a dick cause he knew I'd be abusing that thang. Call me mourning wood the way I'd be fucking trees

person who is chronically outside

Justice 40

Joe Biden is boring and often bad at tooting his own horn, but by god, he is good at process.

Justice 40 is simple but powerful application of that. its a shift in how the executive branch works. 40% of money from a bunch of existing programs should go to census tracts that are overburdened with pollution, at higher risk for climate change, and have been historically underserved.

The shorthand here is basically "communities that don't have enough internal resources to deal with long term problems". So yes, communities that had been redlined for decades, ones that have Superfund sites, ones that have high rates of asthma from air pollution.

and this is by census tract. Not city. census tract. So parts of New York City qualify... but other parts don't. And the city HAS to use the money in the targeted part. it doesn't go into the communal pool. it's for THAT tract specifically.

Also all land federally recognized as belonging to a Native American tribe and all Alaskan Native Villages qualify, specifically.

And again, this is for existing programs that are already running and have existing staff and budgets. They're supposed to prioritize grants and projects for those areas specifically. And that's everything from Department of Agriculture, to FEMA, to Labor, to Environmental Protection.

Does it instantly get rid of all the baked in racism from decades past? No, not even close. But it puts in a countermeasure that has a concrete and measurable goal to aim for rather than a nebulous "suck less." even if the administration changes, many of those changes will stick.

And as things improve, some tracts may come off the list! Some may go on that weren't there before!

You can see a map here. Blue highlighted tracts are "disadvantaged" so qualify for that extra assistance! Check and see if you live in one or part of your town does. Because if you've been hearing constantly "we can't afford to fix X problem..." and you're in that tract.... there's money available. For you. Build that sidewalk, fix those lead pipes, get that brush truck your volunteer fire department has been asking for.

And tell your local officials that! "did you look at Justice 40 for funding". And even if they're doing their best, particularly people in little towns.... being a government official isn't their full time job. They may have missed it. Just asking them about the program may suddenly open a world of possibilities.

But seriously, when we got our property, it was all just…grass. A sterile grass moonscape, like a billion other yards. With two big old maple trees. Just grass and maples, that was it. 

But then I got my grubby little paws on it, and I immediately stopped fertilizing, spraying, and bagging up grass clippings and leaves. I ripped up sod and put in flowers and vegetables. I put down nice thick blankets of mulch around the flowers and vegetables. 

When I first was sweating my way through stripping sod, I saw a grand total of 1 worm and 0 ladybugs. The ground was compacted into something that would bend shovel blades. 

Now, six years later, I can’t dig a planting hole without turning up fourteen earthworms, and there are so many ladybugs here. Not the invasive asian lady beetles; native ladybugs. They winter over in the mulch and in the brush pile. I see thousands of them. 

The soil is soft and rich. There are birds that come to eat, and bees of many sorts.

Like this is something that you, yourself, can absolutely change. This is something that you, personally, can make a difference in.

What part of 'the wellbeing of workers has an impact on the work they do' is hard for some people to understand? Like even if you don't have a single fraction of common decency or care for other peoples' welfare, and don't care whether they live or die, you should still care whether you live or die. You don't have to be morally against human suffering in order to believe in workers' rights.

An overworked truck driver falls asleep on the wheel and swerves on you in traffic? You're gonna die. An overworked nurse doing a 24 hour shift gets two patients confused? You're gonna die. A bridge collapses under you because the building materials provided were dogshit, and none of the builders wanted to speak out because the one to voice a complaint is going to get fired, and they all have kids to feed? You're going to die.

You literally do not have to care about other people. Nobody is demanding you to give a shit whether anybody else lives or dies. You just have to aknowledge that if the people touching your food, building the roads you drive on and buildings you go into, and altogether work in putting together every single thing that you need in order to live, are dying on the job, that's gonna hurt you too.

Being served like a God and fed with human sacrifice does not make you immortal like one.

When people graffiti on buildings: Yes! Ha ha! Fuck yes!

When people graffiti on rockfaces and cliffsides on hiking trails: What the absolute fuck.

be VERY sure the thistles are native to your area, there are lots of invasive thistle out there

As a society we have done thistles so dirty. Not even pollinator-plant zealots recommend planting thistles even though pollinators go absolutely crazy over them.

I saw 2 (two) Great Spangled Fritillaries trying to cram themselves onto the same thistle flower today as well as a thistle plant with multiple American Bumblebees on it. These things are a monarch magnet too.

I know what I'm gonna be gathering seeds from

wore my thigh high boots on a walk today and we had to take a path through some long grass and while everyone else was rolling their pants into their socks and putting on jackets to protect themselves from ticks i was standing there smug as hell in my thigh high leather boots.

be like the dandelion!! unkillable! joyous!! inherently transsexual in ways others cannot fully understand!

on my redbubble!

Oh btdubs, if anyone has access to a vacant patch of grass, like a backyard perhaps, and want to make a garden dollar stretch, invest more in trees and shrubs than vegetables.

They're harder to kill,

Require less water after the first year,

you can usually buy/preorder them cheap when they're out of season (as I've stated before in another post),

You get more fruit per plant,

You don't have to replant/reseed.

Sure it takes longer to establish and bear fruit and you can do stuff while you wait, but if it's between investing in the necessary items for a 5 inch garden box or 4 potted fruit trees your first year, I'd choose the latter. Make one of those trees an apricot and you could have fruit your first year, thereby tricking ur brain into releasing enough dopamine not to quit gardening out of lack of patience.

If you really want a vegetable garden:

grow tomatoes

and a variety of herbs like basil, thyme, mint(IN A POT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD KEEP THAT CRIMINAL LOCKED UP), oregano, lavender, rosemary, etc.

these guys are usually really hard to kill.

For an unkillable berry that you can harvest first year, comes back, and thrives on neglect, try a ground cherry (which is also a cousin to the tomato apparently).

don't forget to mulch okay bye.

Black Velvet Petunias

July 2023

by Brie Thomson

for my guerilla gardeners out there:

if you can spare $20-30 get a tree watering bag like these

they’re used most often for new installs and work wonders for keeping young trees watered

planting trees in densely urban areas will lower the urban heat-island effect on the ground and reduce the number of heat-related illnesses and deaths over time.

trees also help pull pollution from the atmosphere and fix it into their wood and bark. did you know trees life spans can be shortened by being closer to roads/polluted air? they serve us and die for us and we don’t even notice.

trees protect us and we should really respect them more as the globe warms. In the USA, if you’re wealthy/lucky you will have many trees in your neighborhood. If you are in a low-income area they are rarer. this directly correlates to heat deaths.

so if you see a tree dying from drought in your neighborhood…. maybe give it a hand if you can. that tree may very much pay your community back years down the line

planting trees in densely urban areas will lower the urban heat-island effect on the ground and reduce the number of heat-related illnesses and deaths over time.

trees also help pull pollution from the atmosphere and fix it into their wood and bark. did you know trees life spans can be shortened by being closer to roads/polluted air? they serve us and die for us and we don’t even notice.

trees protect us and we should really respect them more as the globe warms. In the USA, if you’re wealthy/lucky you will have many trees in your neighborhood. If you are in a low-income area they are rarer. this directly correlates to heat deaths.

so if you see a tree dying from drought in your neighborhood…. maybe give it a hand if you can. that tree may very much pay your community back years down the line

i love this photo so much. i really like this photo. i could look at this photo forever. i want to draw this photo.

If you liked dandelions as a kid you're gay now