There was a painting I saved from the apartment complex dumpster, back when we had more space and a three by four foot famed painting was a normal thing to decide to carry home. It was kind of pretty on its own, a pastoral sort of scene in heavy textured impressionistic style.

Image description: A photograph of a lightly impressionistic painting of a house on a flowery meadow next to a river. It's unclear, but there is a stegosaurus drinking from the stream. End ID.

For whatever reason, I was inspired to paint dinosaurs into the scene. I guess actually the reasons are simple: it was like the 2000s and I had been seeing people painting cool things onto existing paintings and liked the concept, and! I liked (well, still like) dinosaurs.

You can't see the dinosaurs very well, thanks to the paints and approach I took to add them, but in the end I ended up really liking that they weren't very obvious. They're like a little hidden surprise if you take the time to look.

Image description: A closeup of an impressionistic painting of the side of a clapboard house, a fence in the foreground, where three small bipedal dinosaurs are scampering from the corner of the building. End ID.

When we moved states we got rid of a lot of stuff, which was delightfully easy because we lived on a street that was big into free boxes. And not junk ones either, where you're not sure if things are out for garbage pickup or what. It was a weird neighbourhood but that aspect of the community was a delight.

We had things going as fast as we were putting them out, which did become a problem when I was packing up the moving pod and somebody tried to go for something I'd set on the curb (next to the pod! nowhere near the free sign!) while re-arranging things inside. The dinosaur painting was one of the things set out and I hope whoever took it didn't notice the dinosaurs until much later.

Image description: A large painting leans against a pole that has a "free" sign taped to it. The shadow of the photographer stretches down the sidewalk at it. End ID.

Isn't it wild what small strange ways we influence the world? I joke about shouting into the void but it’s not a void is it. I just got an email about an old (a decade?!) blog post of mine that was so kind and amazing it took me a couple of days to answer it. I remembered recently there are stats on Itchio and it turns out a cool thing I had made as a gift for friends has been downloaded 310 times. I've mentioned before the delight of how our lives intersect others, sometimes without our realising it. It's always a cycle of sharing even when we forget.

It's very on brand for me to say this reminds me of the oranges (which, I finally just made a Flickr album of the snaps I've taken of them at different stages). This year most of the apartment complex came together to harvest as many dang oranges and mandarins as we could reach--the reach being extended this year thanks to someone's mom coming out with a picking pole and a stepladder. But, before the oranges were fully at tasty-to-people, they were getting hollowed out by the squirrels, who will chew a hole then stick their whole body in and chow down, leaving a hollow shell still hanging from a branch.

Image description: The hollowed shell of an orange sitting on a bed of dried leaves. Something has eaten a hole into the side then gnawed the pulp out. End ID.

And before the squirrels, green proto-oranges were getting dropped by the tree as it decided that particular fruit wasn't worth the effort, to the delight of various ground critters. So we all of us, a big variety of animals, have our fill of oranges and still don't manage to get them all. These trees have had their blossom run for the next season and are STILL dropping oranges. While I'm also seeing micro baby green oranges that are just a sketch of what the final fruit will be. I don't know where these old lads are coming from but they sure still are.

Which is fine, because what overripens on the tree until the fruit gets so soft it can't hold onto the branch any more is also a treat for many. Ground animals again, but also birds who either eat the fruit or the bugs that are drawn to their sweet stickiness. If you are strange, like some people in our neighbourhood who never pick their oranges, the oranges are still feeding things. Oh, right, this was a comparison--so, even when you don't realise it, you're feeding the hearts and minds of others. And maybe the fruit is green and not ready but someone loves it, or they find it and love it even when it's well past any time you would have expected it to be found.

This time around, I'm going to recommend two books that have been on my mind lately and are probably not ones you've read. Links go to the Storygraph entries for each title, a great place to check out content warnings and find ways to read them.

• Jennifer Murdley's Toad by Bruce Coville is maybe not the most known of the Magic Shop book, I'd assume that Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher is the big one. But there are two whole books in this series that I didn't even know existed, because one came out when I was in high school and another when I was in college. They're books centred around the idea of the "magic shop that appears when a kid needs it" conceit, and are solid middle grade books with the right mix of gross and cool and learning about emotions. What has made Jennifer Murdley's Toad stand out in my memory for thirty-plus years is the fight scene at the end with the big bad (so gross and badass!) and the overarching theme of beauty not being any sort of indicator for goodness. It's fun! I challenge you to read a middle grade book at least once a year if you're a grown up (though more is better), they'll often surprise you.
• I feel bad a little for recommending something I know for a fact is difficult to find, but I think of Firebird by Charles L. Harness a lot and not just because it's Tristan and Isolde but cat people in space. It does things with time that I am 100% a sucker for, and I will love forever it takes you a page or so to realise that the story you're reading is about anthro cat people. That they're cats is very secondary, though it does influence how emotions are expressed. There isn't the feline social structure you see in C. J. Cherryh's work, it's very "situation in which Tristan and Isolde makes sense" first, space second, and cat people third. It's a bear to find and last I looked did not have an ebook version. But if you see it, try it.

Here's some pictures of little moments.

Image description: A photo of a tight cluster of thinly stemmed plants blown to seed, so they are topped by thick bundles of fuzzy white stars. The sky is shockingly blue behind them. End ID.

Image description: A photo of a thicket of leaves, the sun shining through a gap in a honey yellow spill that throws a giant flare. End ID.

Image description: A photo of a worn concrete bollard, the pale yellow paint chipped off the top. Three small white snail shells cluster on one side, while a teeny snail shell is parked some distance from them. End ID.

A selection of links about quiet influences, shadows, and surprises. Oh, and dirt.

• I feel like everybody has already seen Consider the Greenland Shark by Katherine Rundell over at London Review of Books, but maybe you haven't. It's just a lovely short article about a weird and wonderful animal.
• Phantom View by John Wiswell over at Reactor isn't a ghost story, but it's something. Something that ends up hopeful.
• I was looking through my big folder of random links and found Aurelac Prospecting: Your Guide To Getting Rich On The Green Moon over on Imgur, which archives an in-universe educational pamphlet that also handily shows off the amazing props and worldbuilding of Prospect, which is still one of my favourite movies. You can watch the original short over on Vimeo and it looks like the feature film adaptation of the short is on Tubi. A little meaty, very dreamy a story about surviving in a very a lived-in world.
• You may already know about the special baseball dirt, but I guess rodeos are dependent on the right kind of dirt too, according to this article by Eleanor Cummins over at PopSci.

If you've thought of donating eSims, this guide was very helpful, and Crips for eSims for Gaza is a good option if you can't easily manage topping them up. There are also more traditional donation targets like the Palestine Children's Relief Fund, UNRWA, and Doctors Without Borders. If you prefer giving directly to families, Gaza Funds is a nice resource that facilitates finding campaigns.