Employer: “Where do you see yourself 10 years from now?”
Me:
I love this because you could mean anyone in th picture, including the bear.
You made this 1000x better
Who wouldn’t aspire to be a stylishly dressed Were-bear with a beautiful nude woman on their back providing musical accompaniment as you drive unwanted trespassers from the steps of your stately residence?
Seems like a pretty sweet deal to me.
Belle: Beast, I have to go back to my father, your magic mirror showed he was sick.
Beast: Really? Let me see…. Huh, actually it look like some guy called Gaston is going to have him committed.
Belle: What now? *Grabs mirror*
Beast: you know that guy? he seems like a douche.
Belle: Beast…. Honey…. you wanna get out of the house for a few hours?
Beast: Against my better judgement, I’m gonna say yes.
*Later*
Belle: FLEE MORTALS, I AM ARTEMIS, GODDESS OF THE WILD HUNT, AND I HAVE COME FOR YOU.
Beast: HEY NOT THAT I’M NOT HAVING FUN BUT WHY ARE YOU NAKED?
Belle: ARTEMIS, GODDESS OF THE WILD HUNT DOES NOT REQUIRE CLOTHES.
Beast: I HAVE NEVER SEEN THIS SIDE OF YOU BEFORE AND I’M NOT GONNA LIE I KIND OF DIG IT.
Belle: YEAH I’M HAVING FUN TOO. HEY ITS LEFOU, GASTON’S LITTLE CHEERLEADER. GET HIM!
Beast: YES MA’AM!
Fairy: *Watching in the distance*: You know I was gonna turn him back, but it looks like they’re having fun so I’ll come back tomorrow.
A store-bought bag of topsoil, a roll of landscaping fabric, or a bag of cedar chips doesn’t go very far if you have a large garden or a very limited budget. Here are some ways to create the materials you need for a beautiful, organic, productive garden, by both re-directing household waste, and foraging in your local area. I use a lot of these tricks in my garden to make it almost completely free for me to continue growing new things, and expanding the workable area every year!
For soil
Save your food scraps to create a rich compost for growing veggies and amending your soil. There are numerous options for every size of dwelling and yard. Small space solutions such as Bokashi and vermicompost work indoors and don’t produce bad smells, so you can keep them underneath the sink.Worm towers, compost heaps, and outdoor compost binsare a great solution if you have more space. The more you add, the more rich, nutritious material you can make for your garden. I like composting because it means I don’t have gross smelly garbage bags to deal with, because food waste is diverted. It seems like a lot of work at first, but it actually saves time, money, and transportation.
There are three things that are essential for plant growth. These are nitrogen for leaves and vegetation (N), phosphorus for roots and shoots (P), and potassium for water movement, flowering, and fruiting (K). Commercial fertilisers will give the relative concentrations of each of these compounds with and “NPK” rating. Plants like tomatoes also need calcium to produce healthy fruit. You can create amendments for your garden and soil at home so that you do not have to purchase fertiliser.
Human urine contains 12% nitrogen, and it’s sterile. Dilute before adding directly to plants.
Legumes such as beans, clover, peanuts, and alfalfa fix inorganic nitrogen into the soil with mycorrhizal organisms and nodules on their root systems. Plant these crops every few years in rotation with others to renew the soil organically.
For phosphorus
Human urine is also a great source of phosphorous and trace amounts of potassium.
Many plants are particular about what the soil pH should be.
To make soil more acidic: add oak leaves, pine needles, leaf mulch, urine, coffee grounds or sphagnum.
To make soil more alkaline: add wood ash, shell, or bone.
Mulch
Mulch is decomposing organic matter that adds nutrition to the soil, while simultaneously keeping out weed growth and retaining moisture. It also attracts worms, fungi and other beneficial creatures to your soil. Free sources of mulch include:
Leaves
Garden waste
Grass clippings
Straw (often straw bales are given away after being used for decoration in the fall. You can also plant vegetables directly in straw bales using a technique called straw bale gardening).
Wood chips (if you can borrow a wood chipper after you’ve collected some wood you can have attractive wood mulch for free)
When mulch isn’t enough to keep the weeds down, many people opt for landscaping fabric. It can be quite expensive and inorganic-looking. Free solutions that both attract worms and can be replaced in small segments as they break down include:
Newspaper*
Cardboard*
Egg cartons*
Printer paper, looseleaf, etc. in thick layers*
*try to make sure you are using paper that has vegetable-based dyes, so you aren’t leeching toxins into the soil.
Soil density/drainage
If your soil is compacted and you have plants that require low levels of water, or excellent drainage, add sand. I don’t recommend stealing it from the beach, but ask around and you’d be surprised at how easy it is to get for free. Sawdust also improves drainage. Adding organic matter and mulch encourages worms, who also till and aerate compacted soil.
If the area still needs drainage, dig a hole and fill it with bricks or rocks to create a “dry well”
For drainage in pots, add crushed bricks,terra cotta pot fragments, packing peanuts, small stones, marbles, orsand to the bottom under the soil layer. I find these in construction sites, on craigslist, or at flea markets.
Pots and growing containers
If you have space, raised beds are a great no-dig way to establish growing space. If you are pressed for space (like working on a balcony) there are many cheap or free options for container gardens.
Creating raised beds allows you to build up the soil without digging. Free ways to do this include using rocks or lumber (like my DIY “lasagna garden” made with the sheet composting technique), using the “wattle“ method with sticks and posts you have found, using discarded straw bales, old bricks,paving stones,cinder blocks or really anything else you have lying around.
Hugelkutur raised beds, which fix carbon and provide drainage, can be made by stacking sticks and untreated wood, and then piling soil or compost over it. (Thanks milos-garden)
Rubber tire gardens retain heat in the night and allow for great drainage. They can also be painted in fun ways.
Herb spirals (here is mine: 1, 2, 3) can be built with stones, bricks, and other found materials.
I often use old cooking pots, barbecues, teapots, or other found objects as planters.
If you can track down peat moss, cement, and vermiculite, you can make an easy Hypertufa planter in whatever shape you would like, provided you have a form in which it can dry.
Paving often requires a foundation of sand or another stable and well-drained substrate, and a covering of stones, bricks, or other weatherproof elements. Slowly collect stones over time, or free paving stone fragments to create a mosaic-type walkway. Often people give these things away on craigslist. I made a patio and fireplace out of free salvaged bricks, for example.
Save seeds from foods you like from the grocery store: consider growing peanuts, ginger, garlic, peppers, or a walnut tree: all of these and more can be planted from store-bought produce.
Learn to take cuttings. There is a tonne of info on the web about basic cutting propagation, layering, (like I do with rhododendrons) air layering, and numerous other techniques to take clones of plants you like. This saves going to a nursery and shelling out big bucks for all the variety you want.
For cuttings, willow tea and honey are great rooting hormones/antiseptics/anti-fungal agents, which can save you $40 if you were thinking of buying commercial rooting hormone.
I hope this helps you build your garden outside of the usual capitalist channels! It can be a cheap or free hobby if you are willing to think outside the box, and maybe put up with things that don’t look as clean or crisp as a hardware store catalogue.
If you have any further ideas, please add them! The more information the better.
Another source for pots: Your local garden center (even some at the big name big box stores) may have many, many, MANY used pots they will sell for pennies or possibly even give away.
for all we see that is going bad, never forget that we are making so much progress
in large part we are making progress because we have seen the bad, identified it, opposed it loudly, and changes are starting to be made instead of ignoring it as just a part of the way things are. many foul things that once were not noticed are being dragged into the sunlight where they cannot hide in silence
stay angry at injustice, but hopeful that changes are happening
Berliners are sending a piece of the Berlin Wall to Trump, with the message: “We would like to give you one of the last pieces of the failed Berlin Wall to commemorate the United States’ dedication to building a world without walls”
This is an original piece of the Berlin Wall. For 28 years, it separated east and west, families, and friends.
It divided not only Berlin and Germany, but the whole world. Too many people died trying to cross it—their only crime being their desire to be free. Today the world celebrates the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Germany is united again, and only a few scattered pieces remind us that no wall lasts forever.
For decades, the United States played a major role in bringing this wall down. From John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan, the Presidents of the USA fought against it.
We would like to give you one of the last pieces of the failed Berlin Wall to commemorate the United States’ dedication to building a world without walls.
She had a tweet explaining that, in Swedish, it’s an aphorism meaning something similar to ‘hold their feet to the fire’. She’s not calling for firing squads.
