I found another rose chafer beetle in the garden the other day. This one still had some mud on its shell, so it must have just emerged from hibernation. It was crawling around on our euphorbia. This is exactly what Dave and I want to see in the garden -- wildlife, doing its thing. Maybe David Attenborough will do a show about us.
Right now I'm hearing a woodpecker out there, pounding away on something.
Yesterday was wildly busy in the library. It was our annual "Drop Everything and Read" day, when we schedule time for the students to read freely in their classes. Of course this means lots of checkouts and returns for us. Last year, you may remember, I was a little exasperated because the library was so busy that I didn't get to read myself. This year, I knew better -- and because I didn't expect to read I wasn't annoyed. It's all in expectations, right?
I have plenty of time for reading during the course of an average day. I read at lunch and I read at my desk between busy periods. I figure it's part of my job, and I'm modeling the behavior we want to see in our students, so I don't feel guilty about it at all!
I've also had pretty good success with the overdue books this week. Remember how I said there were about 30 kids with books due Jan. 8 or earlier? Well, I've got that number down to 14. Next week, I begin writing parents. It's a fine line, encouraging reading and being flexible with returns while not allowing people to walk away with the library's stuff.
Here's a nice honesty plant in bloom at the moment -- much leafier and healthier looking than the one I posted previously. Yesterday, around our back patio, I scattered some snapdragon seeds that I saved from our plant on the front porch. We'll see if they come up. I just didn't have the energy to put them in seed trays and perform a lot of careful cultivation.
I've been finding these little colorful painted rocks around the neighborhood during the last few days. Looks like someone had a craft project that they shared with the rest of us.
The lettering is not as clear as one might ideally like. "Look after nature," I think it says?
Some of them say nothing at all on the colorful side...
...and have a message on the back. "From Esley," I think?
I didn't pick any of them up, except to photograph them.
I think this one also says "From Esley," though it took me a while to figure that out.
Anyway, some nice little surprises while walking the dog!
Here's one for all you cat-lovers out there. I took this photo on my recent walk through Southall. This cat was sunbathing atop some rubbish bins and old furniture, and raised its head with obvious annoyance when I stopped and lifted my camera. It wouldn't even quite look at me; it was looking past me, as if to say, "I'm aware you're there, but you do not merit my full attention."
I've been listening to my Q-Anon podcast again -- the one that picks apart many conspiracy theories, both specifically Q-Anon related and not. In the most recent episode they're talking about something called the Tartarian Empire. Apparently this is a belief being promoted online that all our big cities and many of our most famous buildings -- the White House, the pyramids, you name it -- were built by people first based in Central Asia called the Tartars or Tartarians. Supposedly their civilization became incredibly advanced and spread all over the globe, but then 200 years ago it was destroyed in a massive "mud flood" that killed the Tartarians and buried their cities. Then we came along and excavated the cities and buildings and claimed them as our own. This is supposedly why sometimes in big cities you see older buildings with basement windows at or below street level -- they're left over from the Tartarians and were never fully dug out.
Now, this whole thing sounds so wacky that it makes me wonder whether some of these online conspirators are just trying to wind people up. I can't imagine anyone actually believes this. You'd think a massive cataclysm that happened a mere 200 years ago would be foremost in our historical record; we can't stop talking about the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln and many other events of that time period.
But no! Because the mud flood has been deliberately written out of our history by the Global Powers that Be, who are trying to DECEIVE YOU! They're keeping this information from you, because it was the first "great reset" in which the population was wiped out -- or so the theory goes. And of course part of modern conspiracism is that we're about to have another "great reset," driven by Covid vaccines and who knows what else.
Anyway, apparently there are all sorts of videos about Tartarians on YouTube but I can't bring myself to actually watch them. Life is too short. I'll rely on the Q-Anon Anonymous guys to fill me in. It does make me realize, though, that -- assuming people really DO believe in the Tartarian Empire -- people will believe anything. It's astonishing. (For the record, there are or were Central Asian people known commonly in the West as Tatars, though this term is somewhat vague, as are the boundaries of their historic lands. They did not, however, build the White House.)
I found these cherry (I think?) blossoms on my walk home yesterday, after they were apparently blown off one of several nearby trees. There's no shortage of spectacular blooming trees out there at the moment. Do you suppose the Tartarians planted them?
I have been on a campaign this week to make a dent in our overdue materials. As of Monday, we still had about 30 kids with books due at the beginning of January or before. That's an astonishing amount of very late material. So I sent them all a Come-to-Jesus (not really; we are a purely humanist school) e-mail saying they had to get this stuff back this week or I'd start writing parents and requesting disciplinary action from administrators. BOOM!
Now, of course, I'll have to follow through on Monday with the ones who don't make it happen. I'm starting to get a bit nervous because it's mid-April and we only have nine or so weeks of school left, and I've got 13 pages of extremely overdue materials to collect. I love my job. I love my job. I love my job.
Olga on our walk yesterday morning. Now you're getting a dog AND a cat in this post.
If I had to guess, I'd say cats are Tartarian pets; that's why they're so detached from modern humans. I think I'll make a YouTube video about this. I could make millions!
I found this colorful little scene while walking Olga in the cemetery not too long ago. I'm not sure I've ever seen a tattered rubber glove look so photogenic!
And on that note, here are some more random photos I've saved up over the past few weeks.
A sidewalk find from our high street. Someone went a little nuts with the bronzer. Is this what Donald Trump looks like when he takes off his wig? (No, I did not keep it. I didn't even touch it.)
Olga and I found a miniature Barbie bicycle on another sidewalk. Weirdly, the next day, it was in a nearby tree.
And this critter was nearby. Did someone spill their toy box? (I kept the dinosaur.)
This cupcake was my Easter treat, given to me by our friend Carolyn's daughter when we went to Easter dinner. Dave got one too. I think she made them. I like the Easter-grass effect of the icing. In any case, it was yummy!
When Dave and I went to Fallow, a restaurant I blogged about last week, these blown-glass lamps had me mesmerized. They looked like globs of mercury hanging over our heads. There were several, in both blue and gold.
I got a cardboard spork in my take-out sushi the other night. Environmentally sound, I guess, and not something I've ever seen before.
And finally, Dave made some soda bread last week to go with his homemade soup. Yum!
Our Thanksgiving/Christmas cactus has decided to put out a couple of blossoms at this totally random time of year. Merry Christmas! (Maybe it's a Vaisakhi cactus?)
Yesterday was busy as all get-out for me. I switched out our two library displays, so now, for April, we have an Earth Day display and one for Arab-American Heritage Month. This meant re-shelving all the books for the old displays and pulling books for the new ones. And then, of course, everybody was returning books from break and checking out new ones, so there was a ton of re-shelving, and I had a stack of magazines to process, and I began chasing overdues by sending everyone a reminder: "Now that break is over, please remember to return your books!" That kind of thing. Not wildly interesting, but the stuff of my days.
My brother gave me some bad news over the weekend. Apparently I may have another tax form to file, this one related to my late mother's trust. We didn't realize this until he did the taxes for the trust, and that process spat out a form for him and me, the beneficiaries. So I may have to amend my income tax filing. I am pretty much sick about this, having worked so hard to get those taxes done in the first place, but we're still trying to sort out what this form is and what it means. It makes my head hurt.
Remember how I ordered a new wildlife camera for the garden? Well, I harvested the video. There were about a hundred clips, most of them apparently triggered by the wind. I condensed the few interesting ones into the three-minute video above: squirrel antics, Olga trampling the flower beds, some magpies and pigeons, some very strong wind, a neighborhood cat and yes, briefly, a fox. There's even some footage of me and Dave sitting on our garden bench one evening. (If you just want the highlights, the fox is at the 1:11 minute mark,)
As you'll see, I tried two locations for the camera. I think the first location was better, even though there's a hydrangea bush right in front of it. The second one is surrounded by too much foliage that moves easily in the wind. It's hard to find an unobstructed view in our garden!
Finally, that little geranium I rooted last year is already blooming. Olga seems to be giving it a sniff, but she actually just happened to be walking past. Its parent plant, though healthy, hasn't sent up any flowers yet.
The weather was windy yesterday -- somehow related to Storm Kathleen, I think. I woke up in the wee hours of the morning and went to the living room to read (and let me tell you, reading The New York Times is not a good way to get back to sleep), when suddenly I heard a tremendous CRASH! I looked outside and found the avocado tree had blown over. Amazingly, the pot didn't break, but it's topped with a layer of terra cotta and stone chips and that's what made all the noise.
I went out to right it, which was surely a spectacle in the middle of the night. I gave it some water to make it heavier and braced it with a heavy patio chair. I'm sure the Russians were amused.
ANYWAY, I decided yesterday to take a windy walk. Rather than do the rest of the Dollis Valley Greenwalk right away, I decided to try something new. Not long ago I was scanning Google maps when I noticed a location marked "sheep statues" in a field near Southall, a suburb of West London. I decided to go check out the sheep.
I got off the Elizabeth Line in Hanwell, and made my way through town. I eventually reached the Grand Union Canal, and walked the towpath along the water. The canal in this area features a series (or "flight") of picturesque locks, connecting it to the River Brent and eventually to the Thames. The Canal & River Trust says there are seven locks; the London Canal Museum says there are eight, and will give you more information than you ever wanted to know. I guess I should have counted them myself, but anyway, I enjoyed walking past and taking pictures of the locks and the adjacent lock-keepers' cottages.
I reached an area called Three Bridges, yet another engineering marvel from the fertile mind of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the Victorian-era engineer for the Great Western Railway. The railroad, in this spot, goes beneath both a roadway and the canal itself. Brunel designed a tiered bridge that carries the canal over the tracks and the road (which I'm standing on in the photo above) over the canal.
From there I walked a bluebell-lined path through Tentelow Wood and Meadow and finally came to the wooden sheep statues. There are ostensibly two, but one of them is missing its head and the upper half of its body, and the other has a large chunk out of its right rear flank. I found that if I photographed it from this angle, it looks pretty much whole.
I don't know the history of these sculptures or who made them, but they look similar to sheep by chainsaw sculptor Mick Burns, who has worked in this area. Maybe they're his? I belatedly learned there are three more in another location nearby that might be in better condition.
Having seen the sheep, I decided to walk to Southall station to catch the tube home. But the day's adventures were not over!
Southall has a large South Asian community, and apparently the holiday of Vaisakhi is coming up. I stumbled into a huge street festival celebrating Vaisakhi and a procession that makes its way from one temple in Southall to another. I didn't see the procession itself, but it was fun walking among all the participants, who were eating from streetside food stalls and listening to lively music.
I liked this guy's t-shirt: "Powered by Punjab, Serving Britain."
Here's a two-minute video to show you what it was like:
You'll see the Punjab t-shirt guy wandering past, as well as men in colorful turbans and women in bright, flowing saris. In the background you can also see the temples (one partly covered with scaffolding) associated with the procession. It was quite a scene!
After navigating the crowds I got myself to the Southall train station for the journey home, where I mowed the lawn and took our surplus clothes to the charity shop. Today, back to work!
Well, I took a (not really) momentous step yesterday. I shredded all my blank checks. How long has it been since I've written a check? At least five years, I think, and the ones I had were so old that they had our East Brunswick, N.J. address on them and came from a bank that no longer exists. The account still exists, because that bank was absorbed by another bank, and in theory the checks were still negotiable. But honestly, they needed to go. If I need more checks (doubtful) I'll order fresh ones.
This was part of a larger cleaning-up effort that I'm making around the house. I took all our bedding to the laundry for a spring cleaning, to get rid of the stray Olga paw-prints that inevitably wind up on the bedspread during muddy February and March. (Alas, the mud season isn't over, as you can see above -- I'll get to that in a minute!)
I also helped Dave go through his clothes and set aside some stuff for charity. His closet and shelves get so haphazardly jammed with clothing that every once in a while we have to take everything out and put it back in a more orderly fashion, and it makes sense for him to simultaneously discard the things he knows he'll never wear again. He doesn't have a lot of clothes and doesn't buy a lot of clothes, so I don't really know how his closet gets so crazy, except that he is not a -- shall we say -- organized person when it comes to putting things away. (I'm being kind.) Anyway, we've got two big stacks for charity now, some mine and some his.
In the afternoon, I took Olga to the cemetery. The photo above is supposed to show you how muddy she got -- her paws, her chest, both sides of her face. That cherry tree (in the top photo) fell sometime in the last month or so, but it still managed to bloom this year (and miraculously doesn't seem to have taken out any headstones). I wonder if the cemetery managers will remove it or just leave it alone. It's in a far back corner and wouldn't be in anyone's way if it just stayed there.
Olga moved pretty slowly on her walk but she gamely chased her tennis ball and barked with annoyance when I took her picture -- so, life as usual.
On the way back we passed an apartment building where this '70s-looking pottery pitcher was sitting out with the rubbish in the back. I saw it from the street and thought I'd made a great find until I picked it up and realized it had no bottom! Oh well.
I did find this -- a segment of someone's rubber bracelet (I think). Not really useful but mildly amusing.
Finally, I stopped at our neighborhood bookstore and ordered Barbra Streisand's new memoir as well as Rachel Maddow's book "Prequel," which blogger Jeanie recently reviewed. I picked up a couple of British mysteries too. I now have a ridiculous stack of reading to see me up to and through summer vacation. (Not to mention several things I plan to check out from our library!)
