Mandrake & Money Tree

Sunday morning is my favourite time for indoor gardening. Today, I thought I'd share pics of my 4-year old Mandrake coming back to life and my new Crassula ovata project:

Seth's Christmas Ghost Story Collection

I promised a few entries ago that I would do another Seth's Christmas Ghost Stories book post and here it is. As of today, there appears to be 30 books already published in the series, so I have a lot of catching up to do with my collection, which, as of today, looks like this:

As I hope to collect the full series eventually, I have created a webpage to add more info about the series and detail my growing collection. You can find it both here and on my Library page.

Knock Knock

I had a couple of hours spare today and taking advantage of a creative urge, I opened up my Scribe 2 and turned my mind to the next Guy N Smith zine. Unlike the 1st issue, which was a solo effort, my work on the 2nd issue is going to be more of a compiler and design role. That said, I had promised to add something of my own to the project, and a promise is a promise.

I had thought of getting out my box of Lego and recreating a few more GNS Lego book cover recreations. But I haven't been in the mood to work with them for many a moon now. However, over the last few weeks a single scene of a ghost story has been running through my mind. And as I sat there today, ready to kill a couple of hours, I realised I could deal with two birds at the same time if I wrote up this story.

As regular followers of my socials, currently confined to this blog and Bluesky, I plan on writing a series of ghost stories - a genre I particularly favour but have never attempted before. I also need to produce content for the next GNS zine. The ghostly scene that had been haunting my mind of late ia based on a door. Whilst this door was an ordinary front door in my musings, I suddenly realised I could easily change it to a particular door owned by my favourite author, the great scribbler himself. I had seen pictures of it on a GNS forum, and had read a short story Guy himself had written about it. And then, as if by some alchemical mind-magic, my fingers began to scratch the surface of my Scribe 2, and before I knew it I had a good few pages of the short story written. I am rather pleased with it too. 🙂

 

Misty Morning

Mist and Monstrose

I was in a bit of a miserable mood today, sulking that I was trapped in work on a really gloomy and misty day, which I knew would be very photogenic. It was probably a visual hangover from last night's Nosferatu film and I needed to fund some visual feasts of my own.

Mrs E was starving though, having worked through her lunch break and so a trip to our local chippie was needed. And en route back to the this little misty scene caught my eye and satied my need for a pic of the mist: 🙂

Had a wee bit of energy in the evening and did a much needed repotting of my root-bound Trichocereus bridgesii (monstrose long-form) cactus. The prize cactus looks like ir has had a tough winter and is desperate for warmth and a nice, long drink...

Monday - dawn to dusk

A cold morning's drive into work this morning. But, boy, what a beautiful sunrise! 

Finished work early to catch the early evening showing of the new Nosferatu movie...

And, boy (again), I was glad I'd made the effort to catch it at the cinema. For not only was it a ponderous movie, a visual and story-telling masterpiece that  must surely rank as the finest Dracula adaptation to date, but I also to to see this glowing cloud at the carpark afterwards.

Fossil Topsoil

 

Fossil ammonites used as a shingle topping on my 30 year old Crassula ovata, which I grew from a single leaf cutting.