I adore this snake.

They’re the biggest garter snake I’ve ever seen and they live under my sun room. They come out in the mid morning and sun by the corner of the garden there, so I put out some quartz and granite, they rest on and around it now, and that makes me happy. 

Sometimes they let me get close and look at them, I’ve even touched them a few times, other times they’ll hear me coming and slither off.

I think we’re building a rapport. 

I walk past them most on my way to and from the shop, covered in dust and tired from work. I think it’s nice that they spend most of their time sunbathing.

The living room bench has hit another milestone and it’ll stay this way for a while, I think. 

I took an old cherry slab and expanded it with slats, fitting them to the internal curve. The whole thing is strange and not really done the way things are done. It’s held together mostly with screws. There’s joinery, but not a ton of it.

When I was learning woodworking there was an obsession with -the way things are done-, with identity and technique and each of those things done conspicuously. 

This thing is a pile of mistakes and circumstances. There’s the geometry of the slab itself, the limited thickness and wobbliness of my lumber, the imprecision of my tools, my lack of time, my lack of patience.