2020 Life Logs, Day 156: Lack of Ambition
Date: Friday, June 5, 2020
Weather: Rain Early, Overcast; High 71, Low 63 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
I’ll blame it on the dreary day, but for whatever reason, I had a total lack of ambition today. In other words, I was useless. I did have a list of emails I needed to write, so even though I wanted to do nothing, I sat at my computer and checked things off my list. As I was doing this, a bird made the rounds of the cottage rain gutters which desperately need to be cleaned out. But this one bird did part of the job for me. As I sat at my computer, I kept hearing a tapping noise. When I looked out the front door, I saw that the stoop and stairs were covered with dried leaves. Then I looked up and saw only the tail of the bird that was obviously finding food among the dried leaves in the gutter. I just let her continue and swept things up once she was finished. She did this on the front and the back of the house. Watching her work so hard finally got me moving. I needed to plant tomato plants in the area where Jed cleared out the small trees last week. The problem is raking the leaves away and digging the holes. The ground in that area is a web of various kinds of roots, so the digging requires some strength and then pulling on the roots to get them out. Not a great activity for my back. I worked slowly and got only 3 tomato plants in the ground. I also planted some sunflower seedlings that I started indoors. So not a lot done this afternoon, but I think things will go more quickly tomorrow now that I have a process.
When I came inside, I needed to just sit for a bit, so I downloaded a book from Kindle on Mark’s old tablet. I am still reading the Harry Potter series, but Heather mentioned a book by Ta-Nehisi Coates yesterday that she thinks should to be required reading for all Americans, especially right now. The title is Between the World and Me. If you are not familiar with the book, it is written as a letter from the author to his 15-year-old son about the realities of being Black in the United States of America. It is my very first attempt to read a book on a tablet. I’d prefer a hard copy, but so far, I find reading this book on the tablet is working for me. I’m only a few pages in, but I agree with Heather that this should be required reading.
I want to thank my friend Bruce Woodin who sent an email pointing out that I had wrongly identified the crabs that Jonah was finding yesterday. I called them ghost crabs, but ghost crabs are mostly found in tropical and subtropical parts of the world. I took many photos of them as we sailed around the world.
01 Crabby Pirate Greeting on Ile du Coin
My name for them was pirate crabs because they often had one eye closed making them look like they had on a pirate patch. I’m including a photo that I took of a ‘pirate’ crab in Chagos to get Bruce’s confirmation. The crabs I have been calling ghost crabs here on the Cape are from the genus Emerita and are commonly called sand crabs, mole crabs, or sand fleas. Bruce knows my passion for correctly identifying flora and fauna, so I really appreciate his correction.
