Our hollyhock is continuing to produce flowers. My history with hollyhocks has not been great, so I'm glad it seems happy again this year. We have another one at the side of the house but it's still in its first year of growth, so it won't bloom until next summer.
I'm blogging from the back garden, sitting on our bench, and I just looked up to find myself face to face with a strange cat, staring me down from across the lawn. It might have been Tabby, who you may remember from my wildlife videos, but it's hard to tell in daytime. I got a little primal jolt from looking up and seeing a predator's eyes fixed on me! Then it ran off.
Yesterday I came to the realization that my life has been in a process of subtraction for a while now. First Olga, then my stepmother, then my job, then my photography (or at least the main tools of it). Is it any wonder I feel a little shell-shocked?
Time to get out and make some additions. I started with the smallest thing -- my AirPods. I decided to walk up to Brent Cross, to the Apple Store, and get some new ones. That walk would both get me out of the house and help restore some of my routines (since I can't listen to podcasts or music without AirPods, unless I want to annoy everyone around me).
I also hoped to return a useless unopened cable I purchased about six months ago, but learned upon arriving at the store that they don't accept returns after 14 days. That seems a little stingy to me, for a multibillion-dollar corporation like Apple, but whatever. I got my AirPods, brought them home and paired them up with my devices, and now I have my podcasts back for my walks.
And of course, as previously mentioned, Dave is doing an initial survey of available dogs -- another pending addition.
After I posted yesterday's video of the wasp gnawing the wood on our garden bench, some of you expressed concern that we might fall through it! You are not wrong. The bench is in sad shape these days. We bought it ten years ago, which seems astonishing to me now, and even though I refinished it once during the early days of the pandemic -- when we all had lots of time on our hands -- it has lived its life. It's missing slats and many of the joints are rotten.
So I've ordered a new one which should arrive in the next week or so. It's rust-proof metal, which I'm hoping lasts better than the wood. We shall see.
As I was walking back from Brent Cross I found this hammer-and-sickle graffiti. For some reason it immediatelty brought to mind Gil Scott-Heron's song "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." Granted, that's more about black liberation than worker uprisings, but anyway I had to listen to the song right away because I love it so much. Power to the people!
I'm only just now catching up on news from the last few weeks, and I saw that Randolph Mantooth died. Remember him, from "Emergency!" back in the '70s? He was the hottie paramedic, while Kevin Tighe played the capable one. (Well, I guess they were both capable, but Mantooth had hotness in his corner too.) Anyway, I remember going in high school with some fellow drama students to see a production of "Kiss Me, Kate" in Pinellas County -- I believe at the now defunct Showboat Dinner Theater -- and Randolph Mantooth was in it. I was so star-struck to see someone from HOLLYWOOD near my sleepy corner of suburban Florida! I think I even got his autograph. He might have been the first "famous" actor I ever saw in person.
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