A Long Midday Wander

Rose & Crown pub, Southwark

Yesterday morning was pretty quiet. I watered the houseplants and the orchids, did some puttering in the garden (why is the garden the only place where anyone ever "putters"?) and then some reading. By lunchtime I was feeling restless, so after having a meatloaf sandwich out on the garden bench, I decided to take a walk.

I grabbed my big camera and took the tube down to Southwark, near the Tate Modern. I hadn't been on a photo walk in a while and I felt a little rusty, and I'm supposed to help lead a group of Middle Schoolers on a "Street Photography" outing on Thursday. (More on that to come!) So I thought I'd flex my own photography muscles a bit.
 

I specifically wanted to walk across the Millennium Bridge, so I did. That view never gets tiring, does it?

While standing on the bridge, I saw this woman coming toward me, rollerblading in a long red-velvet dress. She was coming so fast that I only had time for one shot, and fortunately it worked out pretty well. I wish I'd seen her at street level, but oh well!

I wandered around St. Paul's Cathedral and then came westward along Fleet Street and The Strand. This statue of Hodge, Samuel Johnson's cat, stands in Gough Square. The streets in that area are a warren of little squares and alleys, with treasures like this at every turn.

I could have sworn that I've photographed this statue before, but if I have, my methods of archiving are failing me because I can't find the shot anywhere.

Samuel Johnson's house is also on the square, and it's a museum now. I've filed that away for a possible future visit.

More interesting sartorial choices.

I thought my Australian readers might appreciate seeing Australia House on The Strand, the home of the Australian High Commission. It's both the oldest Australian diplomatic mission in the world and the longest-occupied foreign mission in London, according to its web page. The sculpted figures in front were created by Harold Parker from 1915-18. The woman at top right looks particularly rapturous.

Finally, I made my way to Trafalgar Square, where I stumbled onto these young women making a dance video to the song "Armageddon" by the K-Pop group Aespa. (I didn't recognize the song as such; I Shazammed it.)

At first I thought maybe they were Aespa, but they'd surely be thronged by fans if that were the case. I guess they're doing a tribute. The way that camera operator is swooping around, their video looks like it might be a bit nauseating to watch, but that's me talking like the 59-year-old man I am.

From there I navigated my way through Soho and along a very crowded Oxford Street to the tube and back home, my wanderlust satisfied!

Post-Equinox Brunch

Yesterday's sky was deep blue and so clear that Dave and I could watch a jet precisely flying in the contrails of another jet that had passed moments before, like Hansel and Gretel following their popcorn path through the forest. "You should just take a picture of this sky," he said. But of course I opted for shadows instead, the dark, clear-cut shadows of spring.

And I just realized we passed the equinox two days ago, so it is in fact spring now. Woo hoo!

We took ourselves out for brunch in the morning, right after Dave got his hair cut. In fact when I walked up to the cafe where I was meeting him, there was a random man sitting in my seat chatting away to Dave -- turns out it was his barber, who came out to sit with him between customers!

It felt great to sit outside and soak up the warmth of the sun and watch the passing parade of people, cars and buses. We are all emerging from our winter coccoons.

In the afternoon I re-potted a couple more plants. I was forced to kill a toadflax that had taken root in one of our lily pots. I'd meant to move it to its own pot but it had woven a net of roots so tightly around the lily bulbs that I couldn't extract them. I just pulled out the crown of the toadflax and repotted the whole root ball, figuring the roots would disintegrate on their own, leaving just the lilies. (Which have already started sprouting.)

I also cleaned the house, read blogs and got about 80 pages into "Flashlight," which is pretty interesting so far. And in the evening I made a martini and we watched "Bugonia," which is one of the weirder movies I've ever seen. It was good right up until it wasn't, toward the end, when it took a twist that neither of us could quite swallow. But it was entertaining, I'll give it that.

The Arch at the Arches

As I was walking on Finchley Road on Thursday morning, I saw these guys installing a big floral arch over the doorway at McDonald's. I guess someone was having some sort of celebration there? I've seen these arches installed over the doorways of homes for weddings and things like that, but I've never seen one at a fast-food restaurant! It was gone by the next day.

Yesterday was all about doing more to prepare for the handoff at work. I went through my entire Google Drive -- 14 years of accumulated work documents -- and moved anything even remotely valuable over to my boss's Google account for safekeeping. I also went through my desk and passed off a couple of things to her that should be preserved -- but of course most work documents are "virtual" these days as opposed to pieces of paper, so there wasn't that much.

I also culled that thick folder of thank-you notes and brought home the ones I decided to keep, along with the originals of all my work photos. Some of you wondered about the group photos in my retirement video -- why they were all so similar from year to year. We took them at school picture time using the school's photographer, and sometimes they were included in yearbooks, but mostly they were just for us. As you can see we tried to have a "theme" each year, somehow related to what was going on in the library or the school. For example, the one in which we all dressed as artists was taken the year our new Arts Building opened.

By the way, we created a second version of the retirement video, including one more group photo I found -- of all of us in masks during the pandemic -- and my boss put a little note on each slide noting that it's for my retirement so that anyone who looks up and sees the show in the middle won't wonder what it's for. Don't feel like you have to watch it. It's otherwise exactly the same as the first one.

I think I might actually start reading a book today. I've made a sufficient enough dent in my New Yorkers that I feel like they're once again at a manageable level, though I'm not by any means caught up. I've been meaning to read "Flashlight" by Susan Choi so I think I'll give that a go.

A Light No Longer Lit

Here's one of our orchids, giving us another round of blossoms. Although this one is doing well and at least two others have flower stalks, I have a few orchids that are looking pretty pathetic. Many are getting on in years and I find that they get a lot less vigorous over time, failing to grow new leaves, not to mention flowers, despite regular and careful watering and feeding. I'm thinking about doing an orchid cull. We have 11 of them, so we're hardly lacking, and I could let three or four go.

But that is not a problem I need to think about today.

Here's my retirement slideshow, the one we made to play in the library. It's made to run on a loop, and it has no sound. It mostly shows me with my co-workers over the years, and it has a few other little odds and ends thrown in. Hopefully no one will mind me posting it here. (It's not public on YouTube.) My boss said the flowery background reminds her of the shirts I wear, which I can definitely see, and it sorts of alludes to my gardening too.

When I came in yesterday morning it was stuck on the first slide, and I couldn't figure out how to get it to auto-play. So I asked my friend Colin for help. "You're setting up your own retirement slideshow? That's pretty pathetic!" he said. I laughed and told him my boss had made it, though I provided the photos. So it's not that pathetic. I just want it to display properly! We got it going eventually.

So, yes, the word is finally out. I'm glad it's not a secret anymore.

I liked the statistic that my boss provided -- that we've checked out nearly half a million books from August 2013 (when I started in the library) to now. I didn't process all of those checkouts, of course, because I'm not working first thing in the morning and I take an hour for lunch each day, but I probably did most of them. And then had to get them all back and re-shelve them!

If I'd thought about it I'd have included something about reading all the Newbery Medal winners, because that's undoubtedly one of my biggest library achievements -- that and talking up the award with the school community. But oh well.

Oh, and remember the light relentlessly burning in the apartment window opposite? I texted the caretaker of the apartments yesterday and told him about it, and he said he'd mention it to the cleaner (?), and when I checked last night it was off. Problem solved, at least for the time being! Dave laughs when I do things like that. "Your retirement is going to be very entertaining," he says.

Getting the Word Out

The sign-maker, whose apartment I pass on my walk to work and who was once fond of hanging elaborate signs in his/her window criticizing Boris Johnson and other Tory leaders, has now taken to sending messages to our Labour politicians. Perhaps this is a sign of how unhappy everyone is with Labour, even the center-leftists. I don't think Keir Starmer is so bad, honestly, but to hear the media talk he's a disaster. Early on he did make some strange choices and decisions that seemed to me very un-Labour-like, but I think he's been better recently. I'm not sure how the next round of elections will go for him, though.

Speaking of which, we got a flyer in the mail yesterday reminding us to vote in early May. Our first opportunity to vote in England since we became citizens! I don't even know where to go or what to do, though I assume that will become obvious as we get closer to the time. I don't think they're national elections -- just local councillors -- but still, I'm excited to participate for once.

I spoke with my boss yesterday about our need to tell kids about my imminent departure. As I told her, I don't want to just disappear and have everyone assume I'd been fired, or worse, hit by a bus. She agreed and we concocted a plan to put up a slideshow in the library wishing me a happy retirement, with photos taken over my 14-year career at the school. I helped her put it together and I think we'll start showing it soon, so the cat will be out of the bag.

I did tell my pal, the eighth-grader who often quizzes me about cameras and wanted me to shoot film for him to develop, and I was surprised by how strongly he reacted. He literally put his hands up to his face in a "Home Alone" gesture and said, "NO! WHY?!" His skin flushed red and I was afraid he would burst into tears, but fortunately he didn't. I told him I'd still see him since Dave still works at the school and I'll be attending events now and then. It made me feel terrible that I blurted it out so casually but I didn't expect that degree of reaction!

I'm actually beginning to feel a little dread about my departure. Excitement, but also a sense of what-the-heck-am-I-doing?! How will I keep myself occupied? I hope I don't regret this.

I met up yesterday after work with a blog reader, Joni, who happens to be traveling through Britain and France. She e-mailed me out of the blue several weeks ago and mentioned she'd be passing through and did I want to connect? So we had a pint together at a pub near the school in St. John's Wood. I think it may be the first time I've ever met up with anyone from blogland who didn't also write their own blog. She told me about her trip and we chatted about our shared affinity for dogs and some of our common experiences with people in the blogosphere. Today she's headed back home to Canada. Safe travels, Joni! (No, her last name is not Mitchell.)

Neighbors

On Saturday I saw this big bumblebee burrowing into one of our camellias. If a bee can look happy, this one did, and it wouldn't turn around or pull its head out of that flower for love or money, as the expression goes. You can see why these particular camellias are not my favorite flower -- they're already browning, and that's a brand-new blossom. But the bee doesn't care.

I just spoke to my upstairs neighbor. I heard him coming down the stairs and stopped him on the porch just to say hello. I wasn't sure anyone was living there but apparently he's still around, though his family is back in Israel. Given the choice, I believe I'd want them here rather than there at the moment, but I didn't press for details. At least I know the apartment isn't vacant.

I haven't called the council for a new rubbish bin, as I'd planned. I realized we have two, and for the time being, I just stashed the broken one at the back of the bin row, and we'll use the good one. If it's just me, Dave and one person upstairs, we ought to make do with one bin just fine.

I got up at 2:30 a.m. and saw that mysterious light burning brightly in the building opposite, shining its glare into our garden. I still think that's a vacant apartment. That light is on all the time.

And that's about all the news (?) I can come up with this morning. Otherwise I'm just walking to work and walking home, listening to my podcasts and trying to catch up on my New Yorkers. More of the same.

Notes and Cards

I found this sticker on my walk to work yesterday -- an unusual one, in that it's stuck directly to the sidewalk and it features the cats' paws and tail. Perhaps the cat artist is trying to do some new things?

I got my glasses repaired over the weekend and picked them up yesterday. When I was in Florida I damaged them pretty severely. One of the arms got jammed closed and I couldn't open it without basically forcing it, which I had to do in order to wear them. So I screwed up the joint, bent it somehow, and first aid was needed. Now they're back on my face, and at no charge! I'm not thrilled with these frames, which Dave bought ten years ago but then never wore himself, so in 2022 I had them fitted with my prescription. They're some kind of fancy German engineering and a little too complicated for their own good.

I polished off a couple more New Yorkers last night while Dave was at the doctor, getting some advice for his Crohn's. He's trying to take his treatment private, in the hopes that he can consistently see the same doctor over time and get some more attentive case management. We'll see how that goes. The doctor he saw last night is referring him to a different doctor and meanwhile has ordered tests.

Yesterday at work I looked through a huge file folder I've kept over the years filled with thank-you notes from students, birthday and holiday cards from co-workers, and other stuff. I have no idea what I'm going to do with it all. There's too much to keep, so I guess I need to do some culling. It's nice to be reminded that I've made a difference in students' lives, enough so that they felt a need to write to me. I always feel like such a crank at work, nagging kids not to eat in the library and to bring back overdue books, so I'm glad to see that they don't just associate me with scolding.

Here's the latest from the wildlife cam in the garden -- back in London and once again collecting footage of foxes, pigeons, cats, magpies and squirrels. The best moment comes at 1:41, when a fox comes right in for a quick sniff of the camera. Normally they're very wary of it. At 2:45 I move it to get a better angle, and at 3:02 I put down some fish skin left over from dinner, which a fox eagerly eats a few hours later. At about 5:23 a fox trots in with a bone or dog treat in its mouth, which it proceeds to bury in the garden.

(By the way, the camera was still set on Florida time -- so don't pay attention to the time stamps.)

Several posts back, one of my commenters admitted somewhat sheepishly that they no longer watch the wildlife videos. By all means, if they are not your thing, don't feel obligated! I find them relaxing and in this crazy world, when humans are doing such terrible things to each other, it's nice to see other critters just going about their business. To me there's something quite calming about seeing a squirrel scratching around in the leaves or a pigeon pecking at nothing. Plus they're fun to edit together. But I promise not to find fault with you if you'd rather just skip them!

Still no sign of the fox with the damaged tail, and I'm not sure I'm seeing Q-Tip (the fox whose tail has a white tip) anymore either. Unless maybe the foxes' coats change with the seasons? I've stopped trying to name them because I can't tell them apart. I also haven't seen Bell the Bengal cat in ages.

Spring Flowers and Toxic Masculinity

Flowering Quince

I just tried to order a new wheelie bin for our rubbish collection. I noticed yesterday that ours, which has long been split along the sides, now has a big hole in it where two splits converged to make a wedge-shaped opening. It's big enough for rats to get through, and maybe even for foxes, so the bin must be replaced.

I looked online how to make this request and was told to log in to the council web site, which I did. I entered my address, blah blah blah, only to be told that although I could get a green recycling bin online, I had to call for a black rubbish bin. Why?!

As my mother used to say, "Everything has to be done at least twice."

The bins are split because our erstwhile upstairs neighbors, the Russians, used to pack about 600 pounds of renovation debris into them every week. Now that the Russians are gone, our rubbish collection is lighter than it's ever been, but we're still living with their legacy -- the damaged bins.

Comfrey

The pictures today show some of what's blooming in the garden. I couldn't work outside as much as I would have liked yesterday, because it got rainy in the afternoon, but I still managed to repot another plant. I also watered everything indoors and did some houseplant maintenance.

Clematis in the neighbor's garden

Snake's Head Fritillary, aka Checkerboard Lily

Grape Hyacinths

Bergenia

Last night, we watched Louis Theroux's new documentary about the manosphere on Netflix. In it, he interviews various guys who would once have been dismissed as mere douchebags, but who now -- through the power of the internet -- have become wealthy social media stars. We have created a culture where saying offensive, obnoxious things is enough to make people rich and famous -- and the more offensive they are, the more rich and famous they get.

I was reminded of a paragraph in a New Yorker article about Stephen Fry that I also happened to reed this weekend:

Once, he was an enthusiastic user of Twitter, but his optimism about social media has waned: “It’s like the opening of the canal system—a wonderful method of transport, you can get stuff made in Birmingham and get it to the sea,” he said. “Then, before you know it, it’s full of rusting Tesco trolleys and turds.”

I thought Theroux handled his toxic (or to be generous, misguided) interviewees quite skillfully. They were obviously wary of him and his motives, but he still managed to challenge them and ask awkward questions, sometimes in front of their girlfriends or de facto spouses. Dave turned to me at one point and said, "Louis Theroux is brave." Which is true.

Mothering Sunday

It's Mother's Day in the UK, or as it's often called, "Mothering Sunday." Even though I am not a mother in any way, shape or form, I celebrated by having a lie-in, sleeping until 7:30, which is pretty unheard of for me. I woke up at 6:30, glanced at the clock and thought, "You know, I'm just going to lie here for a few more seconds." And before I knew it, an hour was up.

I found the little paper cone above on Friday, on the sidewalk next to a bus stop and overground station. It was obviously someone's school project for Mother's Day, complete with a little daffodil. I debated what to do about it -- it had already been stepped on and given that the child in question was probably already on a bus or train I decided to pick it up and bring it home. I showed it to Dave and he said with his usual wry economy, "Some kid is bawling right now."

I wasn't sure whether the daffodil would open, given that it was a bit smushed, but it did...

So, kiddo, whoever you are, please know that your creation brought me happiness, even though I am not your mother. (I think I might take the paper part back and tape it up somewhere near the bus stop, on the off chance that the kid will pass by again and recognize it. Then they could at least bring that part back to Mom.)

This was yesterday's project -- spiffing up the front garden. See that bundle of sticks on the sidewalk in front? That's the dead bush that I removed. It was so dead that I pulled out the stump by hand. I chopped it all up and put it in a yard waste bag, and then planted a hydrangea in the dark middle of the garden and a buddleia where the dead bush used to be. And I pruned that big heather in front, which was largely dead inside and needed some spiffing up.

Here's the "after" shot. I hope that hydrangea isn't in too much darkness, there in the middle, but if it struggles I can trim things around it to bring in more light. They usually don't mind shade.

I had the last of the front porch squash for lunch, blending it into soup form. I was in a race against time to use it up, given that I had to abandon it in the fridge while I was in Florida, but it is now all gone.

Then I gave the grass its first haircut of the year! And I did some trimming to neaten things up in the garden, though there's still plenty more to be done. I have three full yard waste bags and that's the most the council will take per week, so any more work will have to wait.

Finally, I repotted two purple heart plants, combining them into a single pot. Do you remember how the windowsill in the library was overflowing with purple heart plants, all from cuttings from my big plant? Well, I brought several of them back home, in preparation for my retirement and because they were badly in need of new pots. I now have five pots here at home filled with purple heart -- not counting three still in the library, which will stay there after I leave. That stuff is a blessing and a curse! But you know how I am about cuttings. I have a terrible time throwing them away when I know I can root them so easily.

I also polished off two New Yorkers, and I was struck by this essay by a father whose son has transitioned to become his daughter. The dad is pretty much an ideal liberal parent, but he writes openly of his own perplexity at the changes in his daughter's life, including some unconventional relationships and a move overseas. I found it a sympathetic and realistic account of a parent navigating the lives and choices of grown children in today's complex world.

Arrowhead

Here's another photo from my recent Florida trip. Several of these flowers were growing in the wilderness down by the lake at my stepmother's house. I didn't know what they were, but my plant-identifier app tells me they're Sagittaria lancifolia, commonly known as Bull-tongue Arrowhead. Which is quite a mouthful.

I have to give you a Florida picture because I haven't been very inspired photographically this week. I've been walking back and forth to work as usual, but not much has jumped out at me as picture-worthy. I think I just need some leisurely time to take a better look around.

Thank goodness it's the weekend, and I have nothing scheduled, so I can finally write a proper blog post rather than dashing something off before leaping into the shower! From your end this will probably seem no better or worse than any other post, but from my end it's much more relaxed.

It will be interesting to see if my blog posts change once I have more time, after mid-April. I keep thinking I should be plumbing the depths a bit more -- talking about thoughts and feelings and issues. Then again, what can I say about issues, other than how horrifying they all are? I'm not sure I have any more light to shed on world events.

I hope to get some more stuff done around the house this weekend, like sprucing up our front garden, which is looking truly abysmal. As I mentioned before, we have a dead bush out there and it needs some other minor weeding and trimming. I also have some plant maintenance to do in the back garden, and I may even mow the lawn. And I still have a stack of New Yorkers to get through! I am deliberately not starting a new book because I want to focus on reading all those. I made a dent in them during my trip to Florida but I'm still months behind!

I've been taking my New Yorkers to work and sharing them with a colleague -- he has the newest issues, which he will give back to me so I can eventually read them. I reminded him yesterday that I'm leaving in a few weeks, though. As I said, "The gravy train stops after April 15!"

Pounded

We had a lot of rain and heavy winds overnight -- I woke up around 2 a.m. and heard the avocado being thrashed, and peered out the windows to make sure it and the other plants weren't being traumatized. Not that I could have done anything if they were. Everything looks fine this morning. As Dave said, it's good for plants to get knocked around a bit. It makes them stronger.

Dave's been staying home from school the last few days. He had a bout of discomfort stemming from his Crohn's. I, meanwhile, feel like I am being squeezed like a citrus fruit for my last few weeks of work. Is it just because I'm anticipating leaving (18 days!) that I feel like I'm having so much trouble keeping up? I've also got to start telling kids that I'm retiring. I don't want to just disappear and have them all wondering what happened.

We finished the first season of "Broadchurch," which I really enjoyed, but I'm not entirely convinced by the ending. It seemed a bit forced and, frankly, a little hard to believe. There's a second season which we're about to launch. We also finished "The Big C" and (spoiler alert!) that's good because if Laura Linney's character hadn't finally died Dave would have killed her himself.

(Photo: Another cat sticker on Finchley Road, on Wednesday.)

Catching Up

Another view of our Primula in its hanging basket, scruffy leaves and all. With flowers like those, we can forgive a little scruffiness in a plant that is surely by now a senior citizen in the plant world. (It's been in that basket at least five years.)

I thought I'd have some time yesterday to catch up in blogland, but that was not to be. I was nonstop at work and didn't even take my full lunch break. My co-worker is out with an illness in her family, so we're short-handed and I had to clean up everything that hadn't been done by the substitute while I was away.

Having a sub in my position is never easy. It's not a difficult job -- barring the occasional physical demands of lifting and kneeling -- but it does require use of the computer system, which means training, and knowledge of lots of little internal matters like how to handle books on hold, or what to do when a kid comes in to pay for a lost book. My previous boss found that it wasn't really worth all the work to bring someone up to speed just for a few days. It was better to just struggle through with no sub. I wonder if my new boss thinks the same.

Fortunately I'm almost never absent!

They still haven't hired someone to fill my position but I think they're close.

Here's a snapshot that I found at my dad's house that I tucked into my suitcase to bring home. It's weirdly captivating, isn't it? That's my stepmother at right, with one of her brothers behind her and my stepsister at left. It was taken in the early '80s, I believe in my step-grandmother's living room, and I just love the composition and the expression on June's overexposed face. It's one of those pictures you could stare at for hours, picking out all the little details of the room and thinking about the circumstances and relationships.

Off to work!

A Vase in Spring

Home Sweet Home! I got back yesterday about 11 a.m. and although my flight was fine, with no major discomforts (and significantly less alcohol than last time), I am so relieved my traveling is over for the foreseeable future. We've decided to spend Spring Break here in London, so my feet will be on the ground for a while.

I didn't sleep on the flight at all. Sometimes I can but this time, no. So my mission yesterday was to keep myself as busy as possible in order to stay awake. I did laundry, I vacuumed, I cleaned the bathrooms, I took care of some minor stuff in the garden. If I tried to read or do anything on the computer my eyelids would sag like bargain-basement window blinds. Finally I went to bed at about 9 p.m. and slept soundly all night. Hopefully I'm more or less back on London time now, since I wasn't away for long.

It's funny that I spent all of yesterday cleaning, because that's also what I did in Florida the day before. Everyone else had gone home so I cleaned up our guesthouse and did all the laundry before getting on the plane.

That's the state of the garden, above. It will be time to mow the lawn soon! The wildlife cam is back in place so we'll be able to reacquaint ourselves with the local foxes.

The forsythia has burst into bloom...

...and indoors, the Rhipsalis or bird's-foot cactus has more flowers than ever before, I believe.

This is the one item (aside from some loose pictures and my dad's Europe slides) that I took from their house. It sat on some shelves above their TV for years. I believe my dad got it when he lived in the La Place Apartments in Tampa right after his divorce from my mom and before he married June. I seem to remember it came from an art show. It's quite heavy, and signed and dated 1974. I can't quite make out the signature but I'll give it a closer look one of these days.

I've always believed this vase to be black, but it's clearly blue. It was in such a dark location in their house that I've never perceived the color correctly!

Florida Critters

Here it is -- the moment you've all been waiting for. (Not really, I know.) I downloaded the data from the wildlife cam yesterday morning and found a few interesting clips. I captured a pretty big raccoon sauntering across the back yard at my stepmother's guesthouse, another raccoon snuffling the camera and trying to figure out how to take it off the tree (!) and finally, an armadillo nosing around a rotted part of our dock, where there are probably plenty of bugs. For just four nights' recording, and not knowing where I was likely to encounter animals, I was pretty happy with that glimpse of nocturnal Florida!

I am programming this to post automatically, because I'm not landing until 9 a.m. Tuesday. I'll fill you in on my journey on Wednesday, if there are any stories to tell!

Bombax and Road Rage

I came across this jungly scene while driving through Bradenton yesterday with my brother. Doesn't it look like something from "Tarzan," or maybe one of those "Road" movies from the '40s -- "Road to Zanzibar" or "Road to Bali"? That tree with the red blossoms is what grabbed my attention. It's a kapok, more appropriately called a Bombax, and it has huge, rubbery, prehistoric-looking flowers that fall in profusion at this time of year.

I was happy to see one blooming.

We also passed this magnificent pink Tabebuia, a relative of the yellow one I posted a couple of days ago. (My brother took this photo at my request, and I can hear him now: "STOP TALKING ABOUT PLANTS!")

Yesterday was the day to go visit Dave's family. My brother and I got into his low-slung shiny blue Subaru -- it's so low that it makes me groan when I get in and out of it -- and drove down to Bradenton over the Sunshine Skyway bridge. We met up with Dave's sister Dawn at the family mobile home in Cortez, and then took his parents to lunch at the Anna Maria Oyster Bar. (Or actually, they took us, since his dad paid as usual.) I had fish tacos with mango, which were delicious, and we said hi to Pearl, the robot waitress, who has lost her coconut bra since the last time I saw her.

We all video-chatted with Dave in London via Facebook, and then my brother and I headed back to Tampa. My brother has loved cars since he was a tiny kid, and he loves to drive and spends a lot of time on the road, and he has lots of opinions about the proper ways to drive. Those opinions emerge in his hilarious habit of psycho-analyzing all the drivers around us. Most of us see someone driving crazy and say, "Wow, that guy is a jerk." My brother sees them and says, "That guy is a frustrated slave to the manosphere who's boiling with rage and fears he's an incel." He will judge someone's character based on whether their truck has racing stripes from Amazon or a certain style of hubcap. About 35 years ago I sold him my own car, a Honda, and he still holds it against me that I had spilled coffee on the center console and it had sticky spots. To hear him tell it, I replicated a Jackson Pollock painting inside that car.

He has an eagle eye for any kind of highway oddity. He spotted one pickup truck with a sagging back end that looked so scary and unworthy of the road that I couldn't believe it was legal to drive. Once he pointed it out I was astonished, but I know if I'd been in the car by myself I'd have breezed past without a glance.

Today I'll be helping my stepsister and her husband tidy up the house after all their hosting this weekend, and then I'm off to the airport in the afternoon for the journey back to London. I'll let you know tomorrow whether the wildlife cam picked up anything interesting in my stepmother's yard. (I'm sure you can't wait!)

Lakes Are Holy Places

This frog (lizard?) greets people who enter the bathroom of the pizza shop I visited with my family on Friday. It was a little surprising to open the door and find that face staring back.

It's really not a very appropriate picture to start this post, but it's literally the only one I have. I took almost no bloggable photos yesterday, which was crammed with people people people and lots of family time. In fact I didn't even take pictures of the family, which now that I think about it was probably an omission. I was paying too much attention to "peopling," to use a term I learned from Bug.

The memorial service went well. We had some of June's favorite music playing softly in the background as everyone gathered, like Joan Baez, Judy Collins and Joni Mitchell. Then whoever wanted to speak got up and did so, and I did indeed deliver my remarks, though I don't know how effective they were. I have a tendency to over-intellectualize everything (not that I am very intellectual) and let's put it this way -- although they choked me up, I'm not sure they affected anyone else the same way. My brother and stepbrother both spoke, as well as two of June's sisters and my nephew. He delivered the best line of the day when, as the last speaker, he said, "I guess there's nothing to do now but pour her in the lake with Pawpaw."

And that was indeed the plan. My stepmother had been cremated, as had my dad after he died back in 2016. June had saved Dad's ashes, so in the evening we took both his cremains and hers down to the lake and poured them together, in a single mingled stream, into the water. They spread in a fantastic chrysanthemum cloud, almost like a firework, before dissipating in the water. I can't think of a better place for them -- they loved sitting down at the lake and sharing an evening cocktail, and spent a lot of time fishing there and gazing out at the water.

Just like when my brother and I scattered my mom's ashes in the lake where we grew up (a different body of water), I took a photo afterwards. To me, these images always seem so full of God, whatever we conceive him/her/it to be. Any lake in Florida is automatically a holy place of sorts, as far as I'm concerned.

In between the service and the ashes, we chatted with June's six siblings and their spouses, along with other family members and friends. Basically I spent the whole afternoon mingling, which really took it out of me. I think I hold my own pretty well in any social situation, but after a while it's just so tiring -- especially when the people involved are not people I know well. I met June's brothers and sisters several times in my life and many of them had very good things to say about her marriage to my dad and her relationship with all of us kids, so it was rewarding in that sense, but it was also exhausting.

Last night, the family stayed up talking (quite loudly!) into the night but I retreated to my room and went to bed. Of course I'm on a different timetable from everybody else, so that's part of my fatigue too.

Today I'm off to Bradenton to see Dave's sister and parents, and I'm still a little unsure how the rest of this trip is going to play out. I'm not sure if I'm staying down there or coming back to Tampa tonight, for example. I fly back to London tomorrow night, but the real business here is pretty much over and my stepbrother has already departed, along with all the siblings. I'd anticipated needing to sign documents or do business stuff but I don't think any of that is ready yet.

It's decompression time, I guess.

Tabebuia and Pinky

It's not quite 6 a.m. in Florida and I'm back at Dunkin' Donuts, because although my stepsister and her husband have a coffee machine, they had no coffee that I could find -- so I decided to just take a walk up the highway. Nobody else will be up for hours so I imagine I will not be missed!

February and March are great times to visit Florida, because many of the trees are blooming -- the red kapok, the purple jacaranda and the yellow Tabebuia, above. I haven't seen the first two yet, and in fact I'm seeing a lot of frost-scorched plants from a freeze that struck this area several weeks ago. Fortunately the Tabebuias weren't set back by the cold.

I took a walk around the neighborhood yesterday morning and was struck by how many birds I was hearing. It was a chorus! I made a recording:

Steve Reed · Florida Birds

According to my Merlin bird app, here's what you're hearing in just that one-minute clip:

Pretty amazing, right?! This really is an incredible, diverse jungle of a state. I have no idea why the Parula warbler is my "bird of the day," whatever that is. Speaking of which, I haven't checked the wildlife cam yet, so I don't know whether I'm capturing video of any critters. I'll download everything right before I leave and post whatever video results when I'm back in London on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, here's a video of another exotic (to me now, anyway) creature, a limpkin. Doesn't it sound positively prehistoric?

I spent yesterday morning running some errands with my stepbrother and his wife, including going to Target, where I was amused to see this:

It's kind of surreal to be on the other side of the planet and stumble across a picture of a crosswalk that's right around the corner from the school where I work!

Soon afterwards, my stepbrother's son, daughter and her husband and kids woke up after an all-night drive from Louisiana, and nine of us went to Alfonso's, a pizza restaurant that has existed since we were kids and still operates out of the same storefront near our house. I think the staff were a little horrified to see our loud gang (including three preschoolers) come through the door but they handled everything well, and it was good to sit and catch up with people I haven't seen for at least a decade (or in the case of my niece's husband and kids, never). It struck me that as much as memorials are about the people who died, they're also an opportunity for a reunion of sorts, a convergence of family members who are normally flung across the face of the planet. People say funerals are really for the living, and I guess that's true.

My brother arrived in the afternoon and we went to Starbucks and caught up there.

The actual memorial is today, and I've prepared some remarks along the lines of my blog post from a month ago. We'll see if I get brave and actually deliver them.

Last night we all gathered for another loud meal, and brave Pinky watched all the activity mostly from the couch, where she snuggled up against me. (I was sitting where my stepmother normally would.) Pinky was very happy to get a few tiny nibbles of pizza. Her little tail was wagging like crazy.

Who ever imagined that Pinky would wind up being the survivor of her whole household, outliving not only her chihuahua companion Manny but also my dad and stepmother? (My stepsister's son, who lives in my stepmother's house, is caring for her now.)

I'm Here

That's my plane, above, sitting on the tarmac at Tampa International Airport after we landed yesterday. Is that a Florida sky or what? Coming down through it wasn't hard at all -- it looks much stormier than it actually was. In fact my whole flight was mercifully easy.

It started in an annoying fashion when I got to the Thameslink train platform in West Hampstead just in time to see the 8:09 a.m. train pull away. I actually hit the button to open the doors before it began moving, but I was too late. It left anyway. I had to cool my heels on the platform for half an hour waiting for the next train.

But I left plenty of extra time so I wasn't stressed, and checking in and going through security at Gatwick was a breeze. I guess this is the first time in recent memory that I've taken a mid-week flight not somehow attached to a school holiday period, because there were no queues at all. As I told Dave, "I'm going to always fly on a random Thursday from now on!"

The flight wasn't full either, so I had an empty seat beside me and the flight attendant was the biggest enabler in the world when it came to serving alcohol. I asked for a gin & tonic and she said, "Would you like two?" Not one to refuse such a generous offer, I accepted, and then when I got wine with my meal she said, "Would you like two?" And then brought me a third later.

So I was fairly blotto for much of the flight, but if there's one safe place to get tipsy it's in an airplane, where you have no control over anything anyway. I watched two favorite Florida movies that I happened to have downloaded onto my computer, "Condominium" and "A Flash of Green," both adapted from John D. MacDonald novels. It struck me that "Condominium" captures a sort of class resentment that is particularly relevant in our Trumpian era -- a blue-collar disdain for the wealthy and educated. (I actually opened my TextEdit app and made a note about this so I could remember to mention it on the blog, a sure sign that I was buzzed: "Captures the experience of the blue collar male — resentment toward wealthy people. Insulation of the wealthy — decamp to Switzerland!" As you may remember from college, everything seems deep and insightful when you've been drinking.)

Anyway, if there's anything better than watching a favorite old movie accompanied by wine, I'm not sure what it is.

When I landed in Tampa I said hello to Phoebe, our airport mascot, as I always do.

My stepsister, stepbrother and brother-in-law all met me at the airport, and I'm now staying at my stepsister's cat-themed house. (They have two cats and lots of cat-related paraphernalia. Thank goodness Dave's not staying here, because he's allergic to cats and he'd be having fits -- although everything is very clean and not "catty" at all, if you know what I mean.)

I did bring my wildlife cam. I'm not sure how successful I'm going to be in capturing some interesting Florida critters, because my stepmother's property is surrounded and divided by several fences, but I'm going to try. After all, the walls of our garden in London do nothing to keep out the foxes!