Dumpster-Diving, Hungry Foxes and a Huge Cat

Our passionflowers are awakening from their winter slumber. The first blossom appeared the other day and there are plenty more buds. This vine really needs a trim job. Frankly I'm impressed it survives at all, since it's crammed into the same pot as our olive tree (where it grew of its own accord from a seed).

Yesterday I took out the trash and found a bunch of stuff in the bin, apparently discarded by our departing upstairs neighbors. Some of it was in a nice reusable fabric bag from John Lewis, so I grabbed it and brought it inside to salvage the bag. I found another reusable Waitrose bag and some rather fancy clothing -- pleather pants, a heavy pleated skirt, a jacket, some trainers (running shoes), even some earrings in a red box from Valentino. Who throws away earrings?! I couldn't put all that stuff back in the trash, so I folded it up and put it in a bag for the charity shop.

Also...

...a perfectly good Raggedy Andy. I don't really want a Raggedy Andy for myself, so right now he's in the charity bag too. I did wash him to brighten him up and I think he may find another home.

I shudder to think what's in the other trash bags in our bins, but I'm not going to dig through them too. Let's maintain some semblance of dignity.

I keep wondering what will happen if I take that stuff to the charity shop and it appears in the window, and the neighbors walk past and see it. Would they be surprised? Would they be angry? Is it a gross violation of their privacy for me to pull their stuff out of the trash and try to give it a second life? Hmmmm...the ethics of dumpster-diving.

I realized yesterday that Dave's birthday is coming right up in 11 days. Yikes! I have some ideas for things to get him but I haven't moved on any of it and I guess I need to do that. I was going to make us a dinner reservation but when I asked him about it last night he seemed unenthusiastic about going out. This is a bit of a surprise, coming from him, but it may stem from his recent medication changes and the fact that he hasn't been feeling all that great. I told him to tell me if he wants to move ahead on that and I'll arrange something.

Maybe I could give him Raggedy Andy?

(That's a joke.)

I cobbled together another wildlife video with the almost two weeks' worth of footage I've collected. We start with some nice daytime images of one of our foxes, including at 0:14 where it is clearly hunting. (And it ate something, so whatever it hunted it apparently caught!)

-- At 0:56, Pale Cat walks by.
-- At 1:09, a fox gives us a quick drive-by.
-- At 1:17, two little bouncy birds. (Dunnocks?)
-- At 1:25, I put down some pork chop trimmings for the foxes.
-- A couple of hours later, at 1:36, Crooked Tail shows up and spends the next 15 minutes eating the pork. (Don't worry, I condensed the footage so you don't have to watch all the chewing, which isn't all that interesting.) By the way, sorry this part of the video is so dark. That branch in front of the camera was reflecting infrared light back at the lens. I trimmed it the next day and the images got much better.
-- At 3:51, the next night, the foxes are back, first Q-Tip and then Crooked Tail.
-- At 4:17, who is this cat?! I've never seen this creature before. It's huge. Is it pregnant or merely overweight? Henceforth to be known as Huge Cat.
-- At 4:39, an amusingly hyperactive squirrel.
-- At 5:11, the proverbial early bird. (Not getting a worm.)
-- At 5:24, GET OFF THE CAMERA!
-- At 5:35, a little bird lands and spreads its wings to sunbathe. Another bird shows up and they have quite a violent tussle!
-- At 5:50, another treat for the foxes, fish skin this time.
-- At 6:01, an hour and a half later, Crooked Tail shows up and eats it.
-- At 7:02, Sharpie shows up but the fish skin is long gone.
-- At 7:54, Huge Cat is back, also entranced by the smell of the fish.
-- At 8:28, a quick drive-by from Q-Tip.
-- At 8:43, more spazz squirrels.

Tiny Dramas All Around

In the garden yesterday, I noticed that a minuscule blossom from our olive tree had fallen into the middle of a seed head on the clematis. That's a design worthy of a jeweler, isn't it? Or a fireworks display.

Dave wasn't feeling well yesterday so he stayed home from work. The school year is basically over anyway -- his last classes were Monday -- so "work" at this point is just a matter of tidying up the department and filing and that kind of thing. Instead he stayed home and camped out in his chair. He plans to go in today.

In the morning I heard a lot of thumping around above us and on the stairs and realized our upstairs neighbor is moving out of the Russians' flat. Apparently his family is back in Israel so he's downsizing to a smaller flat closer to his office. I'm sorry to see him go because he's been a terrific neighbor, and I told him so. He said another family is scheduled to move in at the beginning of July. We'll see what that's like.

In the afternoon I took a long walk and spent some time looking at the bugs in the butterfly garden at the cemetery:

You'll see some thick-legged flower beetles, Oedemera nobilis, which I have often likened on this blog to David Bowie in his Aladdin Sane costume. And at 0:14, if you look at the left-hand flower, you'll see a white crab spider (Misumena vatia) that has grabbed some poor fly, or possibly two poor flies. I left the natural sound in the video, so you'll hear birdcalls and wind as well as the shouts of some teams on the athletic field adjacent to the cemetery. Summer sounds!

I didn't see any butterflies in the butterfly garden, oddly, but I did find this Angle Shades moth (Phlogophora meticulosa) in our living room yesterday morning. Maybe it flew in when we had the light on the night before. I gently put it outside on a buddleia. Hopefully it promptly moved where it would be better camouflaged.

Dahlias and a Rodent Houdini

Our first dahlia blossom of the year has appeared -- one of the "Bishop's Children" variety. It was a race between that one and this:

Remember how I said the "Iron in the Fire" dahlia appeared to have died over the winter? Well, I think that (above) is "Iron in the Fire," which means the dahlia that died was actually the purple one -- "Dalaya Dark Aruna." (You can see them both here.) I'm not broken-hearted either way, and I guess we won't know for sure until the flower opens, but that bud sure looks more like an orange flower than a purple one.

I spent yesterday almost entirely indoors. It poured rain in the morning, which was fantastic. It's cooler out there than I'd like it to be but I'm so happy for the moisture. I stayed on the couch reading about Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee, and in the afternoon I watched "A Summer Place," which is definitely a melodrama but better than I remember. I learned that the real-life house used in the film -- which was in Monterey, California, and not Maine as specified in the plot -- burned down last year. A shame.

Apropos of nothing, here's a quote I came across yesterday from author Michael Chabon, who wrote "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh" and "Wonder Boys" and "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" and "Telegraph Avenue," all of which I enjoyed:

"Every morning I wake up and in the seconds before I turn my phone on to see what the latest news is, I have this boundless sense of optimism and hope that this is the day that he's going to have a massive stroke, and, you know, be carted out of the White House on a gurney."

Let's just say that struck home.

And here's the sight that greeted me when I looked out the window yesterday afternoon. I don't know if you can see what's going on there, but that squirrel is head-down in the plastic interior tube of that bird feeder. Having emptied the peanut feeder, Houdini-squirrel found a way to unlock the lid of this one, which is supposed to be squirrel resistant. I can't turn my back for a minute!

A Model World

I haven't said much about my slide project lately, except that it's continuing. Here's a more thorough update: I've finished scanning my third bag of loose slides, the one on the left in this photo, and I've just started sorting the loose slides in the green middle bag. Then there are the boxes to go through. I'm trying to devise a way to consolidate those boxed slides while not mixing them together or allowing them to lose their context, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, yesterday I came across multiple slides of something that looked like an amusement park of miniatures. Above you can see a couple of rocket launchpads and lots of little vehicles leading up to and around them. For a sense of scale, there's a person standing behind and to the left of the rockets -- you can see he (and the buildings behind him) are much larger.

The sign on the right-hand building in the background says "Børneteater," which means Children's Theater in Danish. So that gives us a hint where we are.

These slides were all mixed in with a bunch of others, so as I came across them I set them aside in a special pile, and soon found that I had a dozen. They're from 1969.

When I looked more closely, it became obvious that these aren't just miniatures -- they're miniatures made with Legos! Yes, these photos do indeed show the first Legoland amusement park, the year after it opened in Billund, Denmark, in 1968.

The photos vary in quality. It took me a moment to figure out what I'm looking at here -- not a real ship out a window, but a Lego ship (a model of a ferry named the Winston Churchill) in a display case.

This is a model of Marselisborg Palace in Aarhus, Denmark, the summer home of the Danish royal family.

There's a model city, complete with a church with a wedding in progress -- you can see the little Lego people standing in the doorway.

There's a city of the future, featuring architecture worthy of the Jetsons.

And there's a sort of Western-themed area called "Legoredo," which despite the name does not appear to be made with Legos.

The photo quality is dubious overall, but it's nice to be able to add these images to the public record of the history of Legoland.

This Lego portrait, like the ship above, was apparently housed indoors and the photo didn't work out too well. The slide is also significantly discolored. But who knows if there are any images of this portrait elsewhere in the world? I might have the only one! (Google can't find any others, at least.)

Here's a fun short film about Legoland made by British Pathé studios in 1968, the year before all these pictures were taken. You'll see a lot of the same constructions depicted above and how they were made -- not to mention an "American Indian" in full feathered headdress, presumably in Legoredo.

I'm not a huge devotee of Legos, but I still found all this interesting.

Squirrel-Proof

Dave and I have recently marveled at how quickly the peanuts disappear in our "squirrel-proof" peanut feeder, and now you can see why. Turns out, it's not squirrel-proof at all -- at least not to a young, smallish squirrel.

As you can see, I've already had to wire on the lid because otherwise the squirrels will unscrew it.

Here's the escape:

You don't suppose it will ever get stuck in there, do you? I'm not sure how I would solve that problem.

We're reconsidering all our bird feeders -- both their placement and their structure. I'm putting out fewer suet balls, even though the birds love them, because they bring rodents, and I took one feeder down entirely because it got mobbed by pigeons. The others get mobbed by pigeons too, but they're built in such a way that the smaller birds also enjoy them.

I spent yesterday chilling at home. It felt so good, after such a busy week, to lie on the couch and do nothing. I got all my pictures organized and archived and I started a new book, "Dream Lovers," a biography of Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee written about 30 years ago by their son. I have no idea what possessed me to buy this book. I read about it somewhere -- probably around the time Dee died in February 2025 -- and it sounded interesting. I have a soft spot for big, colorful '50s and '60s melodramas, like "Imitation of Life" and "Peyton Place," and of course Dee and Troy Donahue in "A Summer Place." Maybe this will inspire me to watch "A Summer Place" again. I haven't seen it since we lived in New Jersey many moons ago. Probably not the best use of my time, but hey, I'm retired now!

Lilies, Nigella and a Girl With a Cat

Well, my brother and his family are off to Heathrow this morning for their return to the USA. Dave and I had them over last night for a farewell dinner -- Dave made flank steak -- and I think we all agree it was a fun and successful visit.

We met up at noon yesterday for a pub lunch in St. John's Wood, and then took a walk to Regent's Park to stretch our legs before circling back to the school where I used to work (and Dave still does). Dave met them there to give them a tour, and I came home and did some photo editing. I am SO BEHIND on managing and archiving all my photos, especially with this huge slide-scanning project happening. I'll be working on that more today.

As you can see above, our yellow lily is blooming again this year. But the Asiatic lily behind it dropped its buds and it looks like we'll get no flowers. That's probably partly due to the two honesty plants also growing in the Asiatic lily's pot. After the honesty sprouted on its own, I thought all three of them might manage in there but with our dry spring I think the Asiatic lily just didn't get enough water and/or nutrients. Oh, well -- there's always next year.

We also have a single love-in-a-mist, or Nigella, that sprouted by the back steps. We used to have tons of it growing there but it's gradually been crowded out by other plants, weeds and grass. I'm amazed there are still seeds out there to sprout. I think this is the only flower so I'm not sure we'll get any more fertile seeds, but if it produces some I may save them and try to grow them on next year.

All during my brother's visit I was continuing to scan and post my rescued slides, about ten per day. The second Flickr album now has 143 photos in it, and more will be forthcoming. The picture above, from 1974, was a long-shot rescue attempt; the slide is so dark that it's almost black and I could barely see the image. So I scanned it and used Lightroom to brighten it up and bring out the contrast. It's sort of ghostly in its effect.

I downloaded the garden cam yesterday and found that the batteries gave out at some point in the middle of the week. So no garden cam video this weekend; I'll save up what little footage I have and put it all together for another video next week. I know you're all heartbroken. 😀

I intend to reappear elsewhere in blogland today and catch up on all my fellow bloggers' lives! Forgive me if I don't go back and answer all my comments from the past week, but I have read and appreciated them all. Frances asked several days ago why Americans are so infatuated with visiting Stonehenge, which she termed "a few old stones in a field." I think it's basically their age -- I can't think of any large-scale monuments in North America that even vaguely approach the age of Stonehenge. Mesa Verde, in Colorado, has been an inhabited site for thousands of years but the existing cliff dwellings there "only" go back to the 1200s or so. There are other ancient sites but they're mainly excavated areas where spear tips, arrowheads and that kind of thing have been found. Nothing as large as a stone circle. So that's my inexpert opinion!

The Sightseeing Bus

That's the Gothic ceiling of the stunning Lady Chapel in Westminster Abbey, above. It's one of the places we visited yesterday, on a day devoted to London tourism.

I met up with my brother's family in the late morning and we bought tickets for one of those open-top tour buses that roll around the city, taking in all the main sights. Dave and I have found that these buses are a great way to get the lay of the land and at least a glimpse of all the major sights, and then you've got some information to decide what you'd like to revisit. We recommend them to all our visitors.

Our tour began uneventfully. We picked up the bus in Holborn and went eastward, along Ludgate Hill and past St. Paul's. I was amused by this couple sitting in front of me, the man with his "Quality Milk Producers" fleece and the woman with her cow headscarf. I detect a theme.

Then, as we approached London Bridge, crazy weather! Everyone fled the top deck of the bus, including my brother and his family. Only I and the woman with the cow scarf stayed put, and I at least had an umbrella. She must have been soaked. I didn't do too badly -- my seat stayed dry because I was in it and my umbrella sheltered most of my body.

We rode the bus over the Tower Bridge and past the Tower of London, and thought we might get off there, but it didn't stop. Only then did we realize we have to hit the "stop" button, just like on a city bus, so we got off at Embankment instead and ate at a pub near the Temple.

Then we caught the bus again and took it to Westminster, where we checked out Big Ben and went into the Abbey.

I've been to Westminster Abbey several times before, but every time I go I'm astonished. The graves of Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots! Of Edward the Confessor and multiple medieval kings! Chaucer is there, in Poet's Corner, along with graves and monuments to many other famous writers. It really is a mind-blowing place.

The figure above is Joan, one of the 12 children of Edward III originally depicted on the side of his tomb. (Only six of them are still there.) He died in 1377. Amazing.

From there we walked across Westminster Bridge to the London Eye. The line wasn't too long and although my brother wasn't crazy about the idea (he doesn't enjoy heights), my niece really wanted to ride it. So we bought tickets and took a spin.

I noticed the LGBTQ+ Pride flag on the white building at lower left in the image above. We've seen Pride flags in lots of places, I assume because this is Pride month. I'm happy to live in a country where such things are still celebrated.

Remarkable views, as always! I think my niece was pleased.

From there, my brother's family took the tour bus back toward their hotel and I caught the tube home. There was another tube strike yesterday but it didn't affect us much, fortunately -- the line I needed to get home was still running. (This was a very strange strike, with some lines open and some shut down, apparently depending on which union represents the workers.)

Today is our visitors' last full day in London, and they're going to spend it at our place in West Hampstead. Home sweet home!