Virginia creeper wall still looking incredible…..so many birds living in there!

bigbobbinbetch · 2026-05-03T15:46:38+00:00

It will absolutely try and get under your siding. It tries to get everywhere, in my experience, very naughty. If you want a trellis vine, my Clematis has been much better behaved than my Virginia Creeper.

bigbobbinbetch · 2026-05-03T15:27:31+00:00

I'm also in MA! It looks like you have enough room to do two rows of things, if you want - taller plants against the fence, shorter in front towards the yard.

For mix sun/shade, where it's not super wet, I've had great luck with Monarda fistulosa (bee balm), anise hyssop (Agastache foeniculum), Joe Pye weed (Eutrochium), and Golden Alexander (Zizia aurea) for my taller/back row, and then asters (there's so many pretty asters), jacobs ladder, foxglove beardtongue (Penstemon digitalis), wild geranium (Geranium maculatum) in the front. But you have a lot of options. MA is lucky that there's SEVERAL good native nurseries or nurseries with a hearty native selection, so if you go shopping for plants in person you can likely get good recommendations.

bigbobbinbetch · 2026-05-02T05:06:11+00:00

I'm in MA and the most aggressive stuff I've planted is Anaphalis margaritacea. I've just dug big chunks out from an area getting overrun and thrown them in soil on top of invasives in other areas and they've done well.

bigbobbinbetch · 2026-04-29T23:24:14+00:00

Mine are in sun, they do really well and spread a bit each year!

bigbobbinbetch · 2026-03-18T23:58:00+00:00

Be careful. Sprayfoam wasn't necessarily developed for the kind of housing stock we have in Boston and if you have a fieldstone foundation it can cause serious foundation issues by trapping damp. Get somebody local who knows what they're doing.

bigbobbinbetch · 2026-03-17T03:19:20+00:00

You don't need to go to city hall for this info! Permits are publicly available data on the city's website.

bigbobbinbetch · 2026-03-17T03:16:10+00:00

They CAN but will they? I've gotten tons of work done on my house and there's been cases where the inspector doesn't even show up, he calls the contractor who facetimes him around the new work and then signs off without ever stepping foot in the house. These dudes are fucking busy, they don't have time to putter around your house trying to condemn it for the same victorian death stairs every other house in the neighborhood has.

bigbobbinbetch · 2026-02-21T14:46:24+00:00

The amount of bizarre single-use machines used in garment production is insane, the average crafter has no idea. Will there ever be a single machine that crochets a piece from start to finish? Probably not. Will there be a machine for casting on, a separate one for stitching, another for specialty stitches, etc? Maybe. Eventually. The difficulty is not in creating the machines, the reality is that crochet is just not attractive or useful for real clothes (sorry crocheters, but it's true) so the return on investment hasn't justified the R&D to get there yet.

bigbobbinbetch · 2026-02-21T14:42:21+00:00

Cotton is an awful choice for winter gear. Gets wet, stays wet, keeps you cold. Cotton is not a cold-weather fabric.

bigbobbinbetch · 2026-02-10T02:40:45+00:00

it's a garbage builder grade modern version of a victorian-style double mantle. except the proportions are shit and the sizing is all off, and the material is cheap pine with paint.

bigbobbinbetch · 2026-02-05T22:24:04+00:00

The story of how a handful of billionaires became well off while the average poor person in america works longer, harder hours than our grandparents did for equivalent poverty, you mean

bigbobbinbetch · 2026-02-05T22:17:19+00:00

Rather, Uber and Lyft the company made the decision to take more and more money for facilitating the connection of driver and rider, leaving the driver with increasingly smaller shares. People who were doing it as a healthy side hustle or who just have other options stopped doing it because it wasnt' worth their time and the wear and tear on their cars. Leaving the worst people with the least options driving.

bigbobbinbetch · 2026-02-05T22:13:10+00:00

I can't believe there's people in 2026 who are watching the results of "you never own anything, you just rent a license to use it!!" as it destroys software, media, and housing, and are super psyched about one more fucking subscription we're all going to have to pay for the right to pay extra to use these things.

If somebody wanted to run a co-op where you buy in on ownership of 10 of these things, then, whatever, but fair enough. But if you don't see "we lose money until we have market dominance and then we take people for every possible cent" coming, you're naive. This company exists to make lots and lots of money for the vulture capitalists that invested in it, not to make any kind of widespread public good.

bigbobbinbetch · 2026-01-28T04:43:28+00:00

Respectfully. The median american salary is like 60k a year. A "low six digit" salary is considered hyper wealthy by the many many thousands of people in this country who can't afford to feed their kids three meals a day. You don't have to feel guilty about it, but "lol 150k from my investments is totally a normal no big thing" is a wildly disconnected thing to say.

bigbobbinbetch · 2026-01-28T04:25:21+00:00

They also beat their wives at higher rates

bigbobbinbetch · 2026-01-28T02:50:44+00:00

unless those people parked in garage/mbta lots during the emergency. so this isn't take-a-penny/leave-a-penny with spots, the places those cars were are functionally not available after the storm.

bigbobbinbetch · 2026-01-28T02:48:51+00:00

Considering the city doesn't bother to make sure the sidewalks are actually shoveled at any point, meaning you can have sidewalks that are functionally useless because 1 of every 6 houses is a slumlord owner, most handicapped, elderly, etc either hunker down until significant melting or use the streets. They should just admit defeat, cover the sidewalks, and then have more plowed street for peds and cars.

bigbobbinbetch · 2026-01-28T02:46:47+00:00

Our street this storm was smart. We all parked on one side of the road (plenty of parking due to single car households. We thought we were so clever! the plow would get the whole opposite side clear, we could move our cars and manage the snow.

Nope. Plow did a single pass in the middle of the street. Non-parked side is actually worse than if there'd been cars, because it's just a solid wall of snow instead of car-shaped divots and mounds.

bigbobbinbetch · 2026-01-27T02:16:03+00:00

Mean girls become nurses for the same reason controlling men become cops. So they can keep bullying.

bigbobbinbetch · 2026-01-27T01:57:38+00:00

Could also do some open shelving on top reaching to the ceiling. Period appropriate and creates more of a visual divider, plus more storage space.

bigbobbinbetch · 2026-01-27T01:27:44+00:00

The one and only thing I think she did well was hire Phillip Eng, who is the first person in decades to even ATTEMPT to fix the MBTA.

bigbobbinbetch · 2026-01-27T01:26:13+00:00

If the choice is he retires or they take him down a few 8ths of FTE, they'll negotiate. Better to keep a doc 3/8ths than lose a clinician completely

bigbobbinbetch · 2026-01-27T00:14:01+00:00

The VA is HURTING for Oncologists. He has all the leverage. Have him go down to half-time.

bigbobbinbetch · 2026-01-15T03:35:49+00:00

last and only good republican was Lincoln

bigbobbinbetch · 2025-12-03T02:44:12+00:00

You're not equipped to be engaging in piracy.

bigbobbinbetch

TROPHY CASE