Mage Academy Dropout

Wildemount Wildlings here we come!!!

"Today. Tomorrow." a Superman fan comic about Clark Kent, Lois Lane and relationships.

We wanted to tackle one of the trickiest parts of Superman mythos; and that's the entangled romance between Clark Kent, Lana Lang, Lois Lane and Superman. Often times these more mundane parts of Superman get pushed to the side, when they can give so much insight into the characters and what they're seeking from each other.

calamity | downfall | divergence

This must be Thursday.

I never could get the hang of Thursdays.

happy must be thursday thursday

I'm falling behind on stuff at work so i started making a tasklist of just the stuff i can remember without digging into my tickets or email or putting the big shiny thing that I actually WANT to do on the list and so far we are at

29 things.

Hm. Hmmmmm. Don't like that.

okay with four marked off the list grew to 34 because i collected the to-dos from the three small notebooks on my desk in the big college-ruled notebook for bad times.

Still have not addressed ticket queue or email but email is once again over 100 so email under 75 should be one of the things that goes on my list.

This is another form of rubber ducking/troubleshooting my ADHD. I've had a lot of trouble with focus and initiation recently, likely because I've got so much going on that i feel pulled in ten directions and can't prioritize and am just kind of flailing.

Often when i make a to-do list it is not actually a to-do list, it is just collecting all of my projects and tasks in one place so that i can SEE them rather than being a list of things that I expect myself to get done in any kind of timely manner.

As I'm compiling the list, I can check off things that can be accomplished quickly, and then once the list is complete I can start breaking it down into things that are high priority, things that are low priority but are easy, and things that are actually many steps that i need to define before I can work on them because the thing is too big for it to really feel like something that needs to be done.

To-do lists are TERRIBLE for me as a list of things that I'm going to finish, but are wonderful as a way to stop panicking about too much stuff and move forward on at least a couple of things.

(bonus - it you put your pile of tasks in a list before you work on them you can see if there are handy groups that you can lump together - one of these tasks required collecting client email addresses, another required logging in to my old email address, another required contacting clients from my old email address - these things overlap and if i do them at the same time or while all the same windows are open I can save myself the effort of collecting all those things together in the future)

Anyway, I'm avoiding. Gonna go look at my tickets.

It also takes art to restore old paintings that look like scabs...

What a wiggly strawberry macaroon !

The Origin Story of Rhinoceress

Cindy Shears used to be an ordinary girl until one day, she discovered her superpowers. However, her family were not happy about it so they took her in to be studied by Doctor Kavita Rao. She discovered a DNA variance unique to Cindy and suggested her parents leave Cindy in her care until a cure could be found. Abandoned and locked up, Cindy used her super strength to break out and become the Rhinoceress. While she does engage in some illegal work as a super villain, she also bartends and bounces at the Invisible Light nightclub.

Okay, I love her. Especially telling Klaw his vibes are bad, but also the “legally distinct from the x gene”

This counts as vent art.

See also, "We're in a drought; conserve water!" Meanwhile, bottled water companies and golf courses for rich folk empty the aquifers.

A caveat to this study: the researchers were primarily looking at insect pollinator biodiversity. Planting a few native wildflowers in your garden will not suddenly cause unusual megafauna from the surrounding hinterlands to crowd onto your porch.

That being said, this study backs up Douglas Tallamy's optimistic vision of Homegrown National Park, which calls for people in communities of all sizes to dedicate some of their yard (or porch or balcony) to native plants. This creates a patchwork of microhabitats that can support more mobile insect life and other small beings, which is particularly crucial in areas where habitat fragmentation is severe. This patchwork can create migration corridors, at least for smaller, very mobile species, between larger areas of habitat that were previously cut off from each other.

It may not seem like much to have a few pots of native flowers on your tiny little balcony compared to someone who can rewild acres of land, but it makes more of a difference than you may realize. You may just be creating a place where a pollinating insect flying by can get some nectar, or lay her eggs. Moreover, by planting native species you're showing your neighbors these plants can be just as beautiful as non-native ornamentals, and they may follow suit.

In a time when habitat loss is the single biggest cause of species endangerment and extinction, every bit of native habitat restored makes a difference.

The world has a LOT of climates. Over eons, our native fauna has evolved alongside our native flora and lots of the fauna have become “specialists.” Things why monarch butterflies need milkweed—it’s the only thing the larvae can eat. Milkweed sap is very poisonous for most creatures, so they have evolved to tolerate the toxin because the plants are often free of predators.

However, the adult butterflies need more nectar than the milkweed can produce, and butterflies don’t usually make their chrysalises on the plant they eat. They lay eggs there, so the larvae can eat it, but if they make their chrysalises there, nothing can eat the leaf it hangs on, and the less leaves on the plant, the less cover there is from predators.

So monarchs need more than milkweed to survive.

A ton of our butterflies and moths are specialists… and the fauna native to your climate has adapted to need the flora native to your climate. This is why HGNP focuses on *native plants.*

Native plants and wildflowers are not the same thing! “Wildflowers” is a general term for flowers that are in the wild. Even “native wildflowers” are not the goal—if you can plant one oak tree, you’ll do more good than a hundred wildflowers. There are also a lot of native grasses that provide habitat. But they need to be native to your climate.

There are a lot of ways to look up what’s native to your area. Google “keystone” plants for your state. They are some of the most important to pollinators. Even a 1’x1’ square of a keystone plants in your yard or a 16” pot is enough to help.

But political boundaries don’t really give us what we need. Pollinators don’t see county or state boundaries. So the EPA has organized the US into areas called ecoregions, where the boundaries are drawn and areas are organized by the climate/topography. For example, the Ozark, Allegheny, and Oachita mountain ranges are all the same region, even though they’re not connected physically, because they have similar climates and topography.

The ultimate resource is www.bonap.net. It’s kinda complicated and it has a lot of functions, but once you learn the map color key, you have tens of thousands of species and millions of data points at your fingers. It’s organized down to county level, but if you want to get nerdy you can compare the maps to the ecoregions.

http://www.bonap.net

But if you want to get a LITTLE more specific and not super nerdy, there are other places to look.

Cooperative extensions are incredible programs with a WEALTH of information online. Look up your state; the cooperative extension will run out of a state land grant university (PA’s is PSU, NY is Cornell) and they have a master gardener program full of volunteers trained to educate and share quality, science-based information. They can help.

The USDA has a user-friendly database called PLANTS. (They get their data from BONAP.)

bplant.org is nice because it will show you plants based on ecoregion. It’s also pretty user friendly.

Native plants make a huge difference. They do. And you will see more bugs. I planted black eyed Susans and in a few years I started getting ladybugs. I bought a pot of garden phlox and saw hummingbird clearwing moths before I even planted it in the ground.

You can make a difference. You can.

Reblogging for this fabulous addition!

Just a small addition: I'm not sure that it's true that planting a white oak is more valuable than native flowers. It really just depends on what ecosystems are over/underrepresented in your area.

Where I live it would be far more valuable to make meadows, grasslands, or wetland spaces rather than more oak forests. It's worth looking into, and if you can find some local ecological orgs they probably have that info available or would be happy to tell you!

I agree--this is always going to be a pretty nuanced discussion. The important thing is to look at the types of habitats found in your area. Even if you don't know what the location you're trying to replant looked like 200-400 years ago, you can at least figure out whether a tree is an appropriate thing to plant or not.

For example, here in the PNW west of the Cascades, most people's idea of "nature" is a mixed conifer forest. Which is not a bad thing, given that we have plenty of them, especially in the Cascades and Coast Range, and scattered throughout the lower elevations as well. But--both the mountains and the lowlands have historically had localized grasslands and wetlands. While some grasslands may be dotted with Oregon white oaks, and the wetlands often have red alders soaking their roots in the mud, they don't generally have as heavy treecover as a proper forest.

Moreover, many of the people in the U.S. saying "We need to plant more trees!" are in the wooded areas east of the Great Plains. It makes sense to plant trees in a lot of places there because forests are common (though not ubiquitous). However, did you know the American Arbor Day started in Nebraska City, Nebraska? That's in the middle of what was once tallgrass prairie, where oak stands were primarily found in bottomlands, surrounded by endless acres of grassland. Settlers in the Midwest prairies mainly planted non-native trees as windbreaks--the region is full of Siberian elm, for example, because it grows quickly.

I've written about afforestation before, and it always bears mentioning again. Yes, trees are lovely and ecologically important--but not everything needs to be a forest. If you live somewhere that was historically grassland or desert, where trees may be few to nonexistent, you don't want to plant a forest of trees, even if they're native to the region. Instead, look at what the keystone plant species of the area are, which ones may be scarcer than they used to be and could use a population boost, and which ones do well with being planted as opposed to only popping up of their own volition. (Most states have Native Plant Societies you can ask for advice.)

they are puppy dogs

I want a second season of ACOFAF but with either all new players or all new PCs and the same cast. Really lean on the Bridgerton regency romance inspiration and have a second season where we’re still following romances for the PCs but it’s a new bunch of them now and then the S1 PCs are like background characters, very Daphne Bridgerton.