Last fall I left the fallen leaves on my yard, following advice from the #gardening đŸŒ± people here, because beneficial insects lay their eggs under leaves. Right now, there are about two dozen extremely round robins flipping over leaves and eating whatever’s underneath. Guess it worked.

In the 20th Century, I was part of a payroll savings bond program. Because I procrastinate a lot, I never got around to converting them to electronic form on the Treasury website. They’re still a big stack of paper bonds in a safe-deposit box. I’m feeling accidentally smart right now… #uspol

The first time I went to a corporate #DEI seminar, it was because we were going to have a new type of co-workers who talk and act differently, and they wanted to be sure we could smoothly integrate Millennials into our work. Don’t know why I thought of that today.

“In two of the most anti-feminist institutions, the church and the law court, the men are wearing the dresses.” - Flo Kennedy

Buying perfume in Paris: A story

The last day of a business trip. I was looking for a present for my girlfriend at the Samaritaine department store. Perfume – that’s the ticket! Went up to the counter and before I said a word, the lady behind the counter handed me a little flask. “I’m looking for…” She said, “This is the right one.” I asked, “Don’t different women need different kinds of perfume?” She replied, “Of course! This is for a woman who’s tall, has blonde hair, is athletic, plays tennis.” I was stunned. Can their intelligence service be that good? “What color are her eyes?” I asked. “Blue, but that doesn’t matter for scent.”

Moral: never doubt a saleslady in France.

A walk around the cornfield in the snow revealed that a lot more rabbits live on the #farm than I thought. #winter

I miss the weird diction Chinese menus used to have. The proprietors of Chinese restaurants have been here for decades now; their English is too good. So I was delighted to encounter “Barbecued Fork with Vegetable” just now.

Listening to “In Our Time”, I learned that the Antikythera Mechanism may have been created as a thing to show off at parties. Nerds have been around longer than I thought. We are eternal!

Don’t mind me; I’m just testing to see if this kind of link works. duck://player/HfGHOkPERsY

Applause for the publishing genius/madman who is marketing the “Meditations” of Marcus Aurelius as a tie-in to the #Gladiator2 movie. #philosophy

Found this praying mantis catching rays on the south wall of the old barn. We had two freezes this week. Haven’t seen a grasshopper sincee October. But here she is, still. #mantids

Part of a window frame, part of a wall, and all of a five-inch-long mantis. In the Virginia mountains. In November.

Who knows about #squirrels? They’ve built a nest in the aucuba bush by my porch. The bush needs pruning, which I was planning on doing this winter. When should I time it so it won’t harm any babies?

The challenges of autumn container #gardening is that squirrels find a nice patch of really soft dirt and bury nuts in the containers. đŸŒ±

Book idea: An adaptation of “Till We Have Faces” by #CSLewis, set in a pumpkin patch. #Halloween

Just passed a convoy of twelve trucks from a tree-service company, headed south on Interstate 81. Good speed, y’all! Buy yourselves something nice with all the overtime pay you’re aboutit to earn. #Helene

Cry for help: Cherry tomato edition

My vegetable garden has a sunny end and a sorta-sunny end. Persnickety heirloom tomatoes get the sunniest spots because those give the best yield. Cherry tomatoes, the honey badgers of the plant kingdom, get the afternoon shade. Well, I screwed up the labels last spring, and I ended up with cherry tomato vines in the prime location. Anybody know a recipe that calls for six pounds of cherry tomatoes? Which I can eat before Wednesday, when another batch will come ripe? There’s a garden adage to the effect of “The mistakes you make in April haunt you in August.” I always thought it was about soil preparation, though.

Remembering the old guitar player who told me his religion was Frisbyterian. He believed that when he died, his soul would get stuck on the roof where he couldn’t get it down.

I just got another query from academia.edu wondering if I wrote a paper called “Passionate transformation in vernicle images”. No. As a matter of fact, I am no longer sure I know what those words mean. Do people with uncommon names enjoy the simplicity of their lives?

The meaning of the Latin term “_pace_”, sometimes used by scholars, was finally made clear to me when George Starbuck translated it “with a fig for the fatuous fulminations of”.