A Fruit Machine and More Wild Kingdom

We've got some more stuff blooming in the garden. Our sage finally produced a flower stalk, a little later than usual, I think. It sat more or less dormant through the spring, but then I repotted it and it took off.

And we have a hollyhock! And more buds coming! Hollyhocks never work that well for me, despite the fact that everyone says they're so easy to grow, so I'm thrilled to get even a single flower. I grew this plant from the seed of one outside the school where Dave works (and where I used to work). It bloomed a couple of years ago too. Maybe our luck with hollyhocks is turning around.

I took a long, long walk yesterday morning up around the Clitterhouse Playing Fields, almost up to Brent Cross, and then back again -- about five or six miles, according to Google maps. It was a good day for walking. The weather was comfortable and as usual there were some curious sights along the way.

Someone set out these blue and white plates for the taking. You will be surprised to learn that I didn't take any!  The two left-hand ones were pretty old and crackled, but it did make me think I should get a plate hanger to hang up my pheasant platter.

I also came across this wrecked gambling machine outside a house near Brent Cross. The British call these "fruit machines," because they have internal wheels that spin depicting pieces of fruit, like American slot machines. In fact I suppose it's a type of slot machine but there's a lot of stuff going on up top there that I don't understand. (I've never used a slot/fruit machine in my life and I plan to keep it that way.)

Anyway, it's one of the weirder things I've ever found out walking. Someone must have been pretty angry at it!

After I got home I read "Juice" and had lunch. At one point I heard a lot of squawking in the garden -- and as we've established, that's not unusual so I didn't immediately investigate. But when I went out later I found scattered feathers, a leg and entrails from what I believe was a young starling. I don't know whether the predator was a cat or a fox, but I suspect a cat would carry off its prey rather than pluck and disembowel it right away. So I'm leaning fox.

And finally, in the afternoon, I found two of these little critters wandering around on our Phlomis, or Turkish sage. Google tells me they're nymph forms of a southern green shield bug, also known as a stink bug, or Nezara viridula. Pretty, aren't they? It's an "instar," which means it's between molts as it grows and matures. Eventually it will be all green. Stink bugs do cause crop damage but I'm not growing any food, and I'm not worried about them eating our Phlomis. They can indulge all they want. In fact, we could use some help knocking that stuff back. It's out of control.

We've found these bugs in our garden in years past, so this isn't anything new. In fact I'm pretty sure I've photographed this instar stage before but if I blogged it I can't find the post now.

Life in the Wild Kingdom of West Hampstead!

Butterfly Patrol

Dave and I were talking yesterday about how we haven't seen many butterflies yet this year. We saw a red admiral in the garden yesterday (which prompted our conversation) and I'd seen a peacock earlier in the spring. But otherwise, just a few cabbage whites, small blues and the speckled wood I blogged a few weeks back.

There's always some variability to when the butterflies show up, based on when and how much it's rained and what the temperatures have been. I don't really understand all the factors and how they play out.

I thought I'd walk up to the butterfly garden at Hampstead Cemetery and see what I could find there. And bingo, there were butterflies out and about. Above is a skipper, though exactly which one I'm not sure. (There are three possibilities: small, large and Essex, and they all look pretty much the same to me.)

Here's a meadow brown...

...and another one with open wings.

And here's a cabbage white, feasting on thistles. All these are common, small and somewhat unremarkable butterflies. I didn't see any burnets or any other very interesting ones until...

...this peacock flew into view. Unfortunately, for the longest time it sat atop flowers with its wings closed, not cooperating with my photography.

I finally got one shot of it with open wings, from a pretty far distance.

And then I saw this rather tired-looking painted lady, which I was happy about. It's the first painted lady I've seen this year.

Now I have to keep my camera ready for that red admiral when it comes back around! Our buddleia is blooming up a storm, and that has attracted colorful butterflies in the past, so I'm hopeful.

Released From the Oven

"Poodle Skirt" Dahlia

I'm sitting in our back garden as I write this, and it's a blissful 66º F (or 19º C)! The heat has broken, at least in our part of the world. As I understand it, it's still hanging over central Europe and creeping slowly eastward, but at least it's gone from here.

Yesterday was still pretty warm, 88º F at 3:30 p.m., but that's within the realm of reason and comfort. It is summer, after all. There will be warmth.

Dave made plans for dinner last night at a French place he'd read about on Instagram. (Dave is on Instagram? I had no idea.) Anyway, I reminded him that we had fish, pre-cooked vegetables and an entire chicken in the refrigerator, all of it set to expire within a day or two -- not to mention leftovers. So he cooked the chicken yesterday and we stuck it back in the fridge, and we'll be nibbling on that for the next week. The fish and veg will be tonight. We never throw away food, but sometimes getting everything eaten requires some logistical planning!

We also have a couple of entrees in the freezer from times Dave overbought groceries. I think we ought to focus on eating everything down over the next ten days or so before our trip. Once food is in the freezer Dave forgets about it entirely, so that will be my campaign -- to remind him.

"Gallery Valentin" Dahlia

Now that we've been released from the oven, I mowed the lawn yesterday afternoon and I have some trimming to do in the area of the blackberry patch. That part of the garden tends to get, well, brambly.

I also noticed several days ago that our yellow and Asiatic lilies were afflicted with scarlet lily beetle. Their larvae were all over the plants, rapidly devouring them. I dithered for a while on what to do, because you know I hate killing anything -- even garden pests. But yesterday I finally took the hose and washed off all the larvae in the middle of the lawn, where they will never be able to get back to the plants on the patio -- and I stepped on them for good measure. No more scarlet lily beetles, at least from that particular batch.

I once read about a Buddhist teacher who would say, every time he killed a mosquito or some other pesky insect that it was necessary to kill, "Better luck next time." Despite my Buddhist training I don't think there really is a next time -- I think these insects are living their one precious life. But as my Zen teacher taught me, killing is unavoidable. We kill every time we take a step. It's the way of the world. All we can do is minimize our harm.

"Bishop's Children" Dahlia

I started a book by Australian author Tim Winton called "Juice" that I picked up a couple of years ago at a bookstore. (Although I got my public library card this week, I'm still working on my own reading pile!) From what I can tell so far, it's a survival tale about life in a post-apocalyptic Australia -- kind of like "The Road" transplanted Down Under. I've liked Winton's other books and this one seems promising.

Oh, and we did go to Dave's French restaurant last night. We thought it was just OK.

Hot, Hot, Hot

Well, yesterday turned out to be the hardest day of this entire heat wave. The temperature got to 96º F (or 36º C), and there was very little air movement. Everything was dead still. The world was a slow-bake oven.

Experts officially declared this the worst heat wave Europe has ever experienced, with temperatures that would have been "virtually impossible" 50 years ago. Climate change is thought to be at the root of it, of course. The UK broke its hottest June temperature record for the third day in a row.

I did take a walk in the morning, but by midday I was so desperate that Dave and I decided to find a cool retreat. We first went to the public library because we had to pick up our new library cards -- but the library has no central air conditioning! They had a couple of portable air conditioners placed strategically around the room, but the exhaust vent hoses were also in the room, so while one side of each machine was blowing cool air, the other was blowing a stiflingly hot blast. The net gain was zero. We got out of there.

We went instead to Cafe Nero, which did have properly installed and functioning air-conditioning, and thank goodness. We found a table and got some coffees and sat there for about four hours, going over all our options for our cruise next month. We decided on some excursions for the days we're in port, and that was by far the happiest part of the day. I felt like a kettle that had been taken off the heat, with the steam pouring out of my ears gradually diminishing. After Dave left I stayed another hour or so to read blogs.

In the morning I finished Rebecca Solnit's book "The Beginning Comes After the End," which was a thought-provoking and ultimately optimistic look at our current global political strife. Rather than fixating on the rise of the cruel, inept and authoritarian leaders who seem to occupy the world stage today, Solnit wants us to step back and look at the bigger picture -- the ground that has been gained in society over the last century, the respect now widely shown to formerly maligned groups like Native Americans and LGBTQ+ people, the greater understanding and appreciation for the rights of animals and nature, the gains of the Civil Rights era that have reshaped all our views and expectations.

Today's backlash is the inevitable reaction to all that progress, and is essentially the dying gasp of the old power structure, she says. "Cruelty, greed and division are not new, but when the old order that institutionalized them is threatened, its beneficiaries come out fighting to hold onto advantages that used to go unquestioned," she wrote. (That sentence made me immediately think of Elon Musk.)

And as she put it in another part of the book, though individual rights can be legally curtailed, the idea of those rights can't be killed. Entire generations have grown up in the environment of earlier political gains, of slow but essentially revolutionary change, and we all see the world through that lens. As Solnit puts it, "You can cut down the flowers, but you can't stop the spring. There is no going back, though how we go forward is the work -- or conflict -- at hand."

Or, as she quotes writer Anand Giridharadas, "When I look down at the ground of the present right now, I feel depressed. If I lift my head to the horizon, I see a different picture. This is not the chaos of the beginning of something. This is the chaos of the end of something."

God, I hope so.

Solnit also made the interesting observation, and I'm paraphrasing from memory here, that conservatives who see the world through a lens of individuality and isolated achievement are less understanding of systems -- of the interconnection between all living things, and all people and parts of society and economic groups. Rather than perceiving that web of existence, they see only their pinprick selves moving through a universe of resources (including other humans) to be taken and manipulated at will. This is why right-wingers disdain talk of climate change, because the Earth's climate is the ultimate system. When Margaret Thatcher famously declared "there is no society," she was displaying that inability to perceive interconnectedness.

Last night was awful. When I went to bed at 10 p.m. the temperature was 80º F (27º C) and that is just not good sleeping weather. We have an oscillating fan, but it doesn't do much in an airless room. I couldn't fall asleep until after midnight, after I went out and sat on the garden bench just to cool off in the darkness. (It may have been 80º outside but that's cooler than the temperatures inside the house.) I seriously considered sleeping in the garden, but I didn't want to wake up with a rat nibbling my toes.

Instead I came inside, spread out on the living room floor beneath our largest window, and fell asleep there. I woke up around 2:30 a.m. and moved to the bedroom, which was more tolerable by then.

Still warm today, up to the high 80's or about 31º C, but we've had some rain and it's overcast, and all of this really is coming to an end. For now.

Inspired

There's something really grating about persistent heat. I feel more on edge and more tense, if not from current discomfort then from dread of the discomfort that's coming. I think of that famous Raymond Chandler line about the Santa Ana winds, making "meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks." I'm not studying my husband's neck, but I am feeling that tension.

Yesterday, it turns out, was our day of relief -- the temperatures only got to about 90º F, or 32º C. Today it's going to get up to 94º F (34º C) and although the temps start to drop after that, they drop slowly. Saturday's high will be 87º F (31º C).

I don't know why I find this so difficult. I lived in Morocco for two years with no air conditioning, and it gets a lot hotter there than here. But I was younger then, and less cranky.

I spent yesterday morning at home. I got in another good walk in the morning, followed by reading. Oh, and I finished posting all my rescued slides! (At least, all the ones I thought worth posting -- a fraction of the whole.) So I'm finally finished sorting, scanning, editing, uploading and tagging -- and the results are on Flickr in album 1, album 2 and album 3. There are a total of 573 pictures.

I will acquire more slides at some point, but I may take a little break now.

After lunch I went down to the Photographer's Gallery in Soho to see an exhibit of Japanese women photographers. I went mainly to enjoy the air conditioned space, but the photography was interesting, too. Then I spent a ridiculous amount of money on three photo books in the bookshop, including one of pictures of New York by Harry Gruyaert. I read about this book in The Guardian and it's been on my radar ever since, so I was happy to get a copy. Gruyaert's pictures are dense, layered, colorful depictions of street life and after sitting in the cafe with an Americano and paging through them, I was inspired to take a little walk (despite the heat) and take some colorful street photos of my own.

I also bought Arthur Tress's book about men cruising The Ramble in Central Park back in 1969, which I'd also read about in The Guardian, and one by William Eggleston. Photo book stores are dangerous places for me.

I'm not sure what we're going to do today. We might just go find a cafe or mall and hang out indoors. We need to go through the itinerary for our upcoming cruise and decide if we want to buy any of the little side excursions they offer when we're in port. I'm happy to just wander on my own, generally -- and knowing Dave he might not even want to get off the ship -- but I suppose we ought to at least look them over.

Of Aliens and Bosoms

I took a walk early yesterday morning, before it got hot, up through Cricklewood and back again. I was surprised to find this huge plastic (fiberglass?) pachyderm standing outside the Crown hotel. Why, I have no idea. Made a good picture, though.

I also came across this flat on Fortune Green Road. Is this World Cup enthusiasm, or an attempt to keep the sun out of his/her windows? Could be both, I suppose. An interesting mix of countries, there.

I was really glad to get the walking out of the way early, when the temperatures were comfortable, and in fact I hope to do the same this morning. It felt good to catch up on my podcasts and get some exercise.

Ultimately the temperatures got to about 94º F (or 34º C) in our immediate neighborhood, I think. It got hotter elsewhere. That was supposed to be the worst of our "heat dome" experience -- today is expected to be slightly less extreme, if not exactly cool.

Thinking we'd beat the heat, Dave and I went to the cinema. (That's him contemplating Helena Bonham Carter's décolletage, above.) We walked to Hampstead and popped into the Everyman Cinema to see "Disclosure Day." We stepped into the blessedly cool lobby and were certain we'd made a wise decision -- until we learned that the air conditioner in the main cinema wasn't working! While the rest of the building was cool, the air conditioner for screen one -- a big room with a balcony -- was overwhelmed, the manager said. She'd even called an engineer, who said although the machine was functioning, the unit on the roof, in the sun, was registering a temperature of 143º F (or 61º C) and the refrigerant was unable to flow at that temperature -- or something like that.

Anyway, Dave and I debated what to do. The manager told us that the balcony, weirdly, might be slightly cooler than the seats on the floor. Another couple who came in with us decided to leave and get a refund, but we stuck it out and indeed we were fine. It was warm by air-conditioned standards, but certainly cooler than our house at home, and a couple of Aperol spritzes made the whole situation seem like an adventure.

And the movie was good! I really enjoyed it. The performances were terrific and the story, about the revelation that the U.S. government knew of past alien visitation to Earth, was engrossing. Steven Spielberg strikes again.

Here's a detail of the pattern on the Thai batik "tablecloth" I showed you yesterday. It is indeed from Pataya, as YP correctly guessed, though it's spelled "Phataya" on the cloth. Tomato, tomahto.

I see that author and fashion journalist Shirley Lord has died. Spy magazine, in the 1980s, insisted on repeatedly calling her "bosomy dirty book writer Shirley Lord," which I always found hilarious. (At the time she was married to Abe Rosenthal, the executive editor of The New York Times, so it was yet another way for Spy to give the finger to the establishment.) Spy is also responsible for tagging Donald Trump as a "short-fingered vulgarian," a nickname that became a similarly long-running joke. I was surprised the Times didn't mention the Spy joke in Lord's obituary, actually, given how famous it was (and the fact that a lot of people, like me, know her primarily because of that joke). But I suppose the editors thought it would be too mean.

Those Noisy Birds

Our bear's breeches (Acanthus) is blooming once again, but we only have one flower spike this year -- unlike last year, when we had four or five. I always think the flowers look like mollusks -- like mussels growing on a rope.

The "heat dome" was unpleasant yesterday but it wasn't agony. I checked the temperature in the afternoon and it was about 92º F (or 33º C). It was very humid, given our recent rain, and that didn't help matters, but I don't think we're getting heat as murderous as what they're seeing in continental Europe. Did you see that 40 people drowned in France (in separate incidents) while trying to stay cool during the past week or so?! Crazy.

I'm sitting out on the garden bench now, at 6 a.m., and it feels very comfortable -- about 71º F (or 22º C).

Anyway, I spent yesterday morning scanning slides and reading. I'm almost done with this slide project. I have a few more days of scanning and uploading and then I'll be finished with all the slides I have at the moment. Almost time to get more!

I finished a novel called "Sam" by a writer named Lonnie Coleman (who went on to write the "Beulah Land" series, best-sellers in the '70s). "Sam" is notable for being an early (1959) portrayal of gay men in a somewhat sympathetic light. It was full of old-fashioned gender dynamics, exploring how friendship between gay men and straight women could affect their romantic lives, and showed that while there were waspy queens, not every gay man fit that mold. Of course its depictions were dated and the book was full of dialogue like, "Who are those incredible little marys huddling by the aspidistra?" (Yes, that's an actual line.) But it was entertaining, from a historical perspective.

The birds weren't daunted by the heat yesterday. They were making a racket in the garden -- so much noise I put them on video. First there's a clip of the parakeets in our walnut tree (which I actually took several days ago). Then you'll hear what the starlings and tits sounded like as I was sitting out in the garden reading. It's a miracle I could concentrate. In the third clip, the starlings are squabbling on the bird feeder in the evening, and you'll hear the parakeets again too.

Dave and I ended the day with an al fresco dinner -- tuna tartare, which required no cooking at all. (The benefit of this, in terms of temperatures in the house, was somewhat negated by the fact that Dave also made a big pot of bolognese sauce for the coming week.) Do you like the summery tablecloth? It's a piece of batik from Thailand that I found on the high street several years ago while walking Olga -- one of the thrift shops was throwing it away and I thought, "I can use that!" It bears pictures of sailing, parasailing and other activities presumably available at whatever Thai resort it came from. A little evening vacation!