One Degree of Temperature and Separation

During all the commotion in the garden on Thursday, this little robin retreated to the forsythia bush by the bedroom window and sat watching expectantly. Robins are very social birds -- they'll often flit around when I'm weeding or doing other outdoor tasks, waiting for me to uncover a savory bug. I imagine it was thinking there would be a bonanza of insects available after all the trimming, raking and moving potted plants!

Today I need to pay the tree crew. The total bill was about £1,200, of which our landlord will pay roughly half. We are obligated to maintain the garden under the terms of our lease, but I asked the landlords if they'd pay for trimming the walnut tree, since that's a bigger, more long-term property investment, and they agreed. So I'll make the payment and the landlords will reimburse me.

Here's how cold it's been the last few days:

The birdbath is frozen solid. That pot behind it contains a dahlia (and some weeds, which are the leaves you see -- the dahlia tubers are below the soil). It's the only dahlia I didn't put in the shed for the winter. I left it out last year and it did OK, so this is an experiment to see if it can survive a second winter outdoors. I have too many dahlias anyway, to be honest.

There's a pot on the patio where some honesty seedlings have sprouted, and when I heard it might snow I covered it with an old towel. The snow never materialized so I pulled the towel off Thursday morning and found it had turned into a modern sculpture!

Yesterday an engineer from British Gas came to replace the timer on our boiler, which had mysteriously stopped working. We use the timer to turn the heat on and off at certain times of day. I had to stay home and wait for him to show up, but fortunately I was early on his service list so I was able to get to work only about an hour late.

In the "Small World" department, a co-worker loaned me an interesting book last week called "Dignity," by Chris Arnade. It's a book of interviews and photographs of people living in what the author terms the "back row" -- the lower rungs of the economic and social ladder in the USA. Arnade himself is a former Wall Streeter who left his job to travel across the country and document the lives of these people. He's a good photographer.

The funny part, though, is that I recognized his last name. I had a professor named Arnade when I was a student at the University of South Florida. He taught my Florida History course, as I recall. It's not that common of a name, and I wondered whether this author was related -- and sure enough, it's his son! Chris Arnade grew up in the Dade City area, just a stone's throw from where I grew up in Land O' Lakes. (Though I considered Dade City somewhat exotic, being a much older, more self-contained community with more local history.) He's about my age too, but we went to different schools so I'm sure we never met.

Anyway, it was funny to think I'd been randomly handed a book written by someone so closely connected to my own life. It's a good book, attempting to explain the political and social perspectives and frustrations of many people who have been left behind by American prosperity. It's well worth a read.