Random Reasons Why I Swear 1 -- Eighty Fifth Post

I swear at Watson and Crick a lot. Or at least, I do some yelling and fist-shaking when their names come up. I'm not saying they weren't good at researching, or that they didn't make important contributions to science, or that their conclusions about DNA weren't valid.
I just hate them for being huge douchecanoes who didn't give credit where credit was due. Specifically, they used information obtained from Dr. Rosalind Franklin and only barely credited her in their paper. As a result of their rudeness, she was denied her place in history for a really freaking long time.

 According to her wikipedia page, she's pretty badass. She got a BA from Cambridge before they were even giving them to women and  was recognized as pretty awesome. Watson and Crick had a lot of wrong ideas about DNA which were only set straight by Franklin's data, and they gave her and her grad student one stinking footnote.
It bugs me that it's okay for anyone to do this to anyone and then be lauded for great science for decades. So I freak out whenever people go on and on about Watson and Crick and how they discovered the structure of DNA without mentioning the awesome lady to the left, Rosalind Franklin.

Guerrilla Gardening Tip of the Whenever I Get Around To Posting -- Eighty Fourth Post

Sorry about the lack of posting, but good news! I'll be in university a few years longer, as I've been accepted to a couple of graduate schools' PhD programs. More time for this blog to be relevant to my life!

Anyway, I've become quite taken with the idea of guerrilla gardening lately. Being a broke college senior who rents in a town with lots of green space within walking distance means I can't really do it now, but I have big plans.
Big.
Plans.

So here is a definition of guerrilla gardening, made up by me with input from various sources: it's where you plant stuff without permission, preferably on public grounds, really preferably without anyone knowing it's you. Alternatively, it's planting food instead of a lawn. Actually, it's whatever you want it to be. It can be taking control of your food source (especially if you live in a "food desert"), or just making a vacant lot prettier. It can be composting all your food scraps and then growing plants in that compost or just planting an avocado seed in your room. The whole point of this movement, as I see it, is just doing what you can.

Here is a video of a food-planting guerrilla gardener in south central Los Angeles, California. I'm not planning on living permanently (owning my own place) anywhere for a while, though.
So my preferred form of guerrilla gardening is just planting things where they don't belong. I'd like to point out that other people's yards are off-limits, although it's tempting to toss a seed bomb into a really run-down lawn.
Seed bombs are an easy form of guerrilla gardening. They would be fun if you lived by vacant lots; just toss and wait for rain to wash the seeds and their probably nutritious surrounding material into the ground, where they should grow without much care. It should go without saying that you shouldn't plant invasive species, noxious weeds, or anything like that in public spaces, so please do some research BEFORE you set out to change the world.

Etsy has lots of seed bombs. Photo by PulpArt, all rights are belong to them.

For the more ballsy guerrilla gardener, planting seedlings or bulbs in public spaces under cover of darkness is an option.

For the purposes of this blog, my Tip of the Whenever I Get Around To Posting will mostly consist of general garden tips; it just sounds cooler to call it guerrilla gardening. I'm planning to post about starting seeds indoors and keeping them there, growing food in small spaces, and generally beautifying your living space in affordable ways.
Sneak peak: use yogurt containers with holes poked in the bottom as planters.

I'm pretty excited about this, so hopefully I can keep going with it. For some reason, I've become more dedicated to things since getting into grad school; maybe it's the fact that I'll have to be devoted to a single project and goal for three years, minimum. Anyway, I've started feeling serious about things like feminism and equality and doing things for yourself.
But that's a topic for another post.