Tiny little status update from the 2nd

It's a week later for all of you, and yet four posts later, it's still the same Friday evening at a Burger King. (What is linear time, anyway?)

And before I head out, I'm reminded that I took a couple pictures before I left home this morning, just to give y'all another glimpse into my life and into how things are going.

So anyhow, after the jump, I'll show you around.

First off, the jungle. In my garden updates, I've zoomed in to show off as much detail as possible. But it occurred to me this morning that I haven't shown you all the whole effect; you haven't seen the forest, only the trees. So I took a picture; this is what greets me every morning.

After I slowly lose the three-way negotiations with the sun and my cat over whether I'm going to stay asleep, I duck and weave under the various straps on my van's ceiling, crawl over the pillow over the center front seat boxes, insist my adorable furry little gargoyle find literally anywhere else besides the driver's seat to lick herself so I can put on my shoes and leave the van, drain the lizard (possibly with some urgency), and then go in my house, turn on the radio, slump into my chair, and look at this.

There's something inherently healing about being around growing things, something inherently sickening about being removed from them. Maybe it's just that we evolved in forests and so we expect and even need growing things around us to be truly happy. Whatever it is, I can feel it just by looking at this pic.

Next up, we've got my newest friend. The phone is terrible and the light that night was even worse, but this is some kind of a toad. It wasn't the first time I'd met this particular toad, just the first time they came back. I didn't even know toads could survive this desert, hadn't seen any before one showed up in my house, but apparently they can. My house is full of flowers that attract pollinating flies, it's cooler and shadier than the surrounding area, and there's often pools of water or liquid where I spill my tea or after I've showered, so on all metrics it'd be the perfect place for a desert toad to set up shop. (Maybe it's a frog? But frogs usually like wetter environments and toads drier ones, IIRC, but I'm no zoologist.)

Regardless, Toadbro (while I in fact don't know its sex, Toadbro needs a name, so this is gonna be it for now) is a real bro. Toadbro eats flies, which annoy me. Toadbro does not eat marigolds, or human food, or literally everything not smack dab next to a growing onion, like the mice do. Because of this fact, Toadbro is always a welcome resident at my house. Toadbro even got stuck hopping onto a place too high to easily hop down from that night, and hopped into my hand to let me set them down, so on some level Toadbro even trusts me. Toadbro then hopped home, underneath the ceramic tiles I laid down to be a preliminary floor before I put the real one in, and Toadbro didn't even care that I saw where they live. Pretty cool stuff, especially considering that many of the friendlier emotions only evolved with us mammals.

I don't have any pictures of it, but I allow the lizards free reign of my house on the same exact grounds. They don't eat anything I care about, but they do eat all kinds of things I hate. Lizards just aren't as chill as Toadbro, so I didn't really have a reason to bring it up until now.

Next up: this is how I make coffee. Since I was leaving for town right afterwards, I didn't care this morning if I heated up my house boiling water. So I just went ahead and did it, so I wouldn't have to buy coffee in town. Oftentimes when I leave for town, or a trip, I'll do this. Every morning out in the field I'll do this, albeit outside if I'm planning on using the house any further that day.

And when I make my coffee, I always make tea with the same pot. This is usually the first real "work" of any sort I'll do in the morning, and the coffee (and a morning wake n' bake) prepares me for the rest of my day.

And that's all for now. I've got a visitor planning to come down at the end of this month, and there'll be some reports about that later on. I've got several different adventureposts in the works. I'm gonna finish telling y'all about the Denver trip on Monday (but I'm going to write that up some other time.) I still haven't told y'all about my trip to Angel Lake last year. And I haven't told y'all about my big art project, which will be revealed once I start working on it again. (And if I have to come into town before next Friday, I probably will.)

So until next time, stay safe, love your neighbor, and grow something.