veronicafoaleessentials
Veronica Foale Essentials
Tasmanian. Feminist. Gardener. Lapsed writer, mourning my lack of spoons. Disabled (EDS).
Mostly I make a lot of soap. http://veronicafoaleessentials.com.au/ to shop.
2057 posts
Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.
Last Seen Blogs
rainyempathflowerdean
Sem título
bulgogisland
bulgogi island
tecefoser
Untitled
nenebewet
Untitled
shawarmafan27
THE ONE PIECE IS REAL
Text
im continue to impress myself with my helpfuleness & humilité
1K notes
·
View notes
Text
It has been raining today so Jens is wearing his Round-Frog-Helmet with Rain-Visor!
146 notes
·
View notes
Text
Saw a photo of a pigmy seahorse for the first time and it looks like the personification of illness
43K notes
·
View notes
Text
there’s been a really bizarre trend in the past couple years of TERFS/radfems getting pissed off about biology posts. posts about the bilateral gyandromorph cardinal (one half male, one half female), posts about older hens beginning to crow and act like roosters, posts about animals being animals. and it’s hilarious because they interpret these posts as some kind of agenda. no! these are animals not choosing any gender identity or sexuality but being born into bodies they have no control over. weird how that happens in nature huh
91K notes
·
View notes
Text
Here’s a story about changelings:
Mary was a beautiful baby, sweet and affectionate, but by the time she’s three she’s turned difficult and strange, with fey moods and a stubborn mouth that screams and bites but never says mama. But her mother’s well-used to hard work with little thanks, and when the village gossips wag their tongues she just shrugs, and pulls her difficult child away from their precious, perfect blossoms, before the bites draw blood. Mary’s mother doesn’t drown her in a bucket of saltwater, and she doesn’t take up the silver knife the wife of the village priest leaves out for her one Sunday brunch.
She gives her daughter yarn, instead, and instead of a rowan stake through her inhuman heart she gives her a child’s first loom, oak and ash. She lets her vicious, uncooperative fairy daughter entertain herself with games of her own devising, in as much peace and comfort as either of them can manage.
Mary grows up strangely, as a strange child would, learning everything in all the wrong order, and biting a great deal more than she should. But she also learns to weave, and takes to it with a grand passion. Soon enough she knows more than her mother–which isn’t all that much–and is striking out into unknown territory, turning out odd new knots and weaves, patterns as complex as spiderwebs and spellrings.
“Aren’t you clever,” her mother says, of her work, and leaves her to her wool and flax and whatnot. Mary’s not biting anymore, and she smiles more than she frowns, and that’s about as much, her mother figures, as anyone should hope for from their child.
Mary still cries sometimes, when the other girls reject her for her strange graces, her odd slow way of talking, her restless reaching fluttering hands that have learned to spin but never to settle. The other girls call her freak, witchblood, hobgoblin.
“I don’t remember girls being quite so stupid when I was that age,” her mother says, brushing Mary’s hair smooth and steady like they’ve both learned to enjoy, smooth as a skein of silk. “Time was, you knew not to insult anyone you might need to flatter later. ‘Specially when you don’t know if they’re going to grow wings or horns or whatnot. Serve ‘em all right if you ever figure out curses.”
“I want to go back,” Mary says. “I want to go home, to where I came from, where there’s people like me. If I’m a fairy’s child I should be in fairyland, and no one would call me a freak.”
“Aye, well, I’d miss you though,” her mother says. “And I expect there’s stupid folk everywhere, even in fairyland. Cruel folk, too. You just have to make the best of things where you are, being my child instead.”
Mary learns to read well enough, in between the weaving, especially when her mother tracks down the traveling booktraders and comes home with slim, precious manuals on dyes and stains and mordants, on pigments and patterns, diagrams too arcane for her own eyes but which make her daughter’s eyes shine.
“We need an herb garden,” her daughter says, hands busy, flipping from page to page, pulling on her hair, twisting in her skirt, itching for a project. “Yarrow, and madder, and woad and weld…”
“Well, start digging,” her mother says. “Won’t do you a harm to get out of the house now’n then.”
Mary doesn’t like dirt but she’s learned determination well enough from her mother. She digs and digs, and plants what she’s given, and the first year doesn’t turn out so well but the second’s better, and by the third a cauldron’s always simmering something over the fire, and Mary’s taking in orders from girls five years older or more, turning out vivid bolts and spools and skeins of red and gold and blue, restless fingers dancing like they’ve summoned down the rainbow. Her mother figures she probably has.
“Just as well you never got the hang of curses,” she says, admiring her bright new skirts. “I like this sort of trick a lot better.”
Mary smiles, rocking back and forth on her heels, fingers already fluttering to find the next project.
She finally grows up tall and fair, if a bit stooped and squinty, and time and age seem to calm her unhappy mouth about as well as it does for human children. Word gets around she never lies or breaks a bargain, and if the first seems odd for a fairy’s child then the second one seems fit enough. The undyed stacks of taken orders grow taller, the dyed lots of filled orders grow brighter, the loom in the corner for Mary’s own creations grows stranger and more complex. Mary’s hands callus just like her mother’s, become as strong and tough and smooth as the oak and ash of her needles and frames, though they never fall still.
“Do you ever wonder what your real daughter would be like?” the priest’s wife asks, once.
Mary’s mother snorts. “She wouldn’t be worth a damn at weaving,” she says. “Lord knows I never was. No, I’ll keep what I’ve been given and thank the givers kindly. It was a fair enough trade for me. Good day, ma’am.”
Mary brings her mother sweet chamomile tea, that night, and a warm shawl in all the colors of a garden, and a hairbrush. In the morning, the priest’s son comes round, with payment for his mother’s pretty new dress and a shy smile just for Mary. He thinks her hair is nice, and her hands are even nicer, vibrant in their strength and skill and endless motion.
They all live happily ever after.
*
Here’s another story:
Keep reading
59K notes
·
View notes
Text
This is your daily reminder to not be ashamed of making your life easy for yourself.
Cut your food into small pieces, make the font size 30 on your e book, use straws to drink, get a pen that’s comfortable to hold, take more naps, walk slowly, eat another cookie, buy velcro shoes, re-watch the part you couldn’t understand the first time, write things on your hands so you don’t forget it… whatever you want and/or need
Don’t let anyone tell you how you should be doing things. We don’t need to prove each other anything
208K notes
·
View notes
Text
its really really fucked up that people in the global north think? assume? are told? that the ozone hole closed & went away forever & isnt a problem anymore
the ozone hole closes and opens every year and at no point has it stopped. 2020 was one of the worst years on record for both size and length of opening. there has been a trend downwards over the last decade, but the ozone hole absolutely didnt stop being a problem. aotearoa and australia have the world's worst rates of skin cancer. (australia's number is higher overall, but aotearoa is higher per capita.)
i dont really have any kind of moral to this post just please be aware that the ozone hole is very much still a problem and not something you can put in the 'solved' basket. it still massively affects the lives of people in the far south and the idea that it's permanently closed is false.
(please do not ask me any followup questions i am not some kind of scientician im just a guy who got sunburned through jeans one time on a long car trip)
14K notes
·
View notes
Text
weirdest side effect of the pandemic is how many people i know who get sick and say 'but my covid tests are negative so i should be fine' like you know other illnesses. exist. right.
139K notes
·
View notes
Text
Voigt is having a Treatie for Dinner!
Gumby has chosen a Delicious Feetie!
163 notes
·
View notes
Text
shipment officers, gently nudging Ever Given with their 8 tugboats: Ever Given move out of the way please so you don’t block the entire global trade
Ever Given, her lamplights enormous: you SHOVE ever given? you shove her hull like the big boulder? oh! oh! no commerce for human! no commerce for human for One Thousand Years!!!
82K notes
·
View notes