u/transfercannoli

I live in Mn and I’m not talented, so I’m done to a grapefruit, and key lime, a Meyer lemon bush, and two trifoliates where I lost the plant above the graft.

The tris are healthy—what should I do with them? Could someone with my tack record feasibly try grafting?

Shouldn't be surprising, but ugh. The DNT endorsed Jason Rarick—who LOVES data centers—for the district directly downstream of the Hermantown data center project. He loves them so much that he's doesn't even suppor regulation. He voted to let them jack up utility bills in the area and against requiring them to report on water use.

The piece also gave all of two lines to Mary Carlson, who is trying to pause data center construction for a year to give the state time to put together a regulatory framework—but you know, according to the DNT she's "a wedding planner and hobby farmer," QED. Gross.

https://www.revisor.mn.gov/bills/94/2025/1/HF/16/versions/latest/

https://www.conservationminnesota.org/legislation/data-center-bill-sf19-senate

I am in my late 30s and 6 months pregnant with an XX embryo, and my childhood horse passion has come roaring back in the last few years.

I am between horses right now (lost the world's best boy suddenly a few weeks ago), and I am noticing myself fully pining for a horse in a way that I recognize from being a child. Like, my mom finally started me in riding lessons when I was 6 because I woke up crying from a dream about having horses.

I am hoping that my daughter will love horses for her sake--amazing for teaching work ethic, risk management, compassion, a theory of mind--but honestly even more so for mine. Plenty of passions could teach her these things, but it would be fun to share this one, not to mention incredibly convenient for a mom who wants to spend every weeknight at the barn anyway.

My childhood horse obsession was so fueled by longing that it's hard for me to imagine what it looks like for a kid when horses are a part of your family. Like, horses were magical beings that I wanted but couldn't have, so of course I was stoked to spend all summer mucking stalls for ride time.

Obviously, I won't force horses on my daughter or withhold them--I am just kind of curious about what your kids who grew up with horses thought / think of them and how you went about integrating something that is primarily your hobby and an immense privilege into their childhoods.

I've noticed that my guy's been a little sore over his back for the past few weeks, and he's also lost some topline. It's particularly noticeable in front of the withers. This period has partially coincided with lighter work due to heat / smoke, but both the stiffness and the atrophy are more than I've seen during other periods of similarly reduced work.

Have you all seen lumbar soreness and loss of condition from fighting the flies?

He's 20, and we've made a lot of progress over the last 9 months reconditioning and building postural muscles to reduce overall stiffness, so it's a bummer to lose ground in the summer! I've been spending some extra time on bodywork and stretches, but if it's fly stress, I am not sure what else I can do! Any ideas. He wears boots, a mask, a sheet with a hood, and Pyranha spray (which seems to work well for about 5 mins).

Hi all! I have questions about the baby blues and the fact that all of the literature seems to kind of suggest that they "aren't a big deal," and aren't real PPA / PPD. I am terrified of them though, and I am curious about others' experiences. Background below:

I am a FTM at 16 weeks, and I got pregnant through IVF. I've probably had mild undiagnosed PMDD my entire life, and I've had a series of rough physical and mental reactions to birth control but never been able to get a doc to believe me.

Things got SERIOUS after my first egg retrieval. Basically, an egg retrieval cycle mimics a normal menstrual cycle, but your hormones get WAY higher around ovulation than normal, and come crashing down WAY harder in the PMS period. Over the space of two days, I went from high on life (and hormones) to literally unable to pick up the cell phone to answer a call from my doctor. I had suicidal ideation for the first time in my life, raging tinnitus, the whole bag, and it came out of NOWHERE. It got 80% better when my period started, but it took me months to fully climb out of the hole because that kind of experience is so scary.

Based on all this, I have a fear that the PP hormone crash ("baby blues") is going to be a big, big deal for me. It's also a much bigger drop than an egg retrieval! I am in the care of a reproductive psych now and we'll do some proactive SSRI manipulation + whatever else we need to do to respond to waht happens, but I am just interested in hearing from other people who have hormone sensitive depression / anxiety about how the "baby blues" period went.

TL;DR: I am more scared of the PP estrogen drop than I've ever been of anything in my life. What happened for you?

...is how chill everybody is with being known as "[Horse's name]'s owner"

Like the equestrian community as a whole is deeply weird and moneyed / conservative / exclusionary, but also as it's been pointed out here, horse girls are essentially just train boys (i.e., social skills are all over the map), and the one way in which I deeply fit in is that I DID NOT catch your name and I DO NOT expect you to know mine, but I've had a long conversation with your horse and you with mine

Maybe this is partially just my fairly chill h/j+ barn, but I feel like in other communities (esp any with weird status elements), I'm always on the verge of really offending somebody by letting it slip that no part of my brain retained their name AT ALL, and I just love being in a group with this mutually loose screw where nobody minds being "Person schooling Spud level three" in conversation or "Jennifer Spud" in my phone once we're friends

Quick Q because the internet didn't have ideas: Yesterday my guy was repeatedly resting his left hind during our standard post-ride butt scratches / hip tucks. No lameness detected during work, and I wasn't catching any soreness to touch over the back and hip. I would attempt to square him up and shift some weight left before the tuck, but he'd shift back during the exercise.

First time that's happened, so not super concerned yet. I'll check things out later today. Just wanted to see if anybody has ideas about which parts to suspect if this becomes a repeat thing. I don't know quite where to look if the issue is bearing weight on the left while lifting back, or maybe soreness on the back-lifting muscles on the left side?

We do have chiro monthly (and our chiro is worth is weight in gold)--he'll be seen again in about two weeks either way.

Apologies if this comes up too much—did a quick search but could have missed it

Are you all also furious and depressed? I haven’t lost my work to AI, but somehow my work just… sucks now? I largely contract with agencies and the amazing, brilliant people I work with are stressed and overwhelmed, and they’ve lost all negotiating power with clients. They’re being pressured to produce more for less, and the work has gotten a lot harder without the written product being better.

I was mostly fine with SEO writing and didn’t feel much tension between SEO requirements and what quality work looks like. Writing for answer engines is totally different, and it’s also just fucking depressing to know that I’m not even writing for a human reader—just hoping some bot will paraphrase me.

It’s also unbelievably irritating that AI is threatening to replace me without being able to do what I do. It can’t write well; it can’t even reliably pull facts—but that somehow that doesn’t seem to matter in the market?

I came to this field via English and creative writing degrees, and I’ve always felt like what I’m doing is actually still writing, even if it’s not art. Robert Pinsky came to one of my workshops in grad school and somebody asked him something along the lines of whether poetry matters. He had a great response actually—that the earliest hominids communicated with grunts and squeaks I or whatever; that through sound (language) they expressed and / or created a shared experience of existence, that we all exist in that tradition, and, dramatically, “woe be unto those who break that chain.” Been on my mind for obvious reasons.

Sorry this went big at the end. I’m just fucking pissed.

I have a friend who was fitted with an ankle monitor at the Whipple a few months ago (this is / was happening to lots of folks with pending immigration cases--had nothing to do with any specifics of their case). At the time, an immigration attorney told us that there was nothing they could do to remove the monitor.

At my friend's most recent ICE check-in, a social worker told them that they could get the monitors off with the help of an attorney. Does anybody have any info about this process or how to contact the social work team at the Whipple to learn more? I THINK that this is a recent change in USCIS practice around electronic monitoring--not that the attorney we're working with was wrong previously--but any info would help. I'm trying to help my friend sort it out and get the right info into an attorney's hands, but I'm coming up short.

I apologize if this is the wrong sub! I wanted to go for local info, but I can try the USCIS boards if that's better.

Oversimplified title b/c I want to know if other people have had this experience

Backstory is that I am pregnant and I have the type of nausea where you have to eat 5k calories of carbs a day to function. Add the water weight and the boob weight and I went 140 to 180 in three months. C'est la vie.

I've been pretty sick, so big boy has been in somewhat lighter work... we've been doing a lot of stuff from the ground, and I've been loving Jec Ballou's books for challenging things to do under saddle at the walk

My guy is a 16.1 OTTB. We've been together for less than a year, and in that time he's been building muscle and learning to work round and through for the first time in his life. I hopped on a few days ago and we had a normal walk-trot warm-up, but I just COULDN'T get him to canter. I was bareback (normal for us lately), so after a few tries that ended with me thumping him in the sides repeatedly at a medium trot like a 5 yo on a lesson pony, I just stopped. It felt weird to not dig in and insist, but he's typically pretty willing with me--so I was like, maybe he's ouchy, maybe it's the weight, or maybe he knows something I don't.

I did get a canter out of him yesterday, but he definitely seemed to struggle with the transition and holding himself in the gait like was 6 months ago. We kept it short--I was just glad he picked it up.

Anyway, this is my first rapid 40-lb weight gain, and it stands to reason that things are harder for my horse. I guess I am just looking for insight from folks who have either had big weight changes or trainers who see riders of various sizes on the same animal--how big of a difference do you see in what they can do? I am an adult rerider, and 20 years ago there was way less discussion in my area of someone being too heavy for the animal to carry.

I won't be able to ride through the whole pregnancy, but I'd like to keep it up as long as I can, and I'd also love any insight into the best types of under saddle work for a heavier person. I am thinking that hills, groundpoles, and lateral work at the walk could still be beneficial, as long as I take it easy on him. In rock climbing, we call it high-gravity training--eventually I'll lose the weight and he'll be all jacked and ready to fly--provided that I don't hurt him or make him angry and depressed.

Anyway--this was my first experience with my guy refusing something, so I am just curious what others think! Part of me also wonders if he is just being careful with me, but that's the woo side...

My sister and I have a fun bit going about our animal's "offices." Her dog has a little Persian rug and a gallery wall of tiny framed prints of his interests (dogs, squirrels, a duck, etc.).

My husband has generously volunteered to paint a tasteful oil hay bale for my horse's stall, but I am afraid he'll somehow kill himself with it. I won't do this if I can't think of a safe way to go about it--but just wanted to see if anybody has thoughts. If there's anything purpose-made for stalls I could adapt to put a painting in or behind? I might be overthinking it, but somehow adding anything to a stall scares me.

TL;DR: Will any local orgs or businesses teach me the basics of caring for the trees on my property? The previous owners REALLY knew their stuff... I really do not!

I inherited some gorgeous landscaping when I bought my house in 2021, but (unlike the previous owners), I'm not a master gardener (or retired). I'm fine with things being a little shaggy, but I'm worried that I might be neglecting our trees beyond just the cosmetic (esp. the cherries and at least one of the apples).

I also have a number of potted trees (largely citrus), but I am deeply pruning-challenged. It just breaks my brain... every time I try to read up on shaping a tree and go for it, it just ends up looking even more chaotic than before.

When I lived in Tacoma, WA, the master gardeners had a program where you could request a volunteer to visit your property and provide some education on caring for what you have. I think they'd prune for you too (at least a bit) and talk through the process so that you could finish the job without butchering everything.

Does Duluth have anything like this? Or do you know of anyone who might do it? I'm happy to pay a business or individual for their expertise with the caveat that I'm not looking for a full landscaping job (which would take forever and be $$)--more like a private lesson / demo so that I can do a better job keeping everything healthy. There are a few magnolias, azaleas, lilacs, a pear, around 30 peonies, a missing hydrangea (it's just gone now?), and a few Significant Bushes that are probably supposed to be doing something other than what they are doing... in short, I'm in over my head!

Ideally, I'd become a master gardener myself, but that's going to have to wait for retirement (if I get there... AI is a threat, and a deeply dumb one. But I digress). For now, I'm looking for an efficient way to build the knowledge base I need for triage and maintenance of what's already here.

Pic of one unidentified beauty included as tree tax!

where does a pregnant person get emergency tamales in this town

tamales are the water of life today and anything else is getting thrown up stat

eta: god bless you all

My clinic wants my progesterone to be higher, but my reactions to PIO are so bad that I am scared that they'll endanger the pregnancy (or me). I've also gotten mixed messages about where progesterone should be.

Bullets for efficiency:

• I am at 5 +3 off a fresh transfer, and my most recent progesterone was 11.9 (measured on 3 prometrium a day). First tri reference range is 9 to 44.
• At my first beta (on two prometrium daily), progesterone was very low (7s), and my clinic had me start PIO. Four hours after the first shot, I got a 4/10 headache for about 6 hours, temp of 100, body aches, and chills
• After the second shot, I got a 6/10 headache that lasted 24 hours, body aches, chills, a temp of 100, a papular rash on my stomach, and a non-papular rash at the injection site
• I freaked out and asked my clinic if we could try something else. They now have me on endometrin 3x a day and said that this is our last chance to do something other than PIO.
• I had a failed frozen FET at my previous clinic that involved 10 days of PIO. I had a temp up to 101, hot flashes, and chills, but none of the body aches or headaches or rashes. It worries me that this seems to be getting worse over time.
• I was pregnant last year at my previous clinic with a progesterone level of 9.4 on 2 endometrin / day, and my doctor said not to worry about low serum levels because uterine levels would be much higher. I switched clinics because I found them borderline negligent (that was the ONLY time they tested my PDG in two retrievals and two transfers, despite me begging for it after the failed FET), and I love that my new clinic is more aggressive generally. I'm just scared of what this med does to me and what might happen if I go back on it.

Anybody have experiences like this? Or info about where your clinic wanted your progesterone first tri (and why)? Or physician insights into uterine vs serum levels of progesterone when suppositories are used?

Thank you!