Jankety but Upright

I'm free! I'm free! As of today, quarantine is officially over and I am able to go out and have a life. The only complication is that I still haven't received the results of my Day 8 Covid PCR. I'm sure it's going to be negative, but I wonder if I'm supposed to wander free before I know for sure? Then again, people coming into the country from the USA just a few days after me not only got to skip quarantine but didn't even have to take a Day 8 test. So I guess I'm fine.

The NHS didn't call me at all yesterday. I've been dropped like a hot potato. Like a bad date.

Believe me, I wasn't waiting by the phone. I had plenty to do. For one thing, I decided to try to tie up the collapsed teasels one more time -- and I did so, as you can see above. I anchored them to that heavy garden chair. So now they're tied up from three sides and they seem pretty stable. I'm not sure what's going to happen in the first high wind, but at least I've tried.

To what end, I'm not sure. I guess I just want them to live and bloom a little while longer. I saw bees on the flowers yesterday evening and got some satisfaction from knowing that I'd spared the plant long enough for more insects to dine.

As Dave might say, they look "jankety" -- haphazard or badly constructed.  I love that word. It's not one I ever used until I met him, but it's very handy. My teasel rescue is admittedly jankety.

I texted Dave to tell him I'd saved them, but my phone's autocorrect changed "teasels" to "readers," with the result that I told him, "I tied up the readers again."

I guess that's YOU. I've tied you up. Sorry about that.

I haven't mentioned our canna lilies much this summer, but they're both doing fine. One of them is quite big and blooming (above). The other one -- the sad little pathetic one -- is still small, but it's looking healthier than it was last year. Hopefully by next summer it will be more established.

Food-wise, I'm surviving quite well. I haven't even had to do take-out, at least not since Dave's last night in town, when we ordered sushi. After he ordered it, he got a text saying "Eduardo" was on his way. I said, "It's so London to have your sushi delivered by someone named Eduardo!"

And speaking of food delivery, here's a discarded pizza box I found while walking Olga. I was amused by the name. As far as I know, English homes don't have "yards," they have gardens, and as a result the English also don't have "yard sales." They have car boot sales, when they bring their junk to a common location like a schoolyard or car park and sell it out of their car. I suspect whoever named this pizza outfit was trying to sound American.

Finally, remember the jackhammers I've been hearing? This is what their operators are working on -- channeling the street to run fiber broadband lines. This is on West End Lane, which is normally a fairly major roadway, and Finchley Road is also closed off, which is an even bigger traffic artery. Makes me glad I don't drive.

I've been catching up on movies that I've had saved for ages because I knew Dave wouldn't want to watch them. One was "What Happened, Miss Simone?" a documentary about the troubled life and career of jazz singer Nina Simone. Last night I watched "The Treasure of San Bosco Reef," a Disney movie from 1968 that was mildly amusing. It was a mystery set in Italy and it reminded me of "The Moon Spinners" with Hayley Mills, one of my favorite childhood Disney films, which was made a few years earlier and set in Greece. I'm always up for a Disney adventure set in an exotic locale.