Question and tip thread for those looking to get into a new hobby

• Drawing is a good option to put ideas on paper.
• Consider bloom times and evergreen status. From an aesthetic perspective, it is good to have something happening in your garden even in the dead of winter.

Aside, are you in an HOA neighborhood?

Generally for that style of landscaping the best way to start is to break things into subsets and consider the different heights of things. What I tend to do when starting a new landscaping concept in an area is to draw a little overhead of the space and then I aim to place 3 different height levels of plants in to build out the density, so some taller background plants, mid height middle ground, and then lower groundcover or low height plants in your fore ground. I draw these as small circles that get color coded with their blooms and tagged with what months they bloom so that I can start to envision how they will all look together.

For the lush organized chaos end game, when drawing in where plants go take consideration on the spread of the plants so that you don't end up with set lines (ie. a row of lupines with a row of phlox), but instead have there be organic waves of the larger things coming forward and back to draw in interest. And lean into some of the nice shrubs to give your rambling path a point to ramble around where the slight line with break and you will have those magical moments of turning a corner to a part of the garden you couldn't see before.

For my landscaping I tend to break the portions of my space into smaller areas that let me focus narrowing and then I try to work in threes to help keep things focused. For example, I am redoing the landscaping around the very front of my house. I pulled out all the boxwood and dwarf spruce, but left the rhododendron. This year I added California lilac, smooth hydrangea, and NJ tea. Next year I will be adding foam flower, lady fern, and one American wisteria. The area is small and I am working in a limited number of species so it is more manageable. When I move into my next area I will be carrying forward a couple of those species for continuity in design, but will be adding in different things, ex: beyond the gate will have a different colored hydrangea with phlox, PA sedge, daffodils, grape hyacinth, blending into lady fern and NJ tea again.

At the end of the day though unless you plan on spending a ton of money up front for more mature plants, landscaping is a long term project and as you go along your vision will change with what you find interesting, which I think is part of the fun.

I recommend checking out The Middle-Sized Garden on YouTube. The host is a journalist who travels around the world to interview various experts on gardening topics, and she also makes her own videos where she basically distills their knowledge down into generalized tips and discusses how she is using them in her own garden.

She has a lot of videos on how to come up with a landscape design to suit your aesthetic preferences, to meet any practical functions you want your garden to serve, and to work around the quirks of your space and the limitations of your budget/climate/etc.

I found her videos helpful for getting me to think about exactly what I want from my garden — and, importantly, what I also don't want from my garden (and therefore which common/generic design advice I can happily ignore).

PS, I would love to see more gardening content on Tildes. Please do share as your garden evolves and takes shape!

I found this shade mapping site the other day and have found it really useful, the light in my yard changes pretty dramatically with the seasons.

The best thing I’ve seen for layout planning is the book The Know Maintenance Perennial Garden by Roy Diblick. It shows you how to set up a plan with graph paper.

Even if you're a rubbish artist, taking some pictures of the area you want to work on and tracing/drawing over to visualize ideas can help. And look at lots of inspiration. Walk your neighborhood and see what works in your climate. Go to a botanical garden. Stop and pay attention to any bit of landscaping that catches your eye and consider what you like about it and what you would change. Browse around a nursery/garden store and ask the staff any random questions you have.

You have to consider quite a long timeline of experience so it's best to have really clear ideas at the onset especially for a manicured English garden aesthetic. Growth rates, bloom seasons, pruning and maintenance, it's a lot of effort and setting yourself up for success is key.

General tips: you want something happening all year long. Evergreen shrubs ensure there's color and life in the winter. Statuary can spice up slow sections and bring a lot of character. Rigid lines can frame a statement piece while organic curves that invite the eye to wander so consider where you want the focus when planning the shapes.

Specific recommendations are hard without knowing your region and the size/shape/existing layout of the land.

I love that you're interested in native gardening. By leaning into what historically grows in your region you can assume it will do well in the environment, they tend to be more resistant to abnormal weather, and they're beneficial to native wildlife.

That's a nice guitar! As for what it means or how it affects things, it's mostly about how it looks and a little bit bout how it sounds.

With regards to which fingers are on your tab sheets - what tab sheets are you using that is showing you specific fingerings? Can you give me an example? Usually one might see something like this:

|----3----3----3----3--|
|----3----3----3----3--|
|----0----0----2----0--|
|----2----0----0----2--|
|----2----2---------0--|
|----0----3------------|

Those numbers don't imply any fingerings by themselves, but they do represent which frets should be pressed. To pick at just one of the chords above - the first one is an E minor with a 7 added. I typically read from the bottom up, and this chord says "play the E string open, the A string with the 2nd fret held, the D string with the 2nd fret held, the G string (ha) open, the D string with the 3rd fret held, the E string with the 3rd fret held". I automatically do that with my index on the A, middle on D, ring finger on B and pinky on E; that allows me to move my hands nicely through the other chords.

Typically it's up to you to figure out the best fingers to use. As @Lapbunny said, it's often about how you're going to change to the next chord in the progression that determines the best way to arrange your fingers. You can and should play chords in ways that are comfortable for you. You may also find that some chords have alternate voicings that work well enough:

|----1----1----|
|----1----1----|
|----2----2----|
|----3----3----|
|----3---------|
|----1---------|

These two chords are both F chords, and they sound pretty close to the same, but the second one is easier on the hand, generally.

With regards to resources for music without the annoying "download the app" - most of the tabs or chord progressions I get are from Ultimate Guitar and it is perhaps the single worst offender for "download our app", but if you use FF and an adblocker, you can get rid of those. Otherwise, I do not have any good recommendations. The best resource - insofar as it has almost all the songs - is Ultimate Guitar, but almost every resources is an ad-ridden cesspool.

With regards to strumming - that is the art of the rhythm guitar player. Wonderwall is a great example of how your strum pattern can be the basis of the song. It's similar to how you use staccato and legato when phrasing something on the cello; strumming up sounds a particular way, strumming down sounds a particular way, strumming some strings but not other sounds a particular way, strumming while muting the string with your palm sounds a particular way... and you can learn as much of it as you want, or you can do simple patterns, because people will be able to pick up what you're playing either way.

Keep in mind that as you're doing a chord you're also thinking of the next or previous chord and positioning between them. An awkward fingering might be to get to the next one better, but you should just do what's more comfortable if you're able to play it fine and try both until one seems better. (Some tabs are also auto-generated and may not have a good read on that...)

Strumming is partially about comfort, but until you get better it's also kind of about accents? You're going to get a bit of a natural emphasis strumming up or down until you have more control (and even then I imagine), so I think the answer is dependent on the song. If you want to keep consistent emphasis on each note - quarter notes in a rock song or something - I'm guessing the best thing is just downstrums. There's also a bit of nuance about the fact that you hit the bass or treble notes first as you strum down or up that may accent differently. Otherwise I would alternate up and down to try and develop the skill, and once you play faster you'll be able to pick it up a bit better if you're used to it.

I'm talking about this all mainly coming from self-learning it after years on bass guitar myself. When I started guitar I was asking around if it was a bad idea to keep playing fingerstyle, because I figured I should develop my pick more for when style calls for it. I was surprised to find people recommend I keep with the fingerstyle if it kept my interest better. As long as you're willing to develop the skill at some point, I'd do what suits you better right now and work on the technique a little down the line as you explore it. I get wanting to avoid unlearning things or cramping up from bad posture, though...

In the beginning you're just learning basic technique. For technique alone, classical music is just the best way to do it. You're probably not going to be playing fingerstyle in pop, nor complex scales, nor anything else more complicated than melody and arpeggios, but knowing how to do that kind of stuff makes everything else a million times easier. I'd recommend finding a book of exercises or etudes and working through them at whatever pace suits you.

There are a lot of guitar tutorials out there and a large number of them are promising the most with as little effort as possible on your part. All of those are trash. You already play cello and piano (I assume classically for the cello at least) so you probably already have this ingrained in you, but there really aren't any shortcuts for practicing, especially with technique. You just need to do it, and get it right first time.

It's my belief that all paid online music learning services are pointless, especially for instrumental learning. The /r/guitar wiki has a lot of good free resources for learning (/r/classicalguitar also has a lot of resources here). Focus on getting technique right over sounding right; you can sound good with bad technique initially, but it can and will come back to bite you later. And of course the best thing you can get is an instrumental tutor; even if you can't afford regular lessons getting an in-person lesson every few months is a much better way of spending your money than on any online courses or apps.

Additionally, I always recommend that people learn some music theory, but that's mainly because I'm a classical composer and it's kinda my whole thing. But it helps to know what you're playing and understand how it works, rather than just reading notes and knowing where your fingers go without any further understanding. Particularly for polychordal instruments like piano and guitar it can be incredibly useful, especially when you're at a family gathering and your aunt shoves a guitar at you and tells you to play her favourite Elton John song, and while you don't know any Elton John you can kinda hear how that one bit of Rocketman goes in your head and you can approximate it well enough for a group of drunk 50-year olds to be satisfied and call you a genius.

I hope it goes well!

I used to be a roller derby NSO (non-skating official) because I don't actually know how to skate. If you find that playing might be too intense to start off with, there are still plenty of other ways to participate! A lot of players I knew started off as referees to help them get fit, and as a bonus, they learned the rulebook extremely well — which ultimately made them much more effective, strategic players.

Omg please let's hit each other up!! Mid May I am starting flight school for a local derby team where I am, but I'm a far cry from a good skater (which is the whole point of the flight school lol). I personally have been doing dry land workouts for skating, lots of leg work and explosive movements, on top of once a week lessons (for artistic skating mind you). I have a friend who plays derby and he's been giving me a lot of advice and he gave me some gear. Also as a heads up, Rollercon is in July in Nevada -- lots of bouts, lots of skating, classes, and shenanigans.

I'll detail this later. Maybe even have some pics haha.

Just going to pass along advice I got. We used to make bread in caves over fire. (Or in it). There is a lot of advice on making perfect bread out there, but there are also lots of ways to make perfectly fine, imperfect bread and learn from it.

As for the dutch oven I'm not helpful as I have some loaf pans I use . Good luck

Bread is seen as something hugely intimidating, because there's a lot to do, and a lot of variables to change, but really, it's not that bad. You will screw things up, but as long as you used the correct ingredients and it's cooked all the way through, it will taste good. The texture will be the part that changes the most as you make mistakes, but it's still yummy.

The no knead recipe is a good one to start with. If it's too wet (and without pictures, it's impossible to know if your bread was actually too wet, or just wetter than you thought it should be), then it might take a bit longer to cook, or it might be a bit denser than you'd like. Importantly, after baking, should let the loaf sit for at least an hour, but ideally two or three, without cutting it, which is always the worst part of baking bread - it smells so good and you can't eat it yet. If you don't wait, it'll be overly moist inside, and a little gummy. Sometimes I don't wait, but the texture does get much better if you do wait.

As for equipment, I've been using the same enamel dutch oven for about four years now, and I've had no issues. I have heard of people having them flake, but I think that's a manufacturing issue. You don't need a dutch oven for bread, though it does help if you like crusty bread.

The most important piece of equipment you can get is a digital kitchen scale. Stop using cups and teaspoons. The amount of flour in a cup will vary wildly, but 500 grams is always 500 grams. It's also just faster and easier once you get the hang of it. Plus, it lets you use baker percentages in your recipes, which makes it much easier to scale them up and down.

Beyond that, there is so much equipment you can get, but you don't need any of it. My suggestion is to just start simple, and then if you find you can't do something because you're missing a piece of equipment, ask yourself if you really want to do that thing. If the answer is still yes, see if there's a way to improvise at first (there almost always is). At that point, if you still want it, maybe you should buy it.

I mostly work with sourdough, so all of my resources are sourdough based, but the Foodgeek blog helped me get started, so I figure I should give them a shoutout here.

My mother-in-law has been making bread 1-2 times per week for years and years. She uses an old secondhand enamel dutch oven (originally sold by Aldi) and it has held up just fine: no cracks or chips in the enamel. It's just heavily discolored, as to be expected after that much use.

Two things I’ve learned, measure by weight and keep yeast in the freezer. The yeast will stay good a lot longer.