The morns are meeker than they were

Small things:

The older man in Whole Foods wearing a bright red t shirt with F R I D A Y in white (it was Friday).

Oceanside brunch, huge waves, a bright butterfly hiding its wings when it landed.

Clover, early at the empty Deering Oaks playground, loves to play hide and seek on the woodchips, ducking around the climbing structures like a little kid.

Clover, greeting a man on the beach she clearly thought was Mark (who was in Chicago), then returning, utterly defeated. Her tail so low after that it was dragging in the sand. Maybe she forgot about him remembered, and then felt heartbroken? She didn't enjoy the walk after that, kept looking over her shoulder for where we'd entered the beach, turned and trotted back the way we'd come the minute I said, "Oh, okay, want to go back to the car?"

The last days of summer, brilliant with goldenrod and sparkling with surprise asters. Cold enough at night to shut the windows and dig out the comforter. Clover curling up with me on the chilly nights, against my leg (it's like a weighted blanket to feel a dog on my legs, my favorite thing ever).

Not really listening to the BBC narrate the Queen's funeral procession, but catching phrases here and there, the best of which was "at least 40 corgis."

Ladybug-by-the-sea

Each each other's animal again

Sarah brought me two little baby sweet pea seedlings, which I anxiously nurtured through the end of the winter and into the spring and then planted in a pot outdoors. I keep adding sticks and bamboo poles for them to wrap their tiny tendrils around as they grow taller like Jack's beanstalk. They're sort of humble, and they look like they'd fall over on their fine stems but somehow they don't; they're stronger than they look. Pale cream and pink and violet.

Oh yes, when I see the word "saucepan," it is pronounced in a British accent inside my brain: SUUSpin.

On this day in history: I had to reference NFTs in something for work. Also, "cryptocurrency." 

Make your nails look as smooth as Velveeta feels.

If I'm not worrying about the state of the country/world as I fall asleep, I'm picturing roots, the branching kind and the rhizome ones, the coy rugosa babies popping up here and there, looking so tender and innocent above ground while sneakily connecting to something wide and woody as a tree branch underneath the surface. Also, weevils on the roses and oleander aphids on the milkweed. Daily, I put on one disposable glove and squish the aphids, their tiny yellow bodies staining my gloved fingertips. I wear my reading glasses out in the garden, which means I move drunkenly from plant to plant but can see each little bug vividly and avoid harming the tiny monarch larvae under the leaves. I often startle my neighbors, crouched there in the plants. "Squishing aphids!" I called to one confused neighbor this morning. It's strangely satisfying, like popping caviar between your teeth.

The past few weeks in animals:

• Yellow oleander aphids
• Rose weevils, knocked into soapy water
• A ferret, held like a baby at the Pride festival
• A baby goat, also held in arms at the Pride festival, looking less happy about it than the ferret
• Primary-colored birds in my garden: cardinal, goldfinch, blue jay
• A little dog named Blossom
• Swallows dancing over the pond in Deering Oaks

Ouch.

All the Lonely People

Oh because I'm a glutton for all the tears, I watched this:





Which utterly broke my heart. And then even this lonely old man on the moon* really gets me.


 



*Even, only because it's an ad. But it's a British advert, not a US advertisement. So.