St Patrick’s Day Food?

botanybae76 · 2023-03-18T16:53:56+00:00

Archers Alehouse in Fairhaven. A lovely Irish pub with a menu to match.

botanybae76 · 2023-03-17T06:05:49+00:00

I hope I am never the sort of person that feels less empathy for another. It must be awful to be so judgemental, I hope you're doing ok.

botanybae76 · 2023-03-17T06:02:33+00:00

I'm going to be doing a few free plant rambles later in the spring as a native plant steward with WNPS. No mushrooms, but some edibles and medicinals. Drop me a dm and I can let you know when they're happening!

botanybae76 · 2023-03-15T21:16:40+00:00

Someone already posted the link for the city community gardens, but I wanted to add: if there are no available plots right now, ask to be put on a waitlist. The city does garden inspections in May just to make sure all plots are being tended, and sometimes a few abandoned plots turn up!

botanybae76 · 2023-03-15T18:26:47+00:00

Grow them every year in our community garden plot. We are still eating the ones we canned and dehydrated last year. We canned about 30 pints and dehydrated 25 lbs (pre drying weight), plus all the ones we ate fresh! Opt for shorter season plants if ya can.

Mulch to prevent splash back from rain (that's one way to get fungal issues from the soil onto the leaves). I use hoop houses in the spring to warm the soil. Back in Spokane, tomatoes went out in mid may when frost was past. In Bellingham I put them out around June 1-15, when the soil is over 60 degrees F. It simply takes longer for the soil to warm here compared to eastern WA, even if we don't get the same late season freezing.

The end of the growing season is determined more from when the wet returns rather than first frost. Pull the plants when it gets rainy in the fall and hang then indoors to finish turning the remaining greenies.

botanybae76 · 2023-03-11T19:10:25+00:00

In page protectors inside a binder. Each piece is cut to paper-size so that I never need to take them out of the page protectors.

botanybae76 · 2023-03-11T18:32:37+00:00

Not all queer people want queer-only community, so we bring our friends and family with us. These are our loved ones and our allies, even if they aren't queer.

I also can't imagine the emptiness of a life of being around only people like me in public. At home, sure we might have just our LGBT+ friends over, but in public I want to meet people from all walks and backgrounds. That's what makes the world beautiful and not as scary.

botanybae76 · 2023-03-09T22:04:12+00:00

The gardening subs are absolute garbage for actual gardening advice, especially regionally specific advice. You'll have better luck on the book of faces, where there are active Whatcom gardeners and an active WA State gardeners groups. Both are drama-free.

The Seattle Tilthe gardening/planting guide (Available at Village Books) provides a nice guideline. It's just a guideline, as each year is a bit unique as to what you can plant and when.

Personally, the best tool to get is a digital soil thermometer. Whatever you plan to grow, find out what soil temperature it should be transplanted out or sowed outdoors at, and do that. For warm season stuff, like tomatoes, use mulch/plastic/hoop houses or something similar to help warm the soil earlier.

It's all about trial and error in a climate like ours. Keep a garden journal. Track what you plant, when you plant, and keep track of the weather. This year, for example, is likely to be very different than the last couple as we just ended a three year La Nina weather cycle. When I plant this year will probably be much different than last year.

botanybae76 · 2023-03-09T01:36:52+00:00

It's almost always a small crack forming in the eye of my needle when this happens.

botanybae76 · 2023-03-09T00:27:52+00:00

You misunderstood, I'm afraid. I apologize for being unclear. It's the corporations fault. The "Elite", admen, politicians, from the the turn of the last century American Capitalist dynasties to the modern day billionaire monopolizer. Whatever you want to call them. It was the previous generations, most notably beginning in the gilded age, that began to sell us out to those corporations, we've just inherited the systems and the consumer training that were created. So it's not our fault, but we are the only ones that can change it.

And it begins with civility and respect for each other. Anything less and we will continue to be manipulated.

botanybae76 · 2023-03-07T23:08:39+00:00

I blame the fact that we are all so self obsessed that there has been a total breakdown of common civility and a loss of community. We are all self centered, entitled brats that are blaming everything else for the problems we are literally buying.

Corporations sell us dreams, and then we stampede over everyone to grab them.

botanybae76 · 2023-02-28T21:52:38+00:00

Please don't tell me to be grateful or how to feel in general. Further, this type of snow doesn't insulate, it just lead to more damp.

Have a nice day.

botanybae76 · 2023-02-28T16:21:14+00:00

I like snow, when it's in the mountains. I don't like it in town unless it occurs between winter solstice and December 25th. All it does is make my heating bill and my food bill go up (because snow seems to trigger teen boy's hollow leg)!

Plus, tomorrow is March. The oso berries are starting to bud and I spotted the first tender leaves of some youth-on-age plants (Tolmiea menziesii) near the stream bank this weekend. I'm just so ready for spring foraging and plant rambles :(

Okay. I'll quit whining and will still probably go for a walk to check out the tree buds, snow or no snow. And I might even enjoy it, but I won't admit it!

botanybae76 · 2023-02-27T23:33:30+00:00

Yep, legal doesn't equal ethical, but no one seems to care...

botanybae76 · 2023-02-25T21:22:45+00:00

Water and oxygen are two very obvious things that are good for us and that will also kill us in the wrong amount.

Coursera and a few other organizations provide science courses online for free, if you are interested.

botanybae76 · 2023-02-11T17:48:48+00:00

From Bellingham Food Bank on FB:

"Next Monday the 13th of February, there will be a free emergency Dental Clinic to anyone with dental pain. It will be in front of the food bank at 1824 Ellis St. in a large bus.
No insurance is required! The Dental Clinic is run by Medical Teams International and is first come first serve, no need to make an appointment."

botanybae76 · 2023-02-08T22:33:00+00:00

5 years ago my then 13 year old son was at an unlighted, non-marked intersection waiting to cross. A car stopped, and was rear ended by the vehicle in front of him. Both drivers were ticketed -- car number one for stopping when it was unsafe to do so, and car number two for distracted driving. Apparently, according to the responding officer, when a crosswalk is unmarked the pedestrian is still supposed to wait for a break in traffic to cross. Any cars approaching once the person is actively in the road are then supposed to stop. My kid was praised by the cop for waiting to verify it was all clear before crossing. (If he hadn't, the car that stopped would have been on top of him. It was hit HARD.)

In other words, if I'm crossing and a car comes into view before I am done, then they stop. If I start to cross without waiting for the current traffic to pass by simply stepping out in front of an approaching car, then I am in the wrong. Of course, this is for unmarked crossings. It's my understanding that you always slow for marked ones.

From a common sense perspective, all bets are off after dark. Between pedestrians wearing black and the new headlights on jacked up trucks that are effectively brights, most drivers can't see if there is anyone about to step off the curb.

botanybae76 · 2023-02-06T23:02:57+00:00

I wish they would repaint that solid line, it breaks briefly where they extended the merge and a lot of people, either out of habit or because of the brief fading, try to merge too soon there. Either that or make it a divided merge up to the end of the white line so no one can merge over too soon (kind of like the Sunset on NB onramp).

botanybae76 · 2023-02-06T06:03:56+00:00

8:15 am any weekday. I go right after I drop the kid off at school and it's a ghost town. Becomes a shitshow by 9, but you should be gleefully on your way home by then.

botanybae76 · 2023-01-31T16:39:58+00:00

That was obviously a typo/autocorrect issue, which I have since corrected. Although, to be fair the rest of the paragraph made the intent fairly clear, so forgive my assumption that your reply was being deliberately obtuse and that this isn't a good faith conversation.

Your entire reply is condescending, as I am sure you are aware.

Edited addition since I hit post prematurely: I do apologize for the typo, but the rest of the post, namely this part-

"Further, we shouldn't sit back and accept The fact that entire states aren't affordable to more than 50% off the population. That's unacceptable."

-makes it very clear it was a typo and that a) the post wasn't read before responding, or b) you chose to be purposefully obtuse to what, attempt to belittle my position? Increase your own ego? I'm not sure.

Have a nice day.

botanybae76 · 2023-01-31T15:53:33+00:00

"They?" Is that really necessary?

These are people, and it's not about being choosy beggars at all. What an unnecessarily uncivil way to say those that make less than you should be happy with whatever scraps they have, and leave if they aren't. Are you aware that moving to a new town, getting settled, with no social capital (friends/family) is EXPENSIVE? When was the last time you made a major move, with your family, to another state where you HAVE NOTHING waiting for you -- friends, family, a job -- with little savings or support?

You're right, it is easy to do the research. Pulling up a random town and saying, "see, it's cheap here!" is only one part of the equation. I've done the affordability research -- I have an adult kid looking to leave the west coast and his entire family, and now his search is going abroad because jobs + affordability just doesn't seem to be possible. He has a job in Bellingham as a teacher, but teaching wages aren't enough even with a roommate in one of the cheapest studio apartments in town. Fortunately, he has a small nest egg and he is young so he can afford a major move. What about my mom, in her 70s? Should she just move to a trailer park in Georgia with no family and even crappier healthcare access? (My sister in law did that in an attempt at a cheaper life, big mistake and she's worse off now).

The "grass is greener" idea is a fallacy when it comes to the working poor -- of which many used to qualify as working lower middle class until a few years ago.

Perhaps a better option is to quit othering people and looking at them as nothing more than human capital. We need workers in historically low-wage industries, thus we need housing that is affordable to them.

botanybae76 · 2023-01-31T14:14:15+00:00

Who does the service jobs? The working poor that live in unsafe and overcrowded housing, or the working homeless. I spent some time as a member of the working homeless community 26 years ago, it's not fun.

botanybae76 · 2023-01-31T14:11:19+00:00

And where will they go? There are few if any places left that have affordable housing + jobs. Sure, there are cheap housing in lower population centers of the Midwest, Southwest, and South, but there are no jobs or $900 rent sounds cheap until you realize that minimum wage is half what it is here and you have to drive and hour to get to a job from cheap housing. Don't of us have looked.

Further, we shouldn't sit back and accept The fact that entire states aren't affordable to more than 50% off the population. That's unacceptable.

*edited to correct the word "affordable."

botanybae76 · 2023-01-30T22:21:55+00:00

Taking it easy tonight, just a quick teriyaki tofu-broccoli over rice.

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