Growing Wild

The rescue posted that this little family has been spotted several times since the introduction and they seem to be doing great 🥹

June 12 2026 - wildflowers, ruins, and stuff

Driving up to Aptera.. so very dry. We were told this is a pretty delicate ecosystem, especially up on the higher mountains, and they are all protected areas.

Wildflowers and a sign. I've learned that when you're busy traveling, and more importantly, traveling with busy or just incurious people, you have to take pictures of the signs of info and keep running, with the hope you'll read it later.

"The ancient Aptera is one of the most important city-states in Crete. It is already referred to in the linear B tablets (14th-13th century BCE). Its excellent location has proved ideal for its development into a powerful commercial and political centre. Its two harbors, Minoa (present Marathi), and Kissamos at both sides of the entrances of the Souda bay secured the control of naval activity.

In the 4th c. BCE, as most independent cities of Crete, it was capable to mint its own coin. The era of its greatest peak was during the Hellenistic period. According to the epigraphic and philological testimonies, the city has developed foreign relationships with the large centers of the Hellenistic territory during the 3rd and 2nd cent. BCE.

During the Roman period, as a result of the enforcement of the "roman peace", the city experiences a new period of peak which is verified by the big public buildings preserved until today.

The city continued to be inhabited until the Byzantine period (7th cent. AD), when it was destroyed by a powerful earthquake. To its final destruction contributed the Saracens pirates' raids.

In the 11 cent. AD, the existence of the monastery of St. John the Theologian is reported at this site. The monastery was founded at a central part of the ancient city and functioned until 1962."

Abandoned monastery but hey there were interesting public restrooms, for which we were grateful.

It was so dry.

Papaver

The ancient Roman baths - or was it the cistern? If memory serves, men were allowed in at certain times, and women at other times, but kept entirely separate.

For the folks curious about templates, these are the shapes I cut from cardboard. I added a couple little pieces of cereal box cardboard as structural support in various points, like the bridge of the nose and behind the beak. Also, I ended up cutting the forehead piece a little smaller, which I marked on the paper, but I kept the template size in case you want to see how it originally looked.

It's a completely different piece of wearable art. It has a different soul. It has a different feel.

Bear's mask templates! I just want to stress that our masks are extremely low tech and budget friendly. They're made out of cardboard, hot glue, and fleece, with an elastic band in the back. I used a little sheer black fabric I had leftover from my terror bird costume for the eyes.

Fleece and felt are very forgiving fabrics and you can basically just cut a single large piece and stretch it to fit, gluing it to the cardboard one small section at a time. The fabric was the only purchase we made for these, and it was in the form of thrift store blankets.

this was all stuff i had lying around, most of it was obtained for other craft projects that i haven't yet gotten around to

on this blog is for you, and

it never will be.

Under the Equitable Building Decarbonization Program, California is providing no-cost, zero-emissions appliances like induction stoves and heat pumps to low-income households. The program covers single family, multifamily, and mobile homes and also include other efficiency upgrades like smart thermostats, LED lighting, and better duct sealing and insulation.

The Basics

[Plain text: "The Basics". End PT]

Why and how to write image descriptions

Accessibility on Tumblr for new users (has templates, also talks about how to tag for flashing lights to accommodate photosensitive folks)

I see an image and want to describe it: a step by step guide

Fanart-specific and Tumblr-specific advice for image descriptions

How to describe screenshots of tags

IDs versus Alt Text, from a visually impaired Tumblr user (spoiler alert: sometimes it makes sense to use both)

Level of Detail

[Plain text: "Level of Detail?" End PT]

Why a short ID is always better than no ID

Blind people discuss the level of detail to include in IDs

The key word for writing IDs: "Relevancy"

Helpful Communities, Tips, and Tools

[Plain text: "Helpful Communities, Tips, and Tools." End PT]

I want to make my posts more accessible, but can’t write IDs myself: a guide

The People's Accessibility Discord sever (also mentioned in the previous link. It's a friendly server for crowdsourcing image descriptions, with description requests and feedback requests both welcomed)

Google Doc full of template descriptions for memes

Online image to text converter

Describing skin tone and describing hair (heads up that the posts themselves are undescribed and were written with fiction writers in mind; potentially still very useful)

How to remember to write descriptions (spoiler: by putting yourself in situations where you see descriptions more often)

Related, a Google doc of described blogs (almost all the blogs linked earlier in this post have tons of described posts and resources too)

(In my opinion, writing IDs is easiest to learn by doing — but especially if combined with watching other people do so. So follow some described blogs!)

Miscellaneous

[Plain text: "Miscellaneous". End PT]

Alt text vs IDs vs Captions with examples

Why not to put image descriptions in small fonts/italics (also, some non-definitive thoughts on IDs vs alt text)

Special characters read by all screen readers

Brief Intro to Transcripts/Video Descriptions

Myths That Harm Blind People

How to make your blog's colors visually accessible - one of the easiest thing on this list!

Other easy things: show love to artists who describe their work, edit descriptions into your original post when someone provides one in the notes, and copy-paste inaccessible (eg, small text or italicized) descriptions as plain text when you reblog!

Lastly, and maybe most importantly, how to continue writing image descriptions while avoiding burnout.

Like a YEAR'S worth of garlic confit, my beloved

@todaysbird