Hometown Connections and Rootbound Ferns

Just in case someone needs a reminder of where they are. I have no idea what that little thing is -- a key chain? A letter opener? A hood ornament? I found it shoved into the top of that post, and left it there.

I worked my way through more slides yesterday morning. I went back through the second-look pile and decided which of those need scanning and which don't, and I put the "don't" slides into a plastic storage box so they're out of my way. I'm now ready to launch into scanning this new batch, probably tomorrow.

I came across this slide, from 1981, marked "1st Christmas, Pan-Am plane from Tampa to Miami." And sure enough, that is Tampa International Airport in the photo. You could have knocked me over with a feather. What are the odds that I'd buy a pile of random slides in London that contain an image of my hometown airport, taken when I was 15 years old and living about 20 miles from that very spot?

When I was in high school, my friends and I used to go to the airport for fun. Back then you could wander right up to the departure gates without any identification or boarding pass, and we'd explore every public corner of the terminal and page each other on the PA system and generally be silly teenagers. It seemed so exotic and exciting to see people boarding planes for Europe and Mexico and New York. It fueled my dreams of traveling the world.

Incidentally, I discovered that if you enter the tail number of a plane online, you can get information about its use and ownership. The plane above entered service with National Airlines in 1978 and became part of Pan-Am with a 1980 merger, according to this page. (For all you aircraft junkies out there.) In the background are planes from United and the now-defunct Ozark Air Lines.

Here's a detail from a 1984 slide with another hometown connection. That random little kid, sitting in his back garden, is drinking from a cup marked MacDill Air Force Base -- which is in Tampa. I don't know whether he's in England or the USA. The same family is probably responsible for both slides.

Anyway, after lunch I set all that aside and went to work in the garden. We had some ferns in pots that have been struggling, so I planted them in the ground. They were indeed quite rootbound, so I hope they prosper with space to spread out.

Digging in our garden is always an adventure. For one thing, our clayey soil can be hard and heavy, and it's also chock-full of rubbish -- bits of brick and rock, old square nails, you name it. I think when our houses were being built more than 100 years ago, any construction debris just got dumped in the garden, and it's all still there.

Here's some of what I unearthed planting my ferns -- a piece of bright blue tile and some kind of gigantic iron bolt. I tossed the bolt but I kept the tile and added it to my collection of pottery bits. Was our bathroom or kitchen ever that color? Not that I know of.

I also repotted this fern, known as a "golden polypody," according to my Picture This plant identifier app. The app helpfully informs me that "this plant looks sick!" and I'm sure it does, because it was rootbound as all get-out. Repotting it was not easy because I had to remove a fibrous mat of roots growing out the bottom of the old plastic pot, and then I had to cut that pot off because I couldn't get the plant out of it. Then, while repotting, I had to try to preserve those heavy, spreading rabbit's-foot-like roots that have grown over the sides. I wound up breaking a few of those off but I just stuck them in the dirt of the new pot and who knows, maybe they'll grow.

One thing I've learned over the past few weeks, having repotted our tree fern and now replanted these three, is that ferns have a root system from hell. I always thought they were these ephemeral little forest plants, but no, they are freaking prehistoric monsters. I guess that's why they've survived for millions of years.

Filthy Pictures

Well, that got your attention, didn't it?!

As you can see, though, I'm not talking about those filthy pictures. I'm talking about literally, physically dirty and corrupted slides.

I'm almost finished posting all the scanned slides from my first two batches to Flickr. You can see them here. The album has 181 pictures in it as of early this morning, and I think I have about 20 more to go. Two hundred images is a nice round number, though it's bigger than I'd ideally like a Flickr album to be, so I'll start a new one for future scans.

On Monday I began sorting yet another bag of slides that I bought as part of this haul. It definitely contains work by the same photographers whose images I've already been scanning. Some of the people and locations in the pictures are the same. They're like old friends at this point!

I ran into numerous photos that are pretty badly damaged. They look like they got wet, which caused the emulsion on the slides to degenerate and even grow mold. Maybe they were stored in a damp garage or maybe someone had a flood at home.

I began putting them in the trash pile, but then, as I found more, I noticed how cool they look. I remembered Linda Sue saying that accidents can be fuel for art, and in a way these are accidents -- of storage, rather than photography skill. I especially liked that picture above of Corfe Castle and the Greyhound Inn (which is still in business). It almost looks like a painting.

Here are some more slides that were pretty heavily damaged by dampness. The images are all from the mid-'80s to the early '90s, from what I can tell.

There is an artistry to them, isn't there? Be glad you don't have to touch them, though. Believe me, in person, they are pretty nasty.

I wound up pulling them out of the trash and setting aside these favorites. I don't know if they'll continue degrading or if they're stable now that they've dried out, but I sure don't want any residual mold to spread to the other slides, so I'll store them in a separate plastic baggie. Kind of mesmerizing, aren't they?

Anyway, I got through that whole bag -- probably about 1,200 slides -- and as before, I looked at every image and tossed about 2/3 of them because they were boring, flawed or both. I then had to go through the discards a couple of times to pull out the damaged ones above, because I'd belatedly decided to keep them, and to make sure I hadn't made any sorting mistakes.

I'm now down to a few hundred slides, and I will clean, scan and post the best of those over the next couple of weeks. And then two more bags to go!

Mosaics and Tracey Emin

I decided to go out on the town yesterday. I needed some exercise and after a couple of days at home I was ready for a change of scene. So after breakfast I got on the tube and went down to the Tate Modern.

As I walked to the museum from the Southwark tube station, I wound through some little back alleys and found myself in a pocket park off Gambia Street. It featured a couple of mounds or berms, paved with stones and inlaid with little London-themed mosaics like the fox above.

And here's a Jersey tiger moth. I loved those little mosaics. There were about two dozen of them and I could have photographed them all.

I got to the Tate just as it opened, and went first to the Member's Cafe and had a coffee and croissant. I was the only one in the space for a while, sitting by a window overlooking St. Paul's Cathedral and the Thames. (One of my retirement goals is to use my Tate membership more often!) Then I wandered downstairs to see the Tracey Emin retrospective.

Although Emin is quite famous in the UK, I'm not sure I'd heard of her before I moved here. One of her best-known artworks is "My Bed," above, an installation featuring not only her bed but the detritus of everyday life one might find in a bedroom -- underwear, Kleenexes, condom wrappers, slippers, a stuffed dog, a vodka bottle. Its suggestion of intimacy and the squalor of our deepest private places is quite striking. (Behind it is a separate piece in neon, "It's Not Me That's Crying, It's My Soul.")

I came away from the show with a much better understanding of Emin and her work. A lot of it is focused on the sheer brutality involved in being a woman -- the judgements from the men in her life, sexual violence, pregnancies both real and imagined, abortions, body image, illness, aging and death. I'm making it sound dark and bleak but Emin tackles these subjects with vigor, dominating them through energetic painting, sculptures in wood and bronze, photographs and written pages, and bright appliquéd fabric blankets bearing messages. I found it both interesting and energizing.

After the Tate I walked up through St. Paul's, around the cathedral and through Farringdon, Gray's Inn, Fitzrovia, Bloomsbury and Marylebone to Baker Street station, where I caught the tube. Above is Doughty Mews, a picturesque little street near Coram's Fields. As you can see, we did get some sun yesterday. Today is supposed to be pleasant though cloudy, so hopefully I can open some windows and get some fresh air into the house.

I see that Trump critic Rep. Thomas Massie lost his Republican primary in Kentucky to a Trump-endorsed challenger. Along with Sen. Bill Cassidy's loss in Louisiana, this shows how thoroughly some voters remain under Trump's spell. I don't understand it at all. Granted, we're talking about two of the most conservative red states in the country, but this seems like a bad sign for the midterms and it's stunning to me -- stunning -- that any voters still support Trump's agenda. I feel like I'm living on another planet, and maybe I am. Maybe there are things about living in rural modern America that I just don't get -- not just because I'm living in England, but because I have resources and advantages that others don't. I'm not sure. All I know is, I am mystified once again by American voters.

More Baby Birds

I spent part of yesterday watching baby tits on our bird feeder. They're either great tits or coal tits, I'm not sure which. The young birds could already fly, so I guess "baby" isn't really the right word -- more like adolescent? Anyway, they would follow the mother to the feeder and ask her, by vibrating their tiny wings and opening their mouths, to select seeds for them to eat.

The young bird above flew to our nearby quince bush and picked a dead blossom from its branches. It wrestled with it a while before deciding that it wasn't really food.

Here are the babies on the feeder with Mama bird:

Not a great picture because of course they were clustered at the back of the feeder, probably hiding from me (even though I was watching from inside the living room 15 feet away and behind a window). Mama is down below, picking out seeds, and a baby is above her, with its mouth open. Another baby is at the top of the feeder. I think there were three babies altogether.

So, yeah, that was part of the excitement around here yesterday! Otherwise I did some housework -- cleaned the bathroom, vacuumed, put away laundry. Then I went out into the garden and did some weeding. I haven't weeded anything all season but I finally decided to pull the dock and a few other odds and ends. The dock will grow back because, like a dandelion, its taproot is as firmly implanted as a tooth in a jaw. If I don't dig it out, it breaks off at soil level -- but at least that keeps it from going to seed.

Our figs are still on our fig tree, about the size of a golf ball and looking very promising. They're not ripe yet -- in fact I think they have another few months to go -- but Dave saw a squirrel make off with one the other day, so I still don't expect that we'll ever taste them. Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.

In the afternoon I walked to the cookshop on the high street and bought an espresso pot. Bill had one in Vienna and it made fantastic coffee, especially with the Austrian grounds I bought while I was there. I usually use a French press and it works fine, but the Austrian coffee didn't taste as good in it. So now I can duplicate my Viennese coffee at home.

Petunias

We may be having a chilly spring, but it hasn't slowed down our petunias or other patio flowers -- the geraniums and African daisies are blooming up a storm. I don't think the daisies have ever had a better year. There are three petunia plants crammed into that little hanging basket and I fully expect them to outgrow it eventually, but for now they look fine.

We got some sun yesterday, which was a welcome surprise given the cloudy forecast. I mowed the lawn:

As you can see, I've left a little patch for No-Mow May. I considered not mowing the whole lawn but it was becoming a shaggy mess. That unmowed area contains some bulbs and ragwort as well as that big teasel, so it makes sense to leave it alone.

I've also left the area around the birdbath wild, but so many birds peck their way through that grass -- which is right beneath the bird feeder -- that I can't imagine it contains any live insects.

And look! Something's been pulling the fluff out of Curlie the Pig. I suspect pigeons. Whether they're actually building nests with it, who knows -- but I'm glad it has at least interested some critter.

Otherwise, I was home all day yesterday. I polished off another New Yorker, including this riveting article about Nick Fuentes and the frightening drift of many young men to the political right. I don't understand this drive to destroy our system that some of them seem to feel. Won't that just be a form of self-punishment, while letting the billionaires skate? It's astonishing how adept people are at blaming defenseless scapegoats for their problems, while the true culprits deflect responsibility. I worry we are headed toward even darker times. The one potential upside -- many of these young guys have turned against Trump. They've decided he's not their guy, and they don't love Vance either.

Anyway, I've cut the New Yorker backlog down to five issues, which I think is pretty good, so maybe I'll begin reading some books again.

I really need to do something about my glasses. I have two pairs from the optometrist, one of which is broken and the other very old. The broken pair has those bifocal lenses that I hate, and don't really need. When I retired, I grabbed a spare pair of readers from my desk at work, and yesterday I began using those -- they give me clearer vision than either of my regular glasses, but they're cheap and plastic and probably won't last long. I'm glad I'm getting some use from them but they're not a permanent solution. I wonder, though, if I should just buy drug store glasses when I need them instead of going back to the optometrist for a pricier solution. Off-the-shelf readers seem to serve my needs just fine.

Demanding Babies and Other Garden Antics

You can feel the exhaustion of a new parent looking at that starling, can't you? All those mouths to feed!

And here's the starling doing the actual feeding -- at least we have a bird feeder to keep them supplied. The two parakeets seem oblivious. As you can see, I've gone back to the bigger feeder, even though it's old and hard to refill (I have to keep it wired shut to discourage the squirrels). Three or four birds can be on it at a time, while the replacement can only accommodate one or two.

We're going through a chilly spell here. It was down in the mid 40's F last night, and will be again tonight and tomorrow night. At midweek the temperatures warm up a bit but supposedly we won't see the sun again until Friday. At least we're getting some rain, finally -- a 90 percent chance on Tuesday.

I'm not sure I did anything yesterday worth writing about. Mostly just trying to get organized after my trip -- do the laundry, water the plants, that kind of thing. I didn't lose any more seedlings in the garden, as far as I can tell, but they're all still tiny.

More squirrel ballet!

I did download the garden-cam last night, so I've got a video of the week's activity. Not as wild as last week, but some good daytime shots of the foxes and some other interesting critters:

We start with the baby starlings, hopping around after their parents on the ground, mouths open to demand food.
-- At 0:16, one of the foxes show up, and there's some back and forth by a couple of animals.
-- At 0:45, a squirrel carefully prowls the grass.
--  At 1:01, the foxes are back. At about 1:09, one of them gives the camera a good long stare, clearly curious about what that thing is.
-- At 1:27, we get some good daylight shots of a fox. I'm not sure which one.
-- At 1:47, this looks like a young bird. It's fairly mature but still has a bit of fluff and stubby baby wings.
-- At 2:07, one of the baby starlings is hopping around with its mouth open, no parent in sight. It's like it thinks food will just fly in.
-- At 2:23, the foxes are back, first Crooked Tail and then Q-Tip.
-- At 2:38, as a little dunnock hops around on the ground, the rain comes.
-- At 2:58, a several hours after the rainstorm, Pale Cat walks past.
-- A fox is back at 3:07, carrying something in its mouth. A dog treat, I'd guess. I still have no idea where they're getting those.
-- Another daytime shot of a fox at 3:12. Looks like Q-Tip, with white on the end of its tail.
-- At 3:28, we see Crooked Tail at night while a noisy helicopter flies overhead.
-- At 3:38, a minute later, the helicopter is gone and Crooked Tail walks off as it begins to rain.
-- At 3:56, just another minute later, Tabby wanders past. The cats and foxes are certainly out there at the same time.
-- At 4:04, about ten minutes afterwards, a damp fox emerges from the brush.
-- At 4:20, the following night, it's Crooked Tail.
-- At 4:30, the mouse is back. No rats this week, thank goodness.
-- At 4:50, one final fox.

Flaktürme and Hundertwasser

I'm back home in London now, sleeping in my own bed and happy about it. I was unconscious for about seven hours last night, and I feel almost like a new person. I slept well at Bill's, I thought, but I guess being in our own bed gave my body permission to relax more deeply.

Bill and I packed a lot into my final morning in Vienna. First we went to the post office, where Bill had to pick up a package, and it was as clean and pleasant and polite an experience as one would expect. Along the way I saw the graffiti above, which reminded me of the Haus des Meeres the day before.

We decided, despite a light rain, to visit a park where two more of Vienna's six flaktürme are standing. The flaktürme somehow became the theme of this trip. (I've learned that flakturm is singular and flaktürme is plural.)

We took the underground to a neighborhood where we stumbled onto this amazing fountain -- circled with cherubs and various robed figures, along with frogs and lizards and eagles and antelope. It's a monument to St. Charles Borromeo, for whom the square is named. The fountain opened in 1909 and there's more about it here.

I can't imagine being Viennese and living around such beautiful, ornate, artistic creations all the time. I mean, London has its share of beauty, but it's more practical. Life in Vienna is like being served a new wedding cake every evening for dessert.

Except for the flaktürme, that is -- the biggest, ugliest things you could ever want to see. The Viennese must have been horrified when the Nazis built them. Can you imagine looking out the window of your elegant Art Nouveau apartment building and having that in the park across the street? But as Bill said, they weren't really in a position to complain.

This one has the words "Smashed to Pieces (In the Still of the Night)" written at the top. Apparently an artist wrote that phrase atop the one that eventually became the Haus des Meeres, and although that mural was covered up by a subsequent expansion of the aquarium, perhaps he wrote it atop this one too. Or maybe someone added it here in tribute to the other piece.

Anyway, I can now say I've seen all six of Vienna's flaktürme, for what it's worth.

The rain had subsided by this time, so we decided to walk to the canal and back toward Bill's apartment. Along the way we passed this curious structure, with whimsical, colorful pillars. This is part of the Hundertwasser Promenade, a walkway named for free-thinking architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser, who created both the pavilion above and the madcap recycling station we saw a few days ago, among other buildings.

As the path along the canal became more urban, we saw more and more truly incredible graffiti and street art. Bill is not a fan, but I argued that without the murals, these walls would all be drab and gray and I'm not sure that's an improvement. Give me the color any day.

Plus the art is always good for a laugh!
 

I wanted a sausage for lunch -- I was in Vienna, after all, the reason that "wieners" have the name they do in English. We stopped at this little stand on Schwedenplatz and I got a bratwurst in a bun with a Gösser beer.

It came nested inside an unsliced roll, like a little child tucked into bed. I have no idea how the guy got the sausage into that cocoon of bread -- he did it so fast as I was talking to Bill that I missed the process. It came with mustard and nothing else and it was fabulous.

Then, alas, it was time for my trip to come to an end. We walked to the flat, where I picked up my bag, said goodbye to Bill (who is probably happy to have his house back) and headed for the train station and then the airport. I was home in London by 7 p.m.