Stuff
Welcome to the “Stuff” Section
You might be wondering about the vague and slightly lazy title for this part of the blog. Well, it’s because “My Grandiloquent Musings on the Entomological and Botanical Wonders of My Alpine Terrace” sounded a bit pretentious, even for me. So, “Stuff” it is.
Truth be told, this whole section exists by accident. It all started when I decided I needed to get off my fat arse and get some exercise. I joined iNaturalist, a fantastic citizen-science project for identifying local wildlife, and began pointing my phone and camera at daisies and unsuspecting wasps, hoping for the best.
What began as an excuse for a walk has turned into a mild obsession. Here you’ll find the evidence of that obsession: my ongoing war against the tiny green mafia eating my tomatoes, photographic evidence that some wasps are surprisingly polite home-renovators, and a lot of blurry pictures of bugs I can’t quite identify.
After spending so much time writing about the big, heavy stuff from my past—childhood, the army, getting my willy caught in a zip—there’s something deeply satisfying about focusing on the small dramas unfolding on my balcony. I may even throw in some genuinely useful information about the importance of bees or beetles, just to prove I’m paying attention.
The cats and birds have a place and so this is the corner for everything else. The stuff. It’s less about life-changing events and more about the little things that make up a life. Pull up a chair. Just be careful where you sit; a wasp might have claimed it as a nest.