A Borrowed Alligator

The trash collection is coming this morning, and I've just been running around throwing a few dying plants into our garden waste bag. We're at that time of year when some of the annuals are already giving up the ghost. The cosmos on the front porch, the petunia in the hanging basket. I'm going to let the marigolds go a bit longer but they're looking a little peaked too, particularly with all the rain we've had lately. Marigolds are sun-lovers but rain makes the flowers rot.

I think we've finally got the library more or less whipped into shape -- the furniture placed for appropriate social distancing, with signs up saying DO NOT MOVE THE FURNITURE, and caution tape across the bookcases to drive home the point that people shouldn't browse for their own books. It's very bizarre to see a library where the books are marked off-limits, but for now, that's our reality. People have to tell us what they want and we collect it with our "clean, gloved hands." (As my boss has specified.)

So not only am I wearing a mask all day but also latex gloves, which are miserable -- sweaty and constricting. But I am not going to be a baby about it. I promise.

This little alligator-in-the-sewer image came from my computer at work. It was originally used in a New York Times story back in February, and I loved it so much that I copied it onto my desktop. I guess I have that uniquely Floridian tendency to see all representations of alligators as the community property of people from my state. Hopefully, rather than suing me for copyright infringement, the Times will realize that I'm posting it here out of admiration for their excellent, clever newspaper, and they'll appreciate the free advertising.

I had to back up all the useful files on my work computer because it's being wiped clean and updated. So Sewer Gator can live here now. Good riddance to most of the rest of the junk I had stored on that machine.

(Top photo: Spotted on a dog walk -- My Little Pony trapped in a fence!)