u/ageofbronze

Just wanted to share this with people who understand. A few weeks ago my partner was googling ragweed because he didn’t know what it looked like (we have some growing nearby and allergies are bad, so he wanted to know what plant to avoid). He noticed that one of the first results on google was an ai slop website that had “ragweed” identified as goldenrod, in EVERY photo. Literally every single photo in this long article that was high up in google’s first results was of goldenrod instead of actual ragweed 🙄💀.

I completely forgot about that I did this until today, but I ended up rage emailing them telling them to change it because it meant unsuspecting people would probably start pulling goldenrod for no reason to help with their allergies. And to my shock, because I assumed it was likely an unmonitored/bot ai website, they emailed back and changed everything! I’m annoyed that I had to help correct their mislabeled ai crap anyways, and think they have no business being in the garden space if they’re publishing stuff that is so obviously not verified (they are a plant-specific website so it feels less like a simple mistake and more like a systemic issue with accuracy, who knows what else is mislabeled in there), but it ended up being a spot of good news today to actually see that my irritation compulsively spilling out into an email actually resulted in something getting updated to be correct, especially something so high on google’s SEO. With that said, ai slop making it’s way into the gardening space and especially when it comes to natives is so frustrating and I wish people who didn’t actually give a crap about educating people/correct info regarding native species and ecology would leave it alone.

Anyways… just wanted to share as I really thought nothing would come of it but yay!! 🙌 if it stops one person from needlessly cutting down a goldenrod plant I’ll take it!

So I’ve been recently wanting to make my first money bowl and found this dish when cleaning out my art studio that already has a little candle holder built in (2 of them, actually). And then the same day I was at the thrift store and found a box of used taper candles that should have been a full pack of 5 but instead had only 3, and 2 of them were green (pictured here) so basically a thrift find of 2 green candlesticks that work perfectly with this bowl. It seemed serendipitous, but then I started wondering if doing a spell like this would be greedy or wrong in any ways?

Thanks for any insight from a complete newbie.

My partner and I are disagreeing on what these are. I thought that specifically photo 1 was definitely termites. I watched and saw a little winged insect fly in and out of the hole. He thinks that they are both mud dauber tubes and that the insect we saw was a baby wasp.

This is on an exterior structure well away from our house. We had an inspection earlier this year for termites to confirm our status and the inspector said that we were good on termites but of course recommended a protection plan. We’re kind of trying to save money right now since we have some other repairs we need to do and have been monitoring, so trying to figure out if we have an active infestation (although again, far away from our house) and how much of an urgent situation that would be.

Thanks and happy to answer any other questions!

Hi,

We have someone coming to install gutters tomorrow and just in the past couple of days these bees (not sure what they are - they look like big hornets, but are not carpenter bees) have started hovering and fighting right around where the installers will need to access. It looks like they made little holes in the wood of the porch facing the outside 🙄 so I can’t get to the holes to plug them up, unless I did it tomorrow when the power line is being turned off which will likely not even be helpful to the installer since they’re trying to do it within one day.

Is there any way to get these bees to leave? I usually would be against spraying but not in this case since I need to clear the area for the workers asap. I’m not sure how to get them cleared since I can’t climb a ladder past the power line and can’t get at the wood they’re obsessed with from the other side of the porch without being at a really scary angle.

Something I was pondering -

How callous do you have to be to be someone who claims to love the earth (evidenced by her constantly talking about outside, enjoying Hawaii, posting things like waterfalls) and even profit off of your perceived connection with the planet (which she tries to present as deeper than anyone else’s) but then not give a shit about environmental destruction?

The trump admin has been systematically trying to remove protections from all of our public lands, parks, and wilderness areas. Earlier this week Mike Lee snuck a poison pill into a bipartisan wildfire prevention package that strips the roadless rule protection from millions of acres. For anyone unaware, the roadless rule protects wilderness areas that aren’t designated as national parks from being developed on. There’s a whole host of reasons why road development is horrible for wilderness areas, water sources and countless species, but of course the administration is trying to disinform people that it’s for “wildfire prevention” (it’s so they can open up wilderness for logging. All documented as part of P2025).

Likewise, the department of interior just released another sneaky and horrific attack today on our public lands (link to substack here because this writer does a way better job explaining it than I ever could). I recommend reading the whole thing, and please remember to leave a public comment once the comment period for opposition opens on Monday! https://morethanjustparks.substack.com/p/trump-administration-moves-to-close

Anyways. Sorry this is long winded. I think I’ve just been trying to articulate (to myself) why I have particular unease about her and her actions. Obviously the tech billionaires, the oil and logging lobbyists, they have the most culpability in the utter pillaging of nature. But I feel like she exemplifies this abhorrent view that so long as she can insulate herself via her wealth, hoard natural resources and untouched land like the other rich people while everything else burns… while claiming to love nature, to commune with nature.. it’s such a jarring combination of callousness, cruelty and cognitive dissonance.

And i imagine that she would accuse me of being woke and projecting that she has negative intent and is a user. But like all of the other topics we discuss here I just find it SO disingenuous and dystopian that she profits off of her self-mythologizing as a nature lover and nature seeker but then actually simply does. not. care. (Or even worse, actively supports the destruction of nature via the people she aligns with and the policy they platform! And her love of AI 😵‍💫). It’s so gross to me.

So. I’m in my mid thirties and struggle with anxiety, and I feel like half my life now has been absolutely plagued by mowing-related anxiety. Since I was a college student, it’s been nonstop of landlords wanting the grass done non stop (like more than once a week in some cases), neighbors bitching, snide or clueless comments from boomer relatives about “haha your lawn could use a good mow!” when it’s just barely got some clover flowers popping up and looks way better and lush.

When my partner and I bought our first house, we intentionally bought 3 acres out in the middle of the country that borders a big forest that will never be developed. We have only unoccupied lots next to our property borders. Honestly next time we buy, if we’re still in this area, I want it to be like 20 acres so I never have to deal with lawn shit again because I’m so over it. Or I will buy somewhere like a forest where I can tell that no one does incessant lawn care.

Anyways, even though we moved out somewhere rural, of course the lawn culture is still here. It’s constant lawn noise because apparently instead of just letting a meadow be a meadow, it has to be a brick brown stubbly grass monoculture instead. We’ve been in a massive drought and it still has barely relented. Even though the lots neighboring our property are sitting empty, the people that own them (live in other states) hire people weekly to come mow them. That’s totally fine and I’m not going to tell someone what to do with their property, BUT. Today someone they hired, or a relative, I’m not even sure, mowed down a bunch of goldenrod, aster, evening primrose and other natives that are on OUR property. Like… what the fuck?

Im guessing it was a mistake but don’t even know who to talk to since the neighbors live out of state. And It’s not so much this one mistake, as the whole thing crashing on me and triggering me. I’ve had multiple visitors to our property comment on the “weediness” (we MAINTAIN a wildflower meadow). We had carpenter bees and my dad brought over a big bottle of carpenter bee killer, even though my parents are both liberal (care about the environment, supposedly) and are big gardeners. The people we bought the house from asked if we had been able to mow an extra hilly part of our property and if we had bought a $4k riding mower and kept being like “it’s really worth it so that you can mow there!”

Why in the world would I mow down a big patch of goldenrod and aster on a MOUNTAIN???! What the fuck? I know people mean well but I’m so over it. So much if my adult life has been plagued by this shit and even though I really don’t want to care, it’s still so hard for someone with anxiety and a people pleaser to not feel anxious about it or judged, especially since people do NOT understand even if you explain it to them. People are so set in their ways, willfully ignorant, and I’m so tired of THEIR way being the mainstream and everything else being shamed. I’m so tired of living on a precious, abundant planet that is being destroyed, and bug populations being decimated, and still people are obsessed with their stupid, ugly, time consuming lawns.

Sigh. It just makes me so disappointed in people and is really wearing me down today. This is what our meadow looks like btw that people have commented looks “weedy” 😭 (it was all short, brown grass before we started doing meadow). I pray for a world where people leave their hatred of bugs and plants behind. It’s so sad and such a shitty reflection of humanity.

Awful. I worry about the children and targets of this and the fact that it’s very much mainstream now.

I’ve been envisioning this reading nook on this big box elder tree for a while and want to plant something that will almost block the view of the fence/garage if you’re looking up at it (area is circled). Because there’s usually a pretty big hosta in front of it, it would need to be something tall. Just wondering if anyone has any plant suggestions as I’m pretty new to gardening.

Hi all! I had a random question about monarchs as I don’t really know much about their full life cycle and geographic patterns. Last fall we got a bunch of monarchs in my aster/golden rod patch around September. It was so magical!

Anyways, a few days ago I saw something that looked suspiciously like a monarch again. I compared it to other orange butterflies and from what I could see it looked the most like a monarch but I wasn’t able to get a picture where I could really closely examine it. Does anyone know if there could possibly be monarchs here right now? Thank you for any information!