Heh, I don't mind getting sidetracked by roses, I LOVE roses! Roses are, unfortunately, kind of divas in the plant world, though. And SO terribly prone to pest infestations that are nigh on impossible to get rid of! My rose (the mini that was not mini) went to my in-laws when I moved, and it's... three, four years old? But despite all our combined efforts, it suffers from spider mites every single year, which I can only guess had been in the soil from the original pot. And we have tried basically everything; castille and oil mixtures to suffocate the bugs, diatomaceous earth dusted on the leaves and soil to dehydrate them, ground pepper to make an intolerably "spicy" environment. Usually moving outdoors for warm weather gets the "good" bugs in to control the unwanted pests, but the mites have been especially bad so far this year and we're not sure if it's going to make it through the summer. My mom is the big rose gardener of the family, though, she used to have half a dozen bushes, including a Lincoln rose that would grow to 6+ feet tall if not trimmed down every summer. She had some sort of sorcery with roses, because she could buy scraggliest looking little roses in spring and turn them into something hale and hearty bearing full blooms by summer.

I'm very math-oriented, so baking is my true love, but I can't cook worth anything, there's too much "inexactness" to it (inexacts make me edgy, it's impossible to know if I've ruined something when measurements are stupid amounts like "dash" or "pinch" or whatever; like, whose hand is measuring that pinch, my tiny hands grab a much smaller "pinch" than my beau's moose mitts). My beau is the exact opposite, cooks for a living, but anything that nudges up on the mad science of true baking is something to be feared. Says it's because you can mostly "bs" your way through normal cooking, but baking requires exact ingredient ratios. Won't even touch soda bread or potato candy, and soda bread is so simple, the only way I've managed to screw it up is taking too long to get it into the oven, while potato candy doesn't even involve an oven, barely involves measuring beyond "half cup mashed potatoes, stick of butter, enough powdered sugar to form a stiff dough." Most of my baking is gluten free and vegan, though, so sometimes cooking times and wet to dry ingredient ratios are just suggestions, and "wizardry" (read: keep trying until it looks and tastes right) is regularly involved. Quick breads like muffins and scones are super forgiving, though, and allow a lot of room for error and experimentation without too much risk of ending up with something inedible. I dunno, baking is WAY more satisfying to me, and is a really good outlet for stress relief, but anything outside the baking umbrella of cooking CAUSES stress for me and I hate it, it's really weird!

Yep, a lot of the "tame" varieties of rose are temperamental little buggers, so definitely not just you! Wild roses tend to fair better as far as hardiness and pest resilience go, but they can go, well, wild if they're not kept in check and trimmed back or given a trellis or fence or something to climb. Actual mini roses or climbing roses tolerate shade fairly well in my experience, but the tubed roses are generally full rose bushes and I can remember my mom being very particular about where in the yard those were planted so they could get sun all day. Ooh, azaleas! We haven't had those in FOREVER, we used to have them planted around the shadier corners outside our old house, they're so pretty in late spring, early summer. As far as easy, breezy plants to care for go, I think my top picks would be marigold and dusty miller. Marigolds will come up in almost any conditions, the only thing they're picky about is temperature, they tend to wait for summer heat before they start blooming, but once they're up, they'll stick around through fall, rain or shine, and you'll always get back more seeds from them if you leave the last blooms to dry. The downside of them is that because they're not picky about grow conditions and put out so many seeds at the end of the season, they grow like literal weeds and you'll probably end up with marigolds where you didn't plant marigolds. Dusty millers aren't much for color, but they're probably the lowest maintenance plant I've ever seen, they'll even grow in red clay, and they're a nice space filler, my mom likes to plant them between other flowers, break up the riot of colors a bit. I thought the family green thumb had skipped me for years, so "easy" plants were all I dared to try for the longest time unless I had my mom helping me. That all changed after my successful foray into herb gardening, though. XD

I could use eggs if I wanted to now, but I've gotten so used to replacing, and usually whenever I DID buy eggs for baking, I'd use, like, a half dozen at best and the rest would end up going bad, seemed like an unnecessary waste of money. I honestly don't bother looking for actual vegan or gluten free recipes (though I DO have a book of vegan and gluten free baked goods, and I love it dearly), I have pretty good results swapping out one to one wheat for non-wheat, and dairy for non-dairy, so I just find whatever normal recipe and do ingredient switcheroos. Shortbread or lace cookies, if you sub in a vegan plant-based butter, are pretty cost-efficient, even when gluten-free. The recipe I use is just butter, sugar, flour, a little bit of salt, and whatever spices you want to use for flavoring. Though I've only had shortbread turn out as proper shortbread when using garbanzo/chickpea flour, every other flour I've tried (gluten-free all purposes blends, buckwheat, rice) spreads and turns into a lace cookie regardless of the oven temp and other ingredients. Maybe starting from frozen dough rather than just chilled dough would do the trick, though, I've not tried that yet (because slicing a frozen log of shortbread dough is a pain). At any rate, they taste great either way, and I've never had any texture issues with them, it's pretty hard to tell them apart from normal shortbread. Eggs ARE the most challenging thing to sub out for vegan baking, especially when you add in the extra challenge of gluten-free. It requires a certain amount of knowledge in the science behind what the eggs do in a given recipe to judge the best substitute to use. Like in cakes where your eggs are both a binding agent and a leavener, you need specific chemical reactions to happen for it to turn out right, so commercial vegan egg replacement powders are about the only way to go. But muffins, scones, and non-yeast breads, your eggs are basically just there for moisture, and applesauce is the best replacement to keep gluten-free items from getting dry and crumbly, but a flax egg or a couple extra tablespoons of oil and enough extra water or non-dairy plant-based milk substitute to get your batter to the usual consistency work, too. Meringues and anything that requires stiffly beaten egg whites gets more complicated, though. For simple meringue, the liquid drained from a can of garbanzo beans is supposed to be a pretty spot-on substitute. For something like angel food cake, I think coconut oil is the usual go-to, but coconut and I don't get on well, so it's a no-go for me. I might be able to make some magic happen with various nut creams and some leavening, but it'd be down to trial and error in the end to figure it out for sure. It's kind of a lot, but to actually buy ready made gluten-free OR vegan goods, let alone both, is so expensive. Plus I have a lot of weird little quirks that make finding suitable foods hard, in the end it's just more efficient all around even if I have to put in extra work to get something to turn out right, and I like to bake anyway, so win-win. XD

The great kitchen divide: oven or stovetop. It really does always seem to be one or the other for people who like doing some sort of food preparation. I think my beau's parents are the only people I've met that LIKE baking and cooking both, but they each have differing preferences of what they enjoy making between the two categories. I wonder if it's like one of those left-brain, right-brain things, where people of certain persuasions tend toward baking, and others toward cooking... I really wish there was a study about this out there somewhere, I want answers to this so badly. XD I haven't gone much into yeasted breads, either; it requires extra steps for gluten-free bread to not be absolute garbage when it's a risen loaf, and I just can't be troubled with it when muffin bread is a thing. (I love my mini loaf pan, it sees a lot of use, especially around holidays, because what better gift for someone you're not sure what they'll want or can use than tasty homemade baked goods? Everyone has to eat, after all!) I tried a chocolate banana bread a while back, it didn't turn out terrible, but it refused to bake all the way through and the texture was weird. I couldn't eat it in the end, but my beau thought it was okay. Part of my problem was forgetting to get my bananas out to thaw beforehand, so my batter was WAY too cold when it went into the oven, but even before baking, the batter seemed too wet. I ended up ditching the recipe and haven't gotten around to digging up a suitable replacement to try again. I love rhubarb in baked goods, it's so good, I've never paired it with orange, though; might have to try it sometime, orange bread is a favorite of the beau. I wait until the last minute to preheat my oven, too, so I usually have a few minutes sitting around with my wet and dry ingredients separately mixed waiting for the oven to be ready. And then sometimes I have to rush to oil my pans because I forgot to do it before mixing the batter... The kitchen tends to look like a war zone while I'm baking. And no worries, I won't knock cake mix cookies, they're so quick and easy, perfect for when you need a lot of cookies in not a lot of time, and they always turn out so moist and soft. Plus then you don't have to measure out flour and (if you're like me) end up with it all over the place, dusting surfaces you'd swear you never even looked at while handling the flour, let alone touched.

In crafting news, I went to a bargain store recently and had to exercise a great deal of self control, they had a whole aisle of discount yarn, and boy did I want to bring it home with me. In the end I managed to resist its siren call, but then I found a box full of steel hooks, and at fifty cents each, well, of course I had to bring a couple home with me. One ended up being a repeat since I can never remember which steel sizes I have, but the other I should be able to use as a stand-in for the aluminum hook I've been meaning to replace for ages! It should be able to put with my abuse far better, too, so I consider it well worth the investment.

I'm a little picky with my plant-based butters; avocado and olive oil blends are my top picks because they have the best flavor and texture to me. I'm glad the plant-based stuff has gotten really popular over the last few years, used to be hard to find ones I actually wanted to use. Oof, yeah, almond flour isn't cheap, that would be a pricey recipe, for sure. I try to buy my flours and nuts and seeds in bulk, sometimes if I find a particularly good deal on nuts or seeds, I'll break out the food processor and make the flour myself. I'm willing to put in the extra ten minutes or so of effort to save a little money. XD (It's the only way I get pumpkin seed butter, actually. To get it in a jar, already processed, is so insanely expensive, but the same weight of pumpkin seeds costs half as much, less sometimes.) I should probably start putting "GREASE PAN" in big, bold letters at the top of recipes, too. Make it harder to ignore, so it's harder to forget. I'd probably still be rushing to do it right as I'm about to mix or pour batter half the time, though. Usually I buy the little individual applesauce cups when I need some for baking, unless I'm planning on doing up a LOT of bread or muffins, because I have the same problem with it going bad before I use it all if I get the jarred stuff. I REFUSE to buy the tinned applesauce after the batch that came out tasting like gnawing on the can it came in, even made my muffins taste weird. Might try making my own this autumn if one of our acquaintances ends up with a bunch of extra apples from their trees again this year. Used last year's batch for a full sheet pan of apple crumble, there's nothing quite like fresh, local apples for that, it was divine. I do a little bit of everything; cookies, cakes, muffins, pie. But muffins/muffin bread are kind of my specialty. I can also make a mean batch of brownies, but my preferred recipe takes so much cocoa that I don't make them very often, they turn out just cake side of fudge and will crush a chocolate craving in a heartbeat. Nothing wrong with cookies being your thing, though! There are so many cookie varieties out there, and the flavor possibilities are practically endless. And crack cookies sound fun, honestly. XD One of my cousins has a cake mix cookie recipe she calls "crackle cookies," they're rolled in powdered sugar and "crackle" when they expand in baking. They're dangerously delicious, it's easy to eat way too many in one sitting.

I was actually making progress on my eye blanket for a bit, but then I got distracted by games and books and Subeta holidays and origami... Thankfully I don't have a timeline for it, though I'm hoping to finish it by the winter so I can give it as a gift for Christmas. It's probably going to be on the small side unless I add extra motifs onto it. I'd have SWORN I had the gauge right, the circular portion literally measured out the right size, but then the outer diamond-ish shaped round turned out slightly small somehow, sigh... Oh well, I'll be the only one that knows the size it was SUPPOSED to be.

Haha, yes, I'm the person I can't trust, too, but I still always tell myself I'll fit it in while I have to wait for one thing or other. "Yes, I will definitely remember to do this after I've gathered up all the ingredients and have the wet and dry mixed separately and am inevitably waiting for the oven to preheat before putting everything into one bowl." No, no I will not.

Unsweetened applesauce is my preference, actually. Especially since I like it best with cinnamon, and cinnamon tends to add enough sweetness all on its own. Though, tart apples are my favorite to eat plain and I'm not big on the sweeter varieties like red or yellow delicious, I'd rather have a granny smith, so maybe it's just a personal taste thing.

I need to get better about setting aside time for my blanket, too, I mostly just grab it when I have nothing else to hold my attention, or while I'm listening to podcasts. I can't just sit and listen to something, I have to have something to do while I listen, so I always have some craft in the works. Haven't been listening to anything much lately, though, so I haven't been picking up the blanket. Should probably start telling myself to just do one of the motifs a day or something, the blanket would still take weeks, but it'd be better than zero progress, right? (If I set myself an actual timeline, I'd probably be better about making time for it, but since I just have a nebulous "eventually" timeline, my brain feels no need to give it priority. I'm sure I'll regret this when December rolls around and I feel obligated to finish it in time for gifting.)

It's so sad that native flowers are so hard to find. I don't know anywhere around here other than local farmers markets to even start trying to find native plants, aside from just snagging wildflowers from the roadside or something. Which was a valid way of acquiring flowers back in my hometown, you could find all sorts of daisies and chicory and wild mint, sometimes lilies in the right season, but it's less feasible where I am now. Most of the plants growing out and about here are planted and cared for by actual people (we have a lot of little beds for an "adopt a garden" program around town, and most of the spaces that aren't part of that are tended by businesses nearby) and I doubt they would look kindly on my stealing their plants. No bugs really is a big plus for indoor gardening. Now if I could just convince my cats to stop being pests. XD I do find that the damp soil tends to attracts gnats, though. I even sprang for a soil that says it doesn't attract bugs, but I still have little gnats hanging out around my pots. They don't seem to be doing any harm, but they're still annoying. I'll put up with it because I love my little indoor garden, though. Gives me color in the winter, and plants to enjoy without allergies when pollen season rolls around and the outdoors is miserable for me.

Hey, you're doing better than me! I have my craft bag sitting in my bedroom, but I haven't even touched it. It stares at me judgingly every day, and I still procrastinate. I should get a paper crown or something, I'm procrastination royalty when I don't have hard deadline. XD

Hah, yeah, probably best to leave her in the dark on that, then. I only know about it because I'm a weirdo that likes to research random things, I've never known anyone with a black walnut tree to actually put in the work to shell the nuts to use.

Yes, a thousand times yes! Native plants already have the tools they need to thrive in their environment, and tend to be hardier against pest infestations. They're also more viable as forage for pollinators, and anything that is good for bees is a plus in my book. In all the years I lived where kudzu was prevalent, I don't remember ever seeing it flower, though I know it logically must have because we had people that would make kudzu jelly, and you need it to flower to do that. I've always just thought of it as a menace, but it DOES have uses, including being turned into fabric. Still not worth growing outside its native environment, in my opinion. I suppose bamboo is much the same in that regard, has uses, but is too much of a nuisance except in its natural habitat to bother with it.

I'm not entirely sure how it works, but I think if there's an empty bed you just... ask the city if you can care for it? I meant to attend the city "dig day" to find out more, but I missed it. All of the beds I've seen around town have little signs in them that say who has adopted and cares for them, though, and one of the ones in front of my building is tended by a lady who lives nearby, I see her out weeding, watering, fertilizing, etc. on the regular. It's a really smart way to get people out and active in caring for the neighborhood, and gives people who might otherwise not have a way to grow due to living conditions a little space for planting, I wish every town did something like this.

Cats CAN be trained, but they only perform when they want to do so, in my experience. XD Like my boys have learned how to "ask" for things, and understand what certain motions mean, but whether they follow through or not is at their own whim. I've read some breeds are more "trainable" than others, though. Kind of like dogs, labs are always eager to please, but basset hounds are really stubborn. (Even basset show dogs sometimes refuse to follow commands, and I find that hilarious.) Yeah, I always have a hard time with gnats for some reason. They can be nowhere in evidence when I plant, but suddenly months later they'll be everywhere and I don't know where they come from. I have a home solution for bugs that seems to work pretty well, though. I've been spraying my plants with it lately, hopefully that'll do the trick. Meanwhile, I'm convinced my old pots that I reused for planting are cursed. My dill has died again, and something sheared off my marigold sprout at the base. At this point I think I'm just going to have to talk my beau into letting me buy more pots to replace these old ones. It's not like these are great pots anyway, they don't have any way to drain like all of my new ones, which... might be part of the problem? It's just weird because I had plants in these pots before that did quite well.

Woo, progress! Ooh, that'll be nice, maybe some social craft time is in order? At any rate, I've always found it really nice to have someone physically present to bounce craft ideas off of. These days my beau has to take that role when I'm not putting my ideas out there on the internet, listening to my random ideas and pretending he has any idea what I'm talking about. XD Maybe one day he'll actually let me teach him to crochet or sew or something. So far the only lesson he's explicitly agreed to has been piano and sight reading music, though.

Hope you have fun on your visit! I'll patiently await your return, whenever that happens to be. c: Maybe by then I'll have actually stopped procrastinating and made some progress on my own blanket.