quick little mid-feb update just so i'm keeping on top of things here; it's been a humid and wet month, a lot of rain and very warm days. i'm looking forward to march & would really like things to start cooling down sometime soon. we had a horrible warm winter last year and it sucked, i need my three month reprieve from 30+ celcius days or i will perish. it has, however, been excellent for my garden. as of this week, i imagine everything will have one last big bloom for the year as spring comes to a close. things are already starting to flower. my beautiful thai constellation monstera got absolutely ravaged by caterpillars this spring, which i don't usually mind and i won't do anything with pesticides out there anyway, but it's coming back to it's former glory with a few shiny new leaves this week. i like trusting the process, it knows what it's doing. i also recently moved my carnivorous plants to my pond! they do great in the sunny patch i was keeping them in, but i struggle to keep them as damp as they like to be. i have a goldfish pond in a semi-shaded area, which might be detrimental to the plants, but the moisture coming off it will benefit them more, i think. i'll leave them there for a few months and see how they go. i cut the dead pitchers off the pitcher plants and they've almost immediately started springing up new ones, so that's a good sign.

this weekend, i went to a local orchid show! it's a little ways inland from me, hosted in a small suburb up the mountain. i like orchids but never have much luck growing them, though my dad has quite a sizeable collection, so i often go with him to see what locals have been growing and putting up for display each year. my dad is super into vanda orchids, not just for their beautiful flowers but their root systems! they grow crazy aerial roots and look fantastic in hanging baskets. we went in there with the intention of finding some odd and unique vanda's, and ended up meeting the guy who grew them for the show! he was very nice, gave us his number and invited us to come and check out his greenhouses where he grows them. i hadn't intended on getting any plants from the show, but he was just really nice and he had this hybrid vanda x that flowered so young and had beautiful orange flowers that i just couldn't resist.

something i have been trying to work on this year is generally healthy mental health, and a lot of that means getting away from the screens and computers and doing stuff outside. it also means i've been keeping a physical daily journal where i just scribble down whatever is on my mind, but i feel like i'm only really good at that when i'm super anxious or frustrated about something and need somewhere to get my thoughts down. i never really talk about the nice stuff in there, which is a shame because it means i never get to reflect on the positive stuff!! i guess that's kind of what this is for anyway - i made this entire website because blogging on wordpress just wasn't doing it for me. anyway. i guess it is kind of working because i do feel better than i have in a while, despite the state of everything going on right now. some nice things from this month i want to highlight are:

• one of my co-workers randomly presented me with a very cute little origami fox on a slow day the other week and said "your favourite animal is a fox, right? here you go!" and it was just so endearing because omg what do you mean you remembered the one time 2yrs ago i mentioned i like foxes. so sweet. i cherish it. it's stuck up on my locker in the clinic at the moment.
• a friend of mine recently went to melbourne and when she returned, she gave me a little resin cast seahorse that she had picked up from an oddity shop because it reminded her of me. i also love it a lot and it is proudly in my cabinet. i am very glad people see taxidermy and immediately go 'oh yes, ebony' lmao
• went out for a nice lowkey dinner with my coworkers recently and was reminded of how much i have probably got one of the best teams to work with on the planet. i have never worked with a team i like this much before. never felt as comfortable at a job as i do in this one :)
• my frog was having lameness issues with his leg for weeks in january but i think that is fully resolved! i haven't seen any issues since, and he's put on the weight he had inexplicably lost and has been maintaining a good healthy 50g

a good month overall! so far. now i am going to yap insufferably about the Interests Of The Month (tm), because i like looking back at the end of the year and seeing how long something can rattle around in my brain for.

alright alright thats enough outta me for now