What are their names? They're adorable!

Attended a fair on Saturday as a vendor but didn't make back the table fee, which is really kind of a shame. The weather was brisk and incredibly windy, which contributed to folks not really coming through. While I lost some cash doing it, maybe half of the other vendors had broken tents and merchandise by ninety minutes in, so I have to be grateful that our plants are a little heavier than that and I bring enough weights to hold our tent in place. What I missed in dollars I may have made up for in contacts, so I'll keep my fingers crossed.

My parents visited for the first time since our daughter was born, which was really nice for everyone involved. They even babysat so my wife and I could go out for our 7th wedding anniversary! Five minutes into being seated at the restaurant, my wife took my hand, gazed deeply into my eyes, and said "do you think she's behaving for them?" XD

(mod hat on) It might not seem like much ado for you, but I think posting about your plan would be a good starting point for some conversations and might encourage some other folks to emulate you /mod hat

Did they talk to you about solarizing next spring using tarps? Given what I know about your rough geography, that might cut down on your time between weed seed germination and die off. In the meantime, check with the pet store you're a regular at and ask after their pallet slips for your cardboard sourcing. Because their use might be on food bearing pallets, they have stricter rules than other shipping box cardboard and also don't have flaps to worry about overlapping.

but just looking and seeing some truly cosmic stuff in front of your unassisted eyes hits different.

It's so true. I've gotten to see them before, way up Maine, but not as brightly as this evening and it was breathtaking. Our whole dead end street was all out at the same time, we could hear each other marveling at it all

I'm so glad you got to catch it this time!

From my wife's coworker who lives nearby:

Tbh I'm fine missing out on it if it's as dismissive as the reply to @alyaza's direct firsthand experiences working with a local politician who faced issues campaigning which are completely germane to this conversation.

That's fantastic! When did you make it, in relation to that workshop you went to? Seriously, your yard makeover plans deserve their own post

that's great! Our cat kills windowsill plants so you're way ahead of me there.

Keep in mind that I'm incredibly fortunate to have space in an agricultural district of a rural town and have neighbors who have years' worth of gardening experience and collected plants that they've shared with me

They’ve had the power several times over the last 16 years to make life better for the working class and the poor, and they seem to always elect to protect and promote the lives of the billionaire class.

Someone took the time to politely correct this misconception a few days ago, their reply from then is pasted below:

In the past you have stated that the Democrats had control of Congress and the presidency under Biden and Obama, yet they were unable to do things like get a public option in the ACA or codify roe v Wade. However this continues to be a misunderstanding of the situation.

https://19thnews.org/2022/01/congress-codify-abortion-roe/

While I can agree I am disappointed in the inability to get these things done, and Obama saying it was no longer a priority, I don’t see how you can pin this all on the Democrats as some kind of monolithic entity.

The fact of the matter is during Obama’s terms, there were anti abortion Democrats. These Democrats were enough to keep abortion access out of the ACA and prevent roe being codified.

Fast forward to Bidens terms, and we now have a filibuster rule that requires 60 senators in order to pass stuff in the Senate. There were not 60 senators who supported roe codification when the Democrats “controlled” the Senate.

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The fact that there are still anti choice democrats in our legislatures is a failing on the part of all the left-leaning voters in their districts and states (myself included) to organize and replace them with people who will advocate and vote for our policy goals. Alternative parties could capitalize on those races by representing the wants of those left leaning voters in off election years but choose not to.

I, and many others, do not blame other parties when the dems shoot themselves in the foot, we blame the dems for their poor decisions. Likewise, we blame the green party for running a quadrennial grift on the disaffected leftists who know enough to be upset but who wrongly believe the extent of their voting power is only this one race.

Most local candidates have to work to live, and making outlandish statements to these effects weaken a person's rhetorical standing. From the article you posted:

While they have little infrastructure in the county, within the last decade, Madison has nevertheless elected 10 Green candidates to different sorts of local office, more than almost any other city of its size in the nation.

Across the country, the Green Party barely has a footprint. It has little money or political organization, no members of Congress or statewide officeholders and just a few local ones. Every four years, though, the Greens run a candidate for president

In fact, they’ve [the Greens] pursued the opposite tack — they’ve directed efforts toward close battleground states where the party is sure to get more attention.

The Green party could clean house in Maine where we've actually got Ranked Choice Voting and they could win seats, but we're not a swing state and the greens don't act like they're interested. Neither does the Socialist party, or SocDems for that matter. But I do see their campaigning in battleground states, promising things out of their presidential candidates that are squarely the purview of congress, in which they're clearly not interested in having representation.

Being frank, the Green Party and Socialist Party do so little organizing when it's not a presidential election year that it ought to be a joke among all leftists. They aren't doing the outreach or work necessary to implement any of their grand promises made every four years, because they're not getting local party members elected in downballot races. I've been on both party's mailing lists for 22 years and in three different states and have almost never seen anything come of it. Well... besides fundraising emails every four years.

Posts about be(e)ing kind to animals are always welcomed here! If any of you have the means to donate, please consider doing so! If you have other charity drives to help different veterinarian offices in the area impacted by Helene, message us and we'll see about getting a stickied thread going for the remainder of hurricane season so everyone can contribute in a way they can in an area that needs it

I mean .....

No, certainly not. We need and want you here, advocating for a better future alongside us and organizing with those around you for change 💕

Yes, but those skills of effective communication are able to be universally applied, even in private conversation. The fact that it's a positive environment and one focused on constructive feedback is why I feel that it might be an avenue for OP

Try finding an open club with Toastmasters and go practice speaking and communicating with folks who are also there to practice speaking and communicating. That kind of space alone may give you the chance to see differences between their interactions and yours, but it's an incredibly helpful group for so many people who struggle with their communication in everyday life.

That. Sounds. Awesome!

As a broad rule of thumb, any bulbs can be planted during the fall - onion sets and garlics do very well for us when planted this way in usda zone 5 / Trewartha Dca. The same goes for things like daffodils, irises, and other bulbing plants. Trees, shrubs, and perennial herbaceous plants will also benefit from fall planting, and come into the following growing season with a more extensive root system for it. We've also had success with things like kale, chard, and other hardyish cut-and-come-again leafy greens, so that might be worth experimenting with.

True summer veggies - peppers, tomatoes, anything that melts at the first frost - I don't start until late winter or early spring (and those are started inside). Annual summer flowers get pretty much the same treatment, especially any that have a relatively short time to maturity. You could work those seeds into areas during the fall, but you'll have a wider range of results and less direct control (but chaos gardening is cool).

My wife has gotten used to this but some of the neighbors still judge a bit. Then again, we're the house with the hummingbirds and tons of other nesting migratory birds as well as the house with lightning bugs