iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 11h

Strangely, the Australian Silky Oak tree in our garden has started blooming again, just on a couple of branches. This seems…anomalous? But it was so gorgeous in the spring that I’m welcoming the exotic splash of colour.

Two bursts of flowers like hooked hairbrushes in bright marigold orange and red, amid green feathery foliage against a cloud-dappled blue sky.

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Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 15h

When I lived near St. John the Divine (a real People's Church), the feast of St. Francis was always a favourite day. And there was the time when we took Rupert, which has ever since been referred to as The (Unsuccessful) Exorcism. Notice my white knuckles holding him, as I envision potential mayhem.

The hand of a priest in brightly embroidered robes (faces not shown) rests gently on the head of a shaggy, panting Airedale terrier sitting on grass in sunshine. I am holding his leash very close and tightly. To be fair, he looks entirely benign for a moment.

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Reposted by Nicola Pitchford

gamera obscura october edition @ohrobin.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

“The profound moral question is not, 'Do they deserve to die?' but 'Do we deserve to kill them?'" - Sister Helen Prejean

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Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Tfw it’s still only Wednesday & you’re just hoping nobody notices you.

Photo of the back of a wooden bookcase showing mouse droppings and two very cute desert mice with big eyes, huddled up in the crack between shelves & trying to make themselves invisible.

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Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I’d say that I’m as fond of a harmless arachnid as the next person (probably more!) but there’s a very very limited number of things incorporating the word “giganticus” in their name that I want to find in my bedroom. Image warning for the arachnophobic.

Gigantic flesh-coloured spider on a wood floor.

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Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Not strictly Michaelmas daisies but wild Californian asters growing on the hill earlier this month. These flowers & Michaelmas always make me think of my dear wee gran, with her late September birthday, her love of all things lilac & lavender, & her maiden name that sounded like “aster.”

Cluster of small, delicate lavender-coloured daisies in dry grass. They have big egg-yolk yellow centres.

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Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Sitting here at dawn in the desert by an open door & I just heard the most ungodly distant roaring several times. Not, I think, human. Could possibly have been a donkey but no one keeps burros around here, none wild either. Big feline? I expect I will never know—but good lord my heart is pounding.

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Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Autocorrect just gave me “wrench,” which—well yes go ahead

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Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Just another evening of stopping in the local car park to goggle at the sunset. Clouds like some lush 18th-century allegory of luxury & perdition.

Churning dark clouds with a rosy tint and a hole like a furnace.

Hot pink, dayglo pink and orange piles of clouds drifting to mauve.

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Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Really, this brutal landscape just doesn’t stop doing extraordinary things. No wonder desert-lovers become an obsessive, extreme breed. It’s not a place of half measures.

Dark-shadowed bare brown mountainside in the foreground; beyond, a gap between mountains filled with puffy low cloud lit very slightly pink by the rising sun. Above, pale turquoise sky crossed by bands of ominous dark grey cloud.

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Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Early clouds, light-buttered, over the emerging mountain this morning.

A column of fluffy cloud, lit butter gold on one aside, over a partly concealed rugged desert mountain.

Sunrise sky over the dark desert, with fluffy clouds spread outward in a dark blue sky and all lit golden on one side.

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Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Last night, last of the Technicolor desert sunset. Photo by @thatsneate.bsky.social

Pink clouds in a deep twilight-blue sky above a small modernist house with warm light in the windows & a tall lean palm tree beside it.

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Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

OH & me watching the UCI men’s race on delay. After 20km with Quinn Simmons in the leading group, OH turns to me & says, “I looked at the results. He doesn’t win.” Had not even realised that my whole body was tensed & clenched, thinking, “please not him.” Get yrself a spouse who’ll do that for you.

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Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Back in the land of extraordinary skies. Hellfire to the west tonight, neon candyfloss & the hills gone mauve to the east. Let it blaze, let it dance in its lavender wondrousness.

Fiery orange clouds over a desert plain and the dark mountains surrounding it.

The fiery clouds have turned almost scarlet now, like neon blood.

Looking out across the flat desert plain and a distant forest of wind turbines to a line of hills tinted mauve by the light. Above them, vivid neon pink clouds layered onto lavender clouds.

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Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Things seen from the western highway today: • 3 desultory coyotes in a bare field • kilos of plum tomatoes spilled at the roadside where the big, double-trailer trucks hit bumps or curves • two ravens beak-to-beak on a wire fence • trailer touting mechanical bull rentals • wild sunflowers

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Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Marking myself in a relationship with that big American sky

Photo from a car window of a neon orange dawn over a dark highway and a wide plan with hazy mountains in the distance.

Pastel pink and amber and mauve sunrise clouds in a warm baby-blue sky above dry grass hills that look mauve also in this light.

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Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Again & again, she comes around & is no less charming, no less personal & beloved, no less untouchable & unreachable.

Full moon behind the branches of a pine tree, with luminous clouds like waves around it.

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Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Evening, early autumn sky. If you look very very closely you can see a portion of the charm of lesser goldfinches who came swooping & circling across.

Windblown wispy white clouds in a deep turquoise sky. There really are tiny dark birds in flight if you zoom right in.

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Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Seen from the road out west this morning: an antlered buck slipping from the road into the woods; miniature goats headbutting one another; a donkey having her breakfast in an open barn; thin coyote, high on a pasture hillside.

Golden sun just about to rise behind bare dark hills. Low cloud hanging on the far ridge and a great fan of pale cloud stretching across half the warm blue-grey sky from the north.

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Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

#overheard At next table, British guy (ubiquitous in the posher bits of California) interviewing prospective employee: “We do a lot of work for the royal household. In fact, I’m delighted to say that we were recently awarded a royal warrant by the Queen.” I’m shrinking quietly into my coffee mug….

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Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

For #FingerpostFriday an abundance of appetising options outside a posh café where the staff are all actually French & the pains au chocolat are dreamy.

Wooden post with a stack of multiple signs pointing to such destinations as U C Berkeley, Larkspur Ferry, point Reyes, Mount Tamalpais, as well as Food Truck and Farmers’ Market.

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Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

With a brain seething with seemingly intractable problems, only thing to do was to make my legs & lungs work equally hard—up, over the valley. And drink the light, again, always.

Sunrise framed by two dark trees on a hill. Below, flat shoreline and a line of shining lavender water. Above that, a line of orange cloud like fire. Blue-grey sky ascending and then, wisps of windblown candyfloss pink cloud.

Steep grass hillside in low sunrise light with one leaning oak tree. Neon pink cloud blowing across.

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Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Knowing people (women!) with ME/CFS has deepened my gut-level understanding of where medical culture thoroughly fails us. As much science must be defended rn, that also must mean questioning medical science’s failures, prejudices, & refusal to acknowledge as real what it does not (yet) understand.

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Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Moon drifting in a painted peaceful sea of sky tonight.

Blue evening sky with layers in tones of grey, blue, violet. Nearly full moon. The scene framed by the darks silhouettes of pine trees.

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Reposted by Nicola Pitchford

🌬Breeze @cool-summer-breeze.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

This is the Stolen Neighbors Quilt. Each of the 11,000 squares represents a person taken by ICE in Minnesota.

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Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Friend texted this morning that she’s buying a kayak. That lifted me out of my sads & got me scrambling up the ridge behind the house in the half-darkness. The news: it is always worth scrambling up the ridge behind the house in the half-darkness. To where the light smells of honey.

Dawn over distant water. The silhouette of fennel flowers against a line of fiery orange light reflected in still mauve water.

Wisps of pink cloud above the dark outline of a hillside.

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Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Today our office Golden Retriever returned after a long absence & he was so excited he didn’t know what to do with himself. Has spent the first 2 hours of the day compulsively needing something in his mouth, whimpering, & periodically dashing around the place. It’s great.

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Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Through multiple readings & listenings (read wonderfully by Attenborough), I remain stunned by the obsessive brilliance of this book. Even just the observational details. “A cock blackbird, yellow-billed, stared with bulging crocus eye, like a small mad puritan with a banana in his mouth.”

Book cover: The Peregrine by J A Baker. With drawing of a peregrine.

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Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

These days I just wanted to be dressed appropriately in case the Revolution arrives on any given day. Whether my destination be the barricades or the guillotine.

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Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

The day is saying, soften. Go quietly, in camouflage. Regroup. Settle. So of course I’m wearing a pink shirt & a flowered suit & man I am fully raging.

Foggy autumn morning with a khaki-painted fence and a turning maple tree.

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Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

A+ coordination of dog size with vehicle size. We literally chose our car for our (late) dog. Then we had to get him a house with a garden.

Two tiny dogs look wistfully out from a tiny hatchback in a car park.

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Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Happy equinox, friends. May we breathe one precious moment’s balance.

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Reposted by Nicola Pitchford

Fossilized Tree Resin @jamberee13.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Happy equinox, may you be woven a crown of yarrow and tender ferns and frolic merrily around a bonfire this evening

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Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Took pictures of last night’s dazzling furnace of a sunset & forgot to post them. Makes me wistfully think of the old house, where last year I would have noticed the light turning pink & run up to the attic to hang perilously from the small window for the best view westward.

Fiery neon scarlet sunrise over the black suburban silhouette of trees and power lines.

Wild neon red at the horizon, watercolour washes of pink and violet above. Framed by trees and a low black hill.

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Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

"To walk with an enchanted heart is my aim and none shall dissuade me from it." Tattoo it on me.

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Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

A shot of the Northern Lights in this film reminded me of one of my self-soothing rituals I haven't done for a while: watching the live sky camera over Abisko National Park in Lapland.

lightsoverlapland.com

Aurora Webcam | STF Abisko Webcam - Lights over Lapland

Watch the northern lights dance in the sky above Abisko National Park with the most trusted and longest running aurora webcam on Earth!

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Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Younger self with dog-of-my-heart.

A red-haired white woman and an Airedale terrier lie face to face on grass. The terrier may be snoozing, the woman looks adoringly at it.

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Reposted by Nicola Pitchford

Cliff PervoSCARY @pervocracy.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

This is a canary resuscitator, which miners would use to revive canaries that had passed out from toxic gas, because ideally not only do you care, you don't even leave the bird behind. just a little mining history and not at all a furious scream

A canary in a sealed box attached to an oxygen tank

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Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

"More than 25,000 people have been expelled to third countries during President Trump’s second term, according to Third Country Deportation Watch." Thousands & thousands of them are now missing. Many others are left in limbo with regard to their legal personhood: no rights, no assets, no freedom.

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Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Found to my surprise this morning that I just needed to keep running until I reached the sea. Through the dark & quite silent woods to the grey Pacific, the fog-muffled sound of breakers, sparse cries of long-billed curlews & the beating of pelicans’ huge wings.

Grey foggy view of the sea, with dry grasses in the foreground, tiny cream-coloured flowers on coyote bush, orange sticky-monkeyflower.

Another view towqrd the great sea,over dry golden grasses and green coyote brush. There’s a rectangular rock formation sticking up from the sea in the fog, peaked with perching sea birds.

Earth trail through a dark tunnel of mixed pine woodland.

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Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Saw the most beautiful film last night, which I urge on all fellow worshipers of the slow, the quiet, the sublime: Margreth Olin's (2023) 'Songs of Earth,' a tribute to her gentle, remarkable father & the fjord where his family has lived for centuries, noticing, honouring, & enduring the land.

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Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

If there’s a ‘my kind of bar,’ this would be it. Elegant mocktails, too — & a warning at the door for male-presenting folks that they are guests on sufferance here.

Homemade banner under funky lighting, with the words “melt ice” spelled out in a mixture of fingers with long fingernails and dripping ice cubes.

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Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Sounds like a story site for @blairbraverman.bsky.social and "What to Carry, What to Burn." Hey Blair, would your enormous multinational-conglomerate-sponsored research budget extend to sending me to Orkney to do some ferreting for you? I wouldn't mind...really I wouldn't....

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Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Look no further for heroes. ABSOLUTELY Fionna here. And also her Ukrainian guest, her sister, her neighbours. I wish I had the presence of mind and forcefulness (courage) to take to task an ignorant & bigoted (& simply RUDE) local government representative like Fionna did.

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Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Nature Expert pro* tip: check for small insects before thrusting your big snout in & inhaling deeply the soul-renewing scent of the last roses. (*not actually a professional & furthermore sometimes not sure I’m a pro at anything)

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Reposted by Nicola Pitchford

Hugh Jones @hbsj.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

There is no such thing as apolitical Everything is political If you ignore politics, you're siding with the status quo, which is political You might wish it were otherwise, but it isn't

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Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Almost as close to the shortest day as to the longest; we are mid-movement in what Paraig O’Donnell has called “that immense turning away.” I feel it on my bare legs, smell it, sense it — & even the light has turned pumpkin spice!

Silhouette of a deer at dawn on a dark ridge; beyond, dull dark-grey water not yet reflecting light; a bank of low mauve cloud; and an amber-golden sky above.

Lone low tree on a hilltop with dawn light beyond, beginning amber at the horizon.

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Reposted by Nicola Pitchford

Gregk Foley @gregk.co.uk · 16/09/2026

Thinking of/with antiwar activist A. J. Muste:

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Once a reporter asked him, "Do you really think you are going to change the policies of this country by standing out here alone at night in front of the White House with a candle?" A.J. Muste replied softly: "Oh I don't do this to change the country. I do this so the country won't change me.

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Nicola Pitchford @npitchford.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Woken at about 2.00 this morning by the loudest, closest singing coyote party I’ve ever heard. The repeated long awooo from a little further off, the hysterical replying chorus of yips, yodels, & lurid gurgles from just beyond our fence.

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