Another rainy day in North Texas, and apropos of nothing, I started making myself a list of essential garden hand tools. It's amazing how many are out there, and because they basically evolved over time without patents there are tons of styles and names (when you start looking online for photo examples). Garden tools are a physical manifestation of the folk process. I've bought a lot over time and many others I inherited. And I've found uses for all of them. (I was organizing tools in the greenhouse last week and I have another batch of them my neighbor gave me in a corner of the garage that need to move to the greenhouse.)

As my focus shifts to the out-of-doors, yesterday's work on the soffits revealed a couple of new tiny wasps nests starting along the edge of the house. Wasps are beneficial - but best kept at a distance. Any time they build around doorways or well-traveled routes, someone (me) gets stung. So time to knock those down and have them move along.

I ordered the next batch of dog heartworm vials from the Australian pharmacy I started using during COVID. I used to buy from one in the UK but COVID shutdown air travel, taking out the airmail delivery mechanism for that business. The last time I tried to check out the site I got a logon screen with no information and it makes me think maybe that site is in the wind and someone has scooped up the domain and is trying to get logon credentials. The latest issue of the AARP newspaper arrived yesterday and the heading is "What we learned from COVID." A lot, and so many things are done differently now.