#the images make the story but they are on my website d'oh

[nixmcretro]

New Year, New Something That Rhymes with Year

Technically I’m still the same, but my hammock is weirdly outdoors. For the first time in years I have an outdoor area. I’m no longer trapped in a box. I hate apartments. At the same time, urban sprawl isn’t good from an environmental standpoint either. Maybe the answer lies in population reduction? I’m doing my part!

We’ve got cicadas out here in the wastelands. The floury baker cicadas are still about, the one above was intercepted from a noisy miner (Manorina melanocephala) but had catastrophic wing damage at the joint. He was laid to rest that same afternoon. Just because something can suffer, doesn’t mean it should. Rest easy little one.

We’ve also held our first barbecue without incident. My diet remains mostly vegan, thanks to reduced pressure on rent. The only big exception is salmon which will probably be replaced eventually again.

The garden though, and being able to have plants outdoors in the sunlight. What a game changer. I’ve made an active decision to let dandelions take over the buffalo grass. They mow down quite well.

Looks better than any buffalo grass I’ve ever seen. Function over form I say. When they are at full growth, they provide pollen for the bees (native and European), harbour lots of little bug jumpers, which in turn feed the lizards that roam the grass. A little sad when a common blackbird (Turdus merula) snaps up a few, but as long as I can keep the bugs plentiful the lizards should thrive.

Not everything has been rosy though. My first plant casualty, lavender. I had high hopes for it, but since I don’t really know what I am doing it kind of died. Farewell lavender.

My native beehives have been doing well, attracting a few different species of native masked bee (Genus Hylaneus) as well as native wasps (possibly Genus Pison). Both are ridiculously tiny and harmless to us.

Then you’ve got the other bugs, like the pictured assassin bug nymph, Pristhesancus plagipennis. It’s ready to drink the brains of the next honeybee that lands nearby.

And now I’m back on the Apple Watch train with my shiny new Apple Watch SE 2. This time around I’ve picked out the smaller of the two and went with the 40mm. And I have to say, I do not miss the bulk of the 44mm. The Apple Watch is a great motivator to stay on track with new year health goals.

Wait that’s not the image I was looking for… that’s more dandelions!

Whoops, that’s another floury baker cicada. I think the several that were in this tree were eaten by the local bat population as they’ve been silent for a while now.

And that’s Stumpie. Tail growth is coming along well. If I find him running about while I’m mowing the lawn I’ll move him into a lizard hotel plastic tub until I’m done.

Don’t look at me like that Stumpie. We don’t want any repeats of how you got the name Stumpie after all!

Then we’ve got this little guy still rocking about, a bar-sided skink (Concinnia tenuis). After being trapped by a redback spider (Latrodectus hasselti). Luckily for the lizard I noticed…

And here’s the data I wanted to show. Weight loss is beginning again. You might notice a drop almost immediately after becoming unemployed, then a spike to >100 kg when I ran out of money thanks to Sydney’s rental market being unaffordable for a single person – let alone an unemployed single person.

Sure, I could have killed myself easily enough but chose to do the paradigm shift thing. Is it enough of a shift? That’s still an unknown at this point. At least for now, there are real life distractions everywhere which seems to leave very little time for uploading videos. Not such a bad thing I guess. That’s not to say I haven’t been recording new footage.

Better go and check the garden is still there and get my 30 minutes of exercise in. Target weight is set at 75 kg this time around. Roughly 20 kg of weight loss to go, and while transitioning. Should be one heck of a ride. 🤷‍♀️