“Is that your handwriting?”

Hello world. I am reporting from the desk at (insert name of climbing company here) in lovely ol’ East Nastville. What a beautiful day it is out today! The sun is shining. The birds are singing. The people are working communally. What a dream, what an absolute dream.

We’ve had an exciting day here so far. I am the only staff member at this small local gym, until my reinforcements show up at 2pm. I opened the gym up at 10am, and got to crackin’. A deluge of folks came in right at the turn of the clock, that is, exactly at 10am, they were ready to go. Coaches, youth team, gang of young lads, veteran local climbers, and a couple on a first date. This was a lot for me to handle on this sleepy Saturday morning, I must confess, due to my lack of being properly caffeinated.

This failure on my part to ensure proper caffeine levels in mine bloodstream was because I had planned to drink some expired energy milk drink this morning. There is a chocolate milk energy drink by the brand Hatchers, that is sold in these gyms, called Jumpin’ Jimmy. Jumpin’ Jimmy is a 16 oz. beverage that offers everything that anyone could ever want in a single drink, all for an affordable price and packaged in a container that will likely end up in the ocean and starve a whale to death. One Jumpin’ Jimmy contains 42 grams of sugar, 160mg of caffeine, and 32 grams of blessed protein, and of course wonderful fats, calcium, etc., the normal offerings of milk.

I had scored some Jumpin’ Jimmy yesterday… long story short, I forgot the Jumpin’ Jimmy today, and I was planning to finally drink one for test purposes, to see what would happen, because we do sell them after all, I should know about the product, but I have been avoiding them because I have a great fear that it will make me feel terrible and horrible. Well, I purposefully drank only a small amount of coffee this morning, so as not to overload myself on Jumpin’ Jimmy juice, but then I forgot it. I was then blasted with a good amount of action right out of the gate, at the gym, and when it cooled down, I was doing my general activities, and having cravings for more coffee. I took a can of cold brew out of the fridge three separate times, deliberating whether I should buy one or not, as they were $4.21 post-discount, which was still too expensive for me, and I thought long and hard about this purchase. Did I need this coffee? 250mg of cold brew? For $4.21? When I make $15.50 an hour and should be scrounging every penny possible?

This was such a difficult decision that it took me 45 minutes to decide to pull the trigger. I wrote about it in my journal, to help me through the quandary. I went for it, in the end, it was a small joy, and the timing was right. And here we are three hours later, I am 2/3 of the way through the can, and we can say it was the right decision. That caffeine is turning this Saturday around and got me goin’ right quick.

Immediately after I decided to purchase this can of cold brew, my home boy and veteran climbing staff member guru Luke shows up for some Saturday climbing, and the first thing he does is ring up a cold brew, same one that I bought. And he didn’t think about that for a single second. There was no deliberation there, no hesitation, unless he worked it all out in the car. That is a great place for deliberating, we all know it. I commented on this. (He did end up spilling some of his can, his precious coffee life-blood, lost about 70mg worth of cold brew.) When he rang it up, I noticed that it was cheaper for him, and he said there was an issue with some staff members getting regular member discount rates (10%) and not the staff discount rate (30%). I was getting a member discount rate! I could have saved $1.00 on that coffee! And 45 minutes worth of deliberation! I messaged the Director of Operations immediately and brought this issue to his attention.

The cave lights were not on today. One of the coaches asked me to turn them on, and I couldn’t figure it out, and then I had other business to attend to, and I forgot about it for a while. Then I remembered that that was something that needed to be done, and I asked all the brains in the building, how do we get these cave lights on, because nobody told me and I’ve twisted every visible knob and none of them have turned the lights on. I was walking back into the lobby to contemplate this issue further and see if anyone had answered my plea for help on our communication channels, when I spied Carlin, the herpetologist (who also works at these gyms), and I said, “Carlin, do you know how to turn the cave lights on?” (I should have that there is an overhung section of the gym, where you climb at a 60 degree angle or so, maybe just 45, and that is referred to as “the cave”). Carlin investigated, attempted to turn some knobs, and then began to engage her brain further. We discussed the possible resolutions to the problem, and we then had the hypothesis that these cave lights should be also controlled by the master light switch, which toggles every light on that side of the building. Had someone then manually switched off the cave lights by accident, when they should be controlled by the master switch? I was stumped, when Carlin suggested that I just try toggling the master switch again. Okay, why not — I did so, and would you know it? That worked. Now all the lights were on plus the cave lights. Carlin was a genius. We made many jokes about this, that our technical issue was actually resolved by the classic “Did you try turning it off and on again???”

Another comment was made today about my mannerisms (if that’s what we can call them – my quirks.) Actually, two comments were made today about things that are classically commented on, for me. The first is that I was asked by the 16 year old climb coach why there was a loaf of bread in the office. Many of you may know that I am a bread enjoyer and have no problem with eating an entire loaf of bread. This has gotten much attention in basically every workplace I’ve ever been in. I replied to this young climber coach, “It may be that someone is going to be eating a loaf of bread today.” Something like that. It was obvious to us all that it was my bread. The other girl said that she hoped that whoever would be eating the bread wasn’t just eating bread, and I said, “There may also be some peanuts around,” (that was true). She then called my diet “medieval”. It’s the first time it’s been called medieval, but I think that is actually a pretty great description for my diet, if you don’t want to call it “sparse” or “simple”. I generally use the word “simple”.

Some time after this, I was checking in a couple here on their first date, and the guy said to me, noticing my open notebook on the counter, “Is that your handwriting?” This is another thing that is commonly commented on. I confirmed that it was in fact my handwriting. It has already been outed here at this workplace that I have wild and unreadable scribble and script, as I have left several informative notes at the counter that no one has been able to decipher, even though I used my best handwriting. I came in to Starbucks a few days after my last shift, where I had written a short fictional letter of a man who had been stranded on an island with dinosaurs, and it was an object of interest for the staff, most of whom just looked at it and joked about it, but one friend, Chris K., one of my true homies, he went further, and spent “hours”, so he said, attempting to read my scribble. He had gotten quite far, through pure perseverance and will, and when I showed up for my next shift, he immediately came to me with the notepad and had me read the story to him. He said several times, “So that’s what it said!”

I was shocked then a couple weeks ago, when one of the climb staff members was able to read my handwriting almost flawlessly, with very little difficulty. I told him, “you are an anomaly”. The other team members couldn’t read it and were lambasting it, but he said, “I can read it,” and then he read every single word that I had scribbled on a sticky note. It was amazing. I wrote another message and had him read it, and he read that one too with perfect accuracy.

I was also shocked to see, once upon a time, a bartender who had nearly the exact same handwriting as me. She had almost all of the same patterns and quirks in her handwriting. I like to say that it is a “highly evolved script”, as it has become the way it is to be fast and efficient. Many things meld together and evolve/devolve (depending on how you want to look at it), but are readable to me or in context. It’s not an accident that the handwriting looks this way, and this bartender, her script was exactly the same. I had her write on a piece of paper for me, because we were having a conversation about my handwriting, again as I had a notebook open, and I wanted to see hers. I was amazed to see her writing, to see a kindred handwriting spirit. Right there on the paper, I performed a small analysis of the similarities of our writing. It was incredible.

The man at the gym, he said, “Is that your handwriting?” and he was amazed to see it. He said that his writing was “bad, like a 5th graders”. I asked him what he thought about my handwriting, and he said it looked like a doctor’s writing (commonly said).

It does look like a doctor’s scribble.

Shelby Trip (Oct. 15) – A Lotta Vines

[Note: The photos in the email are compressed and aren’t as sharp. If you want to see the photos in higher quality, read the post on my actual blog site.]

Three days ago now I went to Shelby for my first invasive removal session of the season. We’ve just started up again as the winter approaches. This is prime time for removing these Bush honeysuckles and Chinese privets, as they keep their green leaves and are easy to identify. It’s also not as hot and a lot of growth has died back. I haven’t been in the forest for awhile and with my newfound knowledge, I was able to immediately spy wintercreeper, Japanese honeysuckle, and eventually English ivy on trees and on the ground. Unfortunately, the wintercreeper was everywhere, almost ubiquitously covering the ground, if privet or honeysuckle weren’t taking up the space already. And often, privet and wintercreeper were working together to smother the forest floor.

I used to think, subconsciously really, that there was a clear delineation between “nature” and “human world”. Between nature and civilization, I guess. And that there were places that we would go to, and those were the nature places, and then we would return to the non-nature, the constructed, civilized, human habitat. I think that now I feel much more that we are truly in nature all of the time, whether there is almost no “nature” remaining (in a totally constructed city), or we are in the suburbs, whereever we are. Even in a city, nature is there. Pigeons, insects, plants, growing in cracks and crevices. We are always in nature, whether we really realize it or feel it or not.

I think the flip-side of this is that our “nature” is also not perfectly separate from our civilization, and our activities bleed into these nature spaces as well. The forest at Shelby park once seemed to me to be a bastion of nature haven, a place to get away, unaffected and isolated from the hubbub and artificialness of human society. But, now that I realize it is so covered in plants that we have brought with us, and it is so affected by our behaviors, it is not really a removed place anymore. It is an affected and disturbed habitat.

Our properties are the same. We have a neighborhood, we have our roads, and our downtown, but all of this was built on top of and in an ecosystem, and that ecosystem is still here, albeit heavily affected and disturbed.

I have started foraging. I feel that this is a major evolution, a milestone in my naturalistic journey. The plantain weed is edible, I think I mentioned that, (what the caterpillars were eating), that was sprouting up in my yard and is all over the neighborhood. And not only is it edible, it’s so good for you that it has an article on Healthline (popular internet health site). I was so bored at the climbing gym the other day that I finally picked some and tried it out. There was plenty of plantain weed in the patch of grass outside of the gym, and I plucked it, washed it in the bathroom, and ate it raw. It was pretty good, although some of the leaves were really astringent (bitter and dry). Then, that evening when I got home, I plucked it out of my garden, boiled it up, and ate it that way. It was much better, and almost exactly like eating spinach, with a hint of arugula flavor. Parker had asked if I was going to make a tea, and so that inspired me to also save the water and drink it. That was great too, like a weak green tea.

It was really hitting me then, that I was getting a fresh vegetable, free, harvested myself, and that was growing wildly in my yard. I have a whole patch of it, it all just popped up, and once the caterpillars were done farming it, it’s grown freely and there’s tons of it for me to harvest. For the last four days I’ve gone out there and plucked some, and thrown it in with my pasta. Free veggies, and the only thing I had to do was know that I could eat them. That crucial piece of knowledge.

Walking home yesterday, I noticed some berries on vines hanging over the neighbor’s fence, and they looked like grapes. I went home, searched it up online, and made sure it wasn’t any kind of poisonous lookalike, examined the seeds, and decided that they were grapes, and I ate some. They were sweet and delicious, much like blueberries. Were those wild, or had they planted them? I wonder. They’re just hanging over the fence by the road, intermingled with Chinese privet and other random plants. I wonder what the vine looks like on the other side of the fence. I know we do have wild grapes around here, called Muscadines.

Walnuts and acorns are also falling abundantly right now. On the same walk, I had stopped to pick up some walnuts that were all over the road. There were two older neighbors talking to each other in their driveways across the street, and I heard the one guy say, “Those are walnuts,” to his neighbor (they must have been watching me), and his neighbor said, “Those are walnuts???” Yep, they’re walnuts, and if you know how to prepare them, you can have free local walnuts, to eat and enjoy, bounty of the earth. Walnuts are pricey, too.

I spied many interesting things during our Shelby park volunteer session, and so yesterday I went back and did some photography. Lots of vines, some local wildflowers, and one interesting plant, the snakeroot (Ageratina sp.). One of the volunteers, Will, he pointed out this large patch of white flowering plant, that had popped in an area of the forest that we had cleared previously. Sunlight could now get through, and this snakeroot had taken hold of the space. Cool plant, and apparently killed thousands of settlers when they were getting started here in America, as nobody knew that it was toxic. It has secondary toxicity, where the toxins of the plant saturate the milk and meat of animals. Wikipedia says that Abraham Lincoln’s mom may have died from snakeroot poisoning. When I was reading that, I thought, “I bet the Native Americans knew”, and then the article said that the person who figured out it was toxic learned it from a Native American. So the story goes.

Garden Updates

*Large sprouts in the center are radish sprouts*

Sightings From Oct. 15 Shelby Trip

Goldenrod (Solidago sp.) [TN native]

Frost aster/White heath aster (Symphyotrichum pilosum) [TN native]

*My other frost aster – different species / variety?*

*Frost aster AKA White heath aster at Shelby Park*

Sumpweed???? (Iva annua) [TN native]

Frostweed (Verbesina virginica) [TN native]

Snakeroot (Ageratina altissima) [TN native]

Japanese honeysuckle [TN invasive]

Crossvine (Bigonia capreolata) [TN native]

Question Mark butterfly (Polygonia interrogationis) [TN native]

English ivy (Hedera helix) [TN invasive]

Poison ivy? (Toxicodendron) [native]

Muscadine (Grape) Vines

Carolina Snailseed (Cocculus carolinus) [TN native]

Wintercreeper/Fortune’s spindle (Euonymus fortunei) [TN invasive]

*Mostly wintercreeper on the ground, some Carolina snailseed and J. honeysuckle*

*Someone has cut wintercreeper vines off the oak*

*All these branches are the dead wintercreeper branches*

Bush honeysuckle [TN invasive]

*“Chipmunk condo”, pile of destroyed invasive plant debris (mostly bush honeysuckle and Chinese privet)*

Passionflower (Maypop) [TN native]

Wingstem/Yellow ironweed (Verbesina alternifolia)

*Wingstem is also called Yellow Ironweed*

Virginia creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia)

MORE menaces in the yard: Wintercreeper (and English ivy!!)

“This mode of life gave health and vigor to my body, and amusement and instruction to my mind; and to this day I well remember the delicious sleep which succeeded my labors, from which I was again called at an early hour. If I were now asked whom I consider to be the happiest of the human race, I should answer, those who cultivate the earth by their own hands.”

– William Roscoe

I was reading Washington Irving’s The Sketch-book of Geoffrey Crayon, and he was talking about meeting a man named Roscoe, and how great this Roscoe person was. He went on and on about Roscoe being a man of genius and talents, and finally I had to look him up. Well, now I know who William Roscoe is (smart guy from Liverpool, lived 1753-1831), and while I was perusing his Wikipedia page, the above quote was included. Me, who spent that entire morning ripping invasive Asian vines out of my yard, and has recently been engaged in increasingly greater amounts of earth cultivating activities, thought that this was a special quote, from a considerably smart man.

*William Roscoe portrayed by Martin Archer Shee, 1815–1817 (from Wikipedia)*

Reading this Sketch-book of Geoffrey Crayon, by the author of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, I think he (Washington Irving) is a genius too. This guy can write, man.

So, yesterday I was looking out of the window, looking at the dark green leaves of the tree in front of me, and seeing the little green berries, and thinking: What is this tree? What kind of leaves are these, what kind of berries? It’s weird that it’s evergreen. Anything evergreen is suspect, now, because so many of the invasives are evergreen, and that gives them an advantage as they have longer growing season.

Lo’ and behold, it was not part of the tree at all, even though the branches were so large that they seemed like branches of the tree. They were actually coming from a vine, an extraordinarily massive and entrenched vine wrapping around the tree and producing enormous branches. This mega-vine turned out to be, of course, non-native.

A horrible invasive from China — Wintercreeper.

In terms of weight of total plant matter, the Wintercreeper in my yard might take the cake, for an invasive. Looking around, I saw it everywhere, smothering almost all of the trees in the yard, and also laying a mat of dense ground cover in the backyard. This invasive, killer vine from Asia. Then, this morning, I was sawing away at these beastly vines, down at the bases, severing them, and I cut something off that turned out to actually NOT be Wintercreeper.

Oh no–did I kill a native, Tennessee vine?? I identified it, and, oh, not to worry. Just another invasive vine, competing with Wintercreeper to kill these trees. Wonderful. (That’s the English ivy.)

I’m conducting a great purge. None of these invaders will survive. They must all go. In the name of the great state of Tennessee, this land will be reclaimed!

*Veggie pots (bok choi, spinach, radish)*

*Insane amount of Japanese honeysuckle pulled*

*Example of Japanese honeysuckle root node*

*English ivy dangling from tree in my yard*

*Wintercreeper covering another one of my trees*

*Wintercreeper covering yet another one of my trees*

*Stem of Wintercreeper vine adhered to tree trunk*

*Mostly Wintercreeper vine, in the ground as well*

*Large piece of English ivy I hacked off the tree*

With the discovery of these invasive vines on the trees (and all along the ground, and covering the entire fence lining the driveway), there can’t be much more for me to purge. After the Japanese honeysuckle in the front yard, these massive vines, and with me cutting down some of the last giant Amur honeysuckles and Chinese privet, the purge must be nearly complete. There simply aren’t very many plants left in the yard that I haven’t identified now. I even know about the trees (maybe) – I think three of them are hackberries, one’s a maple. And if you guys want to see something crazy, I’ll show you. I have to take a photo of it, I’ll put it in a future post. Oh, it’s not going anywhere.

It’s a giant Tree of Heaven. And it’s right across the street. I didn’t even know they could get that big. Of course, they are a TREE, after all. But, I haven’t seen one so advanced, ever. It was only when I Googled it that I realized, they can become absolutely ginormous. And then, I was playing drums in my roommate’s room, and I was looking out of his window, and my eyes landed on a tree across the street. A strange tree, with leaves that looked like… oh my god.

It was an adult Tree of Heaven. Jesus Christ.

*Mature tree of heaven (internet photo)*

Stages of Ladybug // Garden Photography

There are a lot of ladybug larvae out and about right now here in early October (Oct. 8th). They’re all over the yard, making their tiny metamorphoses on my front door, my plants, the vines, my car. I was wondering why they would undergo their metamorphosis now, as winter is right around the corner (although we still have 2 months before then, and that is plenty of time to do stuff in the bug world). I read that ladybugs can live for several years and that they stay alive through the winter by hibernating. I had no idea about that.

I told my discerning sister that I had some photos of ladybugs and she said, “Are you sure they aren’t Chinese ladybeetles?” I wasn’t sure. And just now, looking at some photos of the Chinese ladybeetles, or, Asian lady beetle, Harmonia axyridis, they certainly look similar. The internet says that the Asian lady beetle is now in some parts of the US the most common ladybug around, and so these photos probably are of the Asian lady beetle.

There is no difference between a lady beetle and ladybug, they are all in the same family, Coccinellidae, which is a family in the order Coleoptera (the beetles). According to Wikipedia, “Entomologists use the names ladybird beetles or lady beetles to avoid confusion with true bugs.”

(The true bugs are the Hemipterans, another order.) I like saying ladybug, though, personally.

This Persian speedwell has been one of the main plants to dominate the bare dirt of my garden. I’ve just let it go and cover the ground. In the below picture you can also see the Three-seeded mercury, the taller, larger dark green plants. It recently put up some flowers, extremely tiny flowers. They must be some of the tiniest flowers you can find.

I’ve been seeing this Smartweed pop up, which has some interesting flowers/seeds. Are those pink things tiny little flower buds? Apparently the Smartweeds are edible. We’ll have to try some. (We as in me and whoever else I can get to eat it.)

*Mostly Veronica persica, Persian Speedwell*

We also have crazy amounts of a fluffy white bug flying around and covering everything with sticky sap. Those are wooly aphids, and probably an invasive kind (from Asia), the Wooly hackberry aphid. According to the internet if you live in the Southeastern US, that’s probably what you’re seeing right now. And I have I think five hackberries in my yard, and a lotttttt of wooly aphids, so it would make sense.

The Nightmare and Her Ninefold

Two days ago at the climbing gym, I was working my shift, doing my duty to god and country, and I decided to pass the time by reading some Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving on Project Gutenberg.

(If you do not know about Project Gutenberg — it is an amazing resource. You must know about Project Gutenberg. You can read all the classics, for free, online in your browser or via your Kindle. This is an incredible thing and I have read countless classics via Project Gutenberg, including Sherlock Holmes, Sleepy Hollow, Ben Franklin’s autobiography, many old Greek philosophical texts, Voltaire’s Candide, and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.)

I was in the first few paragraphs, when I read something that was very interesting. Here is a snippet of the passage:

“The whole neighborhood abounds with local tales, haunted spots, and twilight superstitions; stars shoot and meteors glare oftener across the valley than in any other part of the country, and the nightmare, with her whole ninefold, seems to make it the favorite scene of her gambols.”

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is from the late 1810’s, and it’s interesting to read these old books and stories and see how the language has changed, and so rapidly. You see that he uses ‘oftener’, which today would be considered incorrect, and is not used. We would say, ‘more often’. But the real interesting part of this passage was for me, at the end.

“…the nightmare, with her whole ninefold, seems to make it the favorite scene of her gambols.”

What do you mean her? Who is the nightmare? Irvine is clearly depicting the nightmare as some kind of female entity. What does that mean? I didn’t know anything about that. The closest image or association I have with a nightmare creature is the image of a horse from a Magic: The Gathering card, called nightmare. And a ‘mare’ is a female horse, in today’s language, so is a nightmare then some kind of wicked, female horse?

I never knew about this, and so I had to do some Googling. According to Wikipedia (I know you’re not supposed to cite this, okay):

“The word nightmare is derived from the Old English mare, a mythological demon or goblin who torments others with frightening dreams. The term has no connection with the Modern English word for a female horse.^[5]^”

A mare is a “mythological demon or goblin”! Now, who knew that? And that’s where nightmare comes from. It has nothing to do with the female horse, so says Wikipedia and whoever who the article.

More, from Wikipedia: “Originally, “mare” or “nightmare” referred more specifically to sleep paralysis, in which an experience of terror and paralysis during sleep can be associated with a sense of pressure on the chest and the dreamed presence of entities often pictured as demons, sometimes sitting on the chest. The words also referred to such a “demon,” which was also referred to as a hag and the experience as being “hag-ridden.” The meaning of “nightmare” had generalized from sleep paralysis to any bad dream by 1829.^[1]”

This painting is from 1781. This is what was in their minds, regarding nightmares, at this time. That certainly looks a goblin/demon creature to me. And interesting how there is a creepy horse-ghost in the background. Pretty freaky.

Interesting that the word originally referred to sleep paralysis, before becoming broadly applicable to bad dreams. It makes sense though, because you actually see some evil stuff when you’re having sleep paralysis. I’ve only had it once in my life, when my roommate Adam suggested that I take a melatonin to help me sleep as he did. That night, I ended up having a crazy bout of sleep paralysis, turned sideways, unable to move, and seeing a large, black demon in the corner of the room. After that night, I said Adam, I’m never taking this shit again. That was too freaky.

I think it’s weird that I actually didn’t know about a mare, and never thought about why we say ‘nightmare’ at all. When did the concept of a ‘mare’ get lost? That’s a fun thing to think about. Why haven’t I known about the ‘mare’, sitting on my chest and causing me to have bad dreams? Is that lore gone from our common modern consciousness? Do the older folks know about it?

As I was inn the midst of my ‘nightmare’ investigations, some young lads entered the gym and were checking in at the counter. On the second monitor, my screen was open to the ‘Mare’ Wikipedia page, and one of the guys notices this, seeing that I was deep-diving on Wikipedia, and said, “What are you researching over there?”

I immediately launched into this tale, as I am writing for you, about reading Sleepy Hollow and discovering the interesting line about the nightmare, reading about the origins of the word, finding out about the ‘mare’, (everything I had learned in the last five minutes) and man — these guys were a perfect audience. They were listening with total, rapt attentio, and so I gave them the full scoop. The guy who had originally asked about the Wikipedia page, he said, “So it’s like sleep paralysis.” And I hadn’t even mentioned yet about how the word ‘nightmare’ originally referred only to sleep paralysis, and I said, “Yeah, that’s exactly right!!” and then proceeded to recite more info from the Wikipedia article. It was a wonderful mini-lesson of the etymology of the word ‘nightmare’ that we had over the gym counter check-in right there, and I thought, after they had walked away, and reflecting on how much I had just been geeking out there, “Man, I really am a nerd.” But they thought it was cool.

Now, it gets even juicier than this, people. After learning about the mare, and nightmare and her gambols, I went back to Sleepy Hollow, and read that line again. And then I saw something else that needed to be investigated, which was “her whole ninefold.”

“…and the nightmare, with her whole ninefold, seems to make it the favorite scene of her gambols.”

Okay, so the nightmare is a female hag, demon, devil spirit. Now we know. But what is her ninefold?

We are digging up some very ancient lore here. Apparently this goes all the way back to Shakespear’s King Lear. (From the 1600’s.) A line from the character Edgar:

“This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet. He begins
at curfew and walks till the first cock. He
gives the web and the pin, squints the eye, and
makes the harelip, mildews the white wheat, and
hurts the poor creature of earth.
Swithold footed thrice the ’old,
He met the nightmare and her ninefold,
Bid her alight,
And her troth plight,
And aroint thee, witch, aroint thee.”

(The foul fiend Flibbertigibbet? What an incredible name.)

It seems that the nightmare’s ninefold is a bunch of evil creatures, spirits and hooligans that hang out with the nightmare and do evil with her. This picture is by Arthur Rackman, and shows us exactly what the nightmare and her ninefold are all about.

*The Nightmare and Her Ninefold, Arthur Rackman, 1928 color plate*

I think horses must have something to do with a nightmare. They made a Magic card called Nightmare that is simply a demon horse, and there’s a spooky horse spirit in the above Henry Fuseli painting from 1781, and the hag is riding a horse here in this Arthur Rackman illustration. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is about a ghostly horse-rider. Surely all of this horse association is not just coincidence.

I’m glad to know about the ‘nightmare’, now. I feel like it’s something of an evil tooth fairy. I’ll be thinking about this spirit, whenever I heard about nightmares again. The nightmare, and her ninefold.

Plants of East Nashville [Photography Post, 9/20/25]

Maximillian sunflower (native!!!!)

I did a little photography tour of plants around the neighborhood. I thought I captured a lot but then, this really isn’t much. We’ve got so many different species of things here in these neighborhoods. These are some of the common sights around here, right now mid-September. A lot of flowers in bloom, a lot of pollinators out and about. We’ve got plants from all around the world, man.

*Maximillian sunflower – Helianthus maximiliani*

This is kind of a rare one here, this Maximillian sunflower. I don’t see a lot of this in the neighborhood.

*Honeyvine milkweed in my yard (the narrow, triangular leaves) (native!!!)*

*Salvia yangii? (Russian sage) (non-native)*

*Mealy Sage (Salvia farinacea) (native to Mexico and southern US)*

Sage, catmint, lamb’s ear, lavender… all part of the mint family, Lamiaceae. Catmint is common in these yards.

*Goldenrod (Solidago species) (native, good!!!!!)*

*Crape myrtle, Lagerstroemia indica (non-native)*

Crape myrtles are everywhere. They flower for an extremely long time, like many months. I didn’t know anything could flower for as long as these trees flower for. There’s a row of them outside of the strip mall in the neighborhood that has the climbing gym and Ugly Mugs. Unfortunately the are non-native, and do a native tree would be better here. They are fast-growing and easy to grow, have a long blooming season, and they clearly do well here. I read an article that said they should be used more in gardening in the area, for these reasons, but really I think we should be using local trees. Maybe Dogwoods instead? Dogwoods are like our native Japanese cherry blossom trees. Dogwood > Crape myrtle.

I wonder what the most similar suitable native alternative tree would be, to a Crape myrtle. They are a cool tree, I like them.

Apparently endemic to southern Australia. It’s come a long way.

*Cypress vine (Ipomoea quamoclit) (non-native)*

This cypress vine is everywhere. One of the most sighted plants in the neighborhood, growing on fences and around telephone posts. It is from the tropical Americas and seems to be thriving here. Unfortunately, non-native, and so really shouldn’t be here, but at least the pollinators do love it.

The main issue with non-native species is that local animals often don’t know how to utilize them. They don’t eat the berries, they don’t lay eggs on the leaves and feed on the plants, birds don’t make nests in them, etc. And they will often replace the native plants that say, birds and insects do know how to use. In Shelby Park (and in forests in TN in general) there is a problem with the Chinese privet and Bush honeysuckle completely taking over the understory, and jamming up all the ground cover. TN forests are generally supposed to have clear understory. And this is a problem for a certain forest turtle (the Eastern Box Turtle) that has evolved to wander these clear forests.

You also have the issue of the monarchs, who are specialists and need milkweed plants to lay their eggs on and feed on. There are many insects that are looking for certain plants, and have the chemical signature of these plants dialed in, to use them for food and shelter. Those are the plants that they have evolved with, and know how to utilize.

*Sweet Alyssum (Lobularia maritima) (non-native)*

*My buckeye caterpillar chowing down on buckhorn plantain*

Cosmos Are Popping Off [Garden Post]

The cosmos are popping off now. They add an amazing pop of color to the landscape. It’s actually shocking how much pop they add. Right now things are looking generally brown and crispy, a bit dull, and/or just green. These cosmos are breaking through.

The first one was yellow, and all the rest have been a light yellow-orange. I wonder what’s going to happen to all these flowers with the first frost, which is supposed to be around Oct. 15th.

The bees seem to like them more than zinneas. Every time I’ve looked I’ve seen bees at the cosmos. The butterflies like the zinneas but they have a tough time because of the cars. Every time a car drives by the butterflies abandon the flower, and if two or three drive by they seem to give up on the patch altogether. I feel like the flowers are a bit of a trap for them in this way. But if they can get in when there aren’t any cars driving by they can have a nice feast.

I saw this butterfly on the zinnea this morning, I see this one often around here. Maybe a Pipevine swallowtail? Looking at the pictures online, looks likely.

The marigold has a bud that has grown massively in the last two days. It will bloom any day now. I’m ready. Come on!!!!

My zinneas now have powdery mildew. They must just get it no matter what, because it hasn’t been humid here at all. Hasn’t been rainy. Been dry as a bone. I don’t know how you’re supposed to keep this from happening.

This second patch isn’t having as much trouble with the alternaria though.

Apparently this is the Pipevine swallowtail caterpillar. Look at this crazy thing! And apparently their host plants are pipevines (makes sense), or the dutchman’s pipe, which are also wild-looking as heck. I ain’t never seen one’a these.

I spent more time yesterday pulling up Japanese honeysuckle. Cannot believe how entrenched it is. I start pulling, and there’s more, more coming up, more coming up. It’s hiding, it’s sneaky, in the grass, in the dirt. There’s so much Japanese honeysuckle in the yard, buried, wrapped around stuff. Feels like I’ve pulled up 50 pounds of it.

That’s what I got for ya today folks!

New Menace In The Yard (Japanese Honeysuckle)

There is nothing for the soul and spirit like manual labor. Benjamin Franklin observed that in his autobiography, when he was overseeing construction of a fort during the French and Indian War. He noted that on the rainy days when the soldiers couldn’t work, they were miserable and depressed. On the sunny days, where they could do the chopping and the building, they were joyful, singing songs and feelin’ good. And here I am, returning from my arduous labor of ripping up entrenched Japanese Honeysuckle vines out of my yard in the full sun, barehanded, until my hands are blistered and I can’t continue, and boy am I feeling great.

Nothing for the soul and spirit like some good manual labor.

I have discovered a new menace in my yard. It’s Japanese honeysuckle. This menace was on my radar, from doing the invasive species removal at Shelby Park, and now I am getting to know it intimately. Japanese honeysuckle, which is a vine, was on our top list of plants to remove at the park, along with Chinese privet and Bush/Amur honeysuckle.

There are hundreds of plants, at least a hundred plants on my (I say my, I’m renting) small property alone, and I just don’t know all of them. I’m learning about them slowly. Well, there was a sprawling vine in the yard that was flying under the radar because there’s nothing special about it. It’s just green and a vine, cool. But I finally wanted to know what it was, because it seems like it’s about to flower, one strand of it, and it’s snaking all around the frost aster. I decided that it was time to ID it, and know the truth. The frost aster is native, and precious. Time to know if this vine was also native and precious, or not.

Lo and behold, Japanese honeysuckle. A notorious and pervasive invasive, here in the good ol’ USA.

I set to work ripping up this foreign invader at once, yesterday going until I had a blister on my right hand and was forced to stop. I was shocked at how much there really was, snaking all over, along the ground, under and behind, and on top of everything. Today I’ve given it another go and I once again ripped and pulled until my hands are blistered and hurting. (I really should have a pair of gloves.)

The photo below shows you how much I’ve pulled out so far, of this damned Japanese honeysuckle. I would never have guessed that there was so much lurking in the yard like this.

It’s not just in the frost aster, it’s all over in the grass, winding up stalks of grass, and growing staight out and covering the ground.

The very first vine, I carefully untwined it from the stalk of grass it had wrapped around, and followed it to the base. I was surprised that it led all the way to a node of roots in the ground, that led to several more strands of honeysuckle. I think this is what they mean by “runners”, which is a term I’ve heard. That vines put out “runners”. This is extremely annoying, and makes tearing up this honeysuckle a pain in the ass. As you can kind of see in the above photo, these vines are often putting down roots into the ground at repeated intervals, and you have to rip it all up. Some of the roots are quite entrenched, and three times they were so entrenched that I had to go get the shovel. Some of these runners were so thick that it felt like I was pulling up eletrical cables. I would rip it up out of the ground and it would be thick, like a rope in my hand, and show me where the rest of the cable was, and I would follow it to one of the root nodes. There was one, it was the mothernode, that was deep in the center of a large bush of frost aster, I parted the frost aster and got down in there and found that mothernode, and I felt like I was discovering the source of the infection or plague in a post-acopolyptic movie. It was like when there’s a fungus or something that makes people become zombies, and I was finding the main spore producer, or the main brain. I found that huge root node with multiple thick honeysuckle cables running off of it, and I went and grabbed the shovel and obliterated it. I felt good for a moment, hands blistered and hurting, and then I saw that there is still so much more to pull.

Digging up the grass was harder work and was definitely the most annoying work. This is just more than I wanted to do to pull up these vines. It isn’t that bad, but the fact that I have to go and get the shovel is more than I bargained for.

It’s amazing how prevalent these invasive species are. Half of the things in my disturbed roadside habitat yard are infamous invasives. Tree of heaven, common mullein (apparently a truly hated invasive), Chinese privet, Japanese honeysuckle, the oleander aphids… we really are at war.

It’s a lot of work, just figuring out what the hell is what in the yard. I’m still amazed at how many things growing freely in the yard are from halfway across the world. Here is this tree, right outside of my window in the great state of Tennessee, thriving and looking healthy and wonderful, and low and behold, it’s from China. Right next to it is another tree that is doing wonderfully, that I also see all over the neighborhood, and wouldn’t you know it? It’s also from China. In my yard, smothering my frost aster and wrapping all over everything, snaking out across the ground, is a wonderful vine from Japan! And half of the sprouts in my new garden are the seedlings of yet another tree from where? Yes, China. Right over in my neighbor’s yard are two uncultivated wonderful flowers from East Asia and Peru, and in the front of my other neighbor’s yard is a lovely Japanese banana tree. On my short walk to the coffee shop through my neighborhood, I can count about fifteen Crape myrtle trees, which are from India. And the little fuzzy plants popping up? Maybe those are young Black-eyed Susan plants?

Nope. Common mullein from Eurasia (introduced in the 18th century, apparently).

“Several Years Worth of Coffee Experience…”

“I bring several years worth of coffee experience…”

This is the line that stunned me. I sat on the couch, after a long day of talking to people about jobs, applying for jobs, working on resumes and cover letters, and then printing some off at the local library, going through that whole debacle…

I had checked, I had double checked, it was all good. Everying looked fine, everything was ready. Except, IT WASN’T.

My fresh cover letter for the local cafe laid out in front of me on the table, I was feeling satisfied, a hard day’s work finished, and I picked it up, to look over my fine work one more time—and then I read the start of that second paragraph, and had a crisis.

It read that I had “several years worth of coffee experience”.

Well, that was a straight up lie.

I debated on what to do about this. If the hiring manager read my resume, they would know that that was a lie—or they would think that for some reason I had coffee experience that I did not list on my resume, which would be strange. I had in truth seven months of professional coffee experience. That’s not several years, not even close. I thought about how I could reframe it, (“Well, I’ve been drinking coffee enthusiastically since I was 20, haha!”). No, that wasn’t going to work.

But I really, really did not want to go back to the library. It was horrible, at the library. All to print out several pieces of paper. I had to log-in to Google, which required two-step verification, which required logging-in to wifi, and using my old smartphone that I almost forgot to bring, but I remembered this time, having walked all the way to the library just to be stymied once before. It took about five minutes before my crappy smartphone’s processor could run fast enough to handle a notification from Google, and before even trying this, I had attempted to print remotely from my laptop, and I went through that entire process only to not have it work for some mysterious, unknowable reason. You see that I did not want to go back to library and relive all of that. It took an hour of work to print a few pieces of paper. And to fix one sentence? Please, no. Not like this.

Parker’s suggestion was whiteout. Use whiteout on the letter, he had it. Just write over it. I couldn’t accept that. Handing in a cover letter with whiteout on it?

Come on. It’s just not to my standards.

So, this morning I had the great idea. A handwritten note. That’s what I would do! Cover letter was a little over-the-top anyway, although I’m sure would still be well-received and would be better to turn one in than not. But a handwritten note, with a funny picture, which I had several of—that would be perfect. And I didn’t have to go back to the library. Yes!!!! So that’s what I did.

Now, you may be wondering, why did I write “several years of coffee experience” on my cover letter in the first place? And here is where I must make the confession.

I didn’t actually write that cover letter.

I had written my own cover letter, heartfelt and authentic, and then I gave it to ChatGPT for feedback. ChatGPT kept most of what I had written, and then regurgitated everything I had stated in much more professional and polished manner. And, truthfully, it sounded much better, even though it said basically the same things. All was good, except,I was lazy, I was in a hurry, and I didn’t catch the critical mistake, the LIE. And so here we were.

I thought a lot about using ChatGPT to help me get a job. Is it wrong? But, if I had a friend who suggested to me that I frame things in this or that way, and improved my cover letter in a similar manner, would I accept that? Of course I would. There is one major difference between these two scenarios, however, which is that I would probably learn more from talking it through with my friend, than by just giving it to ChatGPT to mockup. I still learn from ChatGPT though, and this is where ChatGPT can be really useful. I see what I wrote, and I think it’s not bad, but then I see how ChatGPT writes a cover letter, with the same content, and I think—now this is better. And why? It can be a great learning tool.

But in the end I was so impressed by ChatGPT’s cover letter writing prowess that I completely missed the “several years” of coffee experience line. And that killed the whole thing.

I walked in this morning, ready to hand in my resume and handwritten note, folded up in an envelope with some stickers attached, and would you believe it, but I see the manager walking over to the front of the store, passing me in line. It was my perfect chance, to make a direct connection, to hand him my letter in person, and remind him of my face. I couldn’t believe my luck, and I stopped him as he passed, and said that I was interested in working for them, he said great, do you have a resume, I handed it over, boom, shook hands, incredible. Couldn’t have been more natural, or gone more smoothly.

Now, that’s a good sign, is it not? That has to be a good sign.

I am fully immersed in the real world now, as it is required of me. I need a job, I need money. I must engage with the world to get what I need. But I have enjoyed reengaging with the world in general.

I feel like I’ve come out of a deep slumber. (Context: Have been doing a lot of fiction writing.) And waking up, I find that somehow I’m now friends with everybody at the gym, and have made a personal connection with almost all of the baristas at the coffee shop. I’m having more serendipitous interactions with the other customers and other climbers than ever before. But, nothing has really changed except me—they’ve all been here. It’s just that I’m tapped in and engaging, in the real world again. My energy is directed outwards.

My candle has not been cutting it for reading at night. It’s too much of a pain. I could do it for Harry Potter, and that’s a testament to how good the Harry Potter series is. I would say after a month has passed, that reading the Harry Potter series has expanded my literary consciousness. It was something different, something fresh more me, not as simplistic as some children’s literature, nor as whimsical, it was more advanced, something massive and epic in scope but not overly intellectual or literary, emotional and funny, but with depth and darkness as well. It could be all of those things, like The Lord of the Rings, but more accessible.

Anyway, I bring up the candle for this reason…

The last few nights, I haven’t been reading at all. For even the last week. All I do, when the sun goes down, is lay in my bed and think. That’s it.

I have lit the candle a few times to do some things, tidy up the room, attempt to read once more before giving up because it is such a struggle, and then I end up laying down in the bed again. And when I lay in that bed, for hours, in the darkness, it’s just me and my thoughts.

Last night, I was thinking about all of the people that have been in my life recently. All of these people, that are out here in the world, that are part of my world, that are here on this Earth with me. Lots of names, lots of faces. All of us here together, doing our thing, living our lives. And I ended up coming back to a core idea, which is really hippy-dippy, but I kept thinking—I should continue to expand my heart and mind. I kept landing back on that central idea.

I should keep my heart and mind open. I should keep connecting to people, reaching out to people, accepting people. Having pity for people, helping people, having mercy and empathy for them, and caring about them, and supporting them.

It’s hard to explain concisely some deep, lengthy thoughts and complex feelings, but there is a real lesson here that I am consistently reminded of, and am reflecting on once again, these days, which is this: I wish that my brain did not make so many assumptions and judgments about people. My brain, my intuitive and subconscious brain, likes to make assumptions about people. It likes to attempt to infer things based on how they look, how they sound, context, labels and titles. What they are wearing, who they are with, what their job is, X Y Z. Could be good, could be neutral, could be bad, and that doesn’t matter as much as the fact that my brain does this in the first place.

I guess it’s natural that we do it, but I wish it wasn’t so, because I have to tell you—my brain is so often wrong.

Most of these impressions, coming from stereotypes, assumptions, guesses and profiling, almost all of it goes out the window as soon as I start to talk to someone. I don’t like that I have all of this baggage before I even do start to talk to someone. I wish I could take every interaction with every person as a neutral, blank slate, and then learn about them through interacting with them. I wish I could always form my impressions and opinions of them after I start to see who they really are—because my perceptions are so often wrong.

I realized to what extent my perceptions were flawed on a flight to LA. I was on the end of the row, the aisle to my right, and a couple sat to my left. The guy was next to me, and the girl at the window. And I have to confess that I felt that we were unlikely to be friends. They didn’t strike me as such, and especially, I think the guy’s hat did it for me. It had some slogan that I thought was a dumb, and there you go. Whatever it was exactly that did it, my brain made some assumptions.

Well, you can see where this is going… We ended up talking, and then we became best friends. We talked for the rest of the flight, the girl was an actor, the guy had been studying web development, as I had been, we talked about music and coding, life in LA, TV shows, etc., many things. We had so much in common, and we had a great conversation, much bonding. And the guy’s hat?

It was the name of his brother’s band. He was wearing it in support of his brother.

I was so affected by this event, and felt so stupid for my brain having some negative assessment of these people who turned out to be so great, that I wrote something down on a piece of paper and carried it on my wallet, to remind me of this. And I actually still have it, I just checked—this is what I wrote, all those years ago now:

“I’ve noticed on these flights and conversations how judgmental I tend to be from the start, and how every person I talked to was completely different from whatever expectations I projected onto them. This is something you need to be aware of. Every stranger I’ve talked to has brought me a lot of joy, and I’m sure to them as well. So let’s keep that going.”

There you go. It’s still true, and it still happens and I have to catch myself and say, “You don’t know. Until you talk to them, until you get to know them, you have no idea what they’re really about.”

I am corrected and reminded of this lesson all the time.

For example, even at Ugly Mugs—I thought one guy might be the manager. He’s always working, he’s older, and he was on the website, modeling with the merch. Well, when I talked to another Ugly Mugs employee and asked if he was the manager, they laughed, and said no, it was another guy, that I would not have expected at all—and when the other employee came over (this is the girl I befriended who also works at the climbing gym, I should just give them code names), he was laughing and told her, “He thought Caleb was the manager,” and she cracked up.

Apparently it was funny to think about Caleb as the manager. And I thought, you know, that’s it. My brain thought I might have had it figured out, that I could somehow tell, who was doing what, and it turns out I was so wrong that Izzy is laughing about it. I didn’t have a read on anything at all. And I thought, imagine that someone asked, when I was at Starbucks, “Is Jason the manager?” (Jason being the annoying barista who is always complaining and praising Elon Musk and generally driving me insane.) Wouldn’t that be hilarious? I would say the exact same thing to my co-worker, Jessica. “Jessica, this guy thought Jason was the manager. Hahaha!!!” And we would crack up, because we would know Jason, and know how absurd it was to think that Jason could ever possibly be the manager.

A Historic Day (First Ever Cosmos Bloom)

Here it is y’all. First ever cosmos bloom by the hands of Gardener Steve.

I woke up this morning and checked the garden as usual, although lately, as there haven’t been many developments, I haven’t been as consistent about looking in the garden. Well, this morning, I was overjoyed and delighted to see a huge, bright, yellow new flower in my garden. That is this cosmos, and this is a particularly exciting bloom because it has told me, finally, what I’ve really wanted to know. What we’ve all been wanting to know. Were these generic green, springy plants common ragweed? (Undesirable, although native.) Or were they cosmos?

Google Lens had consistently ID’ed these as common ragweed. And I couldn’t remember where I had planted cosmos seeds, so I couldn’t even know if I had planted cosmos here, and if they had any hope of being cosmos. But I was holding out hope, and I almost pulled them out of the ground, in my rage, thinking they were just useless ragweeds. I held on, just in case, and look. They really were cosmos. I can’t believe it.

I started to really have hope about a week ago, when I was walking to the record store. We (Parker and I) passed a neighbor’s yard that was loaded with cosmos, and I saw the buds at the end of the stalks, the future flowers, and I thought, those look just like the buds on my potential cosmos. That’s a good sign! They look exactly the same! But I wasn’t going to get my hopes up too much. No, I’ve been burned before….

And then, yesterday, finally a bud opened up, and it looked like it was going to be a flower, but it was restrained and drooping a bit. I think because it was fresh, and the heat was intense. I thought maybe the flower wasn’t in good health, but this morning, I stepped out and saw that flash of yellow, glorious beaming flower, perfectly healthy and radiant. Not ragweed!!!! But, cosmos??

It looks so much like Coreopsis or something around that I thought I actually had something else entirely, neither cosmos or ragweed. But the internet helped me to ID the flower, and it said, cosmos. A cosmos sulphureus, looks like, as I had gotten the seeds from a free pack at the local park and so wasn’t sure what they were exactly.

In my poor clay, sandy dry soil that turns into mud the second water touches it, these cosmos have done very well. And I see on the internet, right now, (https://www.gardenia.net/plant/cosmos-sulphureus-cosmic-yellow) “Tolerates poor soil, heat, and humidity.” Yep, that’s my yard, alright.

The zinneas have done well but needed more water. Some of them are still doing well, or at least they haven’t died, as you might be able to see in the back of the photo. And actually, I just got a new zinnea bloom, and it’s a bright, light pink. A really nice color. So, it’s true that these are beginner friendly plants, because I have no idea what I’m doing, I’ve done no soil prep, I have put down no fertilizer, and no mulch, my watering methods are surely subpar—and on the whole these plants, cosmos and zinnea, they’re doing alright. They’re making it.

I want to plant the natives. The frost aster in the back is great, I feel great about having that in the yard, a real native. I see it blooming all over now, out in the wild, in some people’s yards, and at Shelby. There’s some frost aster in the wild fields at Shelby. I feel like to have such a huge patch of it here in the yard. And there are some little bits of it here and there on the sides of the streets, in the border grass and by fences. It’s an interesting flower, so incredibly small, yet the same shape and look of the larger, popular flowers. The “classic” flower look, yet so tiny and dainty. The natives are important, but because these zinneas and cosmos have been so easy to grow, and look nice, I am definitely tempted to just go all in on them and have the entire yard just be zinnea and cosmos, next year.

I planted some smooth-blue aster and a lot of coneflower, purple coneflower and black-eyed susan, and I haven’t seen any of those sprouts come up. I wonder if they will show next spring, and need to germinate over the winter. We’ll see about that. It’s either that or they haven’t taken well to the soil at all. The marigolds, I put down many marigold seeds, and only got two plants. So they haven’t done too well, and the sunflowers did okay, I had 5 plants for 20 seeds that I planted, not great, but then they were repeatedly attacked by the local squirrel mafia. They were assaulted, and it was sad, which makes me not want to try planting them again. If they’re just going to get so brutalized… but some made it through. Actually, I should just plant a ton, and expect many to not make it. But if some do, good. The sunflowers are iconic, and provide so much for the local wildlife.

I see fritillaries and skippers on the zinneas. Some bees, but not many. But the fritillaries really seem to like the zinneas.

Now, I had written about the asiatic dayflower that popped up in the neighbor’s yard, and I read that it bloomed for only a day. It looks like this bloomed for at least two days, and I need to check on it today and see if it’s gone three days. And next to it, the marvel of Peru is blooming now too.

I finally yet one of the neighbors across the street. I was lugging my haul back from Kroger yesterday, and I waved to him, as usual. However this time, he was over near the street, and I could actually talk to him, and so we finally chatted. This neighbor has been friendly and we’ve waved to each other many times, he’s often out with his dog while I’m doing my gardening work, and he recently (several months ago) got a puppy, that was extremely tiny and cute. It’s grown up, and is still extremely tiny. He told me that she’s now full sized, and guess what? Her name is Lucy. I thought that was kind of amazing, seeing as how no one is actually named Lucy except the main character in the story I wrote, Lucy and the Mingmerang, and this little dog was named Lucy, the whole time. Well, maybe the story should be about a dog instead. Dog and alien go on great adventure together. Anyway, the neighbor, Jared, he said that he liked my wildflowers. This is another person of the neighbor who has commented on my garden, and that makes you feel good. Even though it is pretty miserable for a garden, it does at least have flowers.

Jared said, “Do you have a hose, for watering?” And I knew what he was talking about. My neighbor has the hose, we live in a duplex that looks like one house, and the hose is on his side, and I never asked him if I could use it, because I’m lazy, I guess. I should have a long time ago asked him, and he would immediately reply, “Sure, go for it!” Well, I have been making due with broken watering cans and then filling up 5 gallon buckets in the tub, and Jared has seen me doing my labor-intensive watering work, and has probably been wondering for months, “Why doesn’t this guy just use a hose?” I thought that was funny.

We talked about plants, he said that he had to bring some plants in because they’re been being attacked by the squirrel mafia. He said that’s what he calls them, the squirrel vigilante group. That’s a good name for them. They have also attacked my plants, they are rogues, and they are everywhere. It seems like we have thirty squirrels living within like 100m radius of us. We have about five squirrels that live in our small backyard alone. There are a ton of great trees around, in our yards, huge trees with holes and nuts.

I should take a picture of it, but there was something popping up in my garden, that seemed to be a wild lettuce, and was possibly edibile, according to the internet. It was growing rapidly, and I’ve been watching it, and yesterday, when I was investigating the garden, I saw that it had been munched down, clean to the bases of the leaves. The whole thing had been chomped down to the base. Someone had a wonderful salad feast on that thing! Squirrel? I wonder who done it.

Those caterpillars, the common buckeye caterpillars all went away. They must have reached critical mass and have gone off to do their metamorphosing work. It’s funny that they were truly keeping the plantain weed in check, and now that my mowers are gone, the plantain weed is bursting up, out of control. They were really keeping it down. I should look around for the chrysalises, maybe I can find one around. It always made me nervous that they were hanging out in such a high traffic region, both cars and feet around. If they tried to go across the road on their quest for a suitable place to make a chrysalis, they would not have had a good time. I hope they have found good places to go.