Do You Ever Just Wonder If Maybe You're A Little Bit Insane?

Everyone's been showing off their orchids so here's mine. 
By all rights, that plant should be dead. I won't even go into how mistreated the poor thing is. However, Oh, life...it's bigger than you and you are not me, as Michael Stipe sings on one of my favorite songs ever and which REM made into what is definitely the best video ever. 
I do love that little bitty orchid but I can't claim to have a thing to do with its purple beauty because all I do is water the insignificant vessel it's in about once a week. It likes its window, I think. 

Good god, I did a lot today. Oh, speaking of gods, Happy Day They Crucified Our Lord. For those of you who have known me for a very long time, you may be either thrilled or disappointed that I have not written my annual Easter diatribe. I kind of want to because my animosity towards religion grows ever stronger, the longer I live. But not today, Satan. Perhaps tomorrow. 
I just do not have the energy tonight. 
I believe I may have become just the slightest bit obsessive about clearing areas of monkey grass and other unwanted plants. This reminds me of when I was probably about seven or eight years old and my friend Helen and I decided that we would rid Roseland of ALL the cactus because we hated it that much and were tired of getting stabbed by it, both the huge spike spines or the almost hairlike ones. The big ones were hell to pull out because...huge. 
The little ones were worse because it took hours for someone with a pair of tweezers (us if they were in a place we could get to) to pull all those damnable things.
We'd get off the bus from school every day and jump right to our task. We probably only worked at it for a few days before we realized that we might as well be trying to pluck all the stars from the sky. I wish I could remember the technique we used. 
So, I've always had this (I'll say it again) obsession with getting rid of plants I do not like. 
Today I decided I wanted to get rid of a plant in the kitchen garden area which is a fine plant as plants go but I do not like it and I did not want it but felt guilty about killing it if indeed, that's what I did. It's a leopard plant and they have pretty cool leaves and an insignificant bloom stalk (at least mine did) of small, daisy like flowers at the end of the summer but nothing about them really appeals to me so I finally decided that hell, it's my yard, my dirt, my garden, my plant and so I dug it up and, okay, I didn't just throw it out, I transplanted it into a pot although NOT VERY CAREFULLY! 
Die my darling. If you want to. 

There's a lot more to the story which involves me planting it in the dirt in the area I've cleared by the hydrangeas first and then deciding that no, that's not what I wanted but before that decision, I cleared out more of that monkey grass and chenille plant and also, I figured I better get my silver palmetto in the ground and so I planted that in the same area and it is still there but I'm going to move it. I know I will. 
So all of that, plus watering the porch plants, took at least an hour and then I got back to work in my supposed herb garden. I dug, I stabbed, I pulled. I made some progress but at some point, I was done for the day and knew it so I went ahead and planted my poor pathetic little herb plants in there. I wonder if any of them will do any good. The bananas have come up and at some point will probably shade some of them and the rose in there grows like a wild house on fire so I had to take all of that into consideration. I didn't bother with any of the bricks because I really don't have that many and did not have a vision of what I wanted to do with them. I've seen pictures of spiral herb gardens built of bricks and those look cool but that will not be happening in that little garden any time soon. 

But it definitely is something to keep in mind. 

So this is what it actually looks like as I was watering it just a little while ago.

Not that impressive, is it? Well, let's give it a month or so and see what happens. 
Besides all that, I did laundry and there are clean sheets on the bed. I didn't hang them outside because the forecast was calling for rain which never materialized. Oh well. 

I undressed my new child, whom I still have not named and I found no markings on her indicating who she might be, when and where she might have been made. But I did find that her little knees, the backs of her hands, and her elbows had been painted the same rosy glow as her cheeks. 

Her clothes were filthy so I carefully washed them and while she is waiting for them to dry and be mended in a few places, I put her in a dress that I am sure Linda Sue sent me along with a bonnet whose origin is the same. I brought out Dorothy Anne and Emily from their bed under my vanity where they sleep in luxury under a homemade quilt and on a down pillow and made a new place for them to hang out together in my bathroom on the rocking chair I got a few weeks ago. 

I gave them my special pillows. I hope they are happy there for now. It is the most colorful and cheerful and light-filled room in the house so they should be. 

Mr. Moon took my car to get new tires before the sun was truly up and then he gave it another washing after the one he'd given it last week and vacuumed it and put new windshield wipers on it, and y'all- that is his love language and I believe he really does love me. As he said, I have a brand new car. 

I may have mentioned recently, perhaps in a response to a comment, that I haven't seen any snakes this year. Well, today Mr. Moon saw one in the back yard and it is a beauty. 

I do believe that is an oak snake or a gray rat snake, same-same, and they are very good at eating rodents as their name would suggest. Snakes, on first glance, will always give me a start but I very much appreciate them for their beauty and for their help in keeping down the rat population. 
Unless, that is, I find one in a nest in a hen house, with an egg halfway down its gullet. And that hasn't happened for quite awhile. Overall though, I am living on snake property, not the other way around. We have killed one rattlesnake that was right up by the house when August and Levon were little. I do not feel bad about that. 

Martini being sipped, clean sheets on the bed. 
Why, it must be Friday. 
Hope yours is a happy one. 

And here it is. The reason the music video was invented.

Love...Ms. Moon

Adoption Announcement. And, Other Things, Once Again

Mr. Moon brought my new child home with him just now and I am in love with her. She's a little rough. I mean, who wouldn't be after spending years in a dresser drawer? She shows signs of being loved and played with for sure. Her hair is a mess and she has several bald spots but she has a velvet hat so that is not a real problem. Her legs, arms, and neck are all very, very loosely attached to her body so one has to be gentle with her. I suppose I could send her to a doll hospital but isn't that sort of expensive? 

Her dress and hat are hand embroidered. And she truly has the sweetest face.

I cannot positively identify her. I haven't done the full undressing and searching for a name of any sort but I have looked on her back which appears to be unmarked. Linda Sue, who knows these things, thinks she's a Shirley Temple doll and that may be correct. Originally when Glen sent her picture, I thought she was a Toni doll but that is truly not the case. The same company made both of those dolls but the Shirley Temple one is more collectable and prettier too. 
I care not one whit if she's worth anything or not. I would never sell my child. Oh! And look at this.

Someone, at some time, pinned a perfect diaper on this child. This is the sort of detail on an old doll that links me to the child who loved and played with her. It is part of the doll's history and I like to ponder that. 
Someone truly did take care of this little sweetie. 
And by the way- her beautiful long-lashed blue eyes open and close perfectly. 
I hope Dorothy Anne does not become jealous. Her beauty has faded tremendously over her long years but she is beautiful to me. We love our children just as they are. 
I need to think of a name for this new child. 

I pulled up all the collards and mustard greens today and I trimmed and washed them right at my sink. 

I LOVE my sink. 

Maurice is enjoying it too. 

I pulled the plants, picked through them and de-stemmed them and put the leavings in the compost. I soaked the greens in batches in that enamel pan and then rinsed them well. I brought them into the house, gave them one more spraying off and let them drain and bagged them. I filled a gallon and a half baggie. 

I'll cook them all on Saturday and heat them up for our lunch on Sunday. What we don't eat or what doesn't get taken home with others will be frozen. 
I get great satisfaction from using that sink and also, these things.

You know how I love things that hold things and these are not decorative items. They have utilitarian purposes in my garden and my kitchen. I do believe I am finally the old granny I was meant to be. 

I gave the hydrangea bed a break and went to work on this area which is the little patch of garden right beside the kitchen porch. As you can probably see, the monkey grass, chenille plant, and Virginia creeper are trying their best to decrease the size of this already small garden. So I worked at trying to remove some of that shit from the border in order to create a little more space for my herbs. I have a new technique for removing the monkey grass which is that I use a shovel to get under it from the inside edge and then with my trowel, I stab! stab! stab! like a psychotic woman in an Alfred Hitchcock movie who has had entirely enough of her no-good philandering husband, and that sort of breaks up the roots a little more. Then I just pull with all my might. 
I'm getting stronger, y'all.  

Oh. I kicked bamboo again today. 

It is desperately trying to take hold of the camellia bed which, as you can see, already has its share of weeds and unwanted plants. 

Mr. Moon is home and I think he is tired. I'm going to go make some of what I call "cheat chili" because I use canned chili-spiced beans and canned tomatoes and canned green chilis. And other things. It tastes good and it's not that bad for us. 

Another good day. At least here in Lloyd for me. 
I have absolutely no complaints and the birds are singing their "I'm alive, I'm alive, I'm alive!" songs before they settle into a quiet night and I am alive too. 

Look at the blueberries!

Love...Ms. Moon

Quite Honestly, A Very, Very Fine Day

Before we really get started here this evening, I thought I'd show you the photo Mr. Moon sent me of how his flooring work is progressing. It really is a beautiful floor. When we talked on the phone he said that it's going to scratch easily but then added that the downstairs floor, which if you'll recall is going to be cement, will stand up to anything. I told him that we could all roller skate on it. 

Yesterday I said that I was going to GET SHIT DONE today and I did, although I did not say that I was going to GET A LOT OF SHIT DONE today, and that turned out to be fairly prophetic. I got enough done in that I feel tired in a good way and I can see progress in the hydrangea bed and I got the firespike I rooted all winter planted out. 
Here's the hydrangea bed.

Now here's the thing- I'm now to the part of that project where the border grass (what a misnomer that is, at least in this yard) is thick. Border grass, aka monkey grass, is about ten times harder to pull than crocosmia. The roots are thick and netted together. I've had to use a shovel to get in there and really get under it in order to pull it and it's still not easy. And I'm not even to the thickest part of it yet but I am determined (famous last words) to clear out that area which is also filled with the wiry-runnered chenille plant. 
Again. Famous last words. 

But I have to say that being outside, doing work that is not exactly easy makes me feel good. I may not be able to do it for as long as I was able to in my twenties or thirties or, hell, even fifties or sixties but I CAN still do it. 

I hung a small load of clothes on the line, simply because it made me happy. A lot of people don't like towels that have been hung on the line because they aren't soft like towels dried in the dryer. I DO like them because they smell better and they seem to absorb better. 

I took the trash to the trash collection place in the beep, beep, beep car but it's only a few blocks away so no big deal. When I was backing up to leave the yard, I saw something in the back-up camera that I hadn't even noticed before I got in the car. 

The shadows of the still witchy-branched pecan trees. They are starting to leaf out but not enough really show up in shadow. They remind me of a vascular system. 

The flame azalea looks like this right now. 

Not really that impressive, I know, but look at this.

The new pink native azalea I planted is alive and living, as evidenced by the fact that it's putting out leaves. I did not take its picture. 

Maggie has been texting to inform me about the upcoming Grandparent's Day at her school which is when the grandparents get to come and have lunch with the kiddos. Glen and I have been doing this for years and of course we will do it until it no longer happens. I think this is Maggie's last year and since August and Levon's school does not have grandparents come for lunch, this could be it. 
I cherish these texts. 

This is so Maggie to correct the time from 11:50 to 11:48 and to plan out the menu down to the ranch on the side. And wheat bread. 
I shall do my best to please her. 

That's my life today. I just realized I need to go change the calendar to April. Time, like my life now, is speeding up to the point where I'm having problems even fathoming it. I had a little chat with Maurice today. I couldn't find the plastic container I keep her chicken chunks in gravy refrigerated in after I've opened it. 
"Maurice," I said, "Your old mama is getting very forgetful. I cannot remember where I've put things. Do you have this problem, because you're no spring chicken either."
She looked at me but didn't say a word.
"Oh well," I said, "As long as we're cute, it doesn't matter."
Again, she remained silent. 
I had to be honest with her and so I said, "That's a lie. It does matter but we're doing the best we can."
I like to think she agrees with me. 

She slept with me all night last night and has been my constant companion all day. She misses her father human. 
Even knowing this, I love her company. She may love me second-best but love me she does. 

Love...Ms. Moon

I Did Not See This Day Coming

There's a story here. 
The story of my day, in fact. A day in which it took me over four hours to get gas, shop at Costco, and go to Publix. For some reason though, I never got upset or even too perturbed. 
What happened was that I was driving Glen's Camry because my Prius needs new tires and is not safe to drive and the Camry needed gas. 
Now. Glen had told me that the lever to open the fuel door on the car was a bit funky and he also pointed out that the fuel door needed a specific sort of heel-of-the-hand slam and he showed me how to do these things and I felt quite confident that I indeed could manage to do these things successfully.
Look. We're not going to do a minute by minute of this. What is the point? The point is, is that after failing to be able to open the fuel door and and then talking to Glen who is up in Georgia about it, I did get it open and managed to get gas. 
Whoo! 
Now. If you ever want to know what may be lurking beneath the little box (?) where your interior trunk lid opener and fuel door opener look like, it may be something like this.

Ignore all the leaves and detritus there. That area is generally covered by the little box (?) that those cables with the round heads fit in. 
Just thought you'd be interested in that. 

So I got my gas, I went into Costco. I had a lovely time as always and bought my ham and some smoked salmon and four pounds of organic extra firm tofu for $5.47 cents (yes, I am freezing all but two pounds of it) and some other stuff and took it all out to the car where I opened the trunk to put the food into the bags I had thoughtfully moved from my car to this car, even remembering to bring an insulated bag with those little freezer things in it and I loaded up the bags with my purchases and went to shut the trunk lid and, well- it would not shut. 
Oh fuckity fuck. And when you drive in that car and the trunk lid is open it beeps every second. 
Beep, beep, beep, beep...
And so forth.
I fiddled around with the cables, no luck, called poor Mr. Moon again and he sent me to a nearby place where they do truck modifications and all sorts of groovy things to trucks and it's in the building that Glen and his daddy built which was the home of Moon Tire and Repair many years ago. 
So Joe, and yes his name was Joe, seemed to be incredibly busy but he told me to just park out front and he'd get around to it and he did send a guy named Joey out to see what he could see and Joey got the trunk lid shut but the gas tank door, which he had inadvertently opened, I guess, would not shut and I said, "Got any duct tape?" and he did and he neatly applied the duct tape you see above. 
He warned me that the whole thing needed fixing because chances were good the trunk lid cable was going to fuck up and I wouldn't be able to open it and would have to lower the back seat and climb through to pull the emergency trunk lid opener. 
I asked him if that was for people who had been snatched by the Mafia and he said it was. 
You know what I'm talking about. 
So. Hurray! 
By this time it was 3:15 and I was understandably hungry so I got myself a burrito at a nearby joint and then drove to Publix with the luxury of no beeps and even stopped at the library to return books and all was well, all was lovely, until I went back to the trunk at Publix to get more bags out of the trunk and guess what? 
The damn thing would not close. 
I did not even consider bothering my husband about this. What in the world could he do? I could drive home with the car beeping and ultimately, that is what I did. I sort of got used to the beeping before I got to Lloyd so it wasn't horrible but I would not volunteer to repeat the situation unless absolutely necessary, like if I had to drive myself to the emergency room or something. 
Which means I won't be going to pottery tomorrow which is fine. Jessie has to work tonight and tomorrow so she won't be going anyway and I've still got that spoon rest to glaze paint and I can do that here so as not to waste class time next week. 

So that is what I did today and as I said, I am not upset nor do I even feel very frustrated. These things happen, you know? I even sort of enjoyed my encounter with Joey who reminded me of a thing an old friend used to say which was that the best people, the real people are the tillers of the soil and the changers of the oil. 
Or something like that. 
I don't think Joey actually changes oil but I have no doubt he has before. 
I even ran into an old friend at Publix and part of me was like, "Oh dear god. I just want to get this over with and go home," but then I realized that she needed an ear and an understanding friend and there I was. 

I think I have taken Karen's words to heart and am just taking things as they come. 
This will probably last for about three more days and then I'll be right back to bitching about everything. 

Moving on, there were several comments on yesterday's post about how I should try the clumping bamboo rather than the spreading bamboo and I realize that I have not made the enormity of the situation clear. I am not ever going to plant any more bamboo of any kind in this yard. Ever. I do not need any more bamboo. It would take heavy machinery and a team of horses to eliminate the bamboo we have here. So all we are trying to do is to contain it within the boundaries of what it already is. 

I took some pictures. Some panoramics because there is no other way to get the entire bamboo jungle/forest in one picture. Even then, the scale is not quite possible to grasp. 

What we have here is the width of the growth nearest to the house. That photo gives a less than accurate picture of what it actually looks like and also, that is the thinnest part of the strip. 

For scale, here is a one stalk of bamboo which I am grasping. 

It is thick and it is tall. 
No dirty comments needed. I know. 

Here is how densely the bamboo grows within the jungle/forest. 

See what I'm saying here? A skinny child could not make their way through that mess. You would need an experienced jungle explorer with massive machete skills to make your way through it. 
Hell, Tarzan could be living in there somewhere for all I know. 
That would be so cool. 

This is my pano of the length of it. 

That is one of the two burn piles in this yard and it is huge. Far bigger than it looks.

In spring, the sprouts come up in that entire field and also in the camellia bed which is far to the left of what you are seeing and also in the space between the house and the next door neighbors' house and also in the front yard and sometimes it comes up in the old chicken run which is not close at all to the closest part of the jungle/forest. 
And let us not forget, there is another type of bamboo which comes up everywhere which is far skinnier and you can not kick it over because it just whips about when you try, and the roots from which it travels are as hard as iron. 
Okay. Maybe not quite that hard but when I try to use my clipper to cut through one, it just laughs and laughs and my clipper, poor thing, just cries. 

Life in Lloyd. 
And still, you know I love it. 

Mr. Moon found a cache of old Life magazines from the mid-fifties in one of the many dressers in the cabin today. 

How cool is that? 

And...he found this.

When we were on our trip, whenever I'd see a baby or a small child, I would say, "Perhaps that is a bad baby and they would give it to me."
Ultimately we decided that none of the bebes we saw were bad and so (sigh) I got no baby. 
But perhaps this one is a bad baby and I am going to adopt her. Yes, her hair's a bit of a mess but so is mine. Please do not say she is scary. I think she has a very engaging expression. I believe she is a Toni doll, also from the mid-fifties. 

As are Glen and I. Well, we're not Toni dolls but we are from the mid-fifties. 

Tomorrow I am going to get shit done! What that will look like remains to be seen but it's going to happen. 
You can read all about it right here. If you should so please. 

Love...Ms. Moon 

Way Too Many Words About Way Too Little Of Importance, Once Again

This morning I was out kicking the bamboo, as one does, and when I got to the old barn/shed/whatever it was, I decided to take this cabbage palm's picture. 
Wait. I just did a plant ID on it which said I have a Chinese Fan Palm there. 
I have no idea. I thought I remembered planting it back when we were clearing our lot in Apalachicola of some of the volunteer cabbage palms and brought some home to plant. What if they're ALL fan palms? 
Good Lord but I am ignorant. You'd think, wouldn't you, that after living in Florida for most of my life and being surrounded by various types of palms, most of which I love, I'd be able to at least identify the cabbage palm which is the state tree? 
I think. 
Welp, no, I just looked up "state tree of Florida" and that would be the Sabal palm. 
I give up. 
I took a picture of a palm tree! 
And can you see that stalk of bamboo apparently growing out of the back of it? When I tell you bamboo is extremely good when it comes to hiding itself before it's too big to kick over, I am not kidding. That is exactly what I mean. 
And that stalk goes up about twenty feet. 

I was determined today to get things done. And I did up to a point. I got back out in the garden and pulled some more weeds. I have the weeds there mostly well under control but I know how these things go and I have GOT to get some mulch going. It's not perfect at weed prevention but it helps. It also helps to retain moisture so that I don't need to water as often. We here at Casa Luna do not BUY mulch except for the occasional few bales of pine straw we use around certain plants in the yard. Of course we have enough oak leaves to fill a silo but that would require raking which I used to do but I got spoiled when Glen started cruising the streets of neighborhoods and loading up bags of already thoughtfully raked up leaves left on curbs. This is the time of year when that generally happens as the oaks seem to retain their leaves until the new baby ones push the old granddaddy ones off, filling up yards which then fill up the bags. People do not have the same attitude about leaves that we do which is that leaves are fine on the ground where they land and since we don't really have any grass, it's not like they are killing anything and in the end, they break down and provide more nourishment for the soil. 
Where the, you know, invasives grow. 
But Mr. Moon has been way too busy to spend time driving his truck up and down suburbia and god knows I'm not doing it. 

Boy. I can take the smallest subject and just go on for hours about it, can't I?
Yes. Yes I can.

So in the garden I planted some of the Seminole squash seeds I'd bought. I am quite interested to see how this experiment goes. I did not plant that many seeds because how many squash can I actually use? Although they will keep for a year in a cool, dry place. 
But I am of the mind to just check this situation out before I commit myself to planting a plethora of pumpkins. 
Yeah. I just wrote that because of the alliteration. But it says what I wanted it to say so what the hell? 

I then cleared a space to plant my zinnias in and I got a lot of those in the ground which makes my heart happy. 

Isn't that a neat and tidy zinnia bed? 
I am certain I planted the seeds too closely together but that is what I do. 
I watered the new seeds in and that was about all I did. 
However, since I had spent a long time on my knees yesterday pulling things out of the ground, spending time on my knees today putting things IN the ground, my lower back, hips, and buttocks (I love that word) told me that they all needed a damn break and so although I had planned on doing more hydrangea bed weeding, I just couldn't. 

So I came in and made a stock with crab legs and claw shells and some shrimp tails along with various vegetables like onions, celery, and garlic. I have in mind to make a sort of seafood chowder with the meat from those shells and tails and that will be the base of it. Once you've got the stock made, the rest of it does not take long. I'll strain the stock and use it in which to cook some potatoes and more celery and onions and also a few carrots along with some cauliflower, maybe, with mustard greens and corn and then make a sort of roux for a white sauce type thing to thicken the chowder, add evaporated milk in lieu of cream or half and half, wine, and finally the seafood which will only take seconds to cook. 
Ooh. I just thought of how good some red peppers would taste in it. 
The more vegetables and colors the better. Knowing this, I am always suspicious of cauliflower. I mean- is it really a vegetable if it has no color in it? Of course potatoes don't but that doesn't matter. Potatoes are one of the staffs of life and as such, are not judged by the standards we use for other vegetables. 

Speaking of the staffs of life, I made some more baguettes yesterday and although these are not as flat and unrisen as the ones I made before, they are still not anything you'd see served in a French cafe. But they have whole wheat flour in them which I pretend makes them better for us. I will toast some slices of that and our supper will be done. 

Mr. Moon will be heading up to Lake Seminole tomorrow to get back to work on that flooring. He said he could only take about three days of that (talk about sore hips, lower backs, and buttocks) before he needed to come back and rest. 

The family is in the process of discussing our Zombie Jesus get-together on Sunday. I'll be going to town tomorrow and will buy a ham (ham holidays are my favorite) and I do believe that I have enough cooking greens in the garden left to make a nice pot of those for the meal. I'll make bread of some sort, probably either Challah or angel biscuits. I shall ask the children which they'd prefer. Lily will be bringing a cake for the Gibson's birthday part of the celebration, Jessie promises deviled eggs and perhaps fun drinks and maybe fruit salad? May has offered to make a salad and bring hummus and whatever else we want. Chips? Salsa? 
Of course. 
Hank and Rachel probably will not be coming which is a great sorrow but completely understandable. I know Rachel does not want to travel to Lloyd and then be uncomfortable for hours and Hank wants to stay home and be with her. 
We shall miss them. 

I wonder if there will be an Easter Egg hunt. I imagine there will be. The youngest ones will be disappointed if there's not, even if the Easter Bunny is no longer believed in. I still find plastic eggs occasionally in the yard from previous years' hunts and to my mind, dying Easter eggs is one of the magical joys of life. 

While it's still fresh in my mind, here's my favorite sign I've seen from all of the ones posted online from the protest. 

I stole this from Jeff Tiedrich's Substack daily newsletter, Everyone's Entitled To My Opinion. 
I like him because he cusses even more than I do with no regard to what anyone thinks. I read that newsletter daily along with Heather Cox Richardson's Substack daily newsletter, Letters From An American, which is an entirely different sort of newsletter but one I absolutely trust. I read it via Facebook and that link is HERE. 
Her newsletter is far more scholarly and serious but I like having the balance between the profound and profane. 

I guess that's about it. 

Love...Ms. Moon

Little patch of cheerful Oxalis. Mr. Moon was about to mow and I wanted to take their picture before that happened. 

Trigger Warning: Toad Ahead

Remember this picture from two days ago of the crocosmia choking out the hydrangea? 
For some completely deranged idea, I thought I could get out there and clear that area of the crocosmia, monkey grass, and chenille plant in a couple of hours. 
Tops. 
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
I was being delusional. 
I did get a good start on it though. I was so determined to get in there and work today that I had already positioned the garden cart in which to deposit the invasive plants I pulled and had my trowel at the ready. So I put on my gardening overalls and gardening shoes and put my clippers in my back pocket to deal with roots I could not pull and on my knees I went. 
After a little over two hours I have managed to get a lot done but it's certainly not all cleared. 

I'm getting there. When I'm done I need to fertilize those poor bushes. In the twenty plus years I've lived here, I have never fertilized them once. It's a miracle they're still alive. 

While I was weeding, I was surprised when this critter hopped out of the border grass. 

I am not frog or toad phobic but they are not my favorite animal either. They're not even my favorite amphibians. 
Wait. I just thought about it and I do not have a favorite amphibian. They are completely otherworldly to me. I have never once held one in my hand although I have held several snakes, albeit in a highly controlled situation with snake experts standing by. 
But if you take all the emotions out of the observation of toads and frogs, they are pretty darn cool.

Let me just say that I am grateful beyond words that I did not have to kiss a toad to find my prince. 

Well, as the T-shirt says, I did kiss a lot of toads before I found my prince but not of the actual amphibious sort. 
This is an Eastern Spadefoot toad. Its little feet are cleverly constructed to be able to dig backwards into the dirt. They spend most of their lives underground, I take it, having burrows where they live. Wikipedia has a most interesting and even, dare I say? fascinating article on them. 
You can read that HERE.
Just in case you feel scientifically interested. 

So clearing out that little bit of ground was honestly about the only constructive thing I did today besides a little laundry and making our Sunday breakfast. For whatever reason, I was simply not in the mood to make the regular Sunday breakfast/brunch which is either bacon or sausage, biscuits, potatoes or grits, and eggs. 
Nope. Didn't want to do it. 
So I made pancakes which is a one and done sort of thing. Sausage too, but that's not hard or time consuming. The pancakes had bananas, apple, blueberries, pecans, and oat bran in them. So yes, they were basically health food. Oh, I scrambled some eggs too because that is also easy. Mr. Moon was not unhappy. 

Sundays are special days for us. We call Sunday our "date day" and although we have an obviously empty nest, it is a day we reserve for each other. There is much sweetness. 
For example- today Mr. Moon washed my car! 
True love, eh? 

I think so. 

And that is all. 

Love...Ms. Moon

These Things Give Me Hope

It was a big day in Tallahassee. This morning was the annual Springtime Tallahassee parade which the little family attended before they went to the protest at the state Capitol. I'm so proud of them. May had to work, Maggie had two different things Lily had to get her to and Hank is taking care of Rachel. Who, by the way, is okay, thankfully. Having some pain but able to rest. Hank's taking good care of her, changing her bandage, making sure the incision site looks good, making her things to eat and drink.
Jessie said there was a really good turnout at the Capitol. I'm so glad. Tallahassee has been an historically blue dot in a red state. There are three universities there and a big arts and music scene and all that other lefty liberal flakey stuff so I'm not surprised people turn out. In her text she wrote, "I'm glad we went. But I get very emotional. Like why the fuck do we have to protest this shit? How did we get here?! But it was a really good turnout and lots of support from cars driving by."
I read an online article from NBC news about the protest in Minnesota and by the end of it, had tears running down my face. 
My god but sometimes I do love human beings. I have become so cynical in my later life but now and then I am reminded that there are so many people who are decent and who care enough to get out there and do the decent thing. And now I've just watched this and I'm a fucking mess. 

I don't even need to say anything about that except that music and those who write it and make it can change the world in ways the politicians never can. 

And while all of this was going on today, I was right here in Lloyd, as I knew I would be. I did get my plants in the garden and I did get my hands in the dirt and I did get weeds pulled up and I did get a real sense of accomplishment and also peace. It's funny how although I do like and try to keep a tidy house, I have little interest in dusting or mopping, scrubbing or polishing while a newly planted garden with all of the sense of possibility inherent in it thrills and satisfies me. 
While I was already on my knees, I felt around each carrot to get an idea of how mature it was. I'm glad I did. I found a good many quite ready to pull. 

It is so wonderful to have this sink.

Mr. Moon texted me earlier today to say that if it was alright with me he would like to come home this evening. I answered saying, "I guess that is fine with me." 
And so he has and I am glad to have him here. I can't seem not to hug him every time we come across each other in the house. I don't think he minds because he surely does hug me back. 
Tenderly. 

I kicked bamboo again today before I got started in the garden. It needs to be done at least every other day or else the sprouts will become so large that it is difficult to snap them off at the ground with a good solid kick. Tomorrow I plan on weeding around the hydrangea, pulling up as much of the crocosmia as I can. I would love to think that I'll finally get to that herb garden I've been thinking about but who knows? 

Here's one more picture of the protest in front of Florida's capitol that Jessie sent. 

Sounds like a good plan to me. 

Time to go make my sweetheart's supper. 

Love...Ms. Moon

P.S. Thanks to all of you who showed up and represented today. You are my heroes. 

P.P.S. Yes, I did watch the Keith Richards documentary again last night and yes, I did love it. 
I knew you'd want to know.