Week in Review 20240818 – Be All My Peas Remember’d

The week started out peacefully enough until I walked out onto my patio and noticed something was missing — several things, actually.

All of my young pea plants had been pilfered in the night, but by who or what I didn’t know. My anger was tempered by the promise of a mystery and I immediately got down to the work of figuring out exactly what happened. I initially suspected a squirrel, but the soil was relatively undisturbed and I spied no indications of little paw prints. I’ve had squirrels help themselves to some free produce in the past and they always left a mess after sampling at the Paulie Buffet. But the crime scene was clean save for all the pea plants either cut at the soil line or holes left where the seeds had once been.

It had to have been birds. Those damned hobo dinosaurs have been the bane of every garden I’ve maintained, but they always went after fruit trees or sometimes tomato plants, not young pea plants that hadn’t even produced pods. But the evidence supported it, since it looks like whatever visited the raised bed had yoinked the plants from the soil. Some had came up whole, while a couple of others held fast to the soil and just snapped at their stems.

At this moment, I don’t know who the exact culprit may be. I know most of the birds that come around, but right now my shortlist consists of a couple of morning doves that nest in the upper corner of my patio. I haven’t seen these two freeloaders in a week or so, but given their penchant for regular mess-making on my patio while maintaining their nest, going so far as to steal pieces off my furniture to build their nest, they remain Patio Nuisances 1 & 2.

In news of a non-thieving variety, I finally received the Dungeons & Dragons stamps I pre-ordered awhile back. The US Postal Service released 10 new D&D stamps for the 50th anniversary and being a natural born sucker for stamps as well as Drungeoning and Dragoning, I bought just about all the stamp-related product the Post Office released.

I always buy first day covers for new releases. The USPS typically releases color and black-and-white versions of cancelled stamps, and I’ll usually buy both since they’re not much more than a $1.30 each and each option has a different design. But they released ten D&D stamp designs (all of which are original art) and getting both versions was a bit much, so I just opted for the color covers.

The USPS also released a lot of extra merch for this release, like a box with “invite” cards all featuring the stamp art and my two favorite pieces: red & gold postcards with metal pins, one featuring a d20 and the other, classic D&D cover art.