Homebody and Pigeon Undertaker

The New York Times ran an article yesterday headlined, "In Britain, July 4 is Mostly Just a Saturday." It said that while some cultural institutions like museums made brief mentions of the Fourth of July and the King issued a statement, British people basically just went about their business.

I thought, do we really need to tell readers that the United Kingdom doesn't celebrate America's independence from...the United Kingdom? I mean, British people don't take it personally or anything, but why would there be a celebration? It seemed a strange and unnecessary article to write.

We totally ignored the Fourth of July here. As I said in a comment on Bob's blog, when America gives me something to celebrate, I'll celebrate.

It was also the day of the LGBTQ+ Pride parade in London, which I've gone to many times in years past, but this year I just couldn't muster the enthusiasm. I think taking that long walk on Friday -- and the fact that we're leaving tomorrow for two weeks in the Mediterranean -- made me want to just stay home. So I did.

I finished "Juice," which I greatly enjoyed. I don't think I'm even going to take a book with me on the cruise. I have such a backlog of magazines that I'm just going to bring them -- nine New Yorkers and my Royal Photographic Society magazine. Maybe I'll stick a small paperback in my suitcase just in case, by some miracle, I get through all of those.

As you can see in the top photo, our lilies are blooming. I've always called these Stargazer lilies but the other day, out of the blue, Dave called them "chandelier" lilies, and they do point downward -- so maybe that's what they are. When I Google "chandelier lilies" I just get pictures of floral lighting fixtures, so I'm not sure.

Anyway, the lily beetles have gnawed holes in some of the blossoms but they still look nice. The one in the top photo looks positively virile. Above is a Cosmos with the afternoon sun illuminating its petals.

I hope all these plants survive our absence. Any little bit of rain would help but there's none in the forecast.

In other garden happenings, I found a dead pigeon on the lawn about two days ago. It had clearly been attacked and killed by something. Coming just a few days after I found the remains of a young starling, it's more evidence that a hunter is in our midst -- whether feline or vulpine I do not know. I buried it in the "wildlife zone" by the back garden wall.

Our rat-deterring peppermint oil pellets arrived yesterday, too. The package takes great pains to explain these are mostly for "freshening" rodent-invaded spaces -- I suppose so we don't complain if they don't successfully drive away the rodents -- but it says they do disrupt scent trails and make the rats uncomfortable. I showered them all over the garden by the handful, particularly near the house, and now it smells like candy canes out there. We don't have a full-on invasion so I'm hopeful they'll be effective.

I picked my first handful of blackberries from our vines yesterday morning. Blackberry season -- just in time for us to leave! Oh well. Hopefully the birds will enjoy them. (Especially now that we've taken down the feeders.)

Brent Cross Loop Walk

The weather was nice yesterday morning -- cooler than in much of the United States right now, though we're due for another hot spell here too. I figured I'd better make the most of it and set out for a long walk.

I didn't start with any agenda or any idea of where I might go. I just put in my AirPods, turned on a podcast and wound up walking north through Hampstead and along Finchley Road, all the way up to Golders Green.

Remember the wall that served as a memorial to the victims of the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack in Israel? Well, it's still there, but it seems to have been largely transformed into a memorial for people killed by the Islamic Republic in Iran. The flags depict the lion and sun symbol of pre-revolutionary Iran and in addition to the pictures of many, many people killed by the Iranian regime, there's one of the Shah.

And remember this place -- Brent River Park? Nothing much has changed here. The pavilions are still a wreck but it's a shady urban oasis.

From there I walked parallel to the North Circular toward Brent Cross.

I wound up in a tangle of overpasses and highway on-ramps, with the channelized River Brent running beneath (that's the river with the concrete walls covered in graffiti). The river itself runs through Wembley and around Ealing and Hanwell in west London before emptying into the Thames near Kew Gardens. (In fact, it might be an interesting future walk to follow the river in that direction, though I'm not sure it's all pedestrian-accessible. I've walked along several portions of it over the years.)

There were dedicated areas for pedestrians so this wasn't unsafe, but it wasn't exactly pleasant. I think the next time I want to get to Brent Cross from Golders Green I'll cut through the neighborhoods on either side of this massive interchange, rather than sticking so close to the highway.

Here's the shopping center at Brent Cross, a very American-style indoor shopping mall with a couple of department stores and lots of smaller shops. I didn't go in. I just walked past.

I crossed back over the North Circular via a pedestrian bridge and found...

...a whole new neighborhood of fancy apartment buildings. This used to be an industrial area. In fact, Olga and I walked past it many years ago, when it was a construction zone walled off by yellow plywood. Now the plywood is gone and there are towering apartment blocks, a food truck, a garden and a stylish green fountain, among other amenities.

I stopped for coffee at a Costa and sat outside watching traffic come and go.

Then I walked home through the now-elegant Claremont Park (which I think used to be known as Clarefield?) and along residential streets around the Clitterhouse Playing Fields. I had my first blackberries of the summer from these vines on Clitterhouse Road. Yum!

Altogether I think I walked between five and six miles.

I spent the afternoon reading "Juice," which I really want to finish before we leave for our Italy trip in a few days. It's a big book and I don't want to carry it with me! I also had to get a document notarized and mailed related to my stepmother's estate, so I took care of that.

Dave and I have enjoyed watching "Widow's Bay" on Apple TV in the evenings. It's a good show and very binge-able. (Is that a word?)

Where Are My Predators?

This is one of the "Bishop's Children" dahlias that I grew from seed many years ago. For some reason, this particular plant is producing much redder flowers than the others, which tend toward orange. Maybe because it's in brighter sun. I'm intrigued by that stripe on one of its petals -- an interesting genetic aberration.

I spent most of yesterday reading. I'm about two thirds of the way through "Juice," which I am really enjoying. It's one of those rare books that I get so absorbed in that I'm not conscious of how much progress I'm making or how many pages I've turned. Someone compared it to "Mad Max" and it's very much like that -- a survival and family saga set in a post-apocalyptic Australia. Let me just say, if the future is going to be anything like this, I'm glad I'm living now.

I got a text from Mrs. Kravitz in which she pointed out that we have rats in the garden and we need to do something about them. She's right. We have to take some kind of action. Maybe we can call a nature-friendly exterminator, if there is such a thing. As I mentioned before, we've stopped feeding the birds suet and I think we'll stop the bird food entirely for a while. She suggested putting down peppermint. I'll look into it.

She also suggested trimming the lower leaves of shrubs "so the rats have nowhere to hide," but that's just not feasible in our garden, which is full of ground cover and low-growing plants. I may need some professional advice on how best to handle that. But I recognize we can't let these animals stay -- it's not fair to the neighbors. Dammit, foxes, do your jobs! Cats, where are you?!

Speaking of foxes, I was lying in bed last night (sleepless, for some reason) and kept hearing racing engines. This often happens late at night and I've always suspected that motorbike riders race on the streets around here late at night, perhaps on Finchley Road. Well, last night I got out of bed and took a walk to see if I could tell where all the noise was coming from. Of course by the time I got outside, it had stopped and a couple of police cars went past with lights flashing -- I suspect they broke up whatever party was going on. But out on my nocturnal ramble I came across several scrawny-looking foxes nosing around in people's garbage. This is why they're not hungry enough to catch a rat in my garden.

I also found yet another discarded fiddle-leaf fig tree, set out with the trash on the corner at the top of our street. Of course I adopted it. It needs some TLC but it's in better shape than the last one, which didn't make it.

I'm missing my slide-rescuing project. Here's one of my favorites, an accidental double-exposure that created an interesting effect. It was taken in Bermuda in the mid-'50s. Look at that huge lobster! I'll go in search of more slides once we're back from our trip.

Volunteers and the Meat Wasp

Here's a garden curiosity. I had only dimly registered the existence of this plant, which grew by itself near our back garden bench. It's in a shadowy spot and even though it's a couple of feet tall and I have to brush past it every time I access the garden shed, I didn't give it much thought. Then Dave asked the other day, "What is that plant?"

I used my plant ID app on it and found that it's lemon balm (Melissa officinalis), which I think is also known as sweet melissa, though I might just be thinking of the song. Crushing up one of the leaves gives a powerful lemon scent.

Here's another volunteer -- a little pansy or viola in the weedy "wildlife area" behind the bench. It beats me where this came from. I don't think we've ever grown violas that color. Brought in by some bird, I guess!

Gardens are so mysterious -- how things just show up. Like our oregano, which is back again for a third year, and blooming up a storm. We never planted it and I haven't a clue how it got here.

We had our friend Warren over yesterday to give him lunch and reacquaint him with the garden, which he's going to water while we're away on our cruise. He's cared for our place before so he mostly knows the drill, and it's not as complicated now that we have no dog. (For the time being!)

Dave was going to cook for him, but the weather has been warm and he wasn't in the mood to whip up an elaborate meal. So he bought some charcuterie and we had a simple lunch of cold cuts, cheese, raw veggies and crackers, with some summery gin drinks. We sat out in the garden and were once again visited by the meat wasp:

Almost as soon as we sat down, this critter flew in, carved off a piece of the charcuterie and flew away with it. We set aside that particular slice of meat for its consumption, and it returned over and over. It was mesmerizing to watch. Afterwards I had a jolt of concern that lunchmeat might be bad for it somehow, with added salt and preservatives. But Google assures me the wasp will not be bothered.

Here's another find from a recent walk. Apparently it's a halogen oven? I've never heard of such a thing, but someone was trying to give it away so who knows how well it works. I didn't take it, but I sent a picture to Dave, my resident cooking expert, who pronounced it "BS."

Zinnia and Jersey Tiger

Finally, FINALLY, a zinnia is making its appearance! It's taken a couple of months for the plants to get big enough to bloom -- when I look back at how tiny they were when I first planted them out, I guess that's not surprising.

We've actually done OK when it comes to seedling survival. I lost three zinnias almost right away, all to slugs, but two more zinnias, my four sunflowers and my cosmos have grown well. I planted an additional two zinnias a bit later that also seem fine. So we should have some more flowers coming up.

Dave and I went all the way down to Greenwich yesterday -- basically the opposite end of London -- to have lunch with our friends Mike and Sally, who live down that way. We hadn't seen them in more than a year, and before that it had been two years, so we really need to get better about spending more time together. Three of the four of us are retired now, so maybe that will help!

Anyway, we had lunch at the local Banana Tree (one of a chain of Asian food restaurants), and I had a yummy curry and two lychee mojitos. (They had a two-for-one deal on the drinks, and I could hardly let that second one go to waste, right?) I'd hoped to also visit my favorite junk shop in London, which is right down the road from there, but I had to get back home by 4 p.m. for a call with  my financial advisor. We had to skedaddle.

And can you believe I didn't take a single picture on that whole outing? I must be losing my touch.

That's why you're getting more pictures of the garden.

When I took the trash out yesterday, I found a Jersey tiger moth sitting atop the bins. It seemed like a bad place to be, so I gingerly moved it to a nearby buddleia plant. I think it must have been newly emerged, or maybe just damp, because it seemed a bit clumsy and uncoordinated -- I tried to prompt it to fly so I could show you its beautiful underwings, and instead it just flopped over on its back. Message to moth: Don't do THAT when a bird is hanging over you! Anyway, hopefully once it dried out it became a bit more agile.

Dave and I had a weird experience watching an episode of "The Golden Girls" last night. (Yes, we watch "The Golden Girls." We are gay men of a certain age and it's required.) Blanche said to Dorothy and Rose, "I am abhorred," and of course that became the basis of a joke. But I think using "abhorred" that way is grammatically incorrect, isn't it? I don't think a person can BE abhorred, except by someone else; I think they have to abhor something. It's a transitive verb that needs an object.

In fact, we weren't even sure what she was saying at first. I had to put on the closed captioning to understand her -- a sure sign that I am becoming my parents!

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.