moved to balkanradfem

Bee: 12/10, beloved, beautiful, miracle bug, would die for her, all flowers in my garden are for her

Ladybug: 10/10 I love her, she trusts me and walks on my hand, has little dots I can count and eats plant lice for breakfast lunch and dinner!

Ants: 2/10, they keep starting lice farms on my plants :/ go farm your lice elsewhere. Fun to watch though.

Spider: 10/10 charming, threatening, excellent vibes, does not respect my walkways, ultimately so useful for the garden I will never bring them down

Frog: 10/10 I don't know what she's up to but I love looking at her!

Mouse: 3/10 she gets 3 because she's so adorable but. She will dig out seeds and eat them. Go live in the fields please.

Snake: 10/10 absolutely love the long noodle, will resolve the mice issue, incredibly useful critter + points for powerful presence

Mushroom: 10/10 not a critter technically but she will make my soil healthy and I hope my plants can communicate underground too? If there's mushrooms?

Worm: 10/10 must have in the garden, please thrive in my soil, please live in my compost pile

Wasp: 6/10 threatening aura but I do believe she just wants to pollinate some plants and I respect her. There's place for her in my garden.

Bird: 8/10 I love her, I'm unsure whether she eats my worms but I hope she also eats bugs that eat my plants. Please don't eat my strawberries.

Plant lice: 0/10. No. Get off my swiss chard.

Butterfly: 4/10 Please stop laying eggs on my broccoli. You're so beautiful I love you and I want you to have as many babies as possible. But I am hungry. I am too weak to support your reproductive process.

Potato bugs: -2/10. No. Only bug I've enacted violence upon.

Any other bug that I do not recognize: 7/10, welcome to my compost pile! We have grass, we have peels, we have rotten fruit. Please eat it. Also if you're a cool neon color or really big I will follow you around for a while infinitely entertained by your existence.

Hedgehog: 10/10 I know she's just lost in there but please stay you're so adorable.

Rabbit: -50/10. Cute baby bunnies are eating machines that can destroy your entire garden overnight. I do not harm the bunnies but regular applications of coyote/fox urine granules get the message across to these cute lil' guys that they should take their eating show on down the road.

After all of that happened, the lady with the broken hip wanted me to still help her out, and I said: I can come here and help you but only under these conditions: I don't have to interact with your husband, ever, I don't have to look at him, or come close to him, or do anything for him specifically. I only care for you.

She didn't like this, but she said yes. There was once or twice where she tried to press and insist I should 'make him coffee' but I held firm to my conditions; I wouldn't do anything for him.

To be honest he was so sick and I thought he would die in a month or two, the fact that he kept being alive after this is astounding to me. He has a genetic lung disease, as he should, and it should have killed him by now.

Anyway, I kept working with the broken-hip lady, and she's not been recovering well, despite therapy and excercise, the pain was not going away. She had a consultation and discovered that the mechanism they put in her hip detached from her bone, and she needs another surgery.

I felt awful for her, I know she didn't want to go through the entire thing all over again, or stay in the hospital, or struggle to get out of bed without help. There's also the issue of who will care for her husband once she's hospitalized; she told me she's looking into a care facility for him.

So this is where things suddenly went weird.

I was at her house, helped her clean and brought her stuff from the basement (she can't reach the basement), and was about to leave, when she stopped me. She seemed kind of angry at me, if I asked a question she would respond with 'it doesn't matter'. Then she asked me to do empty the night basin, but it was very close to her husband, and I hesitated. I said I could do it if nobody was so close to it, and she looked at me with rage in her eyes. I've never seen her look at me like that. Then she said, 'Do as I tell you, or you will lose us, and we will lose you.' I got startled and did what she wanted me to. I left confused. Did she just threaten to fire me, over basically nothing?

I felt uneasy the next day, and had to conclude that it was, in fact, a threat. She wanted to overwrite my boundaries I stated as conditions to working there. And I wouldn't let it happen. I had to speak up.

My next visit I was nervous and scared. I didn't know what was going to happen, but I understood letting a threat slide meant things were only about to get worse. I decided to try and appeal to her empathy and humanity, because she often claimed that she loved me, so I wanted to explain that her threat really hurt my feelings and I didn't deserve to be treated like that.

That's what I opened up with, I asked her if I've ever been hurtful to her, and complained that her threatening me was hurtful to me. I said I went home scared and didn't know what to do. My voice was shivering and I was at the verge of tears.

She got mad. Then she got furious. First she denied anything happened, then she challenged me with 'Of course you have to do what you're told!' and I shook my head no, there were things I wasn't willing to do. She started yelling at me, accusing me of things I knew weren't true, from years ago. She told me I was malicious and making fun of her back when she broke her arm, but I know I wasn't. All the male members of her family were ridiculing her, and I thought they were disgusting and never joined them. I was the only one comforting her. I couln't say anything though, because she was yelling.

Then she told me to go home, and I did.

I didn't understand what had just happened, complaining over mistreatment was hardly a horrible crime, and not even in my most anxious predictions did I think I would be yelled at, then fired on the spot. I still had their key though, as I forgot to return it.

Next day, she messaged me to bring the key back. I replied 'okay, I'll bring it after work.' She then messaged 'leave it in the mail box', and I said 'okay'.

I left it there after work, then sent a short 'Goodbye, good luck with everything, hope you find someone else,' message.

This was such an unexpected and extreme turn of events, and I hadn't done anything wrong, I was just there. I understood from the moment I was threatened it had to turn out this way, I had to speak up, and she was going to fire me no matter what I said. The hip lady's behaviour was inconsistent though; she usually seemed caring, even somewhat invested in my life, and had never threatened me before. She seemed scared to lose me if anything, because I was helping her for very low wages and was willing to be at her house every single day to bring her some groceries or even just to run to the basement to fetch food. I also took care of her after surgeries for a symbolic rate, it was nothing close to what a caretaker would be paid. So I knew she appreciated this and would want to keep me. I never wanted to stress her out, financially or in any other way. So why is she suddenly acting hateful and aggressive?

My theory is that her husband (cheater and a sex pest) refused to go to a care facility, and she knew I wouldn't take care of him. This created a problem for her; she either needed to find someone else, or force me to take care of him. I think she felt if she only exterted more control over me, and threatened me into doing it against my will, then all her problems would be solved. I was the only person in this situation she felt she could extort control over, and since I was technically working for her, it infuriated her she couldn't control me completely, that I still had boundaries in place. In her eyes I was wrong for insisting on boundaries, I should have rolled over and took care of a sex pest who tried to coerce me into helping him cheat on her.

My second theory is that with the situation being so stressful, I was the only one she could take it out on. She decided everything that's going on is my fault and solved it by cutting me off in rage.

I am way less employed now! Even though this is bad for my financial situation, I suddenly have so much free time opened up it's actually crazy. I was at her house almost every single day of the week. The day she sent me home, I spent a few hours recovering, but then I went out foraging! I harvested nettle and sour cherries, in the middle of the pouring rain, then came back home and made nettle pasta and a cherry pie! I mended a bag that needed fixing for a long time now, I cleaned my bathroom, I actually had time to sit down and edit photos and write a bunch of posts so thats why you got all of the tutorials and progress pics! I've been meaning to do it. I might finally get around to making a diy fridge now, I've only put it off for 6 months. I am like a true tumblrina now. Work does not interfere with blogging.

You get your hands on some nettle, with very sturdy gloves on. Pick off only the tops of the plant as it's the freshest and most undamaged part. Lower leaves will have a bug situation going on!

Boil the nettle for a minute, then blend it with some of the water, until it looks like a green smoothie.

I approximated how much flour I can mix with this amount of nettle juice, and added some salt and a spoon of oil. So this is what I'm doing:

Then you mix it all with a fork until it turns into green dough! It is such a beautiful vivid green color it looked like kneading play-dough. You get it out of the bowl and knead it, adding more flour because it's very sticky at this point. Knead until it feels smooth and supple and very pleasant under the fingers, it usually just takes a few minutes.

Once you're done kneading, put it back into the bowl, cover with a lid or a plate, and let it rest for 30 minutes. This is important because it will make the dough elastic and developed enough to properly roll into pasta. If you try rolling it immediately, it will break and make trouble for you.

After 30 minutes of rest, if you have a big ball of dough like me, split it into two smaller ones, and roll out as thin as you comfortably can! You can also do the favourite thickness that you like to eat, but know that it will expand with cooking so, little thinner than you'd like your final product to be.

When it's rolled out, you can use a butter knife to cut into whatever you like, I go for wide strips because they're the easiest to handle.

Now it's time to cook. These are very sticky and love sticking to each other, so you can't just throw them all in a pot, they will stick together. I go around this by placing them one-by-one into the boiling water, this way the water helps them stay separate. Edit: I've been informed adding oil to the cooking water can prevent sticking also!

Homemade fresh pasta only needs 30 seconds of boiling to be cooked! So you need much less time and energy from the stove to be done.

After mine were done cooking, I took the pasta out and fried some garlic to make a garlicky pasta dish, and it was done super fast and delicious.

The pros of making the nettle pasta: It genienly tastes better than the ordinary pasta, nettle is filled with calcium and iron so you add a lot of nutrients to the flour, and you use a free resource to make something good, one thing you don't have to buy at the store! And they're green and pretty to look at.

If you want to dry your pasta for later use, transport them onto a clean cloth after cutting into strips, and they should be dry in a day or two, depending on your kitchen size. After they dry on one side, flip them and let the other side dry as well. You can keep them in a tall jar, they look very pretty and ornamental in the kitchen.

I've spent some time taking the pits out, because that way more of them fit into these little jars:

(The water is taken out of the jars before the cherries are put in, I was just warming the jars up with hot water). Once the jars are full, I made a syrup that's supposed to be equal part sugar and water, but I used 3 spoons of sugar because I like them on the sour side, and they're so acidic and sour this can't possibly cause botulism.

Once they're all covered in syrup (I think I added more after taking my picture) they get their lids on and are boiled underwater for 10 minutes. That way all the air gets vaccuumed out of the jars and they get rid of all the oxygen, so can be stored without going bad!

If you have strawberries and you don't do anything to them, they will still give you fruit, don't you worry. If you take care of them, they will give you three to four times more. This spring I had so much I was able to gift them to everyone, make jam, and still had enough to consistently have them multiple times a day. So I think I figured it out!

Strawberry plants love to send off shoots and make new strawberry plants, which can be bad because they will overtake your garden if given the chance, but it's also good, because you need new strawberry plants every so often. If you have old plants, they won't produce as much, you want 1-3 year old plants in your garden, they'll give you the most fruit.

Fall is the right time to sort out which strawberry plants you want in your garden for spring; you pick out newly made ones and plant them a fair distance apart. You do not want to have strawberry plants anywhere near each other, the more space you give them, the bigger strawberries they make. They should be at least a foot apart from each other in all directions. And then you can just leave them to set root during winter, I mulch them to prevent weeds.

In the spring, you have to make sure they do not have weeds. They start establishing themselves and deciding how large they plan to grow in February, and if there's weeds, they're assuming they don't have a lot of space and grow small. If they have lots of land to themselves, they decide it's the time to grow as big as possible and thus create many more strawbs. When you see them growing new green leaves, it's a great time to fertilize. It will again, help them grow as big as possible, and also let them know there's plenty of resources here and they can just go wild. I use urine dilluted in water (1:10 ratio) but any nitrogen fertilizer works. I also re-mulch them at this point to prevent weeds, and because I use decomposed tree leaves to mulch, it will provide additional nutrients. You could also add compost to them if you have it, or cover the ground in straw. I think they got called strawberries because they like being mulched with straw.

After doing all this you can relax, unless you live in such a dry weather they need to be watered. Here they establish themselves from February to April and we generally get such rainy weather they don't need any help. Once the plants are established, they'll make lots of flowers and start to make strawberries for you. They'll also send of shoots (earth-level vines) to try and make new strawberry plants, and it's encouraged to snip the shoots off so the plant puts all her energy into making the strawbs for you.

I was climbing an old cherry tree, grabbing up the branches I couldn't fully see, and at one point my palm hurt. I thought to myself, 'wow this tree bark is really rough, it hurts my hand to climb it' but I climbed up anyway. Then I looked at the place I was grabbing, and it wasn't just bark; there was a sharp stick potrtruding out. It stabbed through three layers of skin and my palm was bleeding.

And I was just dead cold thinking the bark is a bit rough? Crazy how the adrenaline and not visually seeing whats going on can make one get stabbed with zero reaction! Maybe we humans are not that sensitive to pain!

Except. I could swear I saw that exact illustration before. Not just once. I feel that I saw it many times. Maybe it's by a popular artist?

Here it is. Does anyone recognize this.

The woman who created the video said the strategy for AI was to push it into every possible app, service and program, hoping it would become a neccesary convenience and people would eventually depend on it and become willing to pay for it. But it never became that; all surveys showed that 90% of people wanted nothing to do with AI and CEO's didn't want to hear it.

There's been protests and vandalizing over the build of Data centers, which is a bit louder than filling out a survey, so they know by now a lot of people are ready to fight against it.

That gives me hope, maybe we'll get to experience post-AI internet. I've been refusing to reblog so much art and photography, basically limiting myself to people I personally know took the photos or accounts that swore to research every single thing they post. It's been sad! Artists and photographers missing out on attention they deserve and me missing out on having a blog filled with photos and art.

I imagine in post-AI internet it will be so rare to stumble on a piece of AI art, I'll be able to use tumblr normally again. And if someone does insist on posting AI they get outed and cancelled, and all the AI is like 5yrs old because you can't generate more.

What else do you think might change? We get rid of the AI summary? People no longer go into AI psychosis? Level of literacy goes up? Price of utilities goes down? Global warming levels get sorted out? Finally some stuff to look forward to! Not that I expect they'll give up and we'll just wake up with no AI one day. But any withdrawal of the disease is the reason to celebrate.

The woman who created the video said the strategy for AI was to push it into every possible app, service and program, hoping it would become a neccesary convenience and people would eventually depend on it and become willing to pay for it. But it never became that; all surveys showed that 90% of people wanted nothing to do with AI and CEO's didn't want to hear it.

There's been protests and vandalizing over the build of Data centers, which is a bit louder than filling out a survey, so they know by now a lot of people are ready to fight against it.

That gives me hope, maybe we'll get to experience post-AI internet. I've been refusing to reblog so much art and photography, basically limiting myself to people I personally know took the photos or accounts that swore to research every single thing they post. It's been sad! Artists and photographers missing out on attention they deserve and me missing out on having a blog filled with photos and art.

I imagine in post-AI internet it will be so rare to stumble on a piece of AI art, I'll be able to use tumblr normally again. And if someone does insist on posting AI they get outed and cancelled, and all the AI is like 5yrs old because you can't generate more.

What else do you think might change? We get rid of the AI summary? People no longer go into AI psychosis? Level of literacy goes up? Price of utilities goes down? Global warming levels get sorted out? Finally some stuff to look forward to! Not that I expect they'll give up and we'll just wake up with no AI one day. But any withdrawal of the disease is the reason to celebrate.

Anon I am so sorry. What you're experiencing is domestic violence. Relationships should have zero physical conflict, none, absolutely unnaceptable.

I know if otherwise everything seems perfect this is difficult to believe and it seems like a minor issue that should be explained away. But would you ever be able to raise your hand at a woman you love, regardless of how angry you were? Could you ask her to stay with you after you've done that?

Partners being apologetic and making you feel insane and like you can't bring it up is also very common in these types of relationships. Everything should be easy to bring up and talked about, nothing is worth making a partner feel insane. I feel heartbroken for you, I wish I could say anything else or make you feel better in any way. That woman doesn't love you. She's willing to physically assault you and make you feel insane and does it all over again after apologizing. This will devastate your mental health. People who love you don't do this.

Can you think of any other ways she escapes accountability, prioritizes her own wants and ignores your discomfort or safety, makes you feel like you are less of a priority in the relationship? This is so awful, a long term relationship as well.

If anyone has any advice for anon please comment, I wouldn't know what to do except try to get distance to evaluate this, but partners like this will try to prevent distance and sabotage it.

She is gentle with everyone <--> she uses violence during conflict with me

She is kind to everyone <--> she hits me in private during arguments

These cannot coexist at the same time, and the reason it feels like they could, is you don't count her behaviour towards you in private. How she treats you in private became an exception, because at some point you stopped counting yourself as a person whose experience matters. So in your mind she can be kind to everyone and hit you at the same time, because violence towards you doesn't count.

Just wanted to remind you that it does, and what she does to you reveals her personality just like everything else does. You don't deserve to be put through that, and nobody should put you through that.

Anon I am so sorry. What you're experiencing is domestic violence. Relationships should have zero physical conflict, none, absolutely unnaceptable.

I know if otherwise everything seems perfect this is difficult to believe and it seems like a minor issue that should be explained away. But would you ever be able to raise your hand at a woman you love, regardless of how angry you were? Could you ask her to stay with you after you've done that?

Partners being apologetic and making you feel insane and like you can't bring it up is also very common in these types of relationships. Everything should be easy to bring up and talked about, nothing is worth making a partner feel insane. I feel heartbroken for you, I wish I could say anything else or make you feel better in any way. That woman doesn't love you. She's willing to physically assault you and make you feel insane and does it all over again after apologizing. This will devastate your mental health. People who love you don't do this.

Can you think of any other ways she escapes accountability, prioritizes her own wants and ignores your discomfort or safety, makes you feel like you are less of a priority in the relationship? This is so awful, a long term relationship as well.

If anyone has any advice for anon please comment, I wouldn't know what to do except try to get distance to evaluate this, but partners like this will try to prevent distance and sabotage it.

Fantasy level sunsets in May