A Stornello in Stresa

Well, here we are in Italy, in a beautiful little hotel that somehow manages to be both posh and modest, overlooking Lake Maggiore. We're in a town called Stresa, and that (above) is the view from our balcony.

So is this:

Not too shabby, right?!

We got ourselves launched from home about 10:30 a.m. yesterday, for a 3:25 p.m. flight. We knew it was early but after we'd watered all the plants we were just sitting around, and figured we might as well sit at the airport. We took the Elizabeth Line out to Heathrow and wound up arriving too early to even check our bags, so we camped out at a Pret and had lunch.

Once we finally boarded, our two-hour flight was painless and we landed at Milano Malpensa airport yesterday evening. Somehow I had it in my head that we were staying in Milan, but no! A driver picked us up along with another couple, Linda and Dick from Manchester, and we seemed to be driving and driving and the landscape wasn't getting any more urban, so I said, "How far out is this airport?" And then I looked at my Google Maps and realized we were driving away from Milan. Linda and Dick, who apparently have a much better grip on the itinerary than either of us, clarified we were going straight to Lake Maggiore. OK, then.

We got checked in and set out to find dinner (leaving Linda and Dick behind). By this time, with a one-hour change of our clocks, it was something like 8:30 p.m.

We found a little restaurant called Lo Stornello, and we puzzled over the name. The sign included musical notes, so we figured it must be a musical term but Dave didn't know it. Google AI now informs me that it "refers to a short, often improvised, witty poetic song (usually a 3-line stanza) native to regions like Tuscany and Lazio." Anyway, it was a good restaurant, and I had a chilled cucumber and apple soup (above) as well as a fish called "scorfano," or red scorpionfish. (It sounds better in Italian.) And three glasses of wine plus a complimentary limoncello. Whew! I was ready to sing a stornello of my own by the time we got out of there, but instead...

...we took a quick stroll through town. (Meaning, like, two blocks. Dave was ready for the room.)

We passed this charming little square in the center of town -- a place to revisit today, I think.

Walking back to our hotel along the waterfront, we passed an adjacent hotel, the beautiful Regina Palace, where someone really was singing and couples were dancing on the front portico.

And then we were back in our hotel and ready to crash. Which we did.

And this was sunrise over the lake this morning!

A 50FTY

Yesterday mostly involved trip preparation, so there's not much to write about. How many ways can a person pack a suitcase?

But before I did any of that I took a long walk up into Willesden Green, and got some photos along the way. I'll leave you with those -- no commentary necessary!

I also found some DVDs on the sidewalk, and brought home two seasons of the TV show "Curb Your Enthusiasm." We may be watching some of that upon our return.

We're off in a few hours for the airport. I haven't described our trip in much detail, I realize, but that's mostly because Dave chose it and I have only the barest sense of the itinerary. We'll be in a different place pretty much every night, with the first few days on land and the rest at sea and in various ports. Basically, we're traveling through northern Italy by land, and then cruising down through the Adriatic along the coast of Croatia and Montenegro, then around the boot of Italy to Sicily, and then up along the Amalfi Coast to Pisa and Rome.

I hate to leave all the plants with the garden at its peak, but such is the necessity when you can only travel in summer. Warren will take care of it well, I'm sure, and it's nice to know he'll be here holding down the fort as our house-sitter. (So attention, any thieves reading this: Not only do we not own anything worth stealing, our house will not be empty!)

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!