Magenta Spreen Lambsquart

Dave and I went to breakfast on the high street yesterday morning. Along the way, we passed this beautiful plant growing beneath a street tree. I took a photo and ran it through my plant identifier app. The answer came back "tree spinach," aka "magenta spreen lambsquart," which gave us a good laugh.

"That would make a great password," Dave said. "No one would ever guess it."

Turns out "magenta spreen" and "giant lambsquarters" are common names for Chenopodium giganteum -- the app somehow combined and truncated them. It's also called "purple goosefoot" and "fat hen." It's an amaranth, a relative of quinoa.

We want to try it in the garden. It grows five feet tall, and you know how much I love my dinosaur plants! We might try to transplant this one, or we might wait to collect seeds. Like many amaranths they are apparently prolific re-seeders so we might have to keep them in check.

Anyway, we went to breakfast, and Olga came along. We tried to sit outside but in the early morning the breeze was still too chilly, so we moved indoors for our pastries and coffee at Gail's. As the hours passed the temperatures warmed and by afternoon they were perfect, in the low 70's (F) with a partly cloudy sky.

The Solomon's seal sawfly larvae are back on the Solomon's seal. I'm leaving them for now. Biodiversity and all that. I used to worry that they'd kill the plant and I'd try to remove them, but they reappear every year and the plant always bounces back. Cycle of life!

I did some routine garden trimming, mostly deadheading and cutting blackberries out of the flower beds. I also had a Facetime call with my brother so I could fill him in on my retirement plans. He's retired already himself -- and he's younger than I am -- so he wholeheartedly approves!

It continues to be a banner year for ladybirds/ladybugs. Here's a little video to show you the many stages I'm finding -- larvae, pupae and mature adults, some of them just emerged. Oh, and a bumblebee, busy on our Turkish sage (Phlomis). I like the way it has to lift the lid on each flower to get to the good stuff.

Many years ago I plucked this lantern from someone's trash and brought it back to our garden. It's been hanging there ever since and it had become filthy, and yesterday I almost threw it out. But then I scrubbed it up with an old toothbrush and it looks respectable again.

Last night we had leftover pasta bolognese and I set up a table in the garden so we could dine al fresco. We put a candle in the lantern and set it in the middle of the table atop a colorful tablecloth. It all would have been quite idyllic except that Olga CANNOT tolerate us sitting in the garden if we're not paying attention to her. She barks incessantly. It was a noisy meal.

Two-Spot Afternoon

Our red geranium (or, to be absolutely proper, Pelargonium) has finally bloomed after a spring spent looking rather spindly and terrible. I'm glad it's bouncing back with more sun and warmer weather. Several of our geraniums are looking a bit worn and next year I probably need to give them all a hard prune. (I say this every year but I'm always reluctant to prune anything and so I never do it.)

I had a very relaxed day yesterday. I changed our bedsheets, folded and put away laundry, and sat in the garden with Olga. The temperatures were perfect.

I couldn't decide which of these pictures to use so you're getting both of them! Although you can see my computer sitting on the chair above (I was reading blogs and catching up on comments), I spent most of my time reading "A Visit From the Goon Squad," which I finished. I really, really enjoyed that book. It was masterfully constructed and just so interesting. I have a Louise Doughty mystery to tackle next.

Some of the pupating ladybirds/ladybugs seem to be emerging. I'm seeing more mature beetles around, and the pupa I blogged about a week ago, standing on its end, is now empty. Nature keeps on truckin', to quote R. Crumb.

The ladybird/ladybug above is a two-spot, which is a native variety and not one of the Asian harlequins. I am glad to see the native species holding their own. I was reading last night that although the harlequins are invaders, there's mixed evidence about whether they out-compete native varieties. Maybe we really can all live together in harmony. At least if we're ladybirds/ladybugs (and we're not on Twitter).

I tried once again to find evidence of any protests in London and saw nothing online. Only in the evening, after I'd made my start-of-summer martini, did Dave see a post from a Facebook friend about a protest at the U.S. embassy. Drat! I knew I should have gone down there. (But when? And where? I like to have a plan before I set out on such an expedition. Next time they need better publicity.)

Anyway, I am heartened this morning to see so much visible resistance in the USA, in all 50 states. You've gotta be a brave person to attend an anti-Trump march in Alabama and Mississippi and a lot of other conservative areas, but people did it, protesting our own governmental Goon Squad. Bravo all around!

Free at Last

Yesterday was our last day of work until mid-August. Woo hoo! And it was barely a workday. I had almost no customers in the library, and everything was pretty much already cleaned up and put away for the summer, so I just did a few small tasks here and there.

I took Jerry, the library Christmas cactus, down to the Lower School patio garden and hosed him off to ease his mealybug infestation. (A fifth-grader named Jerry last year when she saw me daubing his leaves with alcohol to kill the mealybugs. She decided he needed a name. I have no idea why she chose that one, but whatever.) I did the same with another Christmas cactus that I then brought home to try to rehabilitate. It needs some work.

I discovered this dinosaur fantasy (above) in a pool or fountain in the middle of the courtyard.

And these fearsome monsters were off to the side.

We had our year-end lunch at noon, where we heard speeches and said goodbye to several departing colleagues, and then we were free!

Someone left these flowers outside the office door of a co-worker. Unfortunately I think she'd already gone home, so I e-mailed her to tell her they were there and I put them in some water. Hopefully she'll come back for them.

I walked home and found these nicely framed prints along the way, offered up for the taking. They need a cleaning but they look good otherwise. Rothko, I think? Or maybe a Rothko imitator? In any case I did not take them.

In the afternoon I lay in the garden with Olga and read. I got very sleepy, which I attribute to the two glasses of wine I had at lunch. It's certainly not the fault of the book, Jennifer Egan's "A Visit From the Goon Squad," which I love. An English teacher recommended it to me and I'm so glad she did. It's a novel made up of interconnected stories about people loosely arranged around a music producer, and I think both the construction and language use are interesting.

Last night we were supposed to get "torrential" rains, according to the weather forecast. We got rain but it was hardly torrential, at least as far as I could tell before I fell asleep. Nothing like the toad-stranglers I've witnessed in Florida!

Authoritarianism and Australian Spam

I'm going to start right out by mentioning the scary state of affairs in the USA -- Trump's mobilizing of the military against our own citizens, and against the wishes of state and local leaders in California, not to mention the handcuffing of a U.S. senator for daring to ask a question at a press conference by Kristi Noem. I said to Dave yesterday morning, "This is martial law." Where does it stop? This is authoritarianism. It's happening now. As I say pretty much every day nowadays, Trump's America is not the country I grew up in.

If we were having anti-Trump protests here tomorrow I might go, but I'm not aware of any. (And I've looked.) As I've said in comments on other blogs, part of the problem might be that the "No More Kings" slogan doesn't really work in the UK. It's a branding problem! I bet if I went down to the embassy or maybe Trafalgar Square something would be going on. Meanwhile, I'm protesting here on my blog.

More trivially, what was up with the onslaught of Australian spam comments on my blog yesterday? Did any other bloggers experience this? I've deleted it all -- which I almost hated to do because YP made funny replies to several of them -- but it was the strangest thing. I had about eight comments trying to sell me pool maintenance and bank loans and all manner of stuff, from businesses all based in Melbourne, I think. Those crafty Australians, hacking Google's firewalls.

Yesterday at work I did my first aid training and my fire safety training. The latter was a three hour online video course, and involved far more detail than I should have to know given that my only responsibility as a fire warden is to make sure everyone leaves the library if the alarm goes off. I don't need the legal origins of the fire codes and statistics about fire casualties blah blah blah, and although it's helpful to know about the various types of fire extinguishers it's highly unlikely that I would ever be in a position to fight a fire at work myself. Not only that, but some of it was stunningly obvious. Here's one actual directive from the video: "Once you believe the fire is out, stop using the extinguisher." Yeah, no shit, Sherlock!

Today is our final all-school meeting and lunch, where we say goodbye to departing colleagues and that kind of thing, and then we're off for the summer. It's also Olga's last walk with her dog-walker. A momentous day!

Oh, and Mr. K returned from his travels yesterday. He mowed his lawn and I told him how I'd closed their shed. Mrs. K is supposedly coming back today, so normalcy appears to be returning to my little corner of London.

(Photo: A neat house I often pass on my walks to and from work.)

Beetle

Here's one of our masterworts, or Astrantia, which I divided and replanted a couple of years ago. Half of the original plant is in the flower bed in the center of the garden and half in a pot. Dave said of these blossoms the other day, "That's not a very nice color." And it's true that it's not as bright as another of our masterworts. But I still like it, that dusty pink.

Yesterday was very quiet in the library. We got a few more books back from people who waited until the very last minute -- and incidentally, there are still quite a few out. I think the student overdue list is about three pages long at this point. The kids will just have to deal with all that in the fall. I am not a miracle-worker.

I only worked through the morning and came home around 1 p.m. -- just in time to see Olga dropped off by her dog-walker. He and I had a brief chat about her age and condition. I think he's sorry to lose her as a client after so many years, but he understands that at this point she'd probably rather just lie around the house and garden. Her last day walking with him is tomorrow.

This is a scarlet lily beetle, living on one of our Asiatic lilies. A severe infestation can defoliate a lily -- in fact, you can see the leaf directly above the insect has been nibbled. The RHS advises to tolerate them if possible, and we don't have much of an infestation so for now I'm leaving it alone. (I think they're kind of pretty, actually.) It doesn't seem to love these particular lilies, but we used to have a crown imperial fritillaria that the beetles hungrily devoured. I've picked them off and killed them by hand in the past, but it's difficult -- they're really hard. Smashing them is like trying to crush a pebble between your fingers.

So anyway, Mr. Beetle is safe for the moment. If I see a lot of larvae or eggs I'll take steps.

Well, That Got My Attention

I passed this graffiti on my walk to work yesterday morning. I thought, "Does that say what I think it says?" And in fact it does.

I was going to title this post HotSexTime but then I figured none of you would click on it because you'd be afraid I'd been hacked by some virus-spreading bot.

Today is going to be a short one at work. It's our last day with students, but it's only a half-day. The kids leave at noon, and then all the faculty are off to their year-end divisional lunches. I am not included in any of those events because I'm a cross-divisional employee, working for the middle, lower and high schools. So I get to come home! (I think in theory I could choose a divisional lunch to attend but I'm fine with missing out.)

I'm supposed to do some online fire safety training module (don't those words just make you want to die?) but I think I'll wait until tomorrow to tackle that. It's going to take a couple of hours, which seems insane to me. I'm a fire warden for the library, but all that means is I have to make sure the space is cleared if the fire alarm goes off. I don't need to know how to fight the fire. So why two hours of training? I have no idea!

I also have First Aid Awareness training tomorrow morning. We have to do that every two years, to refresh our CPR skills and that kind of thing. At least in the back of my head I can sustain myself with the knowledge that it's the last time.

The collapsed bench is still on Finchley Road outside the telephone exchange. Someone very helpfully put large cones around it, just so no one would be tempted to sit down. Wouldn't it be easier to just haul it away? You would think so, right?

The Only Constant is Change

I think this is the only picture I took yesterday. Olga and I were on our morning walk and passed this pleasant cluster of flowers across the street. Olga is barely holding on to her patience.

So, some momentous decisions are being made around here.

First, Dave and I have decided to stop Olga's daily outings with her dog-walker. After this week we'll be home to care for her, at least through the summer, and the dog walks have just become too much. She has never seemed to relish going with the dog-walker and I think, honestly, she'd just as soon stay home, in her familiar environment. So that will save us £100 a week.

I think in the fall, when we go back to work, she'll happily spend her days just sleeping. If she needs a midday walk we'll hire someone to take her out locally or I'll come home at lunch to let her into the garden. We'll see how it goes.

Second, and more major, we've decided that next year will be my last working in the library. I had planned to go one or two more years beyond that, but our school has offered some incentives toward retirement that make it a good time to step down. As you know from all my grumbling and grousing, the routines of the library have been wearing on me a lot this year, and 13 years seems like long enough to plead with 12-year-olds to return their overdue Lemony Snicket books. I've put in the request with the school and I don't expect them to oppose it (though theoretically they could).

I'm not sure what I'll do next, if anything, but I don't have any qualms about making the change. I am ready. Of course I'm a bit nervous about how it will all play out financially but I don't think we should have any problems. I will still have income from various sources.

Dave, on the other hand, is going to stay put for the time being. He's a few years younger than I am and he feels like he's still got some game, more power to him.

Last night I took the chocolates from that ridiculously long box I blogged yesterday and put them all in a tiny Tupperware container, where they fit perfectly with room to spare. A much better solution, if less elegant. That box is going out with the recycling and I'm glad to have it gone.

TV update: I have finally persuaded Dave to watch "Poker Face," which I am enjoying a lot. At the urging of one of Dave's colleagues we're also watching "Sense8," on Netflix, which I have mixed feelings about but we're sticking with it so far. I think there's a new season of "The Handmaid's Tale" which we might try, and I am persevering with "The Studio" which I love, though Dave doesn't like the energy. He says the show is too hyper. Finally, we watched one episode of the new season of "The Last of Us," which I liked but Dave was, once again, not thrilled with.

He's becoming harder and harder to please with TV and a lot of times I'll look up during a show and he'll be scrolling his phone. He says he can pay attention to both but when I ask him what someone on the show just said, or try to confirm what just happened, he never knows. He is lost in the scroll.