Snail Sex and Voting

When I walked Olga yesterday morning -- which can hardly be called a "walk" anymore, because she only goes to the corner, sniffs the garbage inevitably piled there and comes home -- we came across these two snails. I think this is SNAIL SEX! I've seen slug sex before, but I'm not sure I've ever seen snails going at it. Not that there's much to see.

Unfortunately, this was in the middle of the sidewalk, which is a dangerous place for even one attentive snail, much less two distracted snails. So who knows whether they survived their canoodling.

This was my breakfast -- bran flakes with the season's first blackberries from our garden. They're still a little firm and tinged with red, as you can see, so they're not quite at their ripe peak. I may wait a bit longer before harvesting any more. Still, it's good to know we're coming around to harvest time.

I did some more work in the garden and put the fox cam back out after compiling yesterday's video. Some of you asked how the fox gets access to the garden, when it's fenced or walled on all four sides. Well, there's a spot in the back left corner, where the fence and back wall come together, where the fox enters and exits. It walks along the wall and jumps down onto an old compost container that's sitting back there, and then into the garden. It departs the same way. It's a very agile critter! Anyway, I put the fox cam in a new position where we might see some of that action.

And then I noticed this, which just amused the hell out of me -- a pigeon, sitting on the Russians' balcony railing, despite their fiddly pigeon spikes and their silly bird-deterring beach balls. I got such a kick out of it. I am a terrible person.

I had to drop by work in the afternoon to run some quick errands. This year I'm voting for the first time since changing my permanent U.S. address from my parents' house to my brother's house in Jacksonville, and there's a primary election in August. Even though it's just a primary, I wanted to vote so I could test the process before the big election in November. So I went to school, printed the primary ballot and the supporting documents, and got it all mailed. I only voted in one race -- for Florida senator -- and everybody knows the Democrat faces an uphill battle anyway, so my choice in the primary probably doesn't make a huge difference. But as I said, it allowed me to get familiar with the process.

I mailed my ballot and once again marveled that I could pay the postage (about £2.50) with a credit card. Seriously, who needs cash anymore? Even tiny transactions can be done with a card and I am all for it. In fact, as I think I've said before, if someone came up with an implantable debit card chip that allowed us to scan our wrists in order to buy anything, I'd get one of those suckers installed in a heartbeat.

Unfortunately, I've also had some bad health news coming from family members, and I've been depressed about that. I don't want to go into any details in order to respect their privacy, but safe to say I have a couple of relatives who have had or are having serious health issues. A reminder, I suppose, that we live in a world of constant uncertainty.

Last night it rained and the slugs and snails were out like crazy. I pulled handfuls of them off our vulnerable plants and brought in a few of the dahlias to keep them from becoming slug chow.