hand on my heart

I chainsaw'd in two the old stairs that were in the barn, and placed one half between my house and the greenhouse, where the steps I carved into the slope every year kept disappearing - but my new stairs got claimed by Nature in record time.

I decided to let nature (and snails) have this half, and placed the other half next to it so there could be stairs for humans.

...

The second half was immediately claimed by cats. I find a cat on a step every time I try to get to the greenhouse—you'd think this could be a multi-user space, but the cats insist on lounging across the whole step or else it’s not worth it—and if I bother them they make it abundantly clear whose stairs these are.

Pink-spotted Fruit Dove (Ptilinopus perlatus), family Columbidae, order Columbiformes, found in New Guinea

Rinjiro Hasegawa