bombs in bottles
What's that thing called where a fighting force holes up in a home, or a school, or a hospital, thinking that surely its opponent won't commit AN ACTUAL WAR CRIME by killing the civilians mixed in with them, but then their opponent is like NAH FAM FUCK YOUR MOM FUCK YOUR KIDS FUCK YOUR ELDERLY and bombs the entire building into a glass crater?
I committed that war crime today.
Operation Fuck This Fucking Quackgrass ran into a snag when I realized that it had pretty thoroughly integrated itself with a large patch of monarda:
Monarda didyma, aka "bee balm," aka "bergamot," aka "tea, Earl Grey, hot" sans the tea and the hot
I like my monarda. I also use my monarda. A lot. So do the pollinators around here. But if I leave the quackgrass, it will eventually choke out the monarda plants anyway.
So I killed everything in that square meter of side garden. Then I transplanted some creeping thyme and oregano into the space - two species that will colonize that patch of garden like Puritans handing out smallpox blankets.
"Molly, is gardening just a war crime to you?" I hear no one asking. "Are all these gardening posts going to be about how you committed atrocities, but in plant form?"
Yes. As a direct descendant of William Bradford, gardening is how I expend my epigenetic lust for colonial violence.
(I'm joking. William Bradford was a bad man and somehow my branch of the family descended from him ONLY GOT WORSE until my great-grandmother, who used gardening to punch Nazis. It's not the tendency toward violence, it's how you use it.)
In CHICKEN NEWS, I ordered a brooder and a mama plate today. A "mama plate," for the uninitiated, is an adjustable heating plate the chicks can sit under, sort of like sitting underneath their mama. I also picked up some bedding and chick feed. The chicks won't even start incubating for another couple weeks, but I am going to be SO READY for them.
I also built two portable compost bins out of trash cans well-ventilated with holes covered in landscaping fabric. Neighbors can't complain about chicken bedding compost they can't smell.
Since ditching Oligarch Tech (including all social media), I've had the energy and brain space for a lot more of these hands-on projects. I also find a renewed sense of satisfaction in them. The dopamine from these is real and lasting, not the cheap shit from "the feed has New Things!" It's another reason I felt confident getting the chicks - I have the time for them, but more importantly, I have the interest and self-motivation. That got sucked right out of me by social media for YEARS.
Other than continuing to kill grass as needed, I'm now waiting on our last average frost date to pass so I can buy the things I didn't start from seed this year: tomatoes, leeks, cucumbers, peppers. I'd love to pick them up at the end of this week, except I have to run a book fair Thursday and Friday. We'll see.
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