Museum of Vanished Pottery

This is one of the leaves of our canna lily. At some point during the Spring of Insatiable Slugs (SOIL), when the leaf was young and still tightly rolled up, something burrowed straight through it. When the leaf unfurled, this was the visual effect we were left with. There are actually a few places like this on the plant, where it looks like we took a hole-puncher to it. The pattern looks too neat to be from a slug, but I have no idea what the pest might have been.

Yesterday was pretty quiet. The morning was sunny and mild, so I walked the dog on our long loop around the neighborhood and through the nearby housing estate.

She was very patient with my photography, but you can tell she's thinking about barking.

I also made my way through another 80-something pages of "Bleak House."  At one point I was reading a scene and struggling to keep track of who the characters were and what was going on. I looked at the character list and counted 34 major characters and 23 minor -- Dickens really outdid himself stuffing this book with people! Anyway, I was able to sort out who was who, at least, but some of the relationships are still vague in my mind -- and some are supposed to be unclear, for purposes of the plot.

I'm still not loving it, but I am going to finish this book. As much as I complain about it -- and I am going to complain -- I also want the challenge.

I thought about putting my Botswana photos on Flickr, as I mentioned the other day. I dug out the hard drive and was going through all my old photos and realized that I actually have quite a few that I never put online. I don't necessarily need others to see them, but Flickr is how I view, organize and manage my "archives." (I have more than 40,130 photos on Flickr, including a handful of videos, and I've tagged them and organized them into chronological folders, so when I search for something it usually pops right up.)

Anyway, I didn't start the Botswana photo project, but I did find some interesting stuff, like these pictures of pottery I made back in 2005, during a class I took in New York:

I only have one of these pots now -- the rounded vase in the middle in the last photo. I have no idea where the others are. I'm sure I gave them to friends and family. I remember particularly liking the one on the left in the middle photo -- the beige speckled pot with the green rim.

I wonder when I crossed the 40,000-photos threshold on Flickr? I used to see how many photos I had right at the top of my "photostream," but Flickr has now taken that number away and hidden it in my stats, which I never look at. When I finally got around to it yesterday, I was amused to see that among my top ten most recently viewed photos are those titled Tits, Boner, Busty, Sexes, Desire and Boobs. Gee, what could people be looking for online? (Most of those are graffiti-related, except for Tits, which is a picture of birds.)

Snowflakes and a Massage

I was going to start this post talking about my Sunday lie-in, because my bedside clock says it's 7:45 a.m. and I never sleep that late. But then I realized British Summer Time ended this morning, so the clocks jumped back and it's actually 6:45. A trick of the universe to make me feel slightly less lazy!

Yesterday was a day of domesticity -- three loads of laundry (I had to catch up!), vacuuming, that kind of thing. I know I said I was going to read "Bleak House," and I honestly tried right after lunch, but I could barely keep my eyes open and my mind wasn't on the book. I'll try again today, maybe when I'm not in a post-prandial haze.

Oh, and I got something fun in the mail from blogger Ellen!

No, not taco shells. It was a slim envelope containing two flat pieces of cardboard, which happened to have been taken from an Old El Paso box, taped together. Tucked between them were these:

If you read Ellen's blog, you'll recognize these as crocheted and starched snowflakes made by her sister, Pam. Ellen kindly offered them to blogland pals in a recent post, so I spoke up and she mailed me two. (Looks like the two on the far right in the photo she posted to her own blog.) Thanks, Ellen!

Getting these in the mail prompted another bout of housecleaning. I hung them in a living room window, and I was going to take a photo for the blog, but the glass was filthy -- because, you'll recall, Mr. Russia power-washed the upstairs terrace not long ago. All the dirt and debris from there came raining down on our patio, and the windows looked like someone had held a monster truck rally in our garden.

So I went out with a squeegee and the garden hose and wiped and rinsed all the exterior glass around the patio (some of it, out of reach behind the plants, I just sprayed from afar). It all looks much better now, but the task made me grumpy. (Or, in Russian, сердитый -- pronounced "serdityy.")

To help relax I had a massage in the afternoon. I went to the Thai place on the high street and once again had a very good massage experience, though it was deep-tissue and occasionally it hurt. I always have to tell masseurs to go easy on my calves -- my calf muscles don't like fingers digging into them. She even massaged my jaw muscles, which I also could have done without. But seriously, overall, she did a great job.

(Top photo: Nicole the Nicotiana is still blooming away!)

Medical Stuff and Abandoned Signage

I'm bringing the blog back to London today, where as you can see things are looking very autumnal. It's a good thing I could write a couple of posts looking back at significant trips and memories, because not much has been happening here. Just work and home, work and home. And home hasn't been very interesting because Dave had to work several nights this week -- so it's basically been me on the couch with Olga, watching "The Lincoln Lawyer" and eating a can of baked beans and a fried egg sandwich.

I did go to the hospital on Thursday morning for my blood tests, and they've all come back normal. So whatever is causing my raised calprotectin levels (389 on the last test) isn't affecting my blood counts, kidney or liver function or anything else. Which I suppose is a good thing, but it deepens the mystery. Also, I'm feeling not so great, which may partly be due to anxiety about the calprotectin -- which measures intestinal inflammation -- but could be other things too. My obvious concern, as I've written before, is colon cancer, but it would be very odd (but not impossible) to have cancer only four months after a clear colonoscopy, and a total of three clear colonoscopies in the last eight years.

Now I'm waiting for a consultation with the NHS gastroenterologists, which is supposed to happen after they review my case on Nov. 1. I'm going to call my health insurance company and see if I can speed things up by going private.

Fun, right?!

Anyway, my blood draw on Thursday morning made me slightly late for work, which always throws my boss into a tizzy because since my co-worker's departure at the beginning of the month we're down a person. I took a bus back to work, but the bus pulled over in Belsize Park with instructions for the driver to wait a bit to space out the service. We sat for a while and I was dying for a coffee, so I got off and went to Costa for a take-away cup, and figured I'd catch the next bus.

The next bus was mighty slow in coming, though, so I did what I never do and caught a cab. The driver was so intent on telling me about his upcoming fishing trip to France, where he camps with friends and catches carp out of a stocked pond in Normandy, that he missed the turn to school and we had to turn around. Aside from that little mishap, I can see why people take taxis. It felt positively luxurious and it got me to school much faster than the bus.

When I came home Thursday night I mowed the lawn, which may be the last haircut it gets for the rest of the year.

Now, I'm looking forward to a restful weekend and more "Bleak House," which I have ignored most of this week.

Oh, and remember that water project on our street? Well, the project is done, the workers have gone and they've collected and removed most of their signs -- but look what they left at the bottom of the hill! Honestly! I am not taking responsibility for these. They're far enough away from our house that they can stay there forever, as far as I'm concerned. (And they might.)

More Victoria Falls

Posting that photo from Shutterfly yesterday prompted me to look up more photos from my visit to Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, in August 2006. For some reason I never uploaded these photos online, and I should, because right now they all live on a hard drive and they need a backup. Maybe I'll make that a weekend project.

I went to Victoria Falls as part of a trip through South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe with my Peace Corps friend Liz and her friend Jessica. We went with a safari company called Drifters, sleeping nightly in tents and rumbling around the countryside every day in a covered truck with open sides. Except for sleeping and eating, we pretty much lived on that truck, along with a bunch of Italian, Dutch and French people, mostly about our age. It was a lot of fun and we saw a lot of wildlife -- elephants, giraffes, zebras, antelope of all types, warthogs, wild dogs, you name it.

Victoria Falls came at the end of our camping safari, a rare opportunity to stay in a (modest) hotel in a town with tourist conveniences. As I wrote in my journal at the time, "I have never needed a shower so badly in my life!"

Victoria Falls are on the Zambezi River where it tumbles into a deep gorge along the border of Zimbabwe and Zambia.

Blogger Dana (aka Bug) also visited Victoria Falls when she lived in Zambia back in 1988, almost 20 years before my visit. She posted about it much later and mentioned the ubiquitous rainbows at the falls. We saw them too!

Here I am near the gorge. It is a massive, deep cleft in the earth, and there are no guardrails. You can walk right up to the edge if you're foolish enough.

A highlight of the trip was visiting the colonial-era Victoria Falls Hotel, where as I wrote in a blog post at the time, "you half expect Robert Redford and Meryl Streep to come strolling through the lobby, with all its Rhodesian memorabilia." Yes, I know, "Out of Africa" took place in Kenya -- but it's the same vibe.

We had coffee on that massive veranda and my memories are tainted by the fact that I was incredibly hung over from a party the night before. Despite the beautiful surroundings, I was in agony. I don't think I've had a worse hangover before or since. Something about that African beer!

The hotel is perfectly situated to look up the gorge toward the bridge that crosses into Zambia. You can see the mist from the falls at left, but you can't see the falls themselves because the gorge bends to the left after the bridge. To look up the length of the falls, you have to cross...

...into Zambia, which is said to offer the best overall view. Unfortunately this picture doesn't really capture it because I was shooting into the sun, but you can imagine the Zambezi River, on the right, thundering straight into that gorge.

(I still have that t-shirt, though it's quite ragged now!)

See that pedestrian footbridge behind me to the left? There are people walking right along the cliff on the Zimbabwe side. Again, no guardrails!

And just for fun, here's a photo of me with a chameleon we found while walking through town. I think it was just hanging out on a tree or a bush. We put her/him back after taking his/her picture.

The photo I posted yesterday, of me, Liz and Jessica at the falls, is indeed also one of mine. I haven't looked at any of these in so long!

Visions of Vacations Past

I spent Tuesday morning writing 32 e-mails to the parents of students who still have summer books checked out (all of which were due on Sept. 6). Yesterday a bunch of them came back, and I expect more today -- writing to parents is often pretty effective. One mother told me her 9th Grade son just doesn't seem to understand the difference between going to a library and going to a bookstore!

Still, I'm surprised how many books are still lingering out there. I feel like I say this every year, but this really does seem like my worst year for getting books back. I hope I can get all this cleared up by the end of the month.

Today I'm going in slightly late because I have another round of blood tests at the hospital. The doctor is checking my cholesterol levels again, among some other basic functions. Yay.

Yesterday I randomly discovered that the little resort on Sanibel Island, Fla., where my family stayed in 1979 was destroyed by Hurricane Ian in 2022. Here's what it looks like as of August -- just a couple of cleared oceanfront lots. Right before the storm, it looked like this. We stayed in that front cabin on the left behind the trees, as I recall. (Or at least a cabin in that location. After 40-plus years, who knows if it was the same building.)

The place was called Mitchell's Sand Castles and I wrote about it before, though I didn't name it. I'm sorry to see that it's gone.

Also, my brother wrote me the other day that the Sun n' Sea Resort on Longboat Key, another set of old-fashioned beach cabins where we stayed a few times, was recently demolished. I think plain ol' "progress," rather than a hurricane, did it in. Here's an article about the property sale that led to its demolition, including some photos of the old cabins.

Beach resorts just don't look like that anymore, and it's sad.

Also yesterday, I randomly got an e-mail from a photo site called Shutterfly telling me to buy something with my uploaded pictures -- a calendar, a mug, a blanket -- or they would be "archived." (Or something like that.) This was a surprise to me because I didn't recall having a Shutterfly account. When I looked at it I found it full of pictures of my friend Liz (in the middle above), most of which were not mine. I think I must have set it up in advance of her 50th birthday in 2019, and her friends uploaded many of the pictures, and maybe we had them printed into a book or something -- and then we forgot about it.

Anyway, I downloaded the picture above, showing me, Liz and her friend Jessica at Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, back in 2006. Since I spent so much time showing you Iguaçu Falls this summer, and I blogged my trip with Dave to Niagara Falls in 2011, I figured you might like a glimpse of Victoria Falls as well! (I actually blogged from there too, but I didn't say much. That was back in my days of minimalist blog posts.) I have other photos from Vic Falls but I don't think I have this one. Or maybe I do. Maybe it's mine. I have no idea.

(Top photos: Autumnal scenes on my walk to and from work.)

UOCAVA

I've been reading right-wing conspiracies online about UOCAVA voters -- or those who vote under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act. Yes, that includes me and Dave. We are proud UOCAVA voters.

The conspiracists are convinced that UOCAVA ballots are the device by which the Democrats plan to "steal" the election. They are suspicious of the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of American citizens who live overseas and rightfully wish to weigh in on the presidential race. They seem to think we don't really exist, or at least not in the numbers that we do.

Some right-wingers express hostility that we're able to vote at all -- even though we're citizens and we file American taxes -- as if moving off American soil somehow turns us into instant traitors. (Of course their skepticism doesn't extend to the military -- military voters and their families are given a complete pass. It's only civilians like me who worry them.)

They also seem perplexed that a high percentage of overseas voters cast ballots for the Democrats. Assuming that's true, I suspect it's because overseas voters are more educated and less nationalistic by nature, having become used to crossing international boundaries and living among different kinds of people with different laws, cultures and political systems. We are the dreaded globalists, in other words. We're not flying "Don't Tread on Me" flags and waving badly misunderstood copies of the U.S. Constitution.

So I'm here to say yes, I am a UOCAVA voter. I vote Democrat. We do exist. And according to my voting jurisdiction in the United States, my ballot has been received and counted.

Here's one of our newest books in the school library -- co-written by fellow blogger 37 Paddington, otherwise known as Rosemarie. Woo hoo! It was exciting to label, cover and shelve a book by someone I know, even just virtually.

The flowers on our Thanksgiving (Christmas? Halloween?) cacti are beginning to open! This one and a second pink one, which you can see in the background at upper left, are blooming. My other three cacti are coming along more slowly, but we'll see what the future brings.

(Top photo: The Alexandra and Ainsworth Estate on my walk home last night.)

McDonald's and Melania Shoes

I stopped in to the nurse's office at school and signed up for a flu shot yesterday.They'll contact me with a time to go get it. I wish they could do a new Covid booster too, but that's not something they offer, and I don't think I'm entitled to one under the NHS. Dave has been asked to get one, though, because his Crohn's and its treatment makes him vulnerable in the eyes of the medical establishment.

While in the nurse's office I weighed myself and was shocked to find I'm 88 kilos -- or 194 pounds! I don't know why this shocked me because that's the same weight I was last summer, but I guess I forgot. Clearly I need fewer lazy days on the couch reading "Bleak House." (And probably less dessert.)

When I was young I weighed about 175, and when I worked out more in my 30s and 40s I was somewhere around 180-185. But this additional ten pounds is not muscle. Sigh. The weird thing is, I still have the same waist size I've always had -- so where is this weight gain going? I guess my trunk is thicker than it used to be.

I may have blogged this photo before -- I'm not sure. This is me as a 16-year-old, in the summer of 1983, wearing my uniform for my first-ever job at McDonald's. I don't recall the pants being so flared -- they're practically bell-bottoms! But I do remember that uniform was magical. You could spill literally anything on it, and then throw it in the washer and it would emerge clean. It was 100 percent polyester, obviously.

This photo came to mind yesterday as I read about Donald Trump's ridiculous assertion that Kamala Harris never worked at McDonald's, as she has said she did in the very same summer that I began working there. One wag called it "burgerism," a play on Trump's "birtherism" argument that Obama wasn't born in the United States. I'm surprised Harris's campaign doesn't just release a photo like the one above -- but then again, if you spent all your time keeping up with Trump's firehose of lies and accusations, you'd never be able to spread your own message. I suppose whether or not she worked at McDonald's for one summer is hardly the most relevant issue we're facing.

I keep wishing this campaign season would just end. But the minute it does, the next one begins, you know? The news media has always liked the horse-race atmosphere, with this or that candidate pulling ahead or falling behind, and it's much easier to cover politics that way than to actually analyze the issues (which readers and viewers don't have much patience for anyway). It doesn't really do anyone any good, though. It just makes us all tired.

I found this blingy pair of shoes while walking Olga yesterday morning. They're still out there, as far as I know, lying atop their carpet of leaves and soy sauce packets. They're very Melania, aren't they? Except that hers would be Gucci and would cost $10,000.

Bridges, Bleak House and Burros

I belatedly realized that I may have caused some confusion by titling yesterday's post "London Bridge" but showing a picture of Tower Bridge. Tower Bridge is what you see from London Bridge, but it's not the same as London Bridge. Sorry about that!

In fact, the BBC article I linked from that post (here it is again) addresses a longstanding myth about the two bridges -- that the man who bought old London Bridge and moved it to Lake Havasu, Arizona, mistakenly believed that he was buying Tower Bridge. His grandson says that isn't true at all. "My grandfather knew exactly what he was buying," he said.

Anyway, hopefully I have cleared that up!

I had possibly the laziest day of my entire life yesterday. It was rainy and blustery and I spent the entire day on the couch with Olga, who showed no inclination to want to go anywhere. Both of us were in hibernation mode. I watered the plants in the morning and did some vacuuming, and just before and after lunch I struggled to keep my eyes open while reading. I don't know why I was beset with such fatigue considering I'd barely done anything.

My eyes may have been involuntarily closing because I was reading "Bleak House." I'm about 250 pages in, and I think I can already say that this is not my favorite Dickens novel. I had no idea what it was about when I began it (lawyers) and it bothers me for a couple of reasons. One, the perspective keeps shifting from an omniscient narrator to the first-person account of a main character, a young woman. (I think this is the first Dickens I've read with a female protagonist.) Second, there are about a million characters, some of whom have two names, and some of whom have very similar names -- I kept reading about Mr. Turveydrop and his "deportment," but I was confusing him with Mr. Tulkinghorn.

Again, I chalk some of this up to the fact that I was nodding off. But I will persevere.

Let's look at a few more of the old postcards that Jeanie gave me last week. Here's one of a small marina on Bradenton Beach, Fla., mailed in 1953.

"Arrived home Thursday noon. Had a nice trip down, found everything OK, it is no warmer here than in Ohio. -- Mr. and Mrs. Francis, Judy & Pee Wee"

Mailed 1944 from Bakersfield, Cal.:
"Hello Linnis -- I am sending you a pair to work on the farm this spring. How do you like them? How much do you think they are worth? -- Bill Greene"

(On the front: "These are out on the desert where I work.")

This one, mailed in 1910 from Topeka, Kan. to Albuquerque, N.M., gave me a chuckle:

"Dear Arthur & Marie: This is the crossroad to your farm a few years hence. -- Della"

(Top photo: Dramatic shadows on Finchley Road on Friday afternoon.)

London Bridge

Well, I was wrong about the weather yesterday. It was rainy in the morning, but just before lunchtime the sun came out and the afternoon was beautiful. As you can see from the photo above, showing Tower Bridge and HMS Belfast on the Thames, I decided to go on a little excursion.

Blogger Jeanie, who you'll recall I met up with Wednesday night, brought me some old postcards, because she knows I'm a fan of old ephemera like that. She forgot to give them to me on Wednesday but she left them in an envelope at the front desk of her hotel, where I picked them up a day or two later. They were mostly American but thrown into the mix was this:

That is a view of London Bridge meant to be seen through a stereoscopic viewer, which would in theory give it a three-dimensional perspective. It was sold by Montgomery Ward, so it had probably not actually come from London, but was instead a way for Americans to "see the world" without traveling in an era when travel was difficult, time-consuming and expensive.

I tried to figure out how old the picture is. The same card is available on Wikimedia, dated circa 1895-1900. Another very similar image, also said to be from a stereopticon card and probably taken by the same photographer -- is dated "early 1890s." (They look like the same picture but the arrangement of the pedestrians is different, so they must have been different exposures.)

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to go down to London Bridge and compare the view to see what it looks like now.

And here's the answer. I couldn't get the same altitude as the photographer of the stereoscopic image -- maybe he was shooting out a window or from a rooftop? But you get the idea.

In the old photo, across the river you can see the Monument, and immediately to its right the steeple of the church of St. Magnus the Martyr, and then farther to the right another church spire. None of that is visible now, having been hemmed in by more modern buildings. (Maybe the top of the Monument or the St. Magnus church spire would still be visible if that building on the riverfront wasn't covered in white scaffolding, or if I could attain the card photographer's elevated perspective -- I'm not sure.)

And of course the bridge itself is also different, the old one having been famously "falling down," sold to an American oil tycoon, and moved to Lake Havasu, Arizona. Here's the full story on that, according to a BBC article from just a few days ago.

I walked across the bridge thinking I might go up in the Monument, which I've never done. But alas, it was closed. It commemorates the Great Fire of London in 1666. Instead I settled for having coffee and a cookie while sitting beneath it on the plaza.

I tried to figure out what church is visible on the right in the old photo, and I eventually settled on this one -- The Guild Church of St. Margaret Pattens. Like the Monument, it has been overshadowed by more modern buildings including the "walkie-talkie," at left.

Anyway, it was a fun day out and a good way to experience a sunny afternoon!

Fog

It was damp and misty yesterday morning, the garden shrouded in a soft white fog.

Olga and I went on our walk to the corner, but I was running late for work so I had to hustle her home again pretty quickly.

The spider webs were exactly like a child's drawing, beaded with misty droplets.

I've got the dehumidifier going again, and this weekend we're looking at two days of rain -- so it's got a job to do!

Yesterday during my lunch break I tried to comment on several blogs, and Blogger would not let me. I kept getting a "your comment failed to post" message. I hope it was a temporary glitch and not something based on the school's Internet security settings, because that would mean I can't comment from school anymore, which would truly be a huge pain for me. (I also couldn't answer my own comments, but I will try to catch up today.)

I'm looking forward to a weekend of "Bleak House," which I have allowed to languish untouched for several days now.

Maw and Manifest

The vine that covers "the maw," the pedestrian bridge that runs across the tube tracks in West Hampstead, is now a flaming red. It's just about the only time of the year that the maw is attractive. I suppose the steps wouldn't be so dark and shadowy if it weren't for the vine, but I'm glad the council (or whoever has responsibility for this bridge) has left it.

And here's the tree at the top of the hill near our flat -- always one of the first to change. Autumn color all around!

I repotted the rescued dracaena I mentioned yesterday. This one really is a long shot. Most of the roots were dead. I think there was a single surviving root, or maybe a few of them. I discarded most of the dead roots and the root ball and put the stalk with its few remaining roots in fresh soil. They're tough plants, so we'll see what happens.

A few days ago I got a thank-you note from my niece for a graduation gift I sent her. She mailed it in JULY! Why it took so long to get here I have no idea. She had the address, city and post code right, though I noticed that someone at the post office hand-wrote LONDON in big letters on the envelope, as if it went some other place first. They also blacked out all the little bar codes and whatnot that sorting machines usually leave on the envelope. So who knows what happened there. Just further evidence that our postal systems are collapsing, but at least it got to me in the end.

I heard back from the doctor about my recent tests. My calprotectin level, measuring gut inflammation, is still elevated, so she's referring me back to the gastroenterology team at the hospital. I am unclear what happens next. I feel mostly OK -- maybe slightly more tired than usual --  but I think we have to get to the bottom of what's happening and whether it's an early sign of anything serious. There's no blood where blood shouldn't be, so that's a good thing.

Dave had to work last night, so I warmed up some leftover chicken and watched the last couple of episodes of "Manifest." It's a wacky show, a jumbled grab-bag of plot points involving tarot, Noah's ark, dragons, jewels endowed with mystical powers, bizarre meteorological events, rock carvings, evil government operatives, you name it. The premise is that a flight experiences severe turbulence during a storm, and when it lands, everyone on the plane is shocked to find that five years have elapsed. How this happened is never quite explained, beyond the involvement of a supernatural or divine force. Dave gave up on the show a long time ago but I kept watching it all the way to the end of its fourth and last season -- I developed an affection for the characters despite the absurdity of the plot. Now, time for a new series!

Sea Glass Quilt

Our community art show at school is coming down, and I walked over to the gallery yesterday to pick up my very blue photo. While I was there, I photographed this piece in more detail. I remember some of you commenting on it so I thought you might want a closer look.

It's a "sea glass quilt" made by a parent, and although I'd love to give her credit I also want to protect her privacy, so I won't name her. It's made from scraps left over from earlier quilting projects, she said in her description. She called it "Flow" and said in her mind it connects the recipients of those projects and the lessons she learned working on them.

Also, after viewing the video in my earlier post -- which you can see by clicking the link above -- blogger Ellen asked about the sculpture of the woman sitting on an egg and what it was made of. I took a second look and it was glass. (Nothing like answering a reader question a month late, right?!)

Finally, I'd meant to include in my earlier posts the words of a woman who knitted a sweater shown in the show. She mentioned how she'd dipped in and out of knitting through her life, and said, "You don't need to do art every day to be an artist. You can leave it for days, weeks, months or years. It's not going anywhere." As one who often feels compelled to get out and take pictures, I found that such a comforting thought.

Here's my latest plant rescue project. Yes, it's another Dracaena, found a few days ago next to a trash bin at work. As I was looking at it, trying to decide whether to take it on, the principal of our Lower School walked past and said, "You can't save it. It's too far gone." I said, "I think I might be able to, actually!"

I brought it to the library and put that sign on it saying, "Please do not discard. I'm in 'plant hospital.'" Yesterday I brought it home. I'll repot it and probably keep it here until it revives, but I've promised Dave I will then take it back to the library, because we already have five rescued Dracaenas and we really do not need one more.

Finally, last night I got to meet fellow blogger Jeanie of The Marmelade Gypsy. She and her partner Rick are visiting England from Michigan, and they stopped by West Hampstead to meet Dave and Olga. We stepped outside to see the garden and Olga managed to both bark at us incessantly and roll in black mud, so that was fun. We then went to dinner at a restaurant on the high street (Olga stayed home) and had a great time. Jeanie is artistic, articulate and interesting, as you'll know if you read her blog, and Rick's career path was somewhat similar to my brother's in municipal planning so I enjoyed talking to him too -- yet another positive "IRL" encounter with blogland!

Cacti and the Pink Blanket

Another day, another leaf! Nature's little miracles of design at this time of year.

Yesterday was pretty nondescript. It was board game night in the library, and there was some last-minute setting up to do for that -- and I DO mean last-minute. The event started at 4 p.m. and at about 3:45 my boss realized she needed a table to display all the games and had forgotten to request it. I just assumed she'd decided to leave them on the cart, but no! So I ran downstairs and found someone to bring us a table and we set everything out, just finishing up as people were walking in the door.

I didn't stick around to play games. It's not really my thing. I have occasionally enjoyed board games in a group -- like when I'd go to my friend Kevin's for Thanksgiving years ago -- but I bet I haven't played one since then.

Now that the dahlias are fading, here's the next thing to bloom -- the Thanksgiving/Christmas cacti! As you can see, my bright pink ones (on the left) have buds already. The second one from the left at top is my salmon-colored one, which I brought back from the dead and which has a few tiny buds as well.

The other two are the white/light pink variety that blog reader Frances sent me years ago as a tiny cutting. You may remember the first plant I grew from the cutting got root rot and died, but I took more cuttings and kept them going. I think this is the healthiest all my cacti have looked! I don't see any buds on the white ones yet, but fingers crossed. (Or do I have the white and salmon ones mixed up? Hmmm...)

I can hear my brother now: "STOP TALKING ABOUT PLANTS!"

I just talked to him last night on the phone, actually -- an unexpected pleasure. He called about some family business but it was fun to catch up on other stuff too. I don't know why we don't talk more often. I've turned into such a terrible communicator.

I'm thinking it's about time to throw away Olga's pink blanket. It's got that gigantic, frayed hole in the middle and we've actually cut it into two pieces, so she won't get tangled up in it. (This is the biggest floor space I could find in the house to lay it out and take a picture!)

As I'm sure I've written before, this blanket used to be on my bed in the winter when I was a kid. It's about as old as I am -- almost 60 years.

And it is still much-loved! I suppose we'll keep it a while longer.