Today, I decided to go outside and enjoy the fall weather by reading at the picnic table for a while during my lunch break. While I was sitting there, engrossed by The Stand, I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. I looked over—and there was a squirrel. On the bench. With a nut in his mouth. Looking at me. We just sat there, looking at each other, for a long moment before he finally decided to go bury his nut somewhere.
And more nature stuff… instead of turning on the computer immediately after dinner and the news this evening, I ended up moving my near-dead Mums from the front yard to the back yard and planting my Roses of Sharon into individual pots. I had nine Roses of Sharon (aka Althea) all together, although two of them had rooted together so closely that I just potted them together. Most have fairly decent root systems—say, the size of a golf ball with random tendrils—but one had a nice softball-sized rootball, and one was surviving on a single solitary root strand. I have eight pots in all: two I left outside to brave the winter, one I put in the kitchen, and five are in the library/media room upstairs. Hopefully the cat won’t knock them over like she did my damn begonia.
After I got done potting, I got a hair up my ass to organize the boxes we have in the garage. Now it doesn’t look quite as ghetto… but it’s still pretty ghetto. I mean, our shelves of gardening supplies are the orange and blue milk crates that were once my bookshelves in college. Our lawn chairs are sitting on top of the old-school mower. There are packing peanuts on the floor. But now, at least, there aren’t quite as many empty boxes sitting in the back of the garage.
There is a skunk that resides somewhere near my apartment. I’ve seen it half a dozen times times now. A couple times, right outside my back door. It is ever so adorable! When I told my mom (who grew up in “the country”) about it, she said, “I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen a skunk before, I’ve just smelled them.” So, I keep my distance and move cautiously, and resist the urge to hug it like Pepe le Pew (sp?).