Daily Minutiae and a Behemoth Bush

This is our flat's front garden. It's a little crowded, I know! We haven't had it pruned in a couple of years and that Hebe, in particular -- with the purple flowers -- is threatening to swallow the house. The Russians have complained about it a couple of times but I want to wait until the Hebe is done flowering before doing any trimming.

Where the back garden at our flat is our responsibility, the front garden is our landlords'. So ideally they should have someone come and trim it. I've done light trimming myself and I might just do it again in the fall, or I might ask the management company to send someone. I'm not sure yet.

You can see Mr. Russia's stripped and sanded porch railing, which he's going to paint. It's always something with that guy.

We've been dealing with another minor maintenance issue -- a leaky toilet. I think it's been leaky for a while, to be honest, but we didn't really notice it until we got the new floors in the bathroom last year. Water is slowly dripping from the bolts that connect the tank and the bowl. It's not a lot of water, but it's enough that a small puddle forms. The maintenance company has sent someone twice to solve the problem and by golly, it's still happening. They probably should have just replaced the toilet when they renovated the bathroom.

Remember how I loaned some of our garden waste bags to Mrs. Kravitz, and predicted I'd have to chase them down to reclaim them? Well, they've been sitting in a huge pile of garden waste at the front of her house for a couple of weeks, and for some reason, the waste collectors won't touch it. I suspect she hasn't paid her annual garden waste fee. So yesterday morning I grabbed two of my full bags from her stack and put them in front of our house, and that did the trick -- the waste guys emptied them. Now I have them back. Isn't that exciting?! (🙄 Eye-roll emoji again.)

Yesterday afternoon, after Olga left with her dog-walker, I went for long walk on my own to Hampstead Heath. It always feels a little weird going there without Olga, but she can't walk that far anymore -- and doesn't really want to. It was a beautiful day and I made a short video of some of the wildflowers and happily buzzing bees:

In order, you'll see purple knapweed, yellow ragwort, some purple loosestrife (I think?), pink hairy willowherb, a white umbellifer of some kind, some scenery from Parliament Hill, and more ragwort at the end.

But don't feel too bad for Olga, because she was on a different part of the Heath with her dog-walker (who has a van and thus can drive her to and fro). He posted this to the dog-walking company's Facebook page:

She was having a great old time! (And she got a bath last night.)