An Evil Ladybird

I've just been out watering dahlias. The anticipated and much-discussed "heat dome," whatever that is, hasn't hit us yet -- but when it comes, I want the plants to be hydrated and ready! Tomorrow is expected to be the first of three really hot days, Wednesday being the scorcher with temperatures up to 99º F (or 37.2º C).

I found this little ladybug on the "Poodle Skirt" dahlia. It's kind of an unusual one. Here's a close-up:

According to Google, this is a "Harlequin Ladybird (Harmonia axyridis) in its melanistic form, commonly known as f. spectabilis. A key feature is the presence of white markings on its head and pronotum, sometimes referred to as 'cheeks.' These beetles originate from Asia and have become a widespread invasive species in many parts of the world, including the UK, where they can threaten native species."

Most of the ladybirds we see in our garden are Harlequins, even though we released several batches of native ones a couple of times in years past. I've never heard that we're supposed to do anything to cull Harlequins, and in fact it can be hard enough to figure out which is which, so I just let them be. I'm not sure I could ever bring myself to kill a ladybird, invasive or not.

I watered all the houseplants and walked to the hardware store on the high street for some bug spray (an allegedly "pet and child friendly" type) to treat the Rhipsalis cactus for its mealybugs. The cactus has so many branches and spindles that I can never get every nook and cranny treating with alcohol and Q-Tips by hand. I never use any kind of bug spray outside, but the cactus lives indoors, so there's no risk that spraying will harm beneficial insects. I'm sure this will be an ongoing project.

I also cleared the path into the garden. I tied back the Crocosmia so that it doesn't flop as much, and I put in a plant support to push back the Phlomis and the dusty miller. Now we can walk through here without feeling quite so oppressed.

Two of our orchids are brightening up the living room at the moment. Kind of hard to see them against the avocado and tree fern outside!

Finally, today is Dave's birthday. Woo hoo! He is a youthful 58. We celebrated last night with a dinner out in Soho and then a show -- "Titanique" at the Criterion Theatre. "Titanique" is a panto-inspired parody of the movie "Titanic" and features Celine Dion as a central character, a sort of master-of-ceremonies. Dave likes "Titanic" and knows it well, so I knew he'd get a kick out of "Titanique," and as an added bonus it's currently starring a guy named William Hanson, who I'd never heard of but who Dave knows from YouTube. (Dave is much trendier than I am.) So he got a kick out of that, too. By the time we got out of there last night, our cheeks hurt from laughing so much.

I also bought Dave a pan that he's wanted, by Made In Cookware. But he asked for that, so it was hardly a surprise. He basically just ordered it through me!

God, This is a Boring Post

There's a large white climbing rose growing over the trees in the back of the garden. It's actually grown over the fence from the neighbor's, but I don't mind because it's beautiful and along with our own pink climbing roses, it puts on quite a show. It's past its peak now, and its white petals are fluttering down like confetti, landing on our hydrangeas (above) and everywhere else.

I was home all day yesterday, but as usual, I had several projects. I cleaned out the alley at the side of the house where we store our rubbish bins -- just the area streetside of the garden gate. It was full of campanula and other weeds and the shrubbery was growing into the bin storage area, so I weeded it and trimmed everything back and swept it all out. It looks much tidier now. I didn't clean the side return behind the garden gate but I'm leaving all that campanula for now, because it's still blooming and the bees like it. Besides, no one can see that area besides us.

I also moved our fiddle-leaf fig outside for its annual shower. I noticed on Friday night that it was looking pretty dusty. I hosed it down and I think it appreciated the "rain." That pink geranium at bottom left is one I rescued from a neighbor's yard waste bag on the street. They threw it out, and I grabbed it and brought it home and stuck it in a pot and it's perfectly happy. It's a beautiful color.

Remember how a squirrel was climbing into our peanut feeder? Well, I was afraid it would get trapped in there, and that combined with the RSPB advice not to feed nuts during the summer persuaded me to take the feeder down entirely. But now the squirrel has figured out how to climb into the seed feeder as well! Argh!

I don't think it likes the seeds as much, and it seems to struggle to reach them through the tiny openings for the birds, so maybe it will eventually grow discouraged. (Ha!)

God, this is a boring post. Sorry about that. What can I talk about that doesn't involve houseplants or bird feeders? How about Donald Trump and his completely bungled refurbishment of the Reflecting Pool? I am amused as heck by the incompetence he and his team displayed on that job, with the pool's fancy new coating coming away in sheets (within days!) and the water a poisonous-looking algae-green. Trump was so arrogant, insisting he could do the job right at a fraction of the cost of previous restorations, without properly understanding any complications -- and now he's paying for that arrogance. (Though as usual he refuses to take responsibility, blaming leftist vandals. Even if you buy that excuse -- which I don't -- what kind of properly installed pool coating allows people to cut or tear it off?)

And how about his apparent insistence that the scaffold remain in place in front of the Kennedy Center, so no one can see that his name has been removed by court order? He's such a baby. The entire country is being run by middle schoolers -- and I've worked with middle schoolers so I know.

Then we have politics here in the UK. The sudden return of Andy Burnham to Parliament, after a stint as mayor of Manchester, apparently poses an existential threat to Starmer. To an outsider it may seem peculiar that Burnham, who was only just elected to Parliament days ago, would leapfrog everyone else to become Starmer's chief rival -- but he was in parliament for years before his Manchester gig, including in the cabinet, so he's quite experienced. I think Burnham is an appealing figure but as I've said, as unenthusiastic as I am about Starmer, I'm not sure I want to kick him out. I think there's something to be said for maintaining the continuity of the government, especially after several years of very short-lived prime ministers.

As long as I'm boring you with gardening and politics, why not go whole-hog?

Here's the latest footage from our Garden Cam! Woo hoo! It wasn't a super exciting week, but we have a few mildly interesting moments.

We start with Crooked Tail and then Sharpie, sniffing around in the rain. (That was on June 10, so we're actually going back more than a week.) They don't seem happy with the precipitation.
-- At 0:22, the next night, it's still damp but at least the rain's not pelting down.
-- At 0:35, the following night, it's drier still. 
-- At 0:45, Crooked Tail (I think?) shows up with something in his/her mouth. I'm not sure what it is. Maybe a dog treat from that still unidentified source? There's more back-and-forth by various foxes.
-- At 01:15, a great tit nibbles something from the ground.
-- At 01:20 there's more foxes wandering around.
-- At 02:14, another fox shows up with more food. I'm not sure what it's eating. It settles down for a nibble. (It's hard to discourage our rodent visitors when the foxes keep bringing food into the garden!)
-- At 02:35, Huge Cat makes an appearance. I like its triangular face mask.
-- At 02:49, we see a starling and a "little brown thing" (that's a birdwatching term), followed by a very poised squirrel.
-- At 03:08, a fox walks past and apparently surprises a cat offscreen, because we hear it yowling.
-- At 03:37, we see two clips of a blackbird (and hear a leaf-blower, ugh). The bird gets chased off by a squirrel.
-- At 04:09, a fox begins a long itching/grooming session. It may seem to go on for a while, but I actually cut out a full minute of footage!
-- At 04:55, a magpie seems to be collecting sticks. For a nest, maybe? Seems kind of late for that.
-- At 05:16, pigeon, squirrel and hoverfly.
-- At 05:31, various passing foxes.
-- At 05:54, I turned the camera for another angle on the garden and captured our old friend, the rat. (I moved the camera several times after this just to get different perspectives.)
-- At 05:59, a fox trots past. The video skips slightly.
-- At 06:01, the magpie is back, once again collecting sticks.
-- At 06:14, the foxes make a few more passes, curious about the camera's new location.

And with that, I'm going to retire the Garden Cam for a while. Let's give the poor animals some privacy for the summer, shall we?

A Ladybug is Born

Remember the ladybug (or ladybird) I rescued from our yard waste bin the other day? It was in its pupal stage and I had accidentally cut its twig out from under it -- and then taped that twig to an adjoining plant so the insect could continue to grow. Well, I woke up yesterday morning to find it had emerged from its pupa and was resting. It was a very light-orange color and had only barely visible spots.

I checked back again at noon and it looked like this -- much darker and more obviously like a ladybug. Its shell appeared to have hardened and taken on a shinier appearance.

When I looked at 3 p.m., it was gone.

So that's a happy success story. I also lifted four or five ladybug larvae out of the yard waste bag and put them back on garden plants. We gotta encourage these ladybirds to keep down our aphids!

Aside from rescuing insects, yesterday was pretty quiet. It was very warm and dry, and I did a lot of reading and watering.

Some of you asked to see the creamer I bought at Eclectica on Wandsworth Road on Thursday. It's the one on the left, and as I said, I bought it because it seemed a good companion for the one on the right, which I bought 15 years ago right after we moved to London. The new one only cost 50 pence!

Wisdom from some Lucky Pagoda fortune cookies I had with my coffee yesterday afternoon, courtesy of W. Wing Yip PLC of Nechells, Birmingham. They've been hanging around our kitchen for weeks, left over from some forgotten Chinese takeaway.

Last night we finished "The Pitt," and I feel lost without it! We started "Joan" on ITV on the recommendation of blogger Meike from Germany, and I'm liking that so far. I also finally finished "Invasion" (finally!) and I'm still working on "The Lincoln Lawyer." Dave, whose patience with scripted shows has diminished over the years, increasingly just scrolls his Facebook feed while I watch television.

Whistler and Wandsworth

I was ready for an urban adventure yesterday, so I set off in late morning for the Tate Britain to see the James McNeill Whistler exhibit. I thought going midday on a Thursday might mean there would be a sparse crowd, but no! The place was packed.

It was an interesting exhibit. I like Whistler's gauzy expressionist painting style, with landscapes shrouded in mist and portraits in layered, dark tones. Of course his famous mother was there (above), on loan from the Musee d'Orsay in Paris. (Her official title is "Arrangement in Gray and Black No. 1.") This is the second time I've seen her. When I went to Paris in April 2000, I visited the Musee d'Orsay and wrote in my journal afterwards: "There were lots of spectacular paintings there -- just amazing stuff -- 'Whistler's Mother' even -- who knew that was in France?!"

I read a biography of Whistler back in 2014, but some of what I thought I knew about him when I wrote that post is incorrect. He did in fact marry, albeit later in life, and apparently it's still unclear how much he sympathized with the Confederates in the American Civil War. Maybe I just hadn't yet gotten to that point in the book. I still persist in believing that he might have been just a little bit gay, against all evidence to the contrary.

Here's a smaller work in pastels that shows Whistler's genius at capturing form and movement in just a few strokes. This is called "Four Ladies in Japanese Costume," from about 1870.

Anyway, after taking in the show, I took a long walk across the Vauxhall Bridge and came across this horror:

Apparently these young people were protesting Pret a Manger because the chain (according to them) buys inhumanely grown chicken, from animals that have been genetically engineered in such a way that they can't even move. Certainly an eye-catching protest.

From there I walked down Wandsworth Road to Clapham Junction. This is a walk I took many years ago, in early 2013, and I'm not sure I've been back since. So I was curious to see what the area looks like now.

Uncle Tom's Cabin is still there, and it has even been refurbished since I photographed it back in 2013.

This apartment building looks pretty much the same.

I had a good long walk, and enjoyed listening to my iTunes and just taking in the scenery and people. I even popped into this little shop, which is amazingly still in business, and bought a vintage creamer that I need like a hole in the head. (But it matches another vintage creamer I bought ages ago, so why not?!)

Because I walked through the neighborhood known as Lavender Hill, I was inspired when I got home to watch "The Lavender Hill Mob," an old Ealing comedy starring Alec Guinness. I've meant to see this movie for years and years and I'm happy to report that it remains delightful and enjoyable.

Dave was out last night, at a party with some co-workers, so I had leftovers and watched a couple of shows he doesn't like -- "The Lincoln Lawyer" on Netflix and "Invasion" on Apple TV (which I am doggedly trying to get through even though I don't like it much myself).

Overall, it felt good to get out and about!

Fig and Cosmos

I just realized yesterday that I waltzed past my 20th Blogaversary with nary a mention! As of May 24 I have been writing this blog for 20 years. It blows my mind to think I've been going that long -- and pretty consistently, too, with the exception of about seven months in 2010-11, when I briefly quit because I was too busy writing for work. (So maybe technically my 20th Blogaversary is next year.)

When my friend and former colleague Kenneth (whose gay-culture blog is still linked in my sidebar) inspired me to try this platform out way back in 2006, I never imagined it would have such a long-lasting effect on my life. And yet here we both are, still blogging away, along with many of you.

Once I adopt an online platform, I tend to stick with it. Hence I'm still on Blogger and Flickr and Facebook -- all very mid-aughts -- and I never adapted to Twitter or BlueSky or Threads or Instagram, which came later. I've periodically experimented with Instagram but I just don't like it. I know my photos would get a lot more attention there but I just can't bring myself to use it.

Anyway, that's my first cosmos flower (above). Woo hoo! It's always gratifying to plant tiny seeds and see them grow and blossom. Frankly, I would have preferred some colored cosmos as opposed to white ones, but beggars can't be choosers. (I got those seeds free in the mail with a magazine subscription at work.) The zinnias and sunflowers are still plugging away and not yet ready to bloom.

As predicted, the squirrels have knocked a couple of figs off our tree. I cut this one open just to see what it looked like inside. Nowhere near ripe, as you can tell. But they're a nice size, and I'm hopeful I'll get at least one or two to taste.

This was yesterday's plant project. These begonias have been looking straggly and the leaves get crispy and dry, and eventually they fall off. I think it's because I put the plants in that terrible sawdust-and-wood-chip compost I bought last year, which dries out quickly. I bought better quality houseplant compost yesterday and repotted both of them (one in front and one behind on the windowsill), and I'm hoping that will give them a boost.

I cut off one lanky stem, and of course I couldn't bring myself to throw it away, so now it's rooting in two pieces on the kitchen windowsill. Like I need another begonia!

This was my treat yesterday evening. One of Dave's students gave him a tiny bottle of pink champagne at the end of the school year, and Dave can't drink it because alcohol affects his Crohn's disease. So it got passed along to lucky me!

Weeds, Feeders and a Spanish Procession

This oxalis is growing in our front garden, right on the street. It's putting on an amazing display of flowers this year. Those strap-like leaves are crocosmia that also grows there -- it has orange flowers that will appear later in the summer.

I took this picture while weeding the front garden the other day. I usually don't do much to that space, but since Mrs. Russia had it drastically trimmed last year, sunlight reaches the ground and weeds have appeared. I let them go for a while but I finally had to dial them back because we were starting to look like "The Munsters."

I've also made some changes to the back garden bird feeders. I removed the one on the patio because it was creating too much chaos out there -- mainly from pigeons flapping around and damaging plants, but also from squirrels and our unwelcome garden rat. The rodents are drawn by the seeds that birds throw out of the feeder. I moved the whole thing into the rose bed in the middle of the garden, near the other feeder. I want to keep that rat away from the house.

I'm also feeding a lot less in the hopes that less food will encourage the rat to find accommodation elsewhere. We shall see. I feel bad depriving the parakeets of their suet balls. They land on the feeder pole and squawk and stare morosely.

I read recently that the RSPB says we should stop putting out birdseed and peanuts between May 1 and Oct. 31 to reduce the risk of spreading trichomonosis, a parasitic disease that affects certain finches. Apparently it spreads more in the summer, possibly via bird feeders, and the theory is that birds don't need supplemental food then when so much is available in nature.  "Small amounts of mealworms or fat balls can still be offered safely through the year," the article said.

We don't get many finches here -- only occasional goldfinches, which usually don't use the feeders. (Trichomonosis primarily affects chaffinches and green finches, which we never see). I'm putting out a mix of mealworms and seeds mixed together, so I guess I'm only partially violating the advice. My general plan is to just put out less of everything, encouraging the birds to find more food naturally and hopefully discouraging pests.

I also trimmed the straggly alkanet in the back garden, and I started to cut the seedheads off the euphorbia, but then I found this little pupating ladybird (ladybug) on one of the stems. I carefully reattached its perch to a remaining stem with a tiny bit of tape, as you can see above. In a few days it will emerge as a full-grown insect so my repair job doesn't have to last forever. I'll keep an eye on it -- maybe I can catch it hatching.

I only found a couple of larval ladybirds, unlike the last time I removed alkanet stems. I think most of them have grown up by now.

Here are some more interesting pictures from my slide-scanning project. These come from Spain in 1964 -- some kind of parade or procession featuring large effigies, maybe for Semana Santa? I think they were taken in San Sebastian.

I'm not sure how racially sensitive they are by modern standards, but historically and culturally they're interesting. These are the kinds of pictures that I try to preserve with this project, to add to the record of people and events long past. Those little kids trotting alongside those figures above would be about 70 now!

The Early Bird Gets the Dickens

Remember how I said the garden was beginning to feel a little claustrophobic? Here's a good example -- the path leading up from the patio. That gigantic dusty miller -- which grew from a tiny little plant I bought back in 2022 -- is encroaching from the right, and we have a rambling rose and the crocosmia "Lucifer" leaning in from the left. You can still see the stepping stones I made during the pandemic from some of the pottery shards I'd collected on my walks, but just barely! We can sidle through here without too much trouble but I do feel a bit like Dr. Livingstone in need of a machete.

I did a bit more gardening yesterday, trimming and neatening and repotting a fern that lives in the back atop our celebrity plant pedestal. The older fronds on our tree fern were in a sort of in-between zone between life and death -- substantial portions were alive and green but some bits and pieces were brown. So I painstakingly trimmed away all the brown parts, thinking it would be good to save what's still photosynthesizing and benefitting the plant. And then a few hours later Dave marched past holding the entire fronds, having cut them off himself and thus negating all my work.

Oh well.

The Brugmansia seems happy, with five flowers (two of them hidden in this picture).

Here's what I found early yesterday morning on my way to buy a carton of milk. Someone discarded a trash bag full of old books, which had clearly been sitting out overnight as the top volumes were a bit damp. I took about half of them (above). I've never read "The Woman in White" or anything by Elizabeth Gaskell, Oliver Goldsmith, Richard Harris Barham or Len Deighton. I might try all of those. I have read "Great Expectations" and I'm not sure why I took it except that I hated to see it thrown out. "Straight to the Mark" is a Victorian novel supposedly meant to teach morality to young people. It could be incredibly tedious -- it was published by a company devoted to religious tracts -- but it has a beautiful cover so I took it anyway.

I left behind some practical nonfiction ("How it Was Made") and religious books, as well as Robert Browning's poetry and half of "Tom Jones" and "The Count of Monte Cristo," which were published in two volumes but both had one missing. The funny thing is, by the time I went to the store and came back with my milk, all the rest of the books were gone too. Someone must have come along behind me and scavenged the rest.

Here's a peculiar set of images I found while scanning slides. Back in 1991, someone took pictures on a beach of a distant person doing what looks like yoga poses. (Or maybe just acrobatic ones.) They're mysterious pictures, aren't they? Did the photographer know that person? Were they aware in advance that the person was going to bend over backwards? Why are they so far away? So many questions. I love the colorless sort of moonscape, though -- it adds to the surreal quality.