We should not have to pay for safe streets with blood and vigils. www.bostonglobe.com/2026/07/17/o...

I’m having one of those ‘wow things are super shitty and incredibly depressing’ mornings so here’s a photo I took last week of a pollinator‘s tush poking out of a penstemon in my little urban yard.

Also for a non news endorphin hit here are some Mediterranean wildflowers….

What in the world happened to that one little candle?

Florida is a strange place for oh so many reasons, but one odd thing to me is seeing plants outdoors that I only know in their munchkin version, indoor plants.

My secret joy is that we bought the rain barrel from Blue Stem Natives (fantastic native plant place), and it's made here in NE, and they use upcycled food grade containers. I specifically chose ours because of this, the only one like this, which makes me laugh each time:

Everything is depressing so instead I'll talk about rain- we've had a couple of years of drought in NE and so as we've started to fill our little urban plot with native plants we wanted help watering- thus our new rain barrel. Which brings me such joy! Plus my secret joy abt the barrel:

I've been posting about all the horrors, but last night I saw this phenomenon right at home in Somerville: a full rainbow, a double full-rainbow, and literally the most brilliant rainbow (you could see the difference between blue, violet, and indigo!)

And yet more, with a fan fave: Boston is already fucking cold we don't need more ICE

More photos!

I don't know what numbers they're going to give but the Boston protest felt bonkers huge. (Posting after getting back, because for my mental health/sleep I took bsky off my phone)

Norovirus fucking *sucks* (haven't been diagnosed but based on symptoms...) but I'm far better today than yesterday. Instead I'll share this mural we had painted by an amazing young local Som artist (never done murals before!) www.rhecivitello.com My photo doesn't do it justice, makes me so happy

Incredibly proud to call this amazing human being my congressional rep. I wish I could say that hearing her speak from the second row was purely inspiring and not also v depressing, but she made a damn strong case for choosing hope (and fighting) over the ease of cynicism.

The government was actually still open so I got to see cool things like this exhibit on modern art from Haiti

The Post is doing one of those Spotify-style wraps, so I figured I'd see what they came up with about my newspaper reading habits. Clearly it's also geared to trying to get the reader to sign up for different newsletters, etc., but also... Yes, yes I was on the student newspaper in high school.

We do some…unusual stuff while reporting, like apparently, on a short break between interviews, driving our rental car through a tree.

I’ve only been able to get into native plant gardening this year and wow- i love just staring at the bees and wasps in throngs on the blooms. And a few days ago I spent like five minutes watching this monarch butterfly (!) go round and round the spotted bee balm flowers, drinking away!