#like... idk if I can maintain anything with the wildlife but it's their home too and I have sympathy

[ghostlyfoliage]

If anyone has any suggestions of drought resistant perennials that wildlife like to browse, I'm still insane and hoping to plant some things for them.

The plan is to make a fenced section with things for the deer/rabbits etc and let it spread out naturally and eventually remove the fence, so I need things that will either firmly root themselves (so they can't be pulled out very easy, tulips are an example, I think chicory might be an option) or will self-seed enough that it doesn't matter (I'm thinking clover esp for this, might be a fuck and plant some purslane... cus I like munching on it too).

I was gonna do a field of wildflowers in the front yard but right now I'm honestly thinking get some perennials established, fill in with annuals and things the wildlife won't eat, and attempt to maintain a little something-something for the animals... stick a massive bird bath in the middle... hope no more animals collapse in the heat of summer in my front yard. 🙃

[teaboot]

hello! i’m writing a story where a bunch of ghosts befriend a still-alive person, and i was wondering if i could ask you about cemetary caretaking in dms? (because that’s the setting, and i know nothing about cemetary caretaking.) or if not, could you point me in the direction of others who know more?

Yep! Keep in mind though that each Cemetary can have different rules about what markers, headstones, and offerings are allowed, so. There is that.

1. The older parts of the Cemetary are recognizeable because the headstones there are usually upright land in a bunch of varied shapes and sizes. They don't stand in tidy rows, and some of them sink into the ground and tilt or fall over completely. Pieces break off all the time, too, and can get launched back at you with a weedwacker or damage the lawnmower blades, so they have to be moved.

2. A serious concern for maintainance workers is potentially being hit by falling stones, so when they fall down, they tend to stay down until they are paid for to be properly replaced or repaired. My mom said she knows a guy who died that way.

3. Some stones from the late 1800's have weird dog-looking figures carved in- those are lambs, and are put on christian children's graves. They look odd when they erode.

4. Some older graves will be homemade, or have countries of origin included. Some will simply say "baby", "mother", or "father".

5. Some headstones only have one date- those are typically for infants who didn't live long, or were stillborn. Sometimes they won't have names, either, but a few do.

6. When cleaning a headstone, first you now as close as you can through rows, then you go to each individual headstone with a weedwacker and remove whatever's been left to cut the grass down. Then, you put whatever isn't broken or a hazard back as close as you can, and take a leafblower to the whole place so the loose clippings don't end up sticking all over and looking terrible. This takes twice as long when there's a whole pile of stuff, so some places won't let you leave anything at all. I believe in finding a happy medium, but that's me.

7. Loads of local critters and wildlife use headstones and other constructs as shelter. I'm always keeping my eyes out for small birds, snakes, toads, etc- toads are the most common, I try to move them to nearby woods, bushes, or finished areas so they don't get cut or run over.

8. I don't know about anyone else, but I liked to talk to the folks sometimes. A simple 'hey nice flowers' or 'sup kiddo nice truck'. I think it might be cause I used to work with a morgue and it was easy to chat with the people who came in, but Idk. Dead people aren't nearly as eerie or creepy as TV makes them out- I guess it's a tiny bit sad, especially with kids, but like... what can you do, you know?

9. You gotta watch where you step, because some places- especially older ones- are FULL of small holes or sudden dips. These can be from animals, but more often graves that don't get enough dirt on top or super duper ancient ones where things have caved underground let the earth sink in over time. It leaves about a person-sized divot that's easy to trip on and needs extra attention.

10. Some people like to leave candy or bottled drinks for their loved ones. I.... understand the sentiment, but. It gets gross, over time, when the packages fade and split, and critters get in, so most places don't allow it or throw it out.

11. Wal-Mart knicknacks. Are the bane of my life. Little hollow statues that break and get full of wasps nests, wreaths made in China where the flowers pop off, five hundred individual fabric flowers stuck into the ground one-by-one that you have to painstakingly remove and put back every single time, with sharp rusty metal ends and wire cores that pull the equipment apart... just. Ugh. I understand, I do, and I get that it's not something people generally think about, but... just. Whatever you're thinking of leaving, give it a quick shake. If something comes loose, I can't recommend leaving it.

12. Some headstones are homemade by friends or family, with glass beads or shells in cement. Those are sweet,and I like to see them.

13. The back of your neck will burn. No amount of sunscreen will prevent it. I recommend a collared shirt, or tying a bandanna around your neck. There is nothing else you can do.

14. Your whole body will be covered in sweat. I wore jeans, boots, a tank top tucked in, and a sleeveless T over top, with a bandanna, safety goggles, and a hat. The jeans got sweaty every day, and rubbed my upper thighs red-raw after the first three weeks. The skin grew back dark and dry and I need to apply moisturizer constantly to avoid cracking. My old sunburns have turned, and some of the worst ones left strips of dry, papery, red scarring that took forever to fade. Again, moisturizer and sunscreen. Constantly. I still have a callous at the base of each finger on both palms.

15. Your whole body will sweat. Your whole body will be covered in grass clippings. Some will fly up your ears and nose. Sometimes tiny rocks will hit your shins and face and feel like bee stings. You have to towel off every couple hours and drink water damned often, because you will literally sweat full litres every day. You will attract flies. They will crawl on your skin. You will learn to ignore them, because at least they aren't mosquitos or ticks.

16. There is no bathroom. The men will disappear in the woods or behind a tree. I would go to the bathroom at home and just make sure I didn't drink more than I could sweat, I guess. I'd take the worst days of my period off and stay home because there was no way to deal with that on an eleven hour shift with no washroom break. Ta-da. I still worked longer and harder than most of the men, though, so whatever.

17. It's unskilled hard manual labour, and our group had no toilets and long hours. Most of our workers came fresh out of prison, but I can't speak for everybody. We were small town, no-union farmers and kids with free time, and most our new guys quit after a day or two. Literally. We had one dude three years younger and over half my size who showed up for 45 minutes before quitting.

18. Your fingers get stiff and hard to move, and your elbows and feet get sore. It took me a while to make it more than two days in a row without a breather day in between, but three and a half was my max. By the end of it I'd be stumbling, missing spots, irritable, sore, and tired. Given a day or two to get back on my feet, and all was good. But there were some older folks who'd been doing that work for thirty years without a day off, and Damn. They've got my respect.

19. The skin on your feet and hands gets hard like leather. Be ready for that.

20. The older guys, or whoever's worked there longer, will have stories about some of the graves. Special ones they're extra careful with, or spots where old school buddies or family is buried. I'd like to say we treat them all equal, but I guess you can't help but be a little more thorough for the young mom who's daughter just turned nine, or the baby from 1920, or the brothers who died in a house fire. It's like... we're supposed to die from old age, after living a full life, right? It sucks a little harder when you know someone didn't get to have that.

21. You can't work through rain or lightning. You see a strike overhead, you haul ass to the truck and see if you can wait it out. That shit'll blow the bark off a tree.

22. You lose weight, gain muscle, turn darker, and your hair bleaches out at the ends. After about a month I was five pounds lighter, with bigger biceps and shorter hair 'cause it was too hot to leave long.

23. Water grass. Is hell. It's thick, it grows fast, it loves rain, and it's a bitch to cut. It will grow a foot high in two weeks, I shit you not. You gotta come back two, three times a month to keep it down.

24. Hearing damage from not having proper protection is a noticeably advancing issue

Best part of the job: feeling yourself get stronger, seeing your work at the end of the day, plenty of time to think and daydream, regular eating and sleeping schedule, easy to save money because you have long hours and no time to spend anything.

Worst part: physical discomfort, aches and pains, the repetition makes it feel like an ordeal of Greek damnation, always exhausted, coworkers keep quitting.

I can't think of anything else right now but ill update if I can! Hope this was helpful!!! :D

[queerbycrs]

superlong about personal life stuff under the cut (cw for animal death briefly mentioned) (also sorry)

so uh. got home from school this week, my mom said we could go out for dinner so we did and that was great, and before our appetizers arrived she told me that we’re moving this summer.

to kelowna.

if you don’t live in bc, that’s like. not super far away from where i live (which is the greater vancouver area) but it’s. it’s. it’s in the interior. it’s four hours away. it’s next to a giant lake, sure, but it’s hours away from the ocean. last time i was there was over christmas to visit my dad’s family and i got a nosebleed from how dry it was and it was -12 the whole time. it’s in the middle of the mountains. my cousin’s dog got killed by a coyote in their backyard less than two months ago.

and i’ve NEVER MOVED. i’ve lived in this house since i was born, my brother was BORN in this house. i’ve literally never known anything else. i’ve only ever “lived” one other place, and that’s my school, part-time (and it’s around 3-5 hrs of travel away, in the opposite direction, so that’s. that’s lovely. lol). and i’m moving to the interior where it’s dry as hell and gets both hotter and colder than i’ve ever dealt with for more than maybe a week at a time. I LIVE IN THE MILDEST CLIMATE AREA OF THIS ENTIRE COUNTRY. I’VE NEVER EXPERIENCED REAL TEMPERATURE CHANGES.

anyway. my mom told me. i ended up sobbing at the table, and i felt both terrible for our server and really fucking angry at myself for being A Girl Sobbing At A Table In A Restaurant Like A Fucking Dumbass. and my mom was apparently s h o c k e d that i would react like this, and expected my brother to do way worse (idk how he reacted because they told us separately. which makes sense but yeah)

and my dad told me LAST WEEK that he wants to KEEP OUR HOUSE HERE FOREVER, because we were talking about the housing crisis in van!!!! and i calmed down some at the restaurant when my mom said that they’re looking into keeping our house here if at all possible, and tbh that’s the only reason i managed to calm down at all. and i know it’s unrealistic -- i mean, especially if we want to get a decent house, because this house is tiny and not too great but the land value is so high that we could easily get a mcmansion if we sell it -- but i think i need to??? hold on to that for a while???? because i’m. still kinda crying. i saw something vaguely sad after the meal at the restaurant and started crying again and my mom gave me the keys so i sat in the car and cried hysterically for probably about five minutes while she paid.

and also this is so minor esp compared to the fact that lol i cannot make friends for the fucking life of me and my three-ish decent friends all live here, and my closest friend definitely can’t travel to kelowna probably ever (because she can’t drive and won’t ever be able to) but also i have a cat and a dog and i have fucking panic attacks about letting my cat outside in this tiny neighbourhood with three cars an hour and no dangerous wildlife whatsoever and i can’t let my dog offleash under ANY circumstances because i panic about it and lol, it’ll be SO GREAT to be in the middle of the mountains with the fresh fresh memory of my cousin’s dog getting killed by a coyote. lol.

and also super minor but when we were there over christmas we drove through.... i guess like downtown-ish and stopped outside starbucks for my mom to get coffee and my dad pointed out the bookshop and said that hey, wouldn’t it be nice to live somewhere with a bookstore like this? to which i was like, yeah, there’s like one bookstore in my entire city probably, that would be kinda nice. (with the idea that maybe i could move there temporarily to work or smth because cheaper rent than vancouver, while maintaining the ability to go back HOME.) which now makes me sick to my stomach because apparently my parents were seriously thinking about it at that point and yet NEVER. FUCKING. MENTIONED. IT. i even ASKED why my dad was CONSTANTLY LOOKING AT KELOWNA REAL ESTATE and my mom LITERALLY SAID THAT IT WAS A PIPE DREAM OF HIS TO RETIRE THERE. (he is nowhere close to retiring)

and also i had actual plans, maybe, to go to this small university that i can get to via transit easily from my house, maybe do a foreign exchange... like i had a plan. sort of a plan. for a couple years into the future. and i guess just? not? lol?

i just. there’s no point to this, i just wanted to write it out. sorry. idk.