Farewell, Mr. Croque

I was sorry to see, when I went down to Baker Street yesterday for my French class, that Croque Monsieur has bitten the dust. Where will Sherlock Holmes go now?! There have been other casualties in this same building -- Bar Linda is long gone and has been replaced by a chain sushi restaurant. Methinks the landlord may have hiked the rents?

I suspect this is a lean time of year for small businesses. Dave and I tried to do our part on Friday by going to a small local restaurant we've been curious about, called The Petite Corée ("The Little Korea," en Française). It's a cute place and we were very impressed with the food, sort of a French-Korean fusion -- which sounds unusual, and I suppose it is, but it works. We started the evening at the nearby Railway pub, where supposedly the Beatles played back in the day. (And where recently there have been a few renovations. It is indeed very light and pleasant inside -- although I seem to remember some grumbling among locals, either online or in the newspaper, about gentrification.)

I got out in the garden yesterday and cleaned out the area where our climbing roses and blackberries grow. It was getting a little jungly over there, overshadowing the day lilies and other flowers beneath. I cut out one of the biggest blackberry canes, which I hated to do, but after I'd cleaned away the rest of the brambles it looked ridiculous lying across the flowerbed all by itself. So, gone. We will have fewer backyard blackberries this summer. I never could keep up with them all, anyway -- and I can always pick them on the Heath.