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i really like this thing where websites will have separate "log in" & "sign up" buttons and if you click "log in" it takes you to a sign-up screen anyway so you have to click "i already have an account" and then it will ask if you want to sign in with your facebook account or with instagram or linkedin or deviantart or whatever, and if you choose "username & password" it asks if you want to put in your username or use your thumbprint, and once you put your username & password it emails you a confirmation code, and once you put in the code it says "do you want to give us your phone number for future sign-ins? do you want to sign up for facial recognition? do you want to give us your bones? give us your fucking bones?

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Water Lillies/näckrosor. Värmland, Sweden (July 29, 2021).

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Mountain Hare/skogshare. Värmland, Sweden (July 29, 2021).

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Highly recommend Sangu Mandanna's newest novel, A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping. So cozy. So warm. So diverse. Great fun, but with some depth. Love me a wacky found family, and this one includes a zombie chicken and a talking fox. Our heroine is a witch who lost her magic, and her romantic interest is a frosty & handsome academic who's got to learn to trust again.

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Buff-tailed Bumblebee (aka Large Earth Bumblebee)/Bombus terrestris/mörk jordhumla. Kew Gardens in London, UK (July 1, 2025).

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DAKOTA JOHNSON as LUCY MATERIALISTS (2025) dir. Celine Song

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Dawn, mid-July 2020

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More pictures along Pine Creek Road

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i love living in a small town except days like today, when a man i vaguely know from work (met at first aid training of all things), at least 20 years older than me, asked for my number. as i was walking to my office. "to go for coffee as friends" he said. we've only ever talked about the weather, what friendship?

there is not one single thing i said that could've made him want to be friends. it's all been excruciating small talk.

i said i wasn't willing. i think it hurt his ego but he said ok and made a comment about the weather.

but like. he works for the town with an outdoors job that does take him right in front of my office at times. i am fairly sure that he's learned my schedule, i mean what time i go to work, by meeting me on my way in a few times. and it looked for all the world like he'd been expecting me this morning. which is all very creepy tbh.

so um. i didn't feel threatened this morning, but very uncomfortable. i think i might switch up my habits in order to avoid running into him for a while. but this is a small town. wish me luck.

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by Kyle Bonallo (ig: @kylebonallo)

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Cows grazing at the Nötön-Åråsviken nature reserve—a peaceful presence with an important task. By feeding on grass and shrubs, they help maintain the open landscape, preserving the rich biodiversity of the area. Värmland, Sweden (June 18, 2024).

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Common crane/trana. Värmland, Sweden (June 16, 2025).

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Well I just finished Uprooted and I feel like I read a different book than other people. For me, I'm mostly left reeling from the death and devastation I read many, many pages of. Can't quite comprehend how we're at this ending, emotionally. Even if narratively I get it.

Also I felt no chemistry in the love story, outside of work chemistry. And I love a romance! It's practically all I read! But here I felt it was superposed on the rest of the story without quite fitting.

That being said, this is a book that stays with you. With a distinctive voice and rich world-building.

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I should space out novels with redheads for main characters! I find them as beautiful as the next person but, at this point it's such a cliché it becomes distracting, especially twice in a row. It's funny I feel the exact opposite about characters with glasses, as long as it's not romanticised. But I love a little reminder that a character has them, because I also do.

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« Whenever a land hermit crab is lucky enough to come across an empty shell (sometimes because a behavioural ecologist put it there) and if no one else is around, it will stop, take a closer look and probably try on the new shell for size. If it likes what it finds it will keep the new home and continue on its way. However, if the shell is too big the crab won’t pass on by, but will sit quietly next to it, sometimes for as long as 24 hours. In that time other crabs will probably amble past and wonder what’s going on. Then a spontaneous hermit party breaks out. Don’t get too excited, though, because the main thing that happens when hermit crabs get together is they start forming queues.

A gaggle of hermit crabs clustered around a big empty shell will sort themselves out into a size-ordered line with the biggest at one end, leading to the smallest at the other. This orderly formation is called a vacancy chain, and people form them too, of jobs and houses. The crabs work out who goes where by clambering around and feeling up each other’s shells. Sometimes, if there are lots of hermits in the area, several queues will form around a single, large vacant shell and then things get a bit more interesting: a tug-of- war ensues. The biggest crabs will wrestle over the coveted empty shell while the little ones further down the line will shift queues like supermarket shoppers speculating on which checkout will move fastest.

Eventually, one queue will win control of the empty shell and, in a flurry of claws, everybody in the successful line moves house. Each crab slips out of its old shell and into the newly abandoned shell of the crab one place ahead of it in the queue. They all get a new shell, one size bigger, and quickly scuttle off, once again going their separate ways. Behavioural ecologists have worked out that forming vacancy chains provides benefits for all the crabs involved; adding just one new shell can efficiently provide new homes, of just the right sizes, for a whole gang of hermits. »

— Helen Scales, Spirals in Time: The Secret Life and Curious Afterlife of Seashells

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It’s still kind of misty in the woods.