The Rain, the Cemetery and Other Things

It's been pretty mild over the past several weeks -- ever since our snow in December -- and the garden is beginning to come to life. I noticed yesterday that a couple of our primroses are already blooming...

...and the once-glittery hyacinth bulbs are sprouting. (At least, the ones the squirrels haven't eaten.)

The daffodils are coming up...

...and the snowdrops are too.

(These snowdrops grow right out in the lawn, and I've been thinking about how to protect them when the tree trimmers come. I think I'm going to put a plastic trug -- kind of a big bucket -- over them and anchor the handles with stakes. Hopefully that will keep them from getting stepped on or mangled.)

The hellebore has put out a single, ragged-looking flower, but you can see lots of other buds waiting to emerge.

I spent some time yesterday repotting a couple of plants. Above is one of my Thanksgiving cacti, the one with the salmon-colored flowers. It's been looking worse and worse, so yesterday I unpotted it and found that most of the root ball had died. I put it in a smaller pot with fresh soil, and also took lots of cuttings and stuck them in the dirt in hopes that they'll root and I won't lose the entire plant. It will be ironic if the cutting I mailed to Frances survives but my plant dies!

I also repotted one of my geraniums, which had become so top-heavy it kept blowing over and the pot eventually broke.

And now our mild weather is coming to an end. Tonight it's supposed to get down near freezing, with Monday and Tuesday nights at about 24º F (-4º C), and then it will hover around freezing again through the rest of the week. So today I've got to bring in the geraniums and cover the banana and the canna lilies.

I'm sure this is boring as all get-out to all of you, and I apologize, but I haven't paid much attention to the garden lately and it felt good to get out there again!

It rained pretty much all day yesterday, off and on. In the afternoon I risked a trip to the cemetery with Olga and we got caught in a downpour. That was no fun. Olga retreated beneath a couple of big junipers and kept rubbing her back on them, as if to wipe off the rainwater -- while the rain was still coming down. I said, "Dog, that's not gonna work." We eventually scurried to the chapel and found about a dozen other people there with their dogs, but fortunately at that point the rain stopped so we didn't have to join them. We beat a hasty retreat home.

The Price of Eggs

Time for another roundup of random photos from my iPhone. We start with a view of the Thames at night, taken from a riverboat that Dave and I used to get back to Westminster from Canary Wharf when we went out to dinner last week. This is the London Eye and a building known as County Hall. It used to be the headquarters of the Greater London Council, but the seat of London's government is now located in a contemporary building farther down the Thames near Tower Bridge.

I came across this mailbox on my way home from work last night. Looks like it got hit by a car? Someone is making darn sure we don't use it by mistake!

We've been talking a lot in blogland about the price of eggs. Because Dave does all the shopping I wasn't sure how much eggs cost here, so I stopped at a Sainsbury's on my way home from work to check it out. This particular store actually had only a few packages left, along with this sign, but Dave says he hasn't seen shortages in the Waitrose where he usually shops. (By the way, on the sign, note the excellent example of a comma splice.)

The prices varied. According to the shelf signs, a package of six mixed-weight Italian eggs costs £1.35 (or $1.65), but there were none available. Six free range eggs were £2.30 ($2.65), and six Burford brown eggs were £3.85 ($4.71), but they were out too. Eggs are usually sold here by the half-dozen; doubling those prices would give a rough cost per dozen.

Apparently the avian flu is partly to blame, but according to at least one Welsh farmer, there are also problems with production costs and how much some supermarkets are willing to pay to stock their shelves.

These rain boots in the school Lost & Found reminded me of the socks worn by the Wicked Witch of the East in "The Wizard of Oz."

Just a rainy street scene, taken on my way to the post office in St. John's Wood.

Several weeks ago our school library got a letter from a student in Tennessee, who sent us a "Flat Stanley" with the request to take pictures with him around town and e-mail them back. I took this one on the banks of the Thames with the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich across the river.

A sticker I found at Fortune Green, encouraging support for the recent Iran protests.

And finally, I found this interesting piece of pottery on the banks of the Thames during my recent Thames Path walk around the Isle of Dogs. I added it to my little collection. It looks like a shard from an old ceramic bottle.

Restless Dream

This gigantic piece of public art is called "Restless Dream," by Zadok Ben-David, from 1993. It's mounted on the monumental building that serves as the western entrance to the Limehouse Link Tunnel, which carries the A1203 highway beneath the Limehouse Basin, connecting the City of London to Canary Wharf.

I saw it on one of my recent Thames Path walks, and it immediately made me think of the carousel scene from the 1976 movie "Logan's Run." Do any of you remember that film? It takes place in a futuristic society where people are only allowed to live until they're 30, and then they participate in a ceremony called carousel ( or "Carrousel") that exterminates them. And the ceremony looks just like that sculpture!

It's enough to give any commuter nightmares.

Things are finally calming down at work. I am caught up on the day-to-day and focusing once again on getting back overdue materials. I still have two kids who have books out from last summer, if you can believe it. I was assured by the parents that the kids would come in yesterday and pay for them, but of course they didn't. Story of my life.

I'm between books myself at the moment. Someone left a copy of "Disloyal," the memoir by Donald Trump's former attorney, Michael Cohen, on the free table in the library several weeks ago and I picked it up thinking I might read it. But I skimmed the introduction yesterday and it already seems dated. Besides, I'm not sure I can stomach that much Donald Trump.

A co-worker who knows I'm walking the Thames Path gave me a copy of Jerome K. Jerome's book "Three Men in a Boat," which is considered a British classic. (I'd never heard of it before I moved here, so maybe it's not as popular overseas.) It's about a boating holiday on the Thames. Anyway, I might try that one. It's supposed to be funny.

A few nights ago Dave made meatloaf in honor of my recently-departed uncle, since it was said at his funeral to be one of his favorite meals. That was a kind gesture on Dave's part. Besides, who doesn't like meatloaf?

What If...

In keeping with our unofficial theme of Street Art Week, this interesting display greeted me while walking to work a few days ago. These flags are located on the Hilgrove Estate in Swiss Cottage, just off Finchley Road. Are they art? Maybe.

The flags all bear the words "What if..." 

I can think of a lot of ways to end that sentence.

What if Vladimir Putin wasn't president of Russia? What if Donald Trump had never been elected? What if I'd kissed that guy I was too shy to kiss way back in college -- the one who later turned out to be just as gay as me? What if the UK had never Brexited? What if my mom didn't develop dementia? What if my parents had never divorced?

It's kind of an interesting mental exercise, though I'm not sure that's what those flags are really for.

A Commuter Surprise

It must be Street Art Week here at Shadows & Light -- though some would debate the artistic merit of this graffiti. I was just shocked to see it. It was raining cats and dogs yesterday morning, so I took the tube to work rather than walk. As I waited on the platform this train pulled in with two big graffiti pieces on the side.

I didn't get a good shot of the second one because the train came and went pretty quickly. I missed it, taking photos, and had to catch the next one.

I never see large graffiti pieces on tube trains. TFL (Transport for London, the organization that runs the tube) is usually very good about keeping the trains clean. You might see small tags inside the cars but never anything like this. I imagine they got painted overnight and TFL didn't have the time, staff or facilities to clean them immediately.

As for artistic merit, I think this kind of graffiti is interesting -- the color choices, the style and scale of the lettering. I can't read that piece in the first photo with the two faces, but there's some expressive skill there, it seems to me. I'm not sure I want it on my tube trains, though!

So, yeah, the weather was dreary yesterday. I did get some things done that have been on my list for a long time. Many months ago blog reader Frances in Harpenden mailed me a cutting from one of her Thanksgiving cacti, and I finally repaid the favor by sending her one of mine. I was reluctant to put it in the mail over the holidays because we had freezing weather and then mail strikes, and I was afraid it would perish before getting to her. The mail seems to be moving again, though. Just a few days ago we got a holiday card from our friends Sally and Mike in Greenwich that had been mailed on Dec. 5! Hopefully the cutting will move a lot faster than that.

Several of my long-delayed New Yorker magazines have turned up in our letterbox, too. I wrote the magazine and asked if I could turn the subscription into a digital-only one, but I haven't heard back yet. I suppose they'll drag their feet on that possibility. (The digital subscription is cheaper.)

I finished "The Ink Black Heart" yesterday. Yay! No more struggling with that 1,000-page tome! Aside from the awkward size, I found it enjoyable right up to the end.

Mill Lane Bridge

When I was walking Olga a couple weeks ago, I discovered that the Mill Lane Bridge west of our flat has a new paint job!

I wrote about this bridge before, back in 2016. Its panels had been painted by schoolchildren sixteen years prior, and although the drawings were cute, they had all faded to a sort of olive-brown color. Many of them had flaked away and in the years since a lot of them were covered by graffiti.

Apparently someone decided it needed to be revitalized, because according to the panel above, the bridge was repainted this past June by kids from three area schools. (Olga and I don't get over that way too often, so I didn't see it until December.)

It's definitely much more colorful than it used to be!

Looks like the theme was trees, or maybe ecology in general.

Anyway, it's a bright spot on the landscape, especially at this gray time of year.

I was slammed yesterday at work, my first day back from break, with kids checking out new books and returning old ones. I re-shelved two cartloads of books and another is waiting for me this morning. I also put away our Christmas stuff and took down our displays, and processed three weeks' worth of magazines (which involves logging that they've arrived, putting the newest ones in binders on our magazine rack, and circulating the older ones to members of staff). I may be a bit scarce in blogland until I get caught up! But it feels great to be busy again.

Totoro Moves Indoors

Here's another piece of wildlife-themed street art from Walthamstow, also by Irony + Boe. A hedgehog, I believe. It certainly makes this otherwise utilitarian shopfront interesting!

Yesterday was a day to get my ducks in a row before school resumes this morning. I cleaned the house, watered all the orchids, and took care of some other small tasks.

I also walked the dog, and found that someone had dumped a partially decorated Christmas tree at the corner of Finchley Road. Our local council will recycle old Christmas trees, turning them into mulch, but they have to be taken to a fenced area in Fortune Green (only a few minutes' walk). And they can't be mulched if they're still decorated! So, being a busybody, I untwined the lights and took off the bits of ornaments still clinging to the tree, threw them away, and hauled the tree up to Fortune Green. Cleaning up after strangers, once again.

Incidentally, the abandoned Christmas tree in a pot is still sitting nearby. It's too heavy to easily move. I don't think it's even a real tree -- I think it's a piece of a cut tree that's been stuck in a pot of dirt. It's dying and I'm not convinced it has any root system (which is one of the reasons I didn't consider adopting it). I'm resisting the urge to report it to the council because I want to see how long it hangs around if I do nothing.

Here's Totoro, who usually hangs from the walnut tree in our garden. We have a team of tree-trimmers coming in about ten days to do some heavy duty pruning, including raising the canopy on the walnut tree, so I brought Totoro indoors and hung him from the avocado, where he can watch from a position of relative safety.

The Russians were at it all day yesterday, sawing, drilling and pounding. Fortunately, this didn't stop me from making headway in "The Ink Black Heart" -- I'm up to page 815 or so. I think I can polish it off in the next few days. It's huge, but it's interesting and pretty easy reading overall. Much shorter books have taken me much longer to read!