alex51324

[alex51324]

At Easter my uncle was talking about how they got this miniature lemon tree for in the house, and since there aren't any bees in their house, when it blossomed my aunt took a paintbrush and pollinated it, only she did a very good job of it, and they ended up with way more lemons and they had bargained for, and

let me tell you

it was all I could do.

things i’ll not call you a whore for:

sexual activity

how you dress

things i’ll call you a whore for:

stealing my food 

stealing my lemons

my cat likes you more than me

[alex51324]

As this seal demonstrates, it is also possible to tummy-bounce in small amounts of water, if there is something interesting enough, like a camera to boop!

Today's Seals Are: Soaking Weaners

[alex51324]

Spring Cabin Trip Report!

This time I stayed at Clear Creek State Park. It's right near Cook Forest--basically attached to it, except the parts that are attached don't have roads in them, so to get from one to the other you have to go the long way around, unless you happen to be in a boat. Anyway, it's in the northwestern portion of the state; same general area as where I was for the eclipse, just not quite as far.

Here we are on the approach to the cabin:

This park has several cabins arranged along the bank of the Clarion river, and thenuphill from those there's another row of four, which are the ones that allow dogs.

Here's the front view:

I picked this cabin in part because of its very convenient situation--you have the water point right there, and then the little building in the background, if you look between the cabin and my minivan, is the latrines. It also has a lot of stonework, inside and out, and the other best feature is the outdoor fireplace:

This ended up not being as important as I would have thought, because I had the best weather I've ever had on a spring trip. The only time it rained was after midnight going into Saturday morning. So I could have used the regular fire ring every night--but it worked out; it was pretty chilly the first two nights, and it was warmer than it would have been in the open, on the porch with that wooden settle drawn up to the fire. And then on the third night I made chicken and dumplings (thanks @griseldagimpel for the suggestion!) which required me to build up a big fire and let it burn all the way down to coals, so it was handy to be able to use the fire ring for cooking and the fireplace for sitting at.

Going inside, there's two rooms, a main room and a bedroom. First thing when you go in is the table:

And that's the bedroom you can see there on the right. Keep turning to the right, and here's the kitchen area:

These are the "rustic" cabins, which have electricity and kitchen appliances, but you have to tote water from outside. Continue rotating to the right...

This cabin is particularly well-provided with storage, with the dresser next to the stove and then the hutch beyond that. Rotate a bit further, and here's the fireplace:

This park has converted the old fireplaces to gas, rather than the woodstoves that they more often have, which is less picturesque, but a great deal more practical on cold nights. I also like the little stone ledge they have sticking out on the side there. I used it for my dishes & cutlery & tea things hamper:

And over on the other side I put my dishwashing station:

And here's a bit of environmental storytelling for you:

Really makes you wonder what people were doing with the beds! This cabin has one bedroom, containing two double beds and one set of bunks--not an arrangement I've ever seen before, in a state park cabin!

The bunk beds are there on the right; we'll turn a little that way...

I'm not really sure how else you could arrange the beds, if you were to decide to defy the three separate signs telling you not to, unless maybe people were moving one of them into the other room.

Now we'll head back out:

Oh look, there's a sleepy Sophie!

I will do another post tomorrow about Activities, but before we go, let's take a quick look at the river:

This was a short hike that we did on the first day, after we arrived and flung all of our stuff out of the car. You walk upriver for a bit, and there's this interesting little...I would call it a sandbar if there was any sand involved? A narrow strip of land about a yard/meter or so from the bank:

That's the upstream end of it, which comes to a point, and then the downstream end widens out like this:

I walked up and down there for a while, trying to figure out how something like that would form, and why it would stay there. Did not come to any conclusions.

Then on the other side of the trail there's the hill/mountain, which is a whole lot of this:

If I remember correctly, this particular section is one that Sophie found nasally fascinating; I don't really know why, but my best guess is deer. That night we took a nighttime walk down to the playfield next to the shower house to look at stars--here's what that looks like in the daytime:

And startled a very large group of deer who were grazing between the playground and the river. I first saw their eyes reflected in the flashlight, and thought there were maybe four or five, but then they decided they ought to run away--uphill and upstream, and away from the cabins and campground. They went more-or-less single file, passing through the beam of my flashlight, for what seemed like a very long time. I lost count of how many there were, and the sound of all of them bounding away through the leaves was like a much bigger and more active river than the one that was actually there.

Anyway, there aren't any pictures of that because it was dark, but this is approximately where it happened. I think that's why I took this picture, anyway.

#cabins #vacation photos #dogs #state parks #pennsylvania

[alex51324]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I've seen this dog in person at some point. Might've been in puppy class with Sunny, my first dog? His owners said the shelter had him down as a wheaten terrier mix, but honestly, God knows.

As with the horse poll, please regard these options as sliders. The extent to which each one deviates from 1/6th of the total will determine the amount that canine aspect deviates from the "average."

I will draw the dog we make. :)

#dogs

[alex51324]

This article from USA Today goes into some depth about the collaboration between the NPS and the National Arboretum to preserve Stumpy in some form.

The article indicates that they've heard and discussed the public requests to attempt to transplant him; they are not at all optimistic that an attempt would succeed, Stumpy being so old and fragile, but the article is a little vague about whether or not they have made a decision about trying it anyway.

But they definitely do plan to take cuttings and propagate them in the Arboretum greenhouse; if all goes well, Stumpy will be reincarnated into at least 3 new trees--genetically identical to Stumpy--which will be ready for new homes on the Tidal Basin in 2 or 3 years.

Success is not a certainty--the cuttings have to be taken from this spring's new growth, and Stumpy doesn't have a whole lot of that to choose from--but the Arboretum people are very experienced with this technique, and they love Stumpy too, so they will try their best!

there's a cherry blossom tree in DC that keeps blooming every year even though it shouldn't and the park service keeps thinking it's dead and then it keeps blooming! well they're removing a lot of trees to rehabilitate the area and they've said it's finally time for stumpy to go and they're going to mulch it and use the mulch to enrich all the other trees so it can help everything else keep going. and they're also going to plant spliced little pieces of it all over so that stumpy can live forever and this is genuinely sending me into a spiral

#trees #humans being humans #stumpy the tree

[alex51324]

Oh, cool! What's the book called?

I think I'm just going to roast them, this time, since it's my first time using them & that seems to be the classic way to prepare them. But who knows; I might get more in the future!

First Farm Box of the season!

First, does anyone recognize these green guys?

I'm guessing maybe some kind of radish? I haven't cut them open yet.

Here is the group picture:

I got radishes, rhubarb, asparagus, green garlic, greens of some kind, a big bunch of sage, beets, and Jerusalem artichokes (which I only recognized because of that "this isn't ginger" picture that made the rounds last week or so.) I also got the cheese share, which is three cheeses every other week; this time it's gouda, baby swiss, and a sheep's cheese spread. I'm signed up for the fruit share, too, but that doesn't start until June.

Here's everybody hanging out in the box--

and a little free advertising:

They have pickup locations throughout central Pennsylvania and in several major cities in the mid-Atlantic: New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and DC, among others. Signups are open (and prorated) throughout the season, and they have a bunch of different subscriptions--produce, meat, dairy, eggs, flowers, etc.

[alex51324]

First Farm Box of the season!

First, does anyone recognize these green guys?

I'm guessing maybe some kind of radish? I haven't cut them open yet.

Here is the group picture:

I got radishes, rhubarb, asparagus, green garlic, greens of some kind, a big bunch of sage, beets, and Jerusalem artichokes (which I only recognized because of that "this isn't ginger" picture that made the rounds last week or so.) I also got the cheese share, which is three cheeses every other week; this time it's gouda, baby swiss, and a sheep's cheese spread. I'm signed up for the fruit share, too, but that doesn't start until June.

Here's everybody hanging out in the box--

and a little free advertising:

They have pickup locations throughout central Pennsylvania and in several major cities in the mid-Atlantic: New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and DC, among others. Signups are open (and prorated) throughout the season, and they have a bunch of different subscriptions--produce, meat, dairy, eggs, flowers, etc.

#tuesday farm box! #identify this vegetable #vegetables #farmshare #community supported agriculture #Pennsylvania

[alex51324]

I mean yes, but the idea was to increase demand for tires by promoting the concept of recreational driving.

Don't particularly need to go anywhere? Well, why not hop in the car anyway, and put some wear on those tires?

You don't have a car, and don't need one, because you can walk or take a train to all the places you normally go? Well, here's a list of additional places you could go, if you had a car. With tires.

Watching the new tasting history and very charmed by the fact that the whole Michelin Star system apparently started out as, like, a galaxy-brain marketing campaign for the concept of road trips.

[alex51324]

It would have been one of a few graphic design elements included in the newspaper's set of type.

You mostly see it used for emphasis--"look here!"--especially in advertisements, or to mark items in a list (like bullet points, but fancy!).

I wonder if the advertiser, William Chapman, knew the newspaper had it and requested it, or if somebody at the paper (the person selling the advertisement, or the guy setting the type) was like, "You know what would be funny..."

(Additional note: not sure if this is obvious to everyone, but "the Reparation demanded" was almost certainly a duel. There are no hints as to what the original insult was about, but Otho is a "Coward" because he refused to duel when challenged, and "Braggadochio" suggests there was some tough talk prior to his failure to show up for the duel. William's saying that Otho is the kind of dude who lets his mouth write checks his ass won't cash, basically.)

I feel like we need to stop Twitter callouts and go back to publishing them in the newspaper like gentlemen.

(source: The Frederick Hornet, September 27, 1803.)

#history #typography #dueling

[alex51324]

If you're writing Vaguely Medieval Europe, another interesting set of references is the illustrations to the Ellesmere Chaucer--an illuminated manuscript of the Canterbury Tales, dating to about 1400.

The horses are depicted in the usual stylized Medieval way--some more skillfully than others; there appear to have been multiple illustrators--but you can definitely see that the illustrators expected the pilgrims' mounts to be on the small side, by today's standards. Here's the frontispiece, believed to depict Chaucer himself:

This is one of the more realistically-drawn horses in the manuscript--the small head, which is the only really strikingly exaggerated feature, was considered desirable at the time.

Here's the Knight:

The anatomy here is a lot less realistic, but you can still see that his horse is a lot bulkier than Chaucer's, to carry the weight of a rider in armor, but not much taller. (Note again the small head; the little "toes" are spiked horseshoes, designed to give the horse traction on bad ground.)

Here's the Friar, on the smallest horse of the lot:

And to round us off with another reasonably realistic one, here's the Wife of Bath:

She's depicted riding astride--probably because the text makes clear she's a sexually active woman (the Nun and the Prioress are both shown riding aside) but also a practical choice, as sidesaddle technology was not well-developed at the time*. Unusually, her horse's head is depicted in reasonable proportion to its body; it's unclear whether this indicates a greater-than-usual commitment to realism on the part of the artists, or if it's meant to show that her horse is of coarser breeding.

(*You either had to sit sideways on a regular saddle, or use a ladies' saddle that was more like a bench strapped to the horse; either way you were sitting actually sideways--your pelvis roughly parallel with the horse's spine, rather than its shoulders--which made it very difficult to control the horse or ride above a walk. The technology improved in the early modern period, with a stirrup for the left foot and a knee-rest for the right knee, which let you face at least sort-of forward, and very skilled equestriennes could trot, canter, and perhaps even hop over small obstacles in it. But it wasn't until the "leaping horn" of the 1830's that aside riders got a saddle in which they could do anything an astride rider could do--the French called it the "selle d'amazone," or Amazon's saddle--and women jumped, rode to hounds, and roped cattle on the Western plains in them.

By the time of the Great War, young women who had grown up in the sidesaddle--and seeing women of their mothers' and grandmothers' generations using it, to do any kind of riding they pleased--donned breeches and took on the task of training horses the government had requisitioned for the war effort, making them ready for the men of the army to ride. Once you'd learned to gallop cross-country and jump 5 foot fences in a sidesaddle, riding even the rankest and most difficult horse astride was easy.

Anyway, that was a lengthy digression, but my point is, if you're writing a horsey heroine in a vaguely-Medieval-Europe fantasy setting, and the "She rides astride, because she's Not Like Other Girls" trope feels a bit overdone, you might instead try having her invent the modern sidesaddle.

And, to bring this back around to the point, put said sidesaddle on something that doesn't look like a modern Warmblood.)

My Biggest and Most Annoying Fictional Horse Pet Peeve

Big Horses are a Very New Thing and they Likely Didn’t Exist in your Historical and/or Fantasy Settings.

You’ve all seen it in every historical piece of media ever produced. Contrary to popular belief, a big black horse with long legs and long flowing mane is not a widespread or even a particularly old type of horse.

THIS IS NOT A MEDIEVAL THING. THIS IS NOT EVEN A BAROQUE THING. THIS IS A NINETEENTH CENTURY CITY CARRIAGE HORSE.

All the love to fancy Friesian horses, but your Roman general or Medieval country heroine just really couldn’t, wouldn’t, and for the sake of my mental health shouldn’t have ridden one either.

Big warmblood horses are a Western European and British invention that started popping up somewhere around 1700s when agriculture and warfare changed, and when rich folks wanted Bigger Faster Stronger Thinner race horses. The modern warmblood and the big continental draught both had their first real rise to fame in the 1800s when people started driving Fancy Carriages everywhere, and having the Fanciest Carriage started to mean having the Tallest and Thinnest Horses in the town.

Before mechanised weaponry and heavy artillery all horses used to be small and hardy easy-feeders. Kinda like a donkey but easier to steer and with a back that’s not as nasty and straight to sit on.

SOME REAL MEDIEVAL, ROMAN, OTTOMAN, MONGOL, VIKING, GREEK and WHATEVER HISTORICALLY PLAUSIBLE HORSES FOR YOU:

“Primitive”, native breeds all over the globe tend to be only roughly 120-140 cm (12.0 - 13.3 hh) tall at the withers. They all also look a little something like this:

Mongolian native horse (Around 120-130 at the withers, and decendants of the first ever domesticated horses from central Asia. Still virtually unchanged from Chinggis Khan’s cavalry, ancestor to many Chinese, Japanese and Indian horses, and bred for speed racing and surviving outdoors without the help of humans.)

Carpathian native horse / Romanian and Polish Hucul Pony (Around 120-150 at the withers, first mentioned in writing during the 400s as wild mountain ponies, depicted before that in Trajanian Roman sculptures, used by the Austro-Hungarian cavalry in the 19th century)

Middle-Eastern native horse / Caspian Pony (Around 100-130 at the withers, ancestor of the Iranian Asil horse and its decendants, including the famous Arabian and Barb horses, likely been around since Darius I the Great, 5th century BC, and old Persian kings are often depicted riding these midgets)

Baltic Sea native horse / Icelandic, Finnish, Estonian, Gotland and Nordland horses (Around 120-150 at the withers, descendant of Mongolian horses, used by viking traders in 700-900 AD and taken to Iceland. Later used by the Swedish cavalry in the 30 years war and by the Finnish army in the Second World War, nowadays harness racing and draught horses)

Siberian native horse / Yakutian pony (Around 120-140 at the withers, related to Baltic and Mongolian horses and at least as old, as well-adapted to Siberian climate as woolly mammoths once were, the hairiest horse there is, used in draught work and herding)

Mediterranean native horse / Skyros pony, Sardinian Giara, Monterufolino (Around 100-140 at the Withers, used and bred by ancient Greeks for cavalry use, influenced by African and Eastern breeds, further had its own influence on Celtic breeds via Roman Empire, still used by park ranger officers in Italy)

British Isles’ native horse / various “Mountain & Moorland” pony breeds (Around 100-150 at the withers, brought over and mixed by Celts, Romans and Vikings, base for almost every modern sport pony and the deserving main pony of all your British Medieval settings. Some populations still live as feral herds in the British countryside, used as war mounts, draught horses, mine pit ponies, hunting help and race horses)

So hey, now you know!

#horses #chaucer #worldbuilding #vaguely medieval europe #sidesaddle #my sidesaddle rant just kind of slipped out there #the modern sidesaddle of the 1830's was a liberating technology #peasant women and girls have always ridden astride #but most women and girls of higher status *could not afford* the reputational damage that would come from riding astride #aka “being seen in public with their legs spread apart”

[alex51324]

So we all know that Tumblr is US-centric. But to what degree? (and can we skew the results of this poll by posting it at a time where they should be asleep?)

Reblog to increase sample size!

[alex51324]

Oh, to be a shrimp snacking upon Everything!

Monday Shrimp Tower

This week's flavor is Everything

[alex51324]

Tummy-bouncing is a skill that takes practice.

Today's Seal Is: Ragdoll Clipping

[alex51324]

What a tiny little being! I remember that stage. They grow really fast, though!

With Lucy I used a little kitchen scale to track her weight for the first couple of weeks; at one point she doubled in size in like four days.

Can we see more pictures of the baby?

Him tiny

[alex51324]

"Dragon," poem assembled using quotations from Wikipedia articles

#dragons #nuclear semiotics #coal #actually let me tell you a thing #I just came back from a camping trip in northeast Pennsylvania #Appalachia #coal country #actually right up there is the location of the first-ever oil well that was pumped on purpose #but anyway even before coal there was timber #a natural resource that is renewable but not anywhere near as fast as it was being used up #and if you go to a park up there--any park--you'll see lots of informational signs and displays about the logging era #which in that place was the 19th to early 20th centuries #And they'll always make the point that by the end of the logging era the region was almost completely deforested #the ecological damage was so bad *whitetail deer* were almost extirpated--locally extinct that is #And then in 1930 Roosevelt set up his Tree Army #the Civilian Conservation Corps was the formal name #and they planted a million trees and built this very park you're standing in #sometimes they show you a picture of half a dozen folks in Victorian clothes standing on the very spot where you are #with a big pile of logs and not a living tree in sight #and then you look at the forest surrounding you #and you know that you're standing on a spot where the dragon was slain #by boys aged 18-25 getting $30 a month--of which $25 was sent home to their families #Paid by the federal government for the slaying of dragons #But we don't slay dragons like that anymore.

[alex51324]

Toad Time!!!

I'm back from my trip! I have the tired sleepy, so I will post the usual cabin pictures, etc. soon (probably tomorrow), but the most exciting development of my trip was that last night the hills were alive...with toads!

It was the magical night of the year when it becomes warm enough for the toads to leave their winter homes in the leaf-litter and find their way to water for the crucial task of making more toads.

I will first set the scene: I was sitting on the porch in front of a fire, at about 9 o'clock in the evening. (Here is the fire/sitting area, shown during the daytime.)

I had my first inkling of what a special night it was, when I heard something rustling in the leaves just beyond that knee-high stone wall. After quite a bit of looking around, I discovered these guys!

Then, on the driveway, I found this one!

I even witnessed these two, in amplexus!

After seeing this, I had to look up how exactly toads mate--I remembered learning in elementary school that the female deposits her eggs and then the male comes along and fertilizes them later; I wondered if perhaps this account had been highly edited for children, or if toads to things differently.

It turns out that fertilization is external, as we learned, but often--in both frogs and toads--it occurs almost simultaneously as the eggs are laid. Toward this end, the male grabs on to the female, sort of piggy-back fashion, so that their cloacae are lined up, and that's amplexus.

If you look very closely, you might notice that this little fella has got on backwards. Additionally, even on human legs, the cabin is a good 5 or 10 minutes' walk from the water--depending on whether you're going to the lake, the creek, or the vernal pool--and elementary school was right about the eggs being laid in water*. Maybe he got it figured out before they got there; I don't know!

(*There are some African species of toad which do things differently, but these were American toads.)

After seeing those, I went for a walk down to the stream & the vernal pool, and saw many, many, more toads! I counted somewhere between 12 and 24--the former being the number I'm reasonably confident are separate individual toads; the higher number probably includes some duplicates.

Here is one more toad, for the road:

#toads #a magical evening #toad time! #just so many toads

[alex51324]

^^ Exactly what I was going to say.

No in between. Reblog if you vote pleas

#I voted Warm because it is currently spring #but if this poll came out in fall I would vote Cool