SOMEONE INFORM ME EXACTLY HOW I MISSED THAT THE BADASS KEW PLANT GOD PUBLISHED A BOOK ABOUT HIS BADASS PLANT ADVENTURES???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
i ordered it bc i have no self control
update: this shipped out today but it’ll take 8-12 days to get here and im dying. carlos magdalena why must u do this to me
okay so i got this book today and spent like 6 hours reading it and im almost done but i really wanna talk about this plant nerd and his many endangered plonts that he loves and protects with all his heart and soul
carlos magdalena, kew botanical horticulturalist, is honestly an unproblematic fave
also btw heres some pics of carlos with the smallest water lily in the world, which he saved from extinction. he talks in the book about how he learned later on that at the time he finally figured out how to propagate this species in cultivation, rats had broken in and killed the only other specimens in the world at the german conservatory they were being kept at, and the habitat where the 1 or 2 wild plants had been living had been destroyed for a concrete company. he had been working with the last seeds in literal existence without knowing it (he had assumed they were still alive) and the other scientists and botanical horticulturalists in germany had been living in grief over having lost this plant to apparent extinction. he originally had 200 seeds recruited for trying to cultivate the species, and by the time he realized how to do cultivate it, he had been working with the last 5 seeds in the world. he didn’t know at the time. (x)
holy hell.
he definitely deserves the nickname plant messiah for that.
Sometimes, you just need someone else to pick you up. It’s not because you’re lazy or you’re being needy. You just need to be reminded that someone cares to help you when you’re down and even if that person was to never help you up again, you can continue, knowing that there is still goodness in this world. Sometimes, that is all that matters and all that you need.
I used to think that way too, before I got sick. I used to think that if I was just stubborn enough – and I’m really stubborn – then “where there’s a will there’s a way” and somehow I could do whatever I set my mind to.
But it’s simply a fact of reality that this isn’t true. It’s not being “negative” to acknowledge reality, to acknowledge that having a disability limits my abilities. That’s literally what it means. A Deaf person can’t hear, a blind person can’t see, a paralyzed person can’t walk, an autistic person can’t be allistic, and I can’t live the life of a healthy person. That’s not me giving up, that’s me acknowledging reality.
My illness prevents me from doing many of the things I want to do. I don’t “let” it stop me, it just stops me. If I tried to “find a way” to live like a healthy person, I would get so sick that I would collapse. Positive thoughts don’t make my pain and fatigue go away, it doesn’t allow me to think clearly or have the strength to leave the house more often.
I know this is hard to accept, but there is nothing I can do to change this.
I do what I can to improve my health, I test my boundaries to see if I can do more than I think I can do, and I keep trying every single day. But a strong will can’t change a weak body. Wishing and wanting and trying can’t stop the bacteria that are ravaging and polluting my body, it can’t stop my immune system from attacking my organs, it can’t solve the mystery illnesses of fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome. If the disease kills me, it won’t be because I didn’t try hard enough.
Believe me, if wanting to be healthy made you healthy, I’d be the healthiest fucking person alive. If wanting to be abled made you abled, we would be abled.
But a good attitude simply can’t fix a broken meat suit, and you healthy and abled people need to accept that too.
You think you’re helping by telling me I can accomplish whatever I set my mind to, but you need to stop mindlessly pushing that ableist concept and realize that I don’t HAVE to be able to do whatever I set my mind to in order to be a worthwhile person. I don’t HAVE to “find a way” to be good enough. I AM good enough even though I can’t do the same things as healthy, abled people.
Don’t invalidate people’s struggles because you’ve been through worse. If someone is tired after working for 5 hours and you worked for 7, it doesn’t mean that they’re not allowed to be tired. It doesn’t mean they can’t feel what they’re feeling just because you’ve had it worse.
don’t play pain olympics. don’t be that person
Gonna reblog this again for the people in the back.
People use this all the time and then say “be positive! It could be worse!” I’m positive that my day was hard and I’m positive that you’re making it hard to be patient when you don’t let me be in pain/upset/angry.
So I illustrated and laid out the cover of @reddragdiva’s bitcoin book that came out today. If you’re interested in reading about the myriad problems with cryptocurrencies and a general warning about tech journalism you can buy the book here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073CPP581
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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