#or pokeweed lol

[yappacadaver]

but lets be real, who tf thinks about pennsylvania

[trailerparktombombadil]

I've been so busy lol. But I accepted my slot at the online university and registered and everything. Classes start Aug. 26th!!!!

I also acquired employment. It's tiny, maybe 12 hrs a week at the most, but it's a big step for me. I'm hockin' olive oil, folks! I actually love the product and have been using it in my own cooking for months. I got to know the manager through the native community, and she offered me the job straight up two weeks ago. At Thanksgiving this year I'll be grateful for my employee discount. :D

Anyway I've been back and forth between BFF garden and mine for weeks. Here's some of the BFF's. My camera phone was being particularly pissy, sorry these photos suck particularly bad lol. Except the pokeweed. XD

Turns out these ARE moonflowers. I should know, I sewed them myself and they're two of like four things that survived that disaster, but I'm used to the stalked white variety and these took FOREVER to bloom. I was beginning to convince myself they were beans of some kind instead. These were sold as "purple" moonflowers but the actual bloom itself was white just the same as my variety at home.

Now I'm just going through and spraying weeds (dawn dish soap, epsom salt, 30% vinegar) and laying cardboard under the mulch. It working backwards, I know. I've learned a lot from this project, lol. And doing the cardboard now is better than never doing it and dealing with major bullshit next year when I'll want to be focusing on THE LILY POND. :D

Yet to do: the border, the mound/hump, bulbs.

[sorens-art]

Photo quality credited to It's Midnight In A Shed And I Don't Know How There Is Even Electricity Out Here haha 🥰

So I found a new flower to use for dye!

Once again, my discovery is delightfully not new! The Wikipedia page says this was cultivated by Aztect society for it's medicinal properties and prettiness. It didn't mention being cultivated FOR dye, but... I'd be surprised if it wasn't lol. It's damn good dye!

No pros or cons discovered yet. If it isn't weather proof, my pokeweed crop is blossoming and will give me some long-term dye.

I julienned a stick and used that for a little drying rod!! My itinial goal was "I need all these to stay together, but all my tiny jars are filled already. I'll just string them stick them."

It happens to fit perfectly across the container I have the rest in! (I was going to make Clasps for the stick ends, to keep the flowers from sliding off. Too much work! I just cut a segment of stem and then skewered it on the end haha.)

The flowers wilt in an easily-seen way when they're done. Rather than simply drying out, the "petals" curl inwards. It could be a handy strategy to trap as much pollen as possible around the stigma. But it means the liquid is trapped, too! So, when you spot a wilting flower, you pluck it and then can store it for several hours (at least) without it drying out!

These aren't wilted of course! These are from a plant that got so big that it flopped to the side and covered half of a elderly rose bush. It was about dark after I pulled these, so I decided I was done working and then took all the trimmed stuff and plucked off every flower by hand. I have another tub of buds and another tub of wilted flowers :3

I didn't mention the flower name yet, because I might be wrong about some of my info. But if you promise you read the previous sentence, then I will tell you that I call them four o'clocks! I think other flowers share that common name, but it's easy to find the right one using the photos.

[kingdarkstalker]

POKEWEED??

[blackswallowtailbutterfly]

I’M GETTING SO MANY PLANTS THIS YEAR I’M SO EXCITED I’M GOING TO HAVE SO MANY NATIVE TUBERS AND PEAS AND RICE AND LICORICE AND MINT AND WINTERGREEN AND LETTUCE AND GARLIC AND ONIONS AND CHOCOLATE SUBSTITUTES AND COFFEE SUBSTITUTES AND TEA SUBSTITUTES AND SPICES AND FIDDLEHEADS AND GREENS AND FRUITS AND HERBS!

Now, if I could just get a sweetcorn (not technically native to Ontario, but grown here by Indigenous peoples before European colonization, so I’d settle for one of those varieties), a skunk cabbage, fairy spuds, a sweet crabapple (our only native apple species), a water arum, a cattail, any of the native ground cherries, a crowberry, a pokeweed, a mountain fly or Canadian fly honeysuckle, a black huckleberry...I mean, I literally won’t stop looking for more edible native plants until I run out of space I can plant on. lol I want diversity. I want density. I want it to look like the Niagara Falls escarpment: lush and teeming with life, like how I imagine the temperate rainforests of British Columbia (province on the west coast of Canada).

The balance, of course, is making sure the pretty ones stick out and the weedy ones are arranged nicely, to justify it to my landlady. lol So sometimes I do prioritize looks over how edible the plant is (irises are gorgeous, but the two edible ones I’m aware of, one of which I’m getting this year, are still poisonous and the edible parts require a certain amount of processing). But! A good number of them are both beautiful and with many edible parts that can be cooked normally or eaten raw. And that’s why I’m excited to get certain vetches (you do still have to be careful even with edible vetches; like you can cook them normally you only eat them if you’re already okay in the food department, if you eat them when you’re starving and malnourished you can get poisoned), strawberry spinach, ostrich fern, duck potato, fireweed, pickerelweed, and others this year.

[dearbisexual]

i feel like i should write a disclaimer about pokeberries now lol

pokeberries are poisonous! (you can eat the immature plant, known in some regions as pokeweed, but once the pokebush has matured and is producing pokeberries, it’s poisonous) you shouldn’t handle them without gloves like i did b/c i had a dumbass moment.

i thoroughly scrubbed the juice off after coming inside and collected them with gloves after and made sure Banjo didn’t get into them and properly disposed of the stems after plucking the berries off, gloves still on. i also didn’t collect them all so the birds still have some to eat

and im not going to b using any cookware for the dye bath, im prolly going to just boil water and then pour it over the pokeberries in the bucket they’re in now and then add the yarn n let it soak and then wash the yarn thoroughly after

[loartacc]

Lore time for the blight pack i suppose! Starting off with Hemlock and how her pack came to be! A lot of this is still up in the air but!!

Hemlock was raised within a pack of wolves and wolfdogs (with the occasional just dog mixed in lol) due to her parents being rescued from hunters after being injured! She was given her collar and such there and is an INCREDIBLY friendly wolf. Even though she is pure wolf she seems to act mostly like a dog!

Eventually her parents helped her get out of the reservation, knowing she wanted to explore the wild so they just warned her and yadda yadda. She wandered off and soon found Baneberry and Pokeweed! They have been in her pack ever since and she adores them even if Poke is rude.

Hemlock has a tendency to be super friendly with every wolf she comes across meaning their pack is very big and doesn't have the best mix of personalities! She still loves them all though.

[loartacc]

Woo! Long post time! The hunting party! (My main one. Its called 'lets try this?')

It has ok synergy and i hate how one looks but he's good at his job so he's allowed to stay lmao.

So!

The super dark wolf with a pale brown/gray face marking is Hexamine! I paid like 20 sc for her and shes malicious but she has good stats and also i love her. Shes a chaser.

The grey wolf with a dark grey face is Pokeweed! I kinda hate how she looks but otherwise love her? Her personality is vulgar! She is a chaser.

The the sort of grey(kinda grey green?) With orangey red is Cotoneaster and he has a precise personality. This is the one who I absolutely hate but he is very good at his job so he stays. He is also a chaser.

The brown and red wolf with a dark back is Mezereon. He has an anxious personality. He also comes from like?? What seems to be a nice line of wolves i suppose? I don't know much about breeding. Hes also my breeding male, just because he is pretty lol. His job is stalking!

And last but not least is Nightshade! The dark grey and black wolf! Shes my finisher. She also has a trusting personality! I like her and Hexamine the most out of my hunting party!