#persian shield

[victoriaorolfoart]

Some coasters I'll have at Nucleus Portland for their annual coaster show SALUT9! You can check it out irl 6/2 or online the day after.

Went with a purple leaf theme this year! In order of appearance: Persian shield, watermelon coleus (aka premium sun coleus), calathea medallion, purple shamrock 💜

[shelovesplants]

Persian shield 💜🌿

[recurring-polynya]

My houseplant spotlight this week is the first of the three houseplants I bought for my birthday: a Persian shield.

There's kind of a serendipitous story behind this-- we went to the Fancy Plant nursery, but I didn't want to overspend, and I told myself that I could only get stuff that was on my wishlist and wasn't too expensive. I had already picked out two plants that met that criteria, and we were walking through the outdoor plant section to look at some pots, when I spotted these.

During my arduous quest to find a cast-iron plant, I spent a lot of time on Etsy, looking at mail-order plants, and I had seen (and coveted) the Persian shield before, but ultimately decided I didn't want to mail-order plants unless I couldn't find them locally, and I kinda forgot about this one. The important thing was that when I saw it and recognized the name, I remembered that it could be easily grown indoors as a houseplant.

And my gosh, look at it! It's gorgeous! The color is almost iridescent, like dragon scales!

It's also huge-- that's an 8" pot. They like low light and lots of humidity. I read that they lose their bright color after a year or two, but you can easily propagate them from cuttings. Also it was five dollars and fifty cents. It's so big and beautiful and I love it so much. Happy Birthday to me.

[photozoi]

Out on deck, Day lilies and Persian Shield

[lostintheuniverseslies]

A Quiet Little Seedling Plants

Chapter 11

Monstera

Persian Shield

Yellow Marigolds

Previously: Chapter 1 Plants Chapter 2 Plants Chapter 5 Plants Chapter 7 Plants Chapter 8 Plants Chapter 10 Plants

Next: Chapter 12 Plants

[kabretoss]

So. Made a terrarium for the first time, as a proof of concept for a much bigger bioactive. Me and my wife took a bunch of pictures of the process, and I want to show them off somewhere so y'all get them!

The first step was applying and carving a bunch of spray foam -- well, the first step was actually to find, bake, cut, and arrange the cool sticks, but we're starting at spray foam.

(I somewhat miscalculated branch placement, forgetting to account for like 5 inches of substrate at the bottom, and ended up with some of the cool arrangement under dirt. Boo.)

Next was to mix up a bunch of dirt and coco coir into a texturally interesting mess, and then apply black 100% silicone to the carved foam.

We spread it out before mashing the dirt mix all over it, mounding it up a bunch. We worked in small areas to avoid the silicone setting before the substrate could adhere, and let it set for like 3 hours before shaking off the excess.

The silicone has to set for 48-72 hours, so now... we wait.

The next step, purely aesthetic, was Gorilla Gluing down a bunch of dry sphagnum moss. Honestly this really made the thing look great by the end, though here it looks a bit jank.

Next! Leca! Clay balls that serve as a drainage layer for the dirt: very necessary to keep down mold issues over time. Then a sheet of cut-to-size window screen, to keep the dirt from getting in the leca.

We had to cut it smaller than we thought, after all that spray foam, and it was a pain to get in flat between all the cool sticks. (also, ear jumpscare.)

Next! Processing the plants! (Technically it's best to do this a couple weeks ahead of time and quarantine them in a drylock bin, but yolo.) We used SerpaDesign's method -- rinse off substrate, soak for ~15, 5 minute very diluted bleach bath, soak for another ~10, then plant. I am nervous some of the more delicate plants will have some trouble after this, but we'll see.

We ended up using a spider plant, some wandering dude, a persian shield, an aluminum plant, a spider plant and some backyard moss.

(whispers) secret moss

Planting!! A huge pain around all those teeny branches, and I broke a few in the process, ough

We added springtails, too. Didn't snap a shot of that.

LOOK at this thing!!! These isopods are gonna be the happiest damn isopods!

[gergyhead]

A friend and I were hanging out on memorial Day and we ended up buying a plant together. There were three flowers in the same pot. I name my plants, she is really purple and gorgeous, I wanted to name her Violet but that was two on the nose but I still like the name a lot so I called her Violent instead.

Today she texted me and asking how she was and this was my response. And my friend does not name her plants.

[spittyfishy]

Once the idea to draw the different regional Meowths as the kittens in the Aristocats came into my head it wouldn’t leave until I did this lol. I’m actually so happy with how it turned out, and it was so much fun to do!

[okaydrawboy]

Athenian Hoplite in the Persian Wars, twitter was curious about the cloth on the Aspis, so I will share that info here. The cloth is called an apron, sometimes curtain/skirt, and also referenced as "parablemata" it made an appearance in art and archeology around the time of the Persian Wars and fell out of use shortly after, suggested as an arrow catcher/deflector but I haven't finished reading up on it's full use.

[art-g0blin-draws]

I thought of a fun strategy for perrzerker that is not competitively viable, but still very fun to use.

Hear me out.

Iron head does 80 base damage.

STAB is ×1.5 = 120

Steely spirit is ×1.5 =180

Letting it hold metal coat is ×1.2 =216

And from there, if you Tera type it as steel, it gets another ×2 STAB = 432

DROP IT IN A TRICK ROOM AND WATCH IT LITERALLY CRATER OPPONENTS IT'S BEAUTIFUL

Mine has curse, rest, taunt and Iron head. It's real fun to give my viking boi some use.

also, just look at this cute boi. Who wouldn't want one on their team???

[katfreaks-hidyhole]

Another friend/ship I’d like to see in Pokemon one day :)

[blacephalo]

the voices did not stop so i hunted a second clown to be friends with my almost 6 yo son

[dogwise]

spent too much money at the garden center yesterday but look at the annual pot I put together 😊🫶

[lunarpanda]

What did Giovanni do to his Persian to make it tank Fighting type moves I can't even get it down with my Machamp.

I wish Machamp and the other Fighting types didn't have to rely on Counter since to make it work I assume you have to wait for the opponent to make a move like in vanilla games but still Persian is such an uphill battle.

I need to find better mons since my usual team is not cutting it. I've recently been checking whether or not I catch guys with good stats and dump most of the no/one star Pokes since they're not going to be any help in battles.

And as much as I would love to beef them up I don't exactly have the stardust to do it nor do I have the balls to throw at everything and pray it'll be strong. I'm at a loss...

[probablyasocialecologist]

Despite Sparta’s reputation for superior fighting, Spartan armies were as likely to lose battles as to win them, especially against peer opponents such as other Greek city-states. Sparta defeated Athens in the Peloponnesian War—but only by accepting Persian money to do it, reopening the door to Persian influence in the Aegean, which Greek victories at Plataea and Salamis nearly a century early had closed. Famous Spartan victories at Plataea and Mantinea were matched by consequential defeats at Pylos, Arginusae, and ultimately Leuctra. That last defeat at Leuctra, delivered by Thebes a mere 33 years after Sparta’s triumph over Athens, broke the back of Spartan power permanently, reducing Sparta to the status of a second-class power from which it never recovered. Sparta was one of the largest Greek city-states in the classical period, yet it struggled to achieve meaningful political objectives; the result of Spartan arms abroad was mostly failure. Sparta was particularly poor at logistics; while Athens could maintain armies across the Eastern Mediterranean, Sparta repeatedly struggled to keep an army in the field even within Greece. Indeed, Sparta spent the entirety of the initial phase of the Peloponnesian War, the Archidamian War (431-421 B.C.), failing to solve the basic logistical problem of operating long term in Attica, less than 150 miles overland from Sparta and just a few days on foot from the nearest friendly major port and market, Corinth. The Spartans were at best tactically and strategically uncreative. Tactically, Sparta employed the phalanx, a close-order shield and spear formation. But while elements of the hoplite phalanx are often presented in popular culture as uniquely Spartan, the formation and its equipment were common among the Greeks from at least the early fifth century, if not earlier. And beyond the phalanx, the Spartans were not innovators, slow to experiment with new tactics, combined arms, and naval operations. Instead, Spartan leaders consistently tried to solve their military problems with pitched hoplite battles. Spartan efforts to compel friendship by hoplite battle were particularly unsuccessful, as with the failed Spartan efforts to compel Corinth to rejoin the Spartan-led Peloponnesian League by force during the Corinthian War. Sparta’s military mediocrity seems inexplicable given the city-state’s popular reputation as a highly militarized society, but modern scholarship has shown that this, too, is mostly a mirage. The agoge, Sparta’s rearing system for citizen boys, frequently represented in popular culture as akin to an intense military bootcamp, in fact included no arms training or military drills and was primarily designed to instill obedience and conformity rather than skill at arms or tactics. In order to instill that obedience, the older boys were encouraged to police the younger boys with violence, with the result that even in adulthood Spartan citizens were liable to settle disputes with their fists, a tendency that predictably made them poor diplomats. But while Sparta’s military performance was merely mediocre, no better or worse than its Greek neighbors, Spartan politics makes it an exceptionally bad example for citizens or soldiers in a modern free society. Modern scholars continue to debate the degree to which ancient Sparta exercised a unique tyranny of the state over the lives of individual Spartan citizens. However, the Spartan citizenry represented only a tiny minority of people in Sparta, likely never more than 15 percent, including women of citizen status (who could not vote or hold office). Instead, the vast majority of people in Sparta, between 65 and 85 percent, were enslaved helots. (The remainder of the population was confined to Sparta’s bewildering array of noncitizen underclasses.) The figure is staggering, far higher than any other ancient Mediterranean state or, for instance, the antebellum American South, rightly termed a slave society with a third of its people enslaved.

[sl8yter]

Persian Rugs - Mühl

SPECIFICALLY THE JACQUEES VERSION!!

Starts off fluffy then gets filthy!!😬, this may be bad yall I havent wrote smut since my wattpad era…

Nika Mühl x Fem Reader

Part 2 to 3005

When you heard the door close, you were admittedly scared. You didn’t have any idea what type of person Nika was in bed. You guys were close but never really talked about past sexual experiences. You were frozen in place when you heard and felt the footsteps getting closer and closer to the room. When the door finally opened Nika walked in already starting to take off her shirt until she noticed the air in the room. She gently let go of the fabric, covering the skin of her belly before asking

“Are you okay? We don’t have to if you don’t want to, you know that right?” Her sweetness and tender tone did wonders to soothe you. She qently sat herself next to you, the bed dipping as she grabbed one of your hands and held it in hers, rubbing your knuckles.

“No I do want to, trust me I really want to. You just make me so nervous Niks.” You smiled at her, the complete honesty shocked you. The way she naturally made you open up to her felt fresh. Something that you had longed for with partners and she did it so effortlessly.

Your response caused her to tackle you down onto the bed, shifting herself to get on top of you. She raised herself above your lap, barely even skimming the zipper of your pants. She was teasing you both in that way and for your confession.

“I make you that nervous?” She asked smiling as she looked down at you and leaned in closer. Her hair acted as a shield around the two of you. She trapped you beneath her as she moved her hands to the sides of your head, being careful to not pull the stray strands of hair. You didn’t even notice until rays of light weaved their way through her brown hair, reflecting off her face in way that was screaming how beautiful she was.

“Of course you do. Youre so pretty, it’s hard to believe you’re real sometimes. Staring at you feels like a dream” You couldnt help but speak youre mind, everything in this moment made you feel drunk. Drunk with adoration, you were enamored and you could feel it being returned ten fold.

Nika took her hands from the side of your head and moved them to cup your cheeks. Without saying a word she firmly planted herself down on top of you, you could feel her dip her back when she came down to kiss you. Feeling your two bodies flush against eachother making a chill run down youre back, causing you to also arch into her. Wrapping your arms around her back, your fingers played with the hem of her shirt. Nika slightly pushed herself further down on to you. Eliciting a soft gasp from you, using the new space she softly slid her tounge into play. The newfound deepness in the kiss awakened even more chills.

Your hands quickly lifted her shirt, breaking the kiss only for a moment, you swiftly used the intervention to push Nika more in the middle of the bed and to switch your positions. Your body slid between her legs as she layed on her back. Your buckle directly between both of her legs. When you went in to kiss her once again, it softly rubbed against Nika causing her to grab your neck and pull you down, it was like she was sick and the only medicine she had was you. She was practically begging for you the way she hold her breath in hopes for more of you.

You broke the kiss for a second to breathe and Nika was a different person. Her eyes were low and her breathing heavy, everything about her was alluring. Compared to her in any other setting, this Nika, the way you made her, was desperate, in need of something could you give her.

You quickly dove back in for a kiss, only this time on the edge of her lips as you worked your way down her jaw and to her weak point on her neck. Abusing the tender area with your mouth as you gently sucked the area before soothing it with your tounge. The sensation drove Nika wild. Her gasps growing bigger with each nip and the way her body would try to pull you closer with every groan she let out. You stopped for a second, supporting yourself on your knees so you could take off your shirt as well. You needed to feel her skin to skin. Anything keeping you further apart than you needed to was a nuisance to be dealt with.

Nika watched, propped up by her elbows, as she stared at you like you were a work of art. Her eyes moved up along your body until she caught your gaze. You only smiled at her before she used one hand to capture yours and pull you back down. Instead of going straight to her neck you went further down, into the valley between her chest. Using the one hand that she wasn’t holding, you grasped at her breast. Gently kneading it as you kissed around the other. You looked up at her, through your brows, for a second to see her head thrown back, a hand covering her mouth to stifle her moans. You let go of her mound to reach up to her mouth. Grabbing the hand and moving it.

“I wanna hear you” You casually demanded, you moved your free hand down to her thigh. Scooting down once more so your head was level between her thighs. You squeezed the hand she was holding as if to ask for permission. With one swift look, no words needed to be said. She didnt have to make sounds to beg. Her desire was unable to mask itself. No matter if it was the look on her face or the wet mark between her sweats.

You let go of her hand, using both hands to grab the hem of her sweats.

Gently and slowly, as if to tease her already antsy body, you pulled off the first layer. Nika lay under you watching your every move, the way you treated her as if she would break drove her crazy. The friction between every movement only made her need you more. She got tired of being played with, although this was the wettest she had ever been and your fingers were no where near her core.

“Please, I cant” Her voice soft and low, if she spoke any louder it would be sure to come out as a whiny plea. She needed you now.

“You cant what?” You stopped your actions to look up at her, her eyes were glossy and her face red with strands of hair slick to her face. You were teasing her too much, it felt so good it started to hurt to her. You liked her this way, you liked her wanting you, needing you.

“Just please-” her voice broke as you grabbed the lacy black panties she was wearing, pulling them down and off her legs, never breaking eye contact with her.

“Please what? Baby you gotta tell me what you want. Then I promise I can give it to you.” You asked her, the way she trembled beneath you gave you power.

“Please touch me, bebo please” Her voice got whiner with every word, she dropped her elbows, no longer propping herself up to look at the roof. She was embarrassed of how needy you had her. She was overstimulated by just a few teasing touches. You rose your arm up to reach for her hand. Interlocking your fingers before lowering yourself once more, face level with her core.

She was dripping.

With your free hand you rose one leg above your shoulder, signaling her to do the same with the other. Her thighs lay on either side of your head, you look back up at her for a second. Her head propped up on a pillow as she look down at you, trapped between her thighs. You squeeze her hand before saying

“Anything for you” your breath danced along her folds making her take in an uneven breath before you dove in, taking a long swipe up her wet slit. Her free hand now tugging at your hair as she let out a long awaited moan. It sounded like a symphony in your ear. Each moan matching pace with each lick. With each suck of her clit you would earn a tug in your hair that hurt so good.

Eventually you let go of her hand, using one hand to caress her thigh as you slid a stray pillow underneath her lower back. Using the other hand that wasn’t gripping her you reach underneath her leg hooking your arm around it to gently press down on her stomach.

The sudden incline of her body mixed with the pressure and your tongue exploring her inside made her scream with pleasure. Every other moan mixed with profanities you couldn’t have ever imagined her saying to you.

Taking your hand off her thigh, you moved your mouth up to focus on her bundle of nerves instead. Using a single finger you gently tease up and down her slit. Her breathing slowing, but the strength of her legs increases as she wraps her legs around your head.

“Please, please bebo just do it. I cant wait anymore.” Nika pleaded with you as you looked up at her. She used a hand to gently caress your face, wiping off some of her slickness off of your face. Suddenly she pulled you up, using both hands on either side of your face to make you hover over her. One of your hands still lay down with her heat. Slowly teasing her still as you rubbed circles on her.

Your other hand lay flat against the space next to her head as she pulled you down closer to her.

“Please” She whispered softly to you.

Without a second to think you plunged 3 fingers as deep as they could go. The sudden movement releasing a moan from her straight into your ear. Nikas arms quickly wrapping around your back and resting her hands on your shoulders. Pumping your fingers into her and curling them relentlessly as she kissed along your neck. Her fingers scraping down your back with each curl of your digits.

“Fuck just like that bebo, please you’re making me feel so good. Fuck baby” She managed to say in a breathy tone. Her praise made you go faster and harder. You swore your fingers could have been an engine the way she cursed at you.

She took her head out of her your nape to make eye contact with you. Her face had a glass look and her eyes were blown. Her mouth slightly agape as she took in air harshly and let out soft moans. All while never taking her eyes off yours. In this moment you belonged to each other. In body and in soul. Everything about it felt merging. All you could think about while looking at her was-

“I love you” she moaned out, quickly moving one hand to the back of your head pushing you down into her, she captured your lips. Her body had slumped during your kiss and a sticky ooze coated your hand.

“I love you too” you sighed out moving back away from her after your steamy kiss, you eased your fingers out of her as you moved to kiss around her face.

She took ahold of your hand before you could wipe it off. She rose your hand to her mouth, taking it in and sucking a finger dry before pulling you down to kiss her once more. As you pulled back you took the other two fingers she hadn’t sucked and cleaned them before you lay down next to her. She never took her eyes off you as she watched you, she rested on her side gazing upon you suck your fingers as if they were candy.

“You love me?” You turned your head to look at her. Her body uncovered, radiating confidence and a burning warmth that reached you mentally and physically. You felt like you were floating with a simple gaze. The way she made you feel was unmatched. A euphoria that no amount of drugs or women could ever match. She was your high and you were hers.

“How could I not?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(I start barking everytime i see this photo of her)

Anyways please tell me if this was bad or could use something I havent wrote filth in forever ☠️.

Also working on a request sent. Its about Nika n her (seattle storm) teammate getting together at an event. Shoutout to the anon who requested it fr. Also working on a fic based off a Chris Travis song for Nika.