Hi friends,

Short one this month!

A little ditty: "Littlest Birds" by The Be Good Tanyas.

An exciting visitor to the garden - a red eft!! This is the terrestrial teenager stage of the eastern newt. I am over the moon to have seen one here at my own garden. It didn't stay with us, as far as I am aware, but it did a little loop around the pond while I watched for half an hour or so.


An impromptu zine released earlier this month - "Free Samples: a Top Shelf Selection from the Cripple Apothecary's Health Potion Catalogue". (It first went to Patrons - if you'd like to support my various work a little bit at a time, that's a great way.) I have wondered at various times over the years what "health potions" or indeed "hit points" would mean for chronically ill/disabled people and this time I made up some answers with doodles and flavor text. 

It's a one-sheet printable zine, or you can download a digital reading version. There's also a plaintext document with a transcript and image descriptions, since the hand-lettering and digitally-altered fonts don't yield screen-reader-friendly text. PWYW on itch.io. 

I could've made more potions, but I didn't want to go past the single-sheet size. Top on my list of cut concepts would probably be one to digest any food safely; maybe one that balances physical and mental energy... Right now I wish I had the opening potion, Tuner, because my nervous system continues yelling. Weather, stress, physical deconditioning/reconditioning, all much jangling.

Back to being horizontal shortly,
Toby