A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
My neighbour has raised concerns about me because I’ve stopped trimming parts of my lawn to foster the bees. Apparently it’s weird and concerning to let some areas grow wild. I didn’t rake the back last year, and started to see fireflies again.
I was going to buy a wildflower mix, but that will be too unkempt.
Fuck HOAs.
One of my first jobs had me working retail in the "lawn and garden" department. Every year we would have people buy those wildflower mixes and then 6 weeks later, you would see the same people buying weed killer. I had many people tell me that they couldn't understand why their lawn was so overrun with weeds the last few years, and of course they were always the ones doing the wild flower mix.
Isn’t a wildflower mix mostly weeds? Or am I whooshing?
Yes it is all weeds, but people are stupid and don't seem to know that.
Oh good lord.
I’ve been promoting a “mullet yard” where the first little part by the street is standard monoculture mowed grass and then 8-10’ back it’s a riot of natural plants. The contrast kind of works for it.
If I ever own a home, I want a moat. If I am gonna waste water, it should at least be for something badass.
Just make sure you have a decent current in it so you don't breed mosquitoes and It's all good.
Or stock it with some small fish to eat the larvae, and plants to keep the water clean, and invite some frogs and dragonflies, maybe some mink or herons to keep the frogs and fish in check
But then how do you give trespassers malaria?
Dart gun.
Thought so as well, but we have six "ponds", 15G to 150G. They attract enough tadpoles, dragonfly larva and other critters to eat the mosquitoes.
When I put in the 150G last spring, figured it would take a year to get rolling. Nope. Within a couple of weeks it was live and kicking. Probably boosted it by throwing native plants from the rivers and swamps in there, dirt and all.
In any case, someone on here turned me onto "mosquito dunk". It's a little doughnut of mosquito killing bacteria. Setup 5G buckets around camp and dosed them. I don't have actual evidence, but it sure seemed to help.
Moth caterpillars are eating all my mini pumpkins but I dont want to hurt the polinators 😩
Once the flower starts turning into a fruit, put a fine mesh net over it so the fruit can grow in peace
Awe, their favourite! What a thoughtful gift ❤️
If I wanted to be swarmed by insects, I'd go to the woods.
Abolish lawns
I'm not sure if you're for or against biodiversity with this comment...
The first line seems to contradict the second.
Unless it's abolish lawns to replace them with tarmac or something?
ROCK GARDEN HOURS
Ah, I see, you've been turning water into wine again. You be careful now, if you drink too much they'll have you up on that cross again and we all remember how it took you 3 whole days to recover from that hangover
