A Slug Parade

Thanks for all your comments on my post yesterday, relating my fed-upness with our current state of affairs. It's good to know that so many of us are having similar feelings to various degrees. In fact I talked to my boss and co-worker about it yesterday -- how I'd had that sudden crashing paralysis sitting at my desk -- and they both said they can totally relate. We talked about it a long time and we're all the same place.

I really do think this is the "darkness-before-the-dawn" syndrome, as John Gray commented. The end is in sight, we can see it coming, and yet we still have a ways to go and we're fatigued and desperate.

Anyway, it helps to compare notes with others, doesn't it? Express our inner monsters?

And that's a fairly obvious segue (given the top photo) to today's post, which is another set of random recent pictures from my iPhone. On days when I don't have my big camera and I see something interesting, I just pop a little snapshot and they wind up in these posts.

For example, here's an evergreen shrub in a planter, decorated for spring. It's like a Christmas tree for Easter!

This isn't the greatest photo, but here's what it's showing: eight slugs, all traveling in the same direction on the pavement -- and there were a few more beyond the brick wall. A slug parade! I have never seen anything like this and I wonder what it's about. A mating ritual? A migration?

I found this little miniature sequined handbag sitting on someone's garden wall. (Olga thought it might be food, as you can see.) It would make a great holiday ornament or decoration for a car mirror. I left it there and it was gone later, so someone nabbed it.

Of course I don't believe all this anti-mask conspiracy talk but I am always intrigued by it. It's interesting to see what other people are thinking. I suspect this is someone else who's sick to death of it all and rather than being merely annoyed or depressed, their frustration has veered into denial.

These plants were grown from cuttings taken from the gigantic dracaena in our bedroom. We've had them rooting in the dining room for weeks and weeks, and yesterday I finally enlisted Dave's help and we carried them to school, where they're going to live on a wide windowsill in the Lower School. (You can't tell, but there are lots of other plants around the corner.)

The martenitsa are appearing on blooming trees again, celebrating the arrival of spring. These are on a magnolia that I pass on my walk to work; I've photographed them on this same tree before.

And finally, a sticker on a rubbish bin near the tube station. It's very Jack Nicholson. Inspired by all of us being stuck indoors, looking out at the world, perhaps?