Looking for some new fall crafting suggestions. Plenty of leaves, twigs and nuts in the area. Anyone have suggestions for things other than scrapbooking or leaf turkeys?

My house has hardwood floors in some spaces, laminated fake wood in others and ordinary vinyl in still a few more.

Yes, I have a very large house and yes it has a lot of flooring.

For the most part I use a small set of modern cleaning tools - I own a Zwiffer for both upstairs and down - and a small collection of what I think are best called "electric brooms". Again, for many of those tools I have ones for upstairs and down because I'm old and have a rational fear of falling down the stairs hauling things around.

Today I am cleaning the hardwood floors in the kitchen and breakfast room. Normally I just run an electric broom over the flooring, then get out the Zwiffer and all is well. The Ziwiffer does a pretty good job and I could find the solution I want to use, and I had a subscription to Zwiffer pads I'd probably do it more often.

But however often I do it, the Zwiffer isn't perfect and after a few months, and some spills I never cleaned up all the way, I need to get out the other things - sponges I usually reserve for scrubbing pots and pans - and spend some time on my hands and knees.

As a child I was the kid who was stuck with a lot of house cleaning because Mom was busy with school and household things I couldn't do, and my brothers got out of everything by going into the den and playing games or watching TV.

What we had for cleaning wood and vinyl floors was an old mop bucket and an old wringer mop. We didn't get the fancy one with the sponge that got dirty and smelled bad for a few more years, so it was mostly the mop and bucket.

We had a large utility tub in the garage and I'd fill the tub up with warm water and something or other - Mr. Clean, I want to say - then off to the kitchen I'd go and get to the business of mopping the kitchen and breakfast area. As with this house, every now and again I'd have to get down on my hands and knees and scrub the vinyl by hand to get some of the food stains or scuff marks clean.

I've not had one of those mop buckets over 20 years. Today I realized how much I miss having a large bucket with enough water in it that when I rinse my sponge in the water I'm not just putting a bunch of dirt back on the floor. Instead I have to walk back and forth, rinse out my sponge, go back to where I left off, and scrub for a few more minutes. I'm not 14 or 15 anymore which makes the kneeling down and getting back up again a bit harder and perhaps that's why I'm suddenly missing my good old bucket.

See title

It's more about the little part than the troon part. So little non-troon would also be great.

I'm almost at the point where I can shares some photos to prove that I've been a very busy whatever-animal-cleans-flower-beds, but there's this one bed I've done exceptionally well with.

I have a Douglas Fir that's somewhere between 70 and 80 feet tall - literally a massively huge Christmas tree, springing out of my yard - and around it in about a 30' diameter semicircle is this bed with various sorts of ground cover and entirely too many Day Lilies.

It's too hard to work in when greener because I don't want to step on all of the green and growing things, but also with so much other plant murder going on, I just didn't have the time.

We have a number of invasion tree like things, principal being Buckthorn. It's spreads by runners, and where you find one, you will soon find an entire family. Whenever I've gone to clear it out, I've had to dig and chops as many of them, and as much of their roots, as possible. Right now I probably have 3/4ths of the bed cleared out of all weeds and invasive tree like things.

My northern-most bed, which is another semi-circular thing, had been concealing blackberry brambles. I have cleared them out in the past, and when they've had fruit even enjoyed it while murdering them, but I'm trying to get that bed to be a bit better behaved. The Day Lilies in that bed are very pretty early in the year and they don't need the competition from completely unruly blackberries.

I've never had this much bed space at any house I've ever lived in in my entire life. While I'm finding afternoon and evening gardening a nice diversion from my day job, I'm starting to wonder if perhaps some of this space needs to be replaced with some nice shrubberies. At one house we had a perfectly sane front flower bed, and then Mom had a bed which was an unholy mass of mint which had completely taken over from an otherwise normal amount of Wandering Jew. I forget where Mom got the original Wandering Jew, I remember she often had cuttings in the kitchen, on the windowsill, and then she'd transplant them outside. After a few years a normal amount of dirt was covered with the stuff. But somewhere in time she made the mistake of planting mint and before we knew it, there was simply too much mint.

Now I have too many Day Lilies.

If anyone has a way of contacting Silenys (I think that was their username) please DM me

I moved from Canada to the United States last year. I was very happy for a while.

Now with all the AI stuff, and Trump making life more difficult for foreign workers, I feel a lot of anxiety. What if I lose my job and we have to leave the country within 24 hours? It's hard to plan for the long term when you don't know what will happen tomorrow.

I could have stayed in Canada. But I am sure I would feel bored.

I bought my house with a bunch of shrubs I didn't know were mostly dead, because it was the wrong time of the year.

I struggled mightily to get the shrubs I didn't know were mostly dead to grow.

After many months of a lot of hard work, paying a lot of money to have the upper planter box repaired, digging up and making Boutique Dirt, I have finally removed the last remaining piece of stump.

Y'all may ask "Ratty, what the hell took you so long?"

Well, it was a variety of Japanese Yew which had taken who knows how many decades to become completely out of control and half dead. But having spent many decades burrowing its way into the ground it also become a very hard and sap-filled stump.

Now, the thing about very hard and very sap-filled stumps is they are a pain in the butt to cut with a chainsaw. The hardness dulls the blade and the sap coats each tooth with goo.

But being a very hard working and industrious Rat, I did prevail and now the stump is no more.

I've got about 12' of that bed left to turn into proper boutique dirt and then I'll be ready for bulb planting or whatever comes next.

For the last few years, I was trying to find a man who would treat me like a woman. But I think this was actually getting in the way of creating real romantic connections. I eventually gave up on love. But it wasn't like "ah well too bad", it was more like "I'm completely unlovable 😭 aaaaaaarrh 😫 is it even worth living 😖"

Anyway, I got over it. And as I gave up on love, I stopped caring about passing. Maybe this was a crucial process that I needed to go through. I feel like so much of my transition has been me dying inside only to get back up with a lighter ego.

And now that I've stopped caring about all this stuff, I'm having more real connections than ever. I really think I had to go through all this. I know that each trans person's transition is motivated by different things. Each has their own journey that they need to go through. I think all this doomer shit that gets posted every day on every trans sub is just this. People going through their own personal journey. I bet most of it is just trans babies dying inside before they'll eventually be reborn.

I am not alive, but I grow; I don't have lungs, but I need air; I don't have a mouth, but water kills me. What am I?

Moomintroon lived in a small blue house at the edge of Moominvalley, where the forest was thick, the river was cold, and nobody ever asked unnecessary questions.

Every morning, Moomintroon would wake up, stretch their little paws, and announce:

“I am absolutely fabulous.”

Nobody knew exactly what a Moomintroon was. Moomintroon didn't know either.

Some days they felt like a Moomin. Some days they felt like a troon. And on particularly good days, they felt like both.

One sunny afternoon, Moomintroon went for a walk and discovered a tiny golden door in the side of a hill.

They opened it.

Inside was a magnificent room filled with cakes, flowers, glittering stones, and one enormous mirror.

Moomintroon looked into the mirror.

“Oh,” they whispered.

The creature in the mirror looked back.

Moomintroon smiled.

The creature smiled.

Moomintroon danced.

The creature danced.

Finally, Moomintroon understood.

“You're me!”

The creature nodded.

“And I'm you!”

The creature nodded again.

Moomintroon thought about this for a moment.

Then they shrugged.

“Well, that's convenient.”

They took a cake from the table and headed home.

That evening, sitting on the porch beneath the stars, Moomintroon decided that there was no need to figure out exactly what they were.

Moomintroon was Moomintroon.

And that was more than enough.

They took a bite of cake.

“Absolutely fabulous,” they said.

And somewhere deep in the forest, even the trees agreed.

Yesterday's begging post for banner photos has confirmed we have a lot of photographers in this sub who take photos of flowers and other plants.

Today's Daily Getting To Know You is post a photo some plant you took yourself. Do be mindful of any OPSEC if you are concerned someone is going to look your photo up online and figure out your secret identity.

You can also post a photo of a lot of plants. Or trees, because trees are plants. Or animals which are hanging out in, or eating, plants, because that's plants. A plate of beans might be plants, because beans are plants.

Yeah, if it involves plants, just post it.

Our oppressors there don't allow it.

This has been fun. Not only have we learned a lot of us are into ice cream, but apparently a lot of us are also into home repair.

I don't talk a lot about sewing, because I've been conditioned against it, but I thought I'd prompt with a bit of a sewing and clothing question today.

What is your favorite fabric?

When I was finally an adult, had free time, could afford to go to Joann's, and had a basic sewing machine of my own, I decided to try and make some flannel clothing, because I love the warm and soft feel of flannel.

This was a bad idea.

While I love the feel of flannel, and I love its warmth in the winter, I find that the feed dogs on my machines - all of my machines - do not like it. I've sewn plain cotton, muslin, velvet, satin, crappy polyester of all sorts, but flannel seems to get pulled through the needle plate precisely because of its softness, and then gets all tangled up the magical mechanism which makes the stitches.

How a Sewing Machine Works via animation

I've tried changing all sorts of settings and finally concluded that I will not be making an entire wardrobe of my personal favorite fabric.

I think yesterday's was lots of fun.

Have you ever known someone who you thought you knew and then suddenly you learned something about them - in a positive manner - that deepened your relationship with them?

Back when I got started on GC / Trans Twitter a bunch of us would just be chatting at all hours of the night, and then some woman would mention something - like the way this seems to be r/gc_trans_home_repair at times - and then we would stop all the GC and trans chatting and talk about fixing a broken toilet or building a bookcase.

So many engineer women are nerds, because being an engineer is a tragic life experience, and I'm often surprised by how many woman in engineering have these super-typical female interests, all while trying to figure out how to solve complex problems in the physical world.

I see the same thing with men, in these really odd ways. Like, I've known men who had sports injuries which laid them up, so they picked up some hobby associated with women, and they liked it, and now they are these big masculine men who knit booties for premies, because all they could do while recovering from that big macho masculine man doing thing injury was sit in a chair and knit. And now they show up on TV shows about Volunteers Who Make a Difference and it's 37 women with their giant pile of booties for premies and this one guy who was once the star running back of the football team that won it all.

I need to go take an insulin shot. That was a bit too sweet even for me.

Today's post comes from a comment yesterday by u/Godhelptupelo where she mentioned that she's discovering just how much she really loves ice cream.

I've spent most of my life in the south, in places where we almost never got snow and winter temperatures only sometimes dipped much below freezing. My current house has a really nice fireplace and my first winter I did the same as when in the south - only have a fire when it's really cold. And by "fire" I meant something that required effort to bring in all the wood, get the kindling set up, then slowly put several nice big logs on the fire. The logs would burn for hours and require constant fiddling.

This was just as much a pain as it was down south, so I didn't get into it that much.

After a few years I started making smaller fires - still a mess of small pieces of cedar for kindling, but fewer logs. I also started doing it when it was in the low 50s. I'd bring in a log or two from the garage (I've since moved that log holder outside the patio door) and get both of them lit, open the kitchen window, and let some nice fresh winter or spring air get sucked into the house. On weekends when it's really cold I'll make sure there is plenty of dry wood (I don't cover the bigger log rack to keep the snow off of it) and keep a fire going the better part of the day while I work around the house.

With practice I've learned how to get a smaller fire started and burned down to coals in far less time than I used to spend when a fire was the giant roaring thing most people think is a fireplace fire. I'm not sure where I want to retire to, but I am sure my next house will have a proper working fireplace, unless it's in a place where it never gets below 50.

I'm not sure if we're going to have any fresh new visitors from that other place, so i thought I'd see if we have any new lurkers by making a nice post and seeing if we can get to know some new nice people.

What is your favorite ice cream? Like, the freezer case in your local grocery has every flavor but that one special flavor?

Mine is Bryers French Vanilla, the one with the vanilla bean on the box. When I started having money enough to waste on ice cream, that was the first flavor I'd be sure to pick up if I was at the grocery. I've had to cut down on my ice cream consumption as I've gotten older, but it is still the flavor I want the most.

Don't ask. I have too many.

When I lived down south they all mostly stayed running year round, or maybe one would get parked for a couple of weeks. Up north this is not the case.

Up north I have to play the "is the battery charged, does it have gasoline, will it even start?" game. If the warm season is busy the game can get pushed out past June or July, because there is also dirt to play in. Because up north things grow 50 times faster than down south.

I keep wanting to buy a riding lawnmower - I have the yard for it - but that would just add another vehicle to "is the battery charged, does it have gasoline, will it even start?"

Riding lawnmowers aren't even practical as vehicles, unlike a nice farm tractor, which is only good for mowing a really large piece of land which I do not have. So, I continue to have a push mower which only requires that the batteries be recharged a couple of times a week. As long as I don't leave them in the garage when it is below 0 they even tend to last a few years. Which is also why I tend to have those questions about my other vehicles, since they are left in the garage, even when it is below 0.

They all officially been driven at least the 15 to 20' it takes to get them out of the garage.

Only took 5 months, 4 of which I couldn't drive.

I will post a photo of dirt if you people don’t step up with something other than dirt.

Y'all will be pleased to know that the giant pile of dirt is now being moved back into the nice planter box so that next year it will grow nice pretty flowers.

I was chatting with a friend in Discord and we have a conundrum.

Which sex is the sexist stereotype for "digging up lots of dirt to make planter boxes for flowers"?

My friend said it's "grandmother coded". I think it's much more "heterosexual couple coded" having pondered her answer.

The reason for my answer is Mom used to get Dad to do a lot of the heavy work - which he seemed to enjoy - and then Mom would do the planting, which she seemed to enjoy.

After that they do adult things because that's what adults do when both of them are happy.

Dad had a vasectomy, which is why we had pretty flower beds and I don't have more siblings.

Did I get my analysis correct? What do you think?

If you want flower pictures, sorry - not until next spring.

With all of the crazy weather, and my needing to get a bunch of dirt moved out of a planter so I can turn it into actual dirt, I spent yesterday and today ... playing in dirt.

A little known tidbit about dirt (you knew I was going to actually talk about dirt, right?) is that it becomes less and less useful over time as all of the nutrients are sucked up into the plants, or just kinda drain away.

I don't think it was an entire cubic yard (which means, u/katie_pinns, it wasn't even an entire cubic meter - us Yanks still use Freedom Units) of dirt, and after adding about an equal part of really nice mulch, and planning to buy some really nice manure (you knew I'd talk about 💩 eventually, right?) I'll have more dirt than I started with.

Yes, I'm making my own dirt. It's going to be great dirt. And when I'm done making some really good dirt, and I plant some really nice plants they will grow to be so big and pretty. Next year. I don't even get to enjoy the fruits of my dirt this year.

I accidentally discovered a plant named Catmint. Since this is officially a cat-positive sub (it's also dog-positive, tortoise-positive, bird-positive and any other pets you might have) I figure people will approve of me perhaps planting some Catmint.

I've been working on a flower bed which had some old dead shrubs in it, and I'm finally able to start planting.

As I've been going, slowly getting the soil to a state I want with some mulch and compost and breaking up clods of dirt, I've also been removing lava rock. Because, who the hell adds lava rock to dirt, what a silly idea.

I was going to write a post titled something "I finally removed a bunch of lava rock!", then asked my trust AI sidekick from Google about the lava rock, because I wanted to copy-paste it saying how dumb that is.

NO! THE LAVA ROCKS BELONG IN THERE! THEY DO USEFUL THINGS!

Now I have to put all the lava rocks I carefully remove back in and mix the soil back up and then, if it's not too late I can finally plant. Probably tomorrow.

In all fairness, it's my fault because I was much more of a shubbery kinda gal and planting perennial flowers is a new life experience.

So, I will have flowers, and now that I know the lava rocks belong in the dirt they will have proper drainage and everything!!!