The guts of the cabin are portraits of our families, books we have read and not read and shared together, paintings done by creative friends and lovers, and a bird shrine of miniatures, oils, empty wine casks and tapestries. Similar to the insides of our own hearts, the windows into the cabin bring crucial light which forges an atmosphere conducive to napping, loving, cooking, laughing, sleeping, and holding many things dear. With the shades drawn we 
often sleep until two pm, not knowing how late it is until we wake to semis roaring past to the north, and the parrot squawking to our right, which sounds like chatter to the undiscerned ear but really means "where's my fruit ball and I have to poop!" Anyway, I bought a variegated vine to liven up the drabness of plywood which is mystical mostly but can become heavy when I am surrounded by it for long periods. It hangs by the window adjacent to the bed, which is connected to the living-room which has two large windows which let in minimal sunlight. The kitchen is the darkest room of the house, but we brighten it with dancing barefoot and inviting guests until late in the night when the sun has set but the overhead light still burns with shadows of spades and crazy eights. The blame for all this shade is the oak tangle looming above the cabin, housing hawks and vultures alike. Rosie likes to sit on the window panes and jabber on about the weather, and like her caretakers she loves a good westerly breeze.
Spiders rule these woods. In order to do laundry we must 
walk down a sandy, often flooded path to a wooden hut which enhabits a washer, dryer, the neighbor's motorcycle, and sometimes her dog. Along the way, I must dodge webs of varying height and size, and of varying occupants. Usually I run face first into elusive small sticky webs that are microscopically small and give me tingles long after I wipe them from my head. Other times, I carefully detach a banana spider's spindle from a single bamboo branch to minimally disturb my poisonous wood-mate. The other morning I looked out my bathroom window to find the largest aracnid yet, spinning a web the thickness of my pinky, I'm sure, connecting the roof to the window to the p
orch but avoiding the path, thankfully. The second image is of what I'm pretty sure are brown recluse which have been laying eggs outside of the window adjacent to the closet, where we put Rosie to stare at the spiders and try to bite them through glass. This particular window is missing a screen. Needless to say I will not be opening the window anytime soon, or venturing anywhere near the web. The photo of them was taken through glass... at an uncomfortable but supposedly safe distance. We also get what I tell myself are wolf spiders in the kitchen above the sink. I pretend they are harmless and am grateful that we have only killed three cockroaches in the house the duration of the summer.
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 
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.
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.
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 hom
e-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.
The guts of the cabin are portraits of our families, books we have read and not read and shared together, paintings done by creative friends and lovers, and a bird shrine of miniatures, oils, empty wine casks and tapestries. Similar to the insides of our own hearts, the windows into the cabin bring crucial light which forges an atmosphere conducive to napping, loving, cooking, laughing, sleeping, and holding many things dear. With the shades drawn we 
often sleep until two pm, not knowing how late it is until we wake to semis roaring past to the north, and the parrot squawking to our right, which sounds like chatter to the undiscerned ear but really means "where's my fruit ball and I have to poop!" Anyway, I bought a variegated vine to liven up the drabness of plywood which is mystical mostly but can become heavy when I am surrounded by it for long periods. It hangs by the window adjacent to the bed, which is connected to the living-room which has two large windows which let in minimal sunlight. The kitchen is the darkest room of the house, but we brighten it with dancing barefoot and inviting guests until late in the night when the sun has set but the overhead light still burns with shadows of spades and crazy eights. The blame for all this shade is the oak tangle looming above the cabin, housing hawks and vultures alike. Rosie likes to sit on the window panes and jabber on about the weather, and like her caretakers she loves a good westerly breeze. 
