The garden spiral is like a snail shell, with stone spiraling upward to create multiple micro-climates and a cornucopia of flavors on a small footprint. Spirals can come in any size to fit any space, from an urban courtyard to an entire yard. You don’t even need a patch of ground, as they can be built on top of patios, pavement, and rooftops. You can spiral over an old stump or on top of poor soil. By building up vertically, you create more growing space, make watering easy, and lessen the need to bend over while harvesting. To boot, spirals add instant architecture and year-round beauty to your landscape: the perfect garden focal point.
One of the beauties of an herb spiral is that you are creating multiple microclimates in a small space. The combination of stones, shape, and vertical structure offers a variety of planting niches for a diversity of plants. The stones also serve as a thermal mass, minimizing temperature swings and extending the growing seasons. Whatever you grow in your spiral, it will pump out a great harvest for the small space it occupies. I’ve grown monstrous cucumbers in my large garden spiral, with one plant producing over 30 prize-size fruits. The spiral is a food-producing superstar!
Stacked stones create perennial habitat for beneficial critters, such as lizards and spiders that help balance pest populations in the garden. The stone network is a year-round safe haven for beneficial insects and other crawlies that work constantly to keep your garden in balance—and you in the hammock. A little design for them up-front pays big, tasty dividends later.
those ao3 “kudos” emails where someone has gone through and read pretty much all of your stories, one after the other: blessings upon you and your household
don’t authors find that weird though? i don’t do that, just because i always figured it might seem stalkery, going story by story through people’s older work (which of course i do ~all the time~ because awesome fic is addictive)
if people are happy to have the kudos, i will totally start leaving them as i read
I mean, I can only speak for myself here, but no, I don’t find it creepy. Someone I’ve never met going through my old instagram selfies and systematically liking them – creepy. Someone I’ve never met obsessively reading my old fics and liking them – my favorite person of the day. Just MHO.
seeing the same person’s name on a string of kudos for your fics because they’ve obviously read through your back catalogue is one of life’s great joys
xcziel, there’s nothing I like more as a writer than someone who is obviously reading everything.
Well, maybe comments. Yes, on old fic too.
I once (back on lj) had someone comment on every single chapter of a fic I wrote in one evening. It was the most thrilling night of my fanfic career. I didn’t feel creepy in the least.
COMMENT. I don’t care how old it is or how many chapters a reader comments on.
The only thing that might possibly be more flattering is the “I stayed up all night because I couldn’t stop reading” comment.
Yes, please.
YES ALL OF THIS
all of this
Reblogging because readers somehow still have this idea that too many comments/kudos are seen as creepy or stalkery. IT’S NOT. Seriously. Every comment, all of the kudos, they’re greatly, GREATLY appreciated. And knowing that someone liked your work enough to click on your name and go through your other fics and liked those too, even the old stuff you’re kind of self-conscious about, is the greatest feeling a writer can have. So if you like a fic, say something/leave kudos, no matter if it’s the first or fifth fanfic you’ve read in one night from that author.
I LOVE when I get an email where it’s the same name, like a dozen or more times because they went through and read like, /everything I ever wrote/ apparently. It makes me so happy! 😀
Multiple kudos and/or lots of comments are the best thing ever
Not at all creepy. It’s like, they are reading, get to the end, said they liked it, and Prove they liked it because they read another and liked that…
And yes, it’s just as fun to see this with old stories. Maybe even more?
The other thing that is super nice? When someone comments and says, hey, I tried to kudos but I had already kudos’d so I’m commenting to kudos again because I do that ALL THE TIME. I either forgot I’d read this lovely thing and want to kudos again, or I’m doing a re-read of something and I *want* to kudos again. When it happens to me it’s seriously lovely – someone enjoying your stuff enough that they re-read.
reblogged so fast I sprained something
I know for me especially that while writing just for yourself is great, nothing drains me more from writing than not seeing kudos or comments. If you notice in my writing at least, I get the most inspiration when I see people leaving likes, comments, even tags when they reblog (because I look and read them all).
Please please please leave comments, like, kudo, reblog, everything! No writer thinks this is stalkerish and is in fact one of the highest praises we can receive through this medium. It lets us know that you like it and you want more!! Without it, it may possibly mean we may not even continue it. I know I get like that with several of my multi chapter stories.
Don’t feel like leaving something on every little thing? My absolute favorite thing is when people leave notes in my inbox telling me about how much they love my characters, my voice behind canons, just the fact that they say how much they enjoy what I’ve done! I have kept every little note I have ever gotten and once I get my set up my new desk space, I’m going to print them all out and hang them on my wall so I can read them every day. I’m not kidding! This thing fuels us writers!! In this world, fanfiction is probably one of lowest forms of writing. We don’t get paid. Our payment comes from your feedback and the excitement that you have to keep reading!
IT IS NEVER STALKERISH!
IT LETS US KNOW YOU LOVE US AS MUCH AS WE LOVE YOU FOR READING!
“I’m going to print them all out and hang them on my wall so I can read them every day” – Oooh, that’s such a great idea, I might just have to do it too! *g*
And as someone who’s left those strings of comments, and has received them:
1. There is nothing better than an author who knows they’re appreciated. They often get motivation from it! (do be sure to say what you liked- and saying you’re looking forward to the next chapter after is okay, but ‘update’ often scares us writers and gets us stressed- we’ve got soft heart, pelase be gentle with us).
2. It’s a great way to meet new people! Most of my fandom friends I met through commenting on their stories, or them commenting on mine!
3. It inspires us! I can’t remember how may times I got ideas for sequels or new fics I got because this one person commented something that made me tilt my head and go: what if? And I’ve seen the same happen to other writers!
I once got a comment that was basically two readers chatting back and forth about the chapter I’d just posted as they read it. I don’t think I’ve ever been quite that delighted with a response to my fics.
Those times when I get a string of kudos or comments from a person who liked one fic and decided to hit up the rest of my works… Don’t think anything can compare to that, for a writer. This person has stumbled across my fic, and has sallied forth to read all of it! Because they liked it so much!
Why in the world would that be creepy. Or stalkerish. Stalk all our writing, dear readers, and come scream at us about it in the comments or on Tumblr. It’s humbling, leads to squealing on our part and is massively inspiring all at once.
My lumbar puncture last week was a big failure. Which means, not only are my muscles still sore from being repeatedly stabbed with a needle in my back and abdomen, but I wasn’t able to get the test done that I went in for. So now I’m back to doing referrals and tests and procedures, which has me travelling all over the city while we try to pin down a diagnosis. It gets expensive for me, so I am putting out my tin cup to ask for small donations.
My Ko-Fi account is here: http://ko-fi.com/A4027SH One Ko-Fi donation equals one bus trip to see a doctor! If you aren’t able to drop some change in my cup, I would appreciate it if you could reblog this.
There are lesbians and bi women who are not penis-repulsed.
And there are some who are penis-repulsed, with or *without* trauma.
“I would never date a trans woman,” is transphobic because it is a blanket statement on all trans women, implying they are men.
“I have penis-repulsion, which limits my sexual compatability with some women,” is a better, less transphobic thing to say cuz it also can refer to incompatability w/ cis women who prefer using strap-ons and dildos, while validating womanhood regardless of genitals.
bisexuals can’t speak for lesbians. no lesbian prefers dildos to human contact, porn lied to you.
i am a homosexual so as a female my sexuality is male incompatible, which includes trans women. i will never date a trans woman bc i am a lesbian. i have no thoughts on dicks bc i am a lesbian and my partners won’t have male genitals.
“there are lesbian who are not penis-repulsed” is a lie making us doubt our orientation to give males sexual satisfaction and gender validation. don’t fall for it. do you know what heteronormativity is? it’s this. social pressure to give peen a chance. you don’t know you hate it if you don’t try it. but when you pressure lesbians into sex with males it’s different, it’s corrective rape.
drop the t drop the t drop the t
also lots of us have never had anything to do with a “hard cock” so how would we “miss” it?
This got really bad really fast. First of all, not all lesbians are repulsed by penises. Just because you are doesn’t mean everyone is. I know tons of lesbians that aren’t attracted to males but are not horribly disgusted by penis. There are lesbians who aren’t penis repulsed the same way there are gay men who aren’t vagina repulsed. Lack of attraction does not mean repulsed by. Your statement also excludes lesbians who are trans women, because they’re more likely to be attracted to transwomen with various genitalia. Also not all trans women have a penis so you’re doing that exact blanket statement by saying youd never be attracted to transwomen because you think all lesbians are penis repulsed. If that’s how you feel then fine but don’t act like you can tell people what other lesbians are attracted to and exclude trans women from lesbianism and conversations about gay women sexuality. Saying all lesbians are automatically penis repulsed is kinda immature tbh.
The densest people on the internet are the ones who say sci fi and fantasy are getting too political. Why can’t we go back to the good old days of The Twilight Zone, with its various episodes about mob mentality and the danger of mass paranoia that totally weren’t about the Red Scare. Or Star Wars and its genocidal empire of racially homogeneous Aryan men. Or Dune with its religious tribal peoples who live in a desert that contains the galaxy’s most valuable resource and the wars with the foreign colonizers, that was purely from Frank Herbert’s imagination. Can you imagine how much Star Trek would suck if it was packed to the brim with ham-fisted allegories of every societal issue of the 20th century. Not like all this modern ultra-political stuff, like a woman hero.
Beltainefaerie's Flights of Fancy 
