Preparing for the End

Here's another hoverfly. We have zillions of them! This one is feasting on our Inula.

Yesterday I took Olga back to the vet for an ultrasound. I really wanted to get an idea of what's happening inside her body. My understanding was that I'd bring her in, the vet would do the scan while I waited and then we'd talk about it -- but no! I wound up having to leave her there for six hours, which I hated to do, and they had to shave a bit of her belly and chest for the scanner to work. This was slightly more veterinary intervention than I wanted at this point in her life, but oh well. She did fine.

Getting her there was once again a struggle. She would not walk. Fortunately, someone abandoned an old wheelbarrow in front of the Kravitz's house. It's been sitting there for about a week, unused, and rather than try to carry the dog I thought, "I'll use that."

I put a plastic garbage bag and an old towel down to give her a more comfy ride. Olga was not thrilled with this adventure but she stayed in the wheelbarrow while I rolled her around the corner.

After dropping her off, I had to keep myself busy. I thought about taking a walk -- I've been pretty much stuck at home for the past week, dealing with the dog -- but I didn't want to be far from the vet in case they called me to come in quickly. So instead I did more cleaning.

I cleaned out our bar cabinet in the living room, where we keep all our wine and cocktail stuff. It had become cluttered with unused glassware and the shelves hadn't been wiped down in years -- I seriously think not since we moved in here, 11 years ago. I wiped the shelves and reorganized the glassware, and took a box of donations to Oxfam.

Finally I went back to get Olga around 4 p.m. The verdict is that although her heart is fine, she has masses in her chest that are interfering with her breathing -- hence the coughing. What these masses are, we don't know. We're not even sure whether they're in the lungs or adjacent. The vet conjectured that they're cancer, but it's hard to say with Olga -- she has lots of lumps and bumps both internal and external. The vets have suggested twice before (years ago) that she may have cancer, and then when we've tested the growths they're benign. We don't see any bleeding or weight loss, which I would think we'd see with a malignancy, but what do I know? And in a way it doesn't really matter. The growths are causing her discomfort and interfering with her life.

The vet gave her some diuretic medication to hopefully help her process some of the extra fluid that has built up in her abdomen, which could then ease her breathing. That's a temporary fix.

I called Dave in Boston and we agreed that euthanasia is probably the best option, within the next couple of days. I'd like to wait for him to get home on Saturday morning, but Olga wouldn't really eat last night, so who knows how quickly things will move. I am in the process of arranging for a vet to come to our house, perhaps Sunday.

The fact is, she is very diminished. It's shocking for me to watch the "vicious fox hunter" video I posted just a week ago, because we don't see that much activity from her now. It's hard to get her to even walk outside. When Dave and I put down Ernie and Ruby, the old boxer dogs we brought with us from the USA, they were ill but even they were more able-bodied than Olga is now. If Dave were home I think we'd move on this immediately.

But then again, I watched Olga last night, dreaming on her bed, her paws twitching. I could tell she was chasing squirrels. Maybe it's OK to give her a few more nights of sweet dreams of her youth.

Beans from Kenya

Here's another dahlia. Overall, my dahlias seem to be having a very slow year. Some of the bushes haven't even bloomed yet, though all of them have buds. I blame the compost mix I used to pot them in the spring. This compost seems of rather dubious quality -- the water runs through it and then it's dry again in about a day.

God, I wish it would rain. A good, long, soaking rain. Heaven! I think my wishes will come true starting on Saturday, if the forecasts are correct.

I gathered more blackberries yesterday morning. I love being able to forage my own food from our garden! Not enough to want to deliberately grow food -- although I admire vegetable gardeners and am always impressed by the crops they manage to produce, I've never been interested in growing my own. (Hey, we have our one tomato plant -- we're doing our part!)

I did notice as I made lunch yesterday that my broccoli from the local grocery store came from Kenya, just like the string beans I made the day before. That seems insane to me. Surely someone in the UK is producing string beans and broccoli at the height of summer. Why on earth are we flying in vegetables from Kenya?

I know, I know, we could go to the local farmer's market, blah blah blah. Except I am not in charge of groceries in this family. I eat what Dave buys.

Miss Olga, aka the Dowager Countess of West Hampstead, sat with me in the garden most of the day. She likes to lie as close to the teasels as possible, even pushing her back against them until the whole plant is quaking. They have little thorns so maybe they're like back-scratchers to her.

I also did some housekeeping, moving the furniture in the living room and giving all the floors a good vacuuming. I found a ticket from the dry cleaners from March, and wondered if we ever picked up the cleaning. I took it by the shop in the afternoon and yes, in fact, we had picked it up. Whew! It would be pretty embarrassing if we'd left clothes at the cleaners for four months and didn't even miss them. I'm pretty sure I'd notice they were gone. We don't have that many clothes.

Last night's movie entertainment was a double feature: "Earthquake," one of my all-time favorite camp disaster movies from the '70s, which I have seen so many times I practically know the script by heart; and "Tony Rome," Frank Sinatra's outing as a Miami detective in the late '60s. Dave won't be sad to miss either of those.

Blackberries

Several of the orchids that I rescued from my neighbor's garden waste bag a couple of years ago are putting out flushes of flowers now. All the plants from that batch have blossoms this color. Not too shabby, right? I'm happy with them!

Also, in a sign that we are definitely in the midst of high summer, our blackberries are out in sufficient quantity that I can pick them for my cereal:

I didn't think we'd get any blackberries to speak of this year, because the gardeners who came to clear our ivy in February decimated our stand of blackberry vines. But no, blackberries are resilient. They're back with gusto.

I spent yesterday morning reading in the garden. I finished "The Flâneur," Edmund White's book about roaming the streets of Paris, which was OK. I found it a little dull, to be honest, and it's hard to make Paris dull. Fortunately it was a short book.

I spent some more time tidying the garden. I noticed our new upstairs neighbor closed his French doors overlooking our patio with part of the window curtain hanging out. I'm not sure the doors were even really closed because this was not a small amount of fabric exposed to the weather. I thought, "The Russians would lose their minds if they could see that!" Fortunately he came home and fixed the problem before we got the barest whisper of rain last night. Overall, we're still dry as a bone.

Last night I watched the movie "Project X," which was a sort of "Risky Business" on steroids -- teenage boy makes bad decisions, winds up hosting a gigantic house party, repercussions ensue. Dave and I watched an episode of the show "Trainwreck" on Netflix that focused on a real-life "Project X"-type incident, and that prompted me to watch the movie, which I'd never seen (or heard of) before. I enjoyed it, but it made me glad I'm not a teenager now. A house party in my day was a much less risky proposition -- more John Hughes and less Grand Theft Auto.

The other day, Catalyst from "Oddball Observations" used my Blogger profile photo in one of his blog posts. It made me take a closer look at my profile pic, which I've pretty much ignored for years. It's a cropped version of the picture above, which was taken on Nov. 3, 2006, when I went to Key West with my friend Sue for my 40th birthday. So, yeah, it's a very old picture. I was much more buff then, even though I look a little like Hugo Weaving in "The Matrix" (but bald and less menacing). I suppose I should update my profile pic to something more current! I'll think about it.

More Patio Cleanup Amid Slow Inevitability

I took this photo on Hampstead Heath the other day. I believe those are red soldier beetles -- so named because British soldiers, aka "redcoats," used to wear that color.

Dave got launched on his journey to Boston yesterday morning. He was conflicted about going, partly because of Olga's health, but he'll be back on Saturday so it's not a long trip. Meanwhile, I am loving having the house to myself. The first thing I did was clean our end tables, so Dave's pile of debris has been temporarily tamed!

Meanwhile I waited for British Gas to come and do our annual gas inspection. The guy was supposed to show up between 8 a.m. and 12 p.m. He finally rolled up at 12:30, pushing the window a bit, but fortunately I was still home -- I had to get the dog to the vet at 2 p.m.

Getting there was a challenge in itself, even though the vet's office is literally around the corner. Olga has no stamina these days. I had to carry her halfway there and halfway back. The vet listened to her heart and said once again that it sounds fine -- she's convinced Olga doesn't have heart failure. Although Olga looks a little rounder to me, the vet said she isn't accumulating fluid. She did witness Olga's coughing, which she prompted by massaging her throat, and prescribed an anti-inflammatory to treat that. She's going to do an ultrasound Thursday, which doesn't require anesthesia and shouldn't stress Olga out, and perhaps that will reveal what's going on.

I also got some information about having a vet come to our home to provide euthanasia. If we have to go that route -- more "when" than "if" -- I'd like Olga to pass on her bed in the garden, where she spent so many sunny hours.

Of course this is a somber situation, but I am surprisingly calm about it. It's a bit like witnessing my mother's final years, albeit on a smaller scale. By the time my mother died, so much of her personality had already vanished in the fog of dementia that her physical death was easier for me to process. Likewise, much of Olga's energy and vitality have already departed. She seems to be fading by the day, and I know it's not something I can stop or prevent. I do, however, need to understand it, for some reason. I need to know what's going on medically.

I continued my cleanup of the patio by dumping this large, underused pot and replanting our tomato and a toadflax in it. The tomato, of course, is an annual so at the end of summer we'll pull it out and then the toadflax will be there for next year. That tomato was in a small pot and needed more room, so this will make it happy.

I also reorganized the patio to give a little more room to our cafe table, and trimmed and weeded some other stuff here and there.

Here's our white hydrangea, growing in a pot in the garden. I found this plant back in 2022 and it was in sad shape, but it has bounced back beautifully.

In the evenings I'm going to watch movies Dave doesn't want to see. Last night was a repeat viewing of "Condominium," a very '70s tale about coastal construction and hurricanes in Florida. It was a popular TV movie but I don't think it was ever remastered for video distribution or streaming. The version I have -- which I bought as a bootleg DVD about 20 years ago -- is a fuzzy transfer from an old videotape of an Australian TV broadcast. The same version is now on YouTube, minus a chunk of the opening credits, which unfortunately deprives YouTubers of most of the groovy disco theme music. (Part 2 has the credits mostly intact.)

Old Dog Blues

This is what happens when you're sitting in the garden after lunch and wondering, "What would it look like to take a photo through the bottom of my water glass?"

As you can see, I clearly did not have enough to do yesterday. I read an entire New Yorker and part of my current book, Edmund White's exploration of Paris called "The Flâneur." But otherwise I mostly just sat with the dog, who seems to be struggling a bit. I am taking her back to the vet today after all, to get her breathing evaluated and perhaps some medicine to help her breathe easier. Even though the vet said last week that her heart is OK, I'm convinced she's slowly developing heart failure -- she's occasionally coughing and breathing heavily, seems to be retaining some fluid, and doesn't want to move around much. I remember with our other old dog, Ruby, that we got some medicine to make the heart pump more strongly and that did her a world of good, so I'm hoping for the same for Olga.

It's astonishing to me now that we walked all the way through the neighborhood housing estate less than a month ago, because now I can barely get her to walk out the front door. I'm hoping I can get her to the vet without having to carry her. She's a lot of dog to carry.

In a stunningly unfortunate example of bad timing, Dave is leaving this morning for a conference in the USA. He'll be gone all week. We had a talk yesterday about Olga and the fact that I may have to make decisions if she worsens while he's gone, though I think it's unlikely things will get that desperate that quickly. (Knock on wood!) Anyway, he told me to do whatever I have to do.

Ugh.

On a brighter note, I went into town yesterday evening to meet up with some visiting friends, Alan and Greg, who I haven't seen in years. I went to high school with Alan, and aside from our 20th reunion in 2004, I haven't seen him much since graduation in 1984. And I went to college with his husband Greg, who I definitely haven't seen since 1987 or so. Greg and I were involved in the LGBTQ+ student group on campus. It's just a fluke that these two guys I knew independently of each other wound up getting married.

And now they have a 16-year-old son, Derek, who I met for the first time. We had a great dinner full of reminiscing at a Brazilian place in Chinatown -- yes, there's a Brazilian place in Chinatown, for some reason -- and we exchanged stories and memories and probably bored poor Derek to death.

As Sandy Denny sang, "Who knows where the time goes?"

The Patio Table

This is one of my favorite roses in our garden. It starts out bright orange, like this, and after a few days the blossoms gradually fade to a sort of dusky pink. So we wind up with flowers of multiple shades between orange and pink, all on the same bush, before they drop their petals. And the insects like them because the flowers are open with accessible centers.

Yesterday morning, bright and early, after I gave all the houseplants their weekly watering, I decided to assemble our new patio furniture. Remember, it was delivered Friday, in a disturbingly compact box? Well, I opened the box and pulled out all the bits, and there weren't as many as I feared -- basically two chair backs, two seats, four pairs of legs, a tabletop, three table legs and a center brace. And a ridiculous number of nuts, washers, screws and little plastic things you put on top of the bolts so the ends aren't exposed. And a mini wrench and screwdriver. And two cushions.

I spread it all out on the floor in the foyer and went to work.

Olga supervised from a comfortable spot on the dining room carpet.

It took an hour or maybe an hour and a half, but the process went smoothly and with no major gaffes. At the end I wound up with this:

That was yesterday evening, when Dave and I had our French onion soup on the patio for dinner. (Yes, Dave made French onion soup, on a nearly 90º day -- I tried my best not to question the lengthy use of the stove and the oven in such weather, but I did point out that it was an interesting choice. He said he was trying to use up all our surplus onions, so points to him for wasting nothing. It was good.)

Anyway, patio table done, I got to work on some garden projects -- mowing the grass, staking up some plants and trying to widen some of our paths so that we can move around without too much hindrance. Around this time of year I start to get impatient with having to shoulder my way through undergrowth like Henry Stanley. Olga, meanwhile, lazily enjoyed the sun on the grass:

She's lying by my feet now, watching squirrels, as I blog from our garden bench.

Here, by special request, is the "beaded farmyard" as I mentioned yesterday -- sheep, frog and pig. (I guess a frog isn't a typical farmyard resident, at least not in any formal sense, but whatever.) I bought the tiny pig and the frog in Botswana -- the pig was a gift for my father, because he collected them. I reclaimed it after he died.

It's much cooler today, with an expected high of 81º F (or 27º C). I'm going to do my best to catch up on some reading.

Beaded Sheep

I was sitting in the garden on Thursday when this speckled wood butterfly passed through. It fluttered around the roses before settling on our fig tree, and obligingly sat with its wings spread so I could take pictures.

It looks like we have new upstairs neighbors. I don't know anything about them yet -- I've only met the man, and apparently there are (or will eventually be) kids as well. He got some stuff delivered yesterday and the driver left it with us, so I met him when he came to pick it up -- a fortyish guy, nice enough. Strangely, the real estate listing for the flat is still up, though it does say that it's "under offer." Maybe the broker leaves it up for a while just to attract eyes to their other listings.

I would love to know if the Russians are really getting £5,200 a month for it. But of course that's not something one can ask, is it?

It was very warm yesterday -- about 89º F. Today is supposed to be slightly cooler and by next week our highs will be back down in the 70's. I ordered a new patio table and chairs, and they were delivered yesterday in a disturbingly flat box that seems to indicate a lot of assembly is required. I'll probably be working on that today.

When I was near Hampstead Heath on Thursday, I passed a house with a box of stuff sitting outside, free for the taking. Included was this little sheep, made of beads strung on stiff pieces of wire. Of course I grabbed it, because who could resist? Besides, I have a couple of other beaded animals that I got while in Botswana -- a frog and a pig -- and this goes with them quite well. A beaded farmyard!

I finished "The Man with the Golden Arm." Good, but not for the faint-hearted. I'm glad I read it, but literally everything that happens in that book is depressing.

As I was sitting in our garden and typing this post, some small creature ventured behind me -- a squirrel, probably. Olga streaked to the corner of the garden and chased it over the wall, then promptly got very dizzy and staggered back to where I was sitting before awkwardly collapsing on her haunches. She thinks she's very fierce.