Steph 🇨🇦 🇺🇸

I've had a few folks ask about the vintage photo I use as my profile banner. This picture captures a uniquely New Orleans moment in Feminist history - the Storming of the Sazerac.

More pics & #FashionHistory #NewOrleansHistory #FeministHistory #VintageFashion #VintageCocktails in 🧵

This is Nadine Dennis and her cat, Puzzums. The #Frockingfabulous Puzzums became a movie star in the 20s and 30s, pulling down $250 a week working with the likes of Carole Lombard, Maurice Chevalier and Cecil B DeMille!

Essay | Why Vaccines Work Best When We’re Young Parents concerned about vaccinating their babies deserve to know why doctors recommend it.

www.wsj.com/health/why-v...

A delicate pink rose, opened about 2/3 of the way. Raindrops rest on its petals. Beside the bloom are 3 buds, not yet opened. In the background, many more blooms in various stages, from the same bush. This one here is the most perfect.

A cluster of scarlet roses. The two flowers up front are fully opened, and startlingly vivid. Underneath, smaller buds.

Enjoying the last hurrah from our roses, this mild and rainy #RoseWednesday. 🌱

With autumn knocking at the door, wanted to update that this season, I won the battle. The trap showed two more waves of moths throughout the summer. We sprayed before any significant damage appeared, and the boxwood is still looking happy and healthy.

You can dilute down to 20% if you want to stretch the product further, but this strength is fine.

Vinegar works by drying out the leaves that it has direct contact with, but it doesn’t attack the roots. So some weeds will grow back. Expect to reapply periodically.

Allow me to address the elephant in the room: If Charlie Kirk wasn’t a right-wing extremist, right-wing extremist groups wouldn’t be marching to honor him.

That’s an interesting thought! I’m going to have to ask around.

Aah! That makes sense. Thank you!

The original plants came from our CSA, so I don’t know what seeds they used. But I think that’s mystery solved. 😊

An assortment of tomatillos, recently picked. Some are large and green, others are smaller and purple. Allegedly, they should all be the same variety.

I’m growing a bunch of tomatillo plants, from seeds saved from last year’s crop.

Last year’s plants all yielded the same fruit: small and pale green.

This year’s crop is…varied. Some are large. Some are purple. The internet says tomatillo breed true, but do they truly? confused.gif

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::gasp!:: This looks like a painting! Gorgeous photo!

A bumble rolls around on a late-season flower. The flower is bright yellow, and has lost most of its outer petals. The bee is very fuzzy.

A monarch butterfly feasting on purple flowers.

A different angle of a different monarch butterfly, feasting on other purple flowers.

A different angle of TWO monarch butterflis, feasting purple flowers. One butterfly is in focus.

These are not dahlias.

A close up a dahlia. Specifically, a single dahlia. A single row of petals surrounds a central disc. This looks like a folk art drawing of flowers, not real flowers. The petals are perfectly rounded, pale pink (almost white), outlined in a darker pink, and with a touch of bright red at the base. Cheery, pretty, improbable.

A close up a dahlia. Possibly an orchette dahlia. Similar to the orchid dahlia, but spikier. A deep burgundy starburst, with a dark yellow centre.

A few more flowers that are also dahlias!

A close up of a dahlia. I think this is a waterlily dahlia. A hemisphere of rounded petals spiral, becoming smaller and tighter towards the center. Each petal starts yellow in it's center, turning pink towards the edges. It is the colour of a sunset.

A close up a dahlia. Specifically, I think it may be an orchid dahlia.It features a single row long, pale pink petals, spaced around a central disc. The petals are curled, so that they look like narrow and long. The overall effects is that of starburst. Overlapping these outer petals is a second row of much shorter petals.

A close up a dahlia. Possibly a collarette dahlia? It faces forward, with 7 curled pink petals surrounding a central yellow disk. The petals are each different sizes, and in different stages of unfurling.This flower looks as though she were rushed out of the house before she had finished getting ready.

Happened upon the dahlia show at Burlington's Royal Botanical Gardens.

Where we learned that all flowers are dahlias.

🌱 📷 #bloomscrolling

Trying on the WIP. The yoke and body of a knit sweater are completed, in a medium grey wool. The yoke features a ring of halibut, stitched in cream. The sweater also features a very cozy ribbed turtleneck. Sleeves have not been started yet, so the sweater fits like a t-shirt. The sweater fits a bit large in the shoulders. That's okay -- technically it is not for me, though I do plan to steal it from time to time.

A completed sweater, waiting to be blocked. The sweater is medium grey, with a ribbed turtleneck. It features a yoke design of cream coloured halibut. Seven fish lay in a row, dangled vertically, tails up, with diamond patterns filling the space between each fish. Stylistically, they look like wood cut prints. Along the inside of each sleeve are a series of coloured stitch markers. The markers count out the rows in 5s and 10s. Some of the markers also denote decreases. Useful for ensuring the second sleeve matches the first! The sweater is laid out on a distressed pine floor. Very rustic.

Unblocked, but off the needles, just in time for #showmeyourknits sweater week! Caitlin Hunter's Halibut sweater, in Lion Brand's Fishermen's Wool.

This is my first yoke sweater, and I'm already scoping out a second. Much fun. Do recommend.

🧶 #knitting #sweater

Why should I write better when a machine can do it for me? Because actually no one can do it for you, because your voice is unique among all the people on earth. Siri never petted a horse's neck. Alexa has never been ghosted by the captain of the football team. But you have lived, your heart is beating, you have suffered, and you have something important to say. It's a human's job, to use words, and whatever job you give to a machine, that part of your brain goes dark. Maybe it's worth it when it comes to remembering phone numbers and directions, but when that part of your brain that uses words goes dark, that's a vast area that's very close to your soul. Don't let some internet platform convince you that what you have to say and create isn't worthwhile. Words are the echo of your soul. Honing that echo matters.

this iconic advertising copywriter named Kathy Hepinstall Parks died over the weekend and I wanted to share something from her website I thought Bluesky would like

Mr Brachiosaurus has been eyeing those nasturtiums for days. So I let him out to nibble on some.🤓

I do treasure this letter Tom Lehrer, who just died 60 years after he vanished from the stage, sent me when I tried to write about him www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/tom...

Denmark to tackle deepfakes by giving people copyright to their own features Amendment to law will strengthen protection against digital imitations of people’s identities, government says

“In the bill we agree and are sending an unequivocal message that everybody has the right to their own body, their own voice and their own facial features, which is apparently not how the current law is protecting people against generative AI.”

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

History of US-Iran relations: From the 1953 regime change to Trump strikes Iran remains the US’s adversary in the Middle East since the 1979 Islamic revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

esp if you are younger than me and weren't around for the first orchestration of this stuff, you should go over this timeline. it won't take but a minute and it's clear & not an op-ed: it's just an explainer. www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/6/...

That colour is stunning 😍

The first sign of trouble. A top-down view of a very distressed boxwood shrub. Close to 50% of the leaves are brown and dead. Is it blight, or is it a boxtree moth infestation?

It's a boxtree moth infestation. The image zooms in, to see scarred branches, insect webbing, and so many little pellets of caterpillar poop.

3 weeks later, an explosion of bright green new growth. The hedge was sprayed with BTK biological insecticide (which only targets caterpillars; flying insects are not harmed by it). Cautious optimism rules the day. In the background, the blurry pink of a lawn flamingo -- another invasive visitor, albeit a less voracious one.

ALERT! ALERT! The boxtree moth trap has just caught a moth! The boxtree moth has wings that are cream coloured in the centre, with a thick border of dark brown. It clings to the side of a translucent white trap, lured by the pheromones of a female moth. The top of the trap is opaque green. Time to apply more BTK!

Boxtree moth has come to KW. I know its probably a losing battle, but we're currently attempting to manage with pheromone traps (for early detection) and liberal applications of BTK. 🤞🌱

A 'new star' has exploded into the night sky — and you can see it from North America The never-before-seen "nova," dubbed V462 Lupi, recently appeared in the constellation Lupus, after suddenly becoming 4 million times brighter. The shining explosion is visible to the naked eye and ca...

A new star has exploded into a supernova visible from North America. Amateur telescopes can now spot this bright stellar explosion, offering a rare chance to observe a star’s final moments in real time. #Supernova #Astronomy #Stargazing #StellarExplosion
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Ooooh. These look fabulous! I have a guy who needs these! ::runs to etsy::

Bees know what’s good!

They make me ridiculously happy 😊

That's a stunning globe! Ours are just finishing up.

I love to plant allium at the front of the property, along the sidewalk. All the neighbourhood dogs are completely enraptured by it. They have to stop and smell, which gives me plenty of time to come out and say hi. 😂

Nearly forgot #RoseWednesday

A brilliant, neon orange nasturtium blossom, hiding under the plant's leaves. In the background, a blurry little marigold.

And the very first nasturtium!

2 bumble bees hover above a large, purple, clematis flour.

A bumble bee investigating a large, violet coloured clematis flower.

Also, the clematis Diana's Delight is covered in beeeeeeeees. 🐝🐝🐝