Forest Floor

The woods surrounding the cabin and property is a diverse display of fungi, native florida greens, lush trees of varying heights and ages, and composting browns. I have always loved the landscape of undeveloped Florida, but living so intently among it makes me appreciate so much more the magnolia trees stretching all across my yard, and the fallen oak leaves that create a swamp of a forest floor. I have seen the wildest species of fungi, ranging from bright oranges and red clinging to the edges of rain soaked logs, to spongy yellow and white ones coming off the sunniest point of the armadillo-proof garden, to white and

spiky small-capped fungi emiting snowy powder in the compost
garden. Growing anything that is not already established in the ground has been futile. I had 25 heirloom tomatoes in separate pots that were frozen over the intense cold of the new year, except for one which has now died from lack of sun. I have had celery, leeks, and green onions that produced for 2 weeks before withering. My intentional garden is now only plastic bins filled with drenched compost soil. The compost pile sprouts new greens every day from the bird seed we throw in it, and has begun imploding on itself from soil overnutrition. It is ten degrees cooler inside the bamboo gate, except for one sunny spot that grows nothing. My garden is now the entire forest, and I prune wild plumerias and water tiny grass shoots as if I planted them myself.

Rosie Modelo

This is Rosie Modelo, aged 7 mos and some odd days, who has been residing in the cabin for two months since M calls me one day on my way home from work that he's an hour away driving home with a conure on his shoulder.


He is a bird aficionado, I myself have never cared for a perching pet before but fell in love the moment she clamped onto my finger. She knows some basic commands: "up" to perch on a finger, and "down" to go back into her cage (that one she's not as good at). She also knows "unko" to poop (in Japanese) when we tell her to - useful for when she wants to cuddle in M's beard but has just had an entire blackberry....

Rosie loves cuddling in bed with us, tumbling over on her back on the couch and kicking her legs up in the air, bananas, sunflower seeds (junk food), The Who, The Beach Boys, and especially sitting on my head while I wash the dishes. Some busy days we put her cage outside in the shady part of the cabin porch and she watches the other birds play all day - unfortunate to keep her caged but there are so many hawks and owls in the trees on our property that she would get snatched up in a second with her bright feathers.

Colonel Popcorn

Since January of this year I have been living with Matt in a small cabin made entirely of wood, lacking insulation and proper drainage. My life has taken on a sort of mysticism that I don't recognize until I examine my daily experiences from a bird's eye view.
Like clockwork, nearly every two hours a Tokay gecko that lives in the rafters between our porch light and tin roof makes a noise that sounds like uuuuh-ooooooh. Our landlord has a long history of taking care of animals, including a stint raising these South American foot-long dinosaurs in the cabin prior to renting it out. According to myth, they escaped one day and have now become an integral part of the ecosystem of the property, feeding on June bugs and the giant moths that swarm our outside lights. Unfortunately, Colonel Popcorn lost his mate in Winter when she tried to warm herself on a lightbulb. Ouch.
On a rafter above our home-made wooden bed you can see white deposits that once clung to gecko eggs.
Our conure Rosie Modelo turns a curious ear to the kitchen corner each time the gecko crows but has yet to imitate his calls.