Sidewalk Bouquet and Hoarder Fishing

I had some medical errands to run yesterday. I've been having trouble with coughing and occasional breathlessness once again, with no obvious cause. In the past I've believed these conditions to be related to gastro-esophageal reflux (GERD, or GORD as it's called in England, because "oesophagus" here begins with an O). But my usual GERD treatment doesn't seem to be having any effect, so I went to the doctor in the morning, and she wanted me to get some standard blood tests and a new chest x-ray.

After seeing her, I walked straight over to the Royal Free Hospital, where I got the x-ray done lickety split. But then the technician told me the results won't be reported for 28 days! Apparently they have quite a backlog. That seems crazy to me, particularly if something bad is going on. (I may get my own private x-ray today, which will report results in about 24 hours. They're not expensive.)

On the way to the hospital I passed these ruffly camellias lying on the pavement -- a sort of springtime sidewalk bouquet.

I also passed this nice wooden basket sitting by the rubbish bins in front of an apartment building. I think it's a baby basket, like a bassinet? It's really nice and if I needed a basket or could think of anything to use it for, I'd have taken it. (And also if I hadn't been on my way to the hospital, because I couldn't very well carry that thing along.) Anyway, I left it there.

As I said, I also needed blood tests. They had to be scheduled, and the soonest the Royal Free could do them was April 20. But I found that Barnet Hospital, in far north London, could do them right away. I made an afternoon appointment there. That left me with several hours to kill, so I did some photo walking.
 

Remember this decrepit shop? I first photographed it way back in 2011, and then blogged about it in 2020. It has grown gradually more and more sad-looking over the years. When I first saw it, it was actually open. In 2020 it seemed somewhat operational, perhaps on a restricted basis because of Covid.

Well, now there are no signs of life. The "Fishing" sign is gone, one of the windows in front is broken and the inside is a wreck. (Never mind the building itself, which judging from the condition of those upstairs windows is pretty much open to the weather and the pigeons. You can't really tell, but there are two of them sitting in the upper right window.)

Here's the interior, shot through the window. I suppose someone could still be doing business in there, but it's hard to tell. That area toward the rear, through that low doorway, is just piled with stuff. It's a fishing shop for the TV show "Hoarders."

Anyway, having checked that out, I caught the tube from Chalk Farm all the way up to Edgware (which you may recall I visited several months ago). I stopped in at a Wendel's bakery there and bought their lunch deal -- drink, sandwich and snack for something like £5. I got a cheese sandwich ("no mayo," the label helpfully reported) and it was the most tasteless thing I've ever eaten. I ate it sitting on a wall in front of the Edgware public library. At least I got to enjoy the day if not the food.

Then I caught a bus to Barnet Hospital, where I had my blood drawn. Afterwards I wandered around the high street in Chipping Barnet, which I'd hoped might make for some good photography, but I wasn't all that impressed. Just a bunch of chain stores and modern shopfronts, for the most part.

The S&M Local was mildly funny. Whips and chains?

I caught two buses all the way back to West Hampstead, where I made a martini and caught Dave up on the adventures of the day, and he, in return, informed we that we had not yet started bombing the heck out of Iran. (And still haven't, apparently, given Trump's last-minute reprieve.) If our objective is regime change, how does bombing the country help? Seems like that pretty much unites the entire populace against us. Destroying bridges and power stations will not win us hearts and minds.

A Fine Spring Day

Yesterday was about as nice a day as we could possibly want. A bit cold, perhaps, but sunny and bright. It drew everyone outdoors like a magnet. This was the high street in the early afternoon, when I took a walk around the neighborhood for some exercise.

I walked down a nearby street where, in February 2018, a house collapsed while it was under renovation. What didn't collapse was eventually torn down, and although I believe there were plans to rebuild (which I haven't heard anything about in years), so far there's still just a big gap in the street, with the two adjacent buildings supported by some temporary beams. Here's the original story on a local news blog, with links to more photos and coverage.

Free chairs, anyone? Kind of fun! If we needed chairs I might have taken them. They're a bit battered but they have character.

Some brilliant tulips were growing along this fence on the street, along with some euphorbia.

Fair warning -- this is probably what my blog is going to be from here on out, now that I'm retiring: "Here's what I saw on the street today." Do not expect any deep philosophizing.

I forgot to mention that I did get some seeds planted on Sunday. I planted six sunflowers in a seed tray, and five more in some big pots at the side of the house. (Probably too many for those pots, which already contain a few other things, to be honest.) I also planted a tray of zinnias and some cosmos. I'm keeping the cosmos indoors on the windowsill for now, but I'm hoping the others will sprout just fine outdoors, despite our chilly nights. (It's 47º F out there now, or 8.3º C, at almost 8 a.m.)

I've almost finished "Flashlight" -- I should polish it off today, finally. I also archived all my photos yesterday, which always takes time -- culling the ones I don't want and saving the rest to my portable disk drive. It's nice to have it done.

I can tell the world is waking up because I've already begun my summer ritual of rescuing insects that blunder into the house. I keep a little drinking glass and a notecard on the end table next to the couch, and when a bee or hoverfly comes in and I hear them buzzing and thumping against the windows, I pop the glass over the insect and slide the card beneath it, and transport the critter back outside. I had to do it twice yesterday already!

First Butterfly, Figs and Foxes

I spent yesterday cleaning the house and working in the garden, among other things. I saw my first butterfly of the year, a cabbage white (above). It seemed to want to land on light-colored leaves or flowers, like the Turkish sage leaves above, which are covered with whitish fuzz. I suppose the butterfly is trying to blend in. Nesting birds are probably hungry!

I mowed the lawn, and afterwards Dave and I sat on the garden bench. "We'd be crazy to ever move from here," Dave said, and I agreed, taking in our little urban oasis. I happened to look up and notice...

...that our fig tree has figs on it! This is also a first for us. I didn't expect to see them this early in the spring and I'm a little confused about the timetable, but hey, I'll take it. They're all out at the very ends of the branches, and I don't know if that's because they grow that way or the squirrels have already nibbled them off branches closer to the center of the tree. I'm not sure we'll ever get to taste them ourselves, our wildlife being ravenous, but it's still exciting.

Remember when I found that fig tree ten years ago, discarded in a pot down on the high street, its roots having been cut off? It wilted and looked terrible and I potted it up and hoped for the best, and now it's in the ground and about 20 feet tall. And bearing figs!

I went up to Waitrose at lunchtime to buy some soup, and as usual I checked out their plants. These sad-looking foxgloves were on sale, and since we don't have any foxgloves this year I took the plunge and bought them. I think the two on the right will be fine, but the one on the left is iffy.

On the way home, I happened to pass my neighbor down the street, a 79-year-old guy who's quite talkative. I walked back with him, and he told me about his achy bones and his physical therapy. "I hope you didn't pay for those," he said, pointing at my plants. I assured him I'd gotten a deal, but I think he still thought I'd been had.

I planted them all, so we'll see how they do.

I downloaded the garden cam, and produced this rather spacious and meandering video, which I think has answered the question of how many foxes we have.
-- We begin with the fox I'm calling Arrow, because it has an arrowhead- or dagger-shaped tail. It seems young. It finds something to eat among the bluebells, who knows what.
-- We then see, in quick succession, two more foxes, one with a long, crooked tail and one with a white-tipped tail. I'm pretty sure these are the three vulpine denizens of our garden. (Check out the screen cap of their tails below for comparison, and I think you'll see what I mean.) I'm not sure if these are still Q-Tip and/or Guy Fox, the animals I was seeing last year. I suppose I could go back and compare with earlier videos but I haven't done that yet.
-- At 0:50, you hear the construction crew next door as they disassemble the huge scaffold that's been covering our neighbor's house.
-- At 1:10, a bird (robin?) is once again trying to perch on the camera.
-- At 1:22, we have a nice sunny, peaceful view with some wind. I thought it captured the spirit of our garden well.
-- At 1:42, a squirrel nibbles something and seems curious about the camera (but doesn't quite get there).
-- At 2:02, you get a good view of the crooked-tailed fox. There's a lot of back-and-forth exploring.
-- At 2:52, a little robin perches on a rose and then flies into the shrubbery.
-- At 3:12, I put down some chicken skin from dinner, which the foxes promptly eat.
-- Pale Cat appears at 5:17, a day before I saw him sitting on that gatepost a couple of streets away.
-- Crooked Tail prowls around again, followed at 6:08 by another nibbling squirrel. I wonder what it's eating?
-- At 6:24, Arrow is back, followed at 6:48 by Crooked Tail, whose name I have established in the process of writing this post. (Remember these visits are actually hours apart.)
-- At 7:03, we see Crooked Tail apparently unconcerned as a helicopter flies overhead, probably either the police or an air ambulance. Ah, urban life!

Fox tail identifier: L to R, Arrow, white-tipped tail, Crooked Tail

I'm not setting up the garden cam this week because we'll be out there a lot and I don't want a ton of footage of us!

The Cemetery and Storm Dave

I spent yesterday morning doing stuff around the house, and by early afternoon I was ready to get out and about. I decided to walk up to the cemetery, where I hadn't been in a while. Going there always makes me think of Olga but that isn't a bad thing. I made some coffee in my travel mug and brought it with me.

I found this little rocking horse outside the church on the corner. I texted Dave a photo. "No," he wrote back. (Although I do love my rocking unicorn, I actually wouldn't have taken this one -- not only because I don't need it, but also because it's upholstered. I don't mind picking up hard furniture but upholstery gives me the willies. It was gone when I walked past again a little later.)

The wood anemones are just starting to bloom. They seem a bit behind this year. I'm pretty sure they typically have more blossoms by this time in April.

It felt good to walk the paths that I used to take at least once a week with Olga. I'm sure I've photographed this familiar monument before -- it's lying flat on the ground, having long ago fallen over.

This crabapple tree is in fine form. Technically it's an Asiatic apple (Malus spectabilis), according to my plant identifier. I would have just said crabapple, but whatever.

I've always found this an interesting (and sad) headstone. My first thought, upon reading it, was that Stebbing must have been much older than his wife Ada, who lived for almost forty years after the death of her husband. But in fact he was only eight years older. She just lived an incredibly long time.

Their son, Jackie, is memorialized on this page at the web site of the military cemetery in Belgium where he is buried. There's even a picture of him. He died of wounds "received before Comines," which probably means the offensive to liberate Comines from the Germans in late September 1918. Such an incredible tragedy, all those boys on both sides, killing each other in drives to recapture or defend a couple of miles of territory. It must have been devastating for Jackie's parents -- a story repeated hundreds of thousands of times across England in those years.

Last night we had some really intense winds and spattery rain, I assume related to Storm Dave (a name which, of course, greatly amuses my Dave). I got up in the middle of the night and saw the avocado on its side on the patio, but I waited until this morning to lift it back into place. It had minimal damage -- a clump of leaves broke off but otherwise it seems fine.

I guess this is a sign that it has once again outgrown its pot, which seemed huge when I repotted it a couple of years ago. I'm not sure where to go from here. Maybe we should just put it in the ground. The only reason to keep it in a pot was to be able to move it inside if necessary, but it's too big for that now anyway.

Cat Out of Context

Yesterday was a much-needed quiet day at home! I did laundry, I read blogs and I made substantial headway in "Flashlight," which I am enjoying a lot. I know nothing about Korea and Japan and the relations between the two, especially as they affected families living there (and immigrant families in the USA), so it's opening a window on an experience that I have never really imagined.

I pass this tree on my walks home from work. I took the picture above on my phone, and it's OK, but I'd hoped to get one with my good camera. But on Thursday, when I took my camera to work, the house had all its rubbish bins stacked in front and more rubbish on the front walkway. I had a crazy moment when I considered moving their bins aside to take the picture, but then I caught myself. I do not need to be moving other people's garbage cans. In the USA you'd get shot for that. (And a lot less!)

Here's an unfortunate gardening situation that I had to rectify. You know I hate killing anything, but in this case it was necessary. There are three burdock plants in this photo, including the uprooted one in the center. Burdock plants get huge, and right in the middle of this trio is a hollyhock. I knew three burdocks would totally overwhelm the hollyhock, so I pulled up the one that was in front -- which was growing in the lawn, anyway, and I wasn't thrilled about that. I've left the other two for now and I think if I keep the leaves trimmed I can let them survive while still keeping the hollyhock alive.

In the afternoon I went to have a massage, which I haven't done in a long, long time. (Not since Tenerife last November, I think.) It was fabulous, of course, and then look who I ran into on my rubbery-legged walk home:

It's Pale Cat! He was perched on this column next to someone's front garden on the next block. I wonder if that's his house? If so, he has quite a wide territory to wander, because we're not only one more street over, but we're a long block north of where he was in this photo -- and as you know from my wildlife videos, he's always showing up in our back garden. (I'm saying "he" because I've pretty much decided he's a male, though I could still be wrong.)

Anyway, it's the first time I've seen him not in our garden, so that was kind of funny. It's like running into your barber at the grocery store, or your doctor at the wine shop -- you can't help but do a double-take because the person (or cat, in this case) is out of context!

Moai

I passed this house on Tuesday when I was walking around the neighborhood near my dentist's office. The Easter Island moai on the windowsills caught my eye right away. I wonder if this person has any connection with Easter Island (aka Rapa Nui) or if they're just fascinated, as many of us are, from afar?

And now I'm on Spring Break! None too soon, either. I got annoyed at my boss yesterday when she made another late-afternoon request and I realized once again that it really is just time for me to go. I am so done with that job.

I had a series of weird dreams last night involving some of my coworkers. I had scheduled time on the calendar to do some kind of AI training, and there was discussion about that, and then suddenly I was at a dining room table and I moved a centerpiece and a pair of hummingbirds flew out. "Awww, they built a nest there!" said my co-worker Martha. And then I woke up, and wondered what on earth I'll dream about when my three remaining workdays are over. Hopefully less calendar scheduling or AI and more hummingbirds.

Pam Bondi is finally out at the Justice Department, and I can't say that's surprising. (I've written before about my two degrees of separation from her.) That is going to be an impossible job for anyone, because Trump and the MAGAts want to prosecute people who have done nothing wrong. Ever since the chants of "Lock her up!" he's made promises to jail Democratic leaders, and darn it, the law just won't cooperate. It will be interesting to see if a new attorney general is any more successful in bringing charges, never mind making them stick.

Meanwhile, I hope Bondi writes a book, because that could be entertaining.

I'm looking forward to a restful day and making more of my way through "Flashlight," which I haven't touched since last weekend!

Unremarkable

The magnolias are just about done for the season. This one managed to push out one final flower before getting on with the business of making leaves.

Yesterday was unremarkable. I had a dentist's appointment on Tuesday, but that was also unremarkable (which is a good thing). I am feeling unremarkable so this will be an unremarkable blog post.

The only interesting thing I did yesterday was take my old computer to work in order to discard it. I asked a co-worker, a tech guy, to remove the hard drive -- which turned out to be a computer chip rather than the spinning disk I've seen in previous machines. I destroyed the chip and gave the empty shell of the computer to the tech office to recycle. I wanted to get rid of it while I still had a method for easy disposal.

My persistent cough has been bothering me again, which I'm not happy about. I've toyed with going back to the doctor but I'm going to let nature take its course for a little while and see what happens. Both my boss and a co-worker have been sick this week, and working as usual, which annoys the heck out of me. (GO HOME if you're sick! Don't give it to the rest of us!) Anyway, my cough doesn't (yet) seem like a passing illness -- it's more my usual chronic problem. I've been back on lansoprazole to control stomach acid so hopefully that will help it calm down.

Today is our final workday before Spring Break. Woo hoo! I'm off all next week, and when I return to work the following week, I'm only there three days before it's sayonara for good. Next week will be a foretaste of the life to come!