repeating this to myself forever and ever
So. Storytime for guerilla gardeners and solarpunk enthusiasts. This story comes to me 3rd hand but I believe the basic shape of it is true, even if details may be off.
So there’s this guy who lives in my parents’ town. Wanted to have a pocket farm but lives on an urban lot in a small city instead because y’know jobs and stuff. He could definitely get a few raised beds in the backyard but nothing all that impressive and the front yard is on a very busy road with the expectation that it’ll look reasonably traditional (plus planting food by busy roads isn’t always a good idea).
However
After he’s lived there for a while, he realizes his neighbors are all older people who maybe have more challenges taking care of their yards than they used to. So he goes to his next door neighbor and offers a deal: I’ll mow and maintain your front yard for free if you let me knock down the fences between our backyards and plant them both with food. And you’ll get a cut of the produce.
Presumably the neighbor already knew and trusted this guy because he said yes. So he starts mowing and maintaining his and his neighbor’s front yards and planting food in their now-shared backyards. After a season or two this goes well enough that the next neighbor down the street asks if he can be in on this too.
So now there’s 3 front yards to mow and three backyards full of produce. And it keeps going from there. Dude gets a rider lawnmower and does everyone’s front yards, and meanwhile he’s maintaining an entire block’s worth of produce in the back. His yields got so high that he was able to start offering boxes of produce outside of the block’s residents too. This is how I heard of him: my parents’ next door neighbors were picking up a regular box of produce from him.
I love a couple of things about this story:
- Offering to maintain people’s front yards for them allows baby boomers to feed their thirst for keeping up appearances while still getting food production into the neighborhood
- As homeowners age offering services like this is legitimately good community building
- BLOCK-LONG POCKET FARM
These exact circumstances might not be replicable everywhere, but I love thinking about how these principles could be applied.
Even when massive pocket farms aren’t on the table, community building and communication can unlock possibilities. It was like two months ago that I asked a neighbor if I could plant a hazelnut hedge right on our property line- on the understanding that it will eat 5 feet of their front yard that they then don’t have to upkeep, and that all the hazelnuts on their side of the line belong to them, with 0 cost to them. They were up to it and I was able to plant 7 hazelnut plants, which will not only eventually give me tasty and healthy protein, but that are native here and key to piles of local insects and birds, plus loads of habitat.
All because I was willing to knock on the door and ask.
maomao is my favorite "not like other girls" style protagonist bc for one shes a girls girl through and through. to the bone. and two she's just a weird little freak. absolute lunatic. they have the whole "omg she's actually beautiful and everyone falls for her when she's all made up" trope but the punchline is that she does not fucking want to look like that. she actively puts dirt on her face every day bc she does not want to be perceived as attractive (mostly out of fear of being used for sex work though at the same time she has the utmost respect for women who do sex work like she grew up in a brothel those are her sisters). she's Sherlock level smart and solves every mystery so fast but goes "well thats none of my business. anyway back to testing poisons on myself" she has the 2nd most powerful guy in the nation head over heels in love with her and is like "man this guy is weird around me what's his deal. I guess he's fine though because he gives me rare medicines and has no dick" fucking ICON i love her. also she once slapped someone so hard they fell on the floor. 10/10
honestly i think im good without that thanks
Try it
two things that can and should coexist: writing fanfiction for yourself as a form of self-care slash comfort and appreciating kind comments given by your readers, as well as using these encouraging comments as a source of motivation to write more fics
i walk out of the shower, and bam, first thing im greeted with is my cat gagging. four seconds into being clean, and barf is already making its way back into my life.
my first thought is to "take the bullet for the president." the bullet of course being cat yack, and the president being the thick luxurious carpets of my bedroom.
i discard this thought. im clean. i like being clean. i have been clean for only four seconds.
my second thought is to remember that there is a large, plastic sheeted area in the corner near the cats food bowl. ms. kitty is a messy eater, so she has to eat on the sheet.
i grab my cat and toss it across the room onto the sheet. i feel like im throwing a live grenade out of my trench. cat drives heaves once in my arms, then throws up in midair, approximately one foot out of my grasp.
i watch the barf fly in the same arc as my cat. conservation of momentum. theres not much velocity imbued by peristalsis.
both land at the same time. vomit splats. cat lands gracefully. she turns around, looks at me with total serenity, and throws up a second time. still on the plastic. i tell her that shes a great cat for staying still to do that. she does not give a shit.
i get some dirty clothes out of my laundry hamper and pile them up so she can sit on them. she loves dirty laundry. cats are nasty like that. i clean up the barf and she watches with interest. i have tossed her across the room, and now, stolen her barf. i am utterly befuddling to her. she tolerates me though because i give good scritches.
i toss the vomit soaked paper towels into the trash and come back with a bowl of bottled water (she has preferences) and a cat squeezy treat. she accepts three sips of water but declines the treat. very reasonable. i go back downstairs and put the treat in a ziplock in the fridge so she can have it tomorrow. i come back and shes trotting on her wheel.
i ask how long shes been able to do that. she doesn't answer - in part because she is a cat, but mostly because she is an asshole. she just keeps jogging. i turn to walk away and she meows at me to spin the wheel faster.
i do not. i go upstairs and play halo. a few minutes later she comes and sits next to me before falling asleep.
Holy ground