Reading, Mowing and Storm Damage

I once again spent yesterday morning reading in the garden next to Olga, who was determined to be outside despite the somewhat chilly temperatures. (It wasn't too bad in the sun.) I am loving "Long Island Compromise," though it is a bit like its predecessor novel, "Fleischman is in Trouble," in its focus on Jewish family life and specifically, troubled and self-obsessed men whose behavior comes at the expense of the women they marry.

Eventually the grass dried out enough that I was able to mow the lawn, which is like vacuuming -- it makes everything look better. Now the wind and rain are whipping around out there and I am not looking forward to getting myself to work.

My cold, if that's what it was, seems mostly gone. I honestly can't tell if it even was a cold. Maybe it was allergies. Mostly just a tickle in my nose and throat.

Our canna lily is trying its best to belatedly bloom, but I think it may have waited too long. It's awfully chilly out there for a canna to flower. We'll see what happens.

I spent yesterday evening catching up with post-hurricane aerial videos of the beachfront communities I know so well in Southwest Florida. I've blogged many times from Anna Maria Island, which has a lot of damage, including tons of sand in the streets. And Longboat Key, where my family vacationed every year in the mid-'70s to the mid-'80s, also seems battered, but the condo complex where we stayed looks like it emerged without too much damage. (Of course it's hard to tell from the air.) St. Armands Circle, a ritzy shopping district on an island off Sarasota, looks devastated and was still underwater when the aerial videos were shot. I used to drive to St. Armands to have coffee and write in my journal almost every weekend when I lived in that area, and I went to several outdoor art shows under the trees in the main circle -- all submerged by the storm.

Just for old times' sake, here's a family photo from that condo on Longboat, taken in about 1980. That's my dad on the left, my stepsister, my stepbrother, me and my brother hiding behind my shoulder. My stepbrother was grumpy for some reason. It's funny how, when I picture the '70s in my mind, everything has that sort of orangey tone like you see in the photo. I suppose my memories are being affected by the color capabilities of the photo processors.

We spoke to Dave's parents last night who said their mobile home in Cortez apparently survived, but they may have had water in their laundry shed. They're waiting to hear more from a neighbor. (They're in Michigan now.)

And my brother in Jacksonville reports that his power is back on but his younger daughter, who has been out of school for four days, is "bouncing off the walls."

Finally, last night I rented "The Owl and the Pussycat," which you may remember was the last of three Barbra Streisand movies I wanted to watch after reading about them in her autobiography. I can see why I never saw it on television. It's mostly a harmless comedy/romance but it has some mature language and themes -- and again, some casual anti-gay slurs, particularly in the very beginning. A sign of the times in that era (1970), I suppose.

(Top photo: An aster growing next to a dusty miller in our garden.)

Dahlia Close-Ups

Well, my cold has settled in and this morning I am not feeling so great. But colds are always worse first thing in the morning, when you have to get your body moving again after a long night of sleep. I did sleep last night, at least. I also took a Covid test and that was negative, so as I suspected, it's apparently just a garden variety cold.

Speaking of gardens, ours is still cranking along, even though it's about 45º F (or 7º C) out there right now. It warmed up pretty quickly yesterday morning, and soon Olga and I were sitting out in our usual positions.

To be honest, I would have preferred to stay on the couch but Olga was insistent. And it's not enough for me to put her bed outside -- no, I have to be there too. That dog runs my life.

As you see, the red Gallery Valentin dahlia is still blooming up a storm. Here are some other dahlia close-ups from yesterday:

Have I ever talked about dahlias as much as I have this summer? I don't think so.

I heard from my stepsister in Tampa -- apparently she and my stepmother had no damage from Helene and in fact they didn't even lose power. Whew! I don't mean to minimize damage from the storm, though, which has turned out to be particularly devastating in Appalachia. Not a place you'd normally expect hurricanes. Such a strange world we now live in.

Hurricanes, Maggie and Faulty Electrics

I just took that picture out the back door, after letting Olga out in the garden. The skies are clear this morning and the sun is really lighting up the walls of the apartment buildings behind us. I'm imagining those flats streaming with sunlight. I wonder if their occupants enjoy it, as I would, or if they're cursing so much sun at 7:20 a.m.?

I had a lousy night's sleep. I seem to have come down with the mildest of colds. It's a slightly sore throat and a slightly stuffy nose, but I don't feel feverish or anything like that. I'll probably take a Covid test if we have one lying around. Anyway, I think that's why I didn't sleep. I woke up around 3:30 a.m. and logged in to check on Mary Moon, and was happy to see she'd posted from the strike zone of Hurricane Helene that she and her family were fine.

My brother said a tree fell on his neighbor's house in Jacksonville "and gave our roof a bit of a poke," but he climbed up and found no major damage. His power was still out when he wrote me yesterday, though.

Someone asked in yesterday's comments what my biggest hurricane experience was like. You know, I lived in Central Florida for 33 years, from my birth in 1966 to 2000, except for my two years in the Peace Corps in the early '90s. And during all that time, I never experienced a direct hit from a hurricane. When I was a child, Donna was the storm everyone talked about, but it struck before I was born. (My great-grandmother said afterwards, "I wouldn't name a dog Donna.")

The Tampa area enjoyed a long mostly hurricane-free period in the '60s and '70s. In 1985, Hurricane Elena sat off the coast and caused a lot of flooding, but by a weird stroke of luck I was in Daytona Beach that weekend, on the other side of the state. So I missed that whole thing. And we had some scares in the '90s -- I remember Opal, and battening down the hatches for Georges -- but they weren't direct hits either. Andrew, as far as I know still the most destructive hurricane to hit Florida, struck in 1992 when I was already in Morocco for the Peace Corps -- and it was far to the south of Tampa. And by the crazy summer of 2004, when Central Florida got struck by Charley, Frances, and Jeanne -- two of which pretty much passed over our family home in Pasco County -- I was already living in Manhattan.

So, long story short, I've never been in a hurricane and I hope to keep it that way.

Now, let's talk about Maggie Smith, who died yesterday at 89. I found this photo on Facebook of her as Beatrice in "Much Ado About Nothing" in 1965. It's so different from the Maggie Smith we all think of, the fascistic Miss Jean Brodie or the doddery Dowager Countess of Downton Abbey. She was a remarkable actress and one of the true originals. She somehow became her characters and yet always infused them with a distinctive bit of herself.

I first became aware of her in 1978 when my church youth group leaders took us all to showing of "California Suite." I laugh about this now because they must have been mortified by the movie's references to prostitution, alcohol, pill-popping and homosexuality. I was 12! But I remember how much Maggie Smith made that movie hum. She won an Oscar for it, and it became (and remains) one of my favorite films, largely because of her.

I also loved her as "poor, poor Charlotte" in "A Room With a View" in 1985. And I saw her on stage in London in April 2000, performing in Alan Bennet's "The Lady in the Van." I sat in the third row and couldn't believe I was so close to her. I was star-struck.

As on "Downton Abbey," it seemed like the Dowager Countess would be with us all forever. Smith's precise, clipped delivery and acid humor will be missed.

Finally, at the risk of overstuffing this post, this (above) was going on in the neighbor's flat last night. I wouldn't have even noticed except when I face the television, that window is directly above it over our patio, and I immediately saw all the flashing. I made Dave stand up and look too, and we tried to figure out what the heck was going on.

If teenagers or young people lived there I wouldn't have thought anything of it -- maybe a strobe light or a party or something. But an older woman lives there, and it seemed like this might be some kind of danger, like an electrical short. Would it start a fire? So I went over and knocked on her door, and the people who answered didn't even know it was happening. I guess they were downstairs and hadn't seen the flashing. Anyway, it must have just been a faulty light bulb. They turned it off, and nothing burned down in the night.

Am I a Nosey Nelly or what?

I Got Nuthin'

Not much news from this corner of the world this morning. We're having more rain, which may be an example of too much of a good thing, but it looks like we'll dry out a bit over the weekend. Tomorrow is even supposed to be sunny!

Of course our weather is nothing compared to what's going on in Florida, and my thoughts are with Ms. Moon and the other Floridians who have endured the wrath of Helene. I haven't heard from my family but I don't think they're in areas that are being particularly hard hit, thank goodness.

I'm about to start Taffy Brodesser-Akner's book "Long Island Compromise," which I'm looking forward to reading. And I'm ready for the weekend.

(Photo: A sycamore seed resting atop some graffiti on Finchley Road.)

Leaves and the Mail

Every time I walk home from work, I see at least one leaf on the street that makes me think, "Wow! What a nice leaf!" And then I debate taking a picture of it, because I already have so many leaf pictures -- but to not take a picture and preserve it for posterity seems unfair to nature and the leaf.

So, you're probably going to get a lot of leaf pictures.

I think these are both sycamores.

As I write now, lying in bed with Olga snoring next to me, it's pouring rain outside. It's been very rainy all night. The plants are still loving it.

I got a letter in the mail yesterday from Bob C. of St. Louis, MO, urging me to cast my overseas ballot. It was a pre-printed form letter to which he added a handwritten note about the importance of voting. He also sent me a little sticker:

Thanks, Bob C. -- I'm on it! My ballot is already cast!

Dave, meanwhile, got a much more fun postcard, mailed from Birmingham, England:

Dave has not yet mailed his ballot but he does have it and he intends to do so. He's a Michigan voter so he's especially critical. We'll make sure to send it ASAP. (Dave is having a busy week at work.)

So, yeah, some interesting leaves and some fun mail. That's about the extent of the excitement yesterday.

Malodorous

Our last dahlia has finally flowered, so despite this year's dahlia-hell spring of slugs, snails and chilly temperatures, I can now claim a 100 percent success rate. And this one has several more good-sized buds so I think we'll see more flowers over the next month or so, before it finally gets too cold.

And I've got to share one more picture of our hollyhock, which just keeps putting out flowers -- because we've got to enjoy it while we can, right?

One thing we are not enjoying is the aroma of our living room. On Monday I came home from work and noticed a distinct animal tang in the air. It smelled like a fox had somehow gotten into the house and, ahem, marked its territory. I sniffed all around the room -- the carpets, the door frame, the shoes by the door, the couch, the dog bed, the dog herself -- and I couldn't find the source of the odor. Fortunately it's one of those things that diminishes as you live with it, so after a while we didn't notice it any more.

But then last night, when I walked into the room after work, I was hit with it all over again. I decided it had to be the dog bed, which often lies out in the garden all day and which a fox (or cat?) may have marked when our heads were turned. I loaded it into the washer, hoping that would solve the problem.

It did not. Dave and I finally decided it must be the yucca's new pot. That pot sat by the back fence for months, empty, before we put the tree in it. We're thinking a fox or cat marked it, and we just didn't notice because it was so dry. But now it's holding a new plant and it has been watered, and that glorious pungent fox aroma is leaching out.

I wiped it down, hoping that might help, and I may be deceiving myself but I think it has. Hopefully in time the pong will subside.

I must say I never anticipated this particular risk in storing empty flowerpots outside.

A message from me and one of the neighborhood trash piles!

An Autumnal Display of Dog Food

I've photographed this little dog-legged street in St. John's Wood before. The only time I ever walk it is when I'm going to the Post Office, but its quaintness makes the journey a little nicer.  I wonder how many times someone has bumped a car or truck into these buildings?

I mailed my overseas ballot yesterday, having received an e-mail that it was available from the supervisor of elections in Florida. I had to follow a special link, mark the ballot, download it along with an accompanying voter certification statement, print them both, sign the statement, put the ballot in a special envelope all its own, then mail it and the statement back to Florida in a larger envelope. I was very exacting about every step, and nervous as a cat while I was doing it because I didn't want to miss anything.

So yes, I have cast my ballot in the U.S. presidential election. I've done my part, and it feels good to have it behind me.

I'm already seeing autumnal-looking leaves on my walks to and from work. It seems a little early still, but I guess it is officially autumn!

I think I figured out what was going on with the woman and her snail-covered suitcase on Sunday. Remember I mentioned some of the tents along the high street were occupied by community groups focused on recycling? Well, one of them offered a "pop-up skip" where you could dispose of things like household electronics or textiles that would otherwise go to the recycling center (or in the trash). I bet the woman brought that suitcase to put it in the skip. Unfortunately I don't think it was a real skip, and I'm not sure they were taking large items like that -- so I'm not sure she was able to get rid of it.

Of course, all I can think is, "Poor snails." Why didn't she brush them off first?

We just replenished Olga's supply of dog food. I thought the cans looked rather colorful (and seasonal!) all lined up together. She loves this food, but to be fair, she loves any food -- and I love all the labels and the names of the flavors. After all, dog food is marketed to humans, not dogs! The "Rest Up Recipe" even has bananas in it, an ingredient I don't think I've ever seen in canned dog food before. And the "Fishy Fish Pie" is quite...fishy.

I swear I am getting no compensation for posting this picture. (But Lily, if you want to compensate me, please feel free to get in touch. I will accept payment in dog food.)

Snails on a Suitcase

We are on our second day of pretty steady rain, and I am SO thankful. It's been a while since we've had a really good rain, and I imagine all the plants luxuriating in it like a waitress in a bath after a long shift. If plants could breathe and sigh, I imagine they'd sigh with relief.

Olga has been reluctant to go outside, understandably, but during a break in the weather late yesterday morning I took the picture above on our high street. It was World Car Free Day, and West End Lane was closed to traffic all day (except for buses and emergency vehicles). Supposedly this is meant to reduce pollution and emphasize the benefits of clean air, but what it really meant is that all the traffic turned one block off West End Lane and went up and down OUR street.

Still, I walked up and down the high street with Olga, taking in the atmosphere. The tents were occupied by community groups educating people about things like recycling and group transportation, and there were musicians and other activities, though the whole scene was somewhat dampened by the weather. At least one jogger took the opportunity to run in the middle of the street, though I hope he kept an eye out for those buses and emergency vehicles.

I saw one woman carrying a rather battered suitcase and realized the suitcase was covered with cobwebs and snails. It looked like she'd found it behind someone's garage. I figured Dave can't make too much fun of me for rescuing things from people's rubbish -- at least I never came home with anything that decrepit.

We've got another orchid in bloom...

...and the white and pink one I showed you a couple of weeks ago is flowering even more profusely.

Dave and I watched "A Very Royal Scandal" over the last few days, which we enjoyed -- it's only three episodes long -- and now we're on the second season of "Monster," about the Menendez brothers. I remember the media being so captivated by that story in the early and mid-'90s, to the point where I developed a severe case of news fatigue about it. "Monsters" (it's plural for this season) promises to be entertaining (if controversial) viewing. For one thing, it proposes an incestuous relationship between the brothers, which I don't think was ever revealed in court -- I remember allegations that the father molested the boys, but never that they were involved with each other. I understand they're hardly model citizens but I'm not sure they deserve that re-victimizing, and isn't the story scurrilous enough without embroidering reality with fantasy?

Liberating the Yucca

This is our one dahlia that hasn't bloomed yet -- the one that was nibbled down to bare stems in June and thus got a very late start. Now it has multiple buds, a couple of them pretty far along, so it looks like we'll get some flowers after all. Fingers crossed!

I walked Olga up to the corner yesterday morning, where my campaign against neighborhood trash continued. This time it was more discarded cabinetry, a vent hood and a refrigerator. I reported it to the council and within an hour or two they carried it all away. There was also a spray of broken glass from a fluorescent tube that had been thrown out in an earlier junk pile, and I went up there with a broom and swept it up. Lest you think this was a charitable act, let me just say it was purely selfish -- Olga walks in that area every morning and I don't want her getting glass in her paws.

After that I sat in the garden reading The New Yorker. I am six issues behind and my magazine stack is big enough to make me feel guilty, so I've gotta work through some of it. I read a chilling article about the leader of a religious cult in Kenya whose extreme (and insane) interpretation of evangelical Christianity has led to the murder or starvation of hundreds of his parishioners. It's all very Jim Jones, and as someone who just doesn't have the capacity for that kind of religious belief, I find the blind devotion a huge mystery.

I also embarked on what turned out to be a very ambitious repotting project. I took our huge yucca tree out of its smallish pot (in the photo above, it's the empty clay one on the right, by the chair) and put it in a bigger one, and then moved Manny Two into the smaller one.

I'm making it sound easy, but it was not. The yucca was so root-bound that Dave and I together couldn't pull it out of the pot. At one point Dave pulled the trunk and I held the edges of the pot, and he was dragging me along the ground behind the tree. I went around the edges of the root ball with a long bread knife, and that didn't help. I was afraid we'd have to break the pot, but I wanted it for Manny. Finally we soaked the whole thing in water, and that helped loosen the yucca enough to free it. The root ball was rock-solid.

It now has more room to grow -- which is good and bad, since it's already near ceiling height -- and Manny is happier in fresh soil. In its new pot, freshly watered, the yucca was so heavy that getting it back inside was very difficult. I'm still sore from the exertion. It's not going outside again!

As you can see, Olga was a big help.

I found this shiny, polished blue pebble in Manny's old pot. It was like a little piece of treasure, buried in that dusty, dry, exhausted potting soil.

(And how do you like my high-tech labeling method for my AirPods? That's so kids at school don't try to claim them as lost property when they're sitting on my desk. Which has happened.)

This morning, it's pouring rain outside. A glorious sound!

Butterflies and the Art Show

I've mentioned several times the dearth of butterflies in our garden this summer. I've seen a few cabbage whites, a few common blues and I think one single red admiral, and that's about it. It's been a terrible year considering we usually get commas, peacocks, Jersey tiger moths and others.

Well, now I'm seeing articles about how we're not alone. It's apparently been a disastrous summer for butterflies across the country. Some of it might be due to the climate, but according to experts cited in this article, "the declines in butterflies and other flying insects appear to be more than seasonal fluctuations relating to bad weather." As a result, Butterfly Conservation wants a ban on all neonicotinoid pesticides -- Britain and the EU banned them in 2018 but then the UK exempted the sugar beet industry from its ban. So those potent pesticides are flying around once again, instead of our beloved butterflies.

Isn't it amazing that 62 years after Rachel Carson and "Silent Spring," we're still having this conversation -- still waging this battle?

On a brighter note, I made a video to show you more of the community art show at the school where I work. I tried to do it all in one take -- it's not a very big show -- but people kept walking through the gallery so I had to do some splicing. I also tried to film in a way that shows the works but not the names of the exhibitors, for privacy reasons. So this will only give you a taste of what's on display, but it's better than nothing. I added the contemplative Asian-themed music mostly to drown out extraneous sounds of people talking, floors creaking and doors opening and closing, but it seems to complement the art, doesn't it?

You'll see pottery, embroidery, an architectural model, a decorated boom box, a painted pair of sneakers and a wooden sculpture of a jungle cat. And of course paintings and drawings and photography and all manner of wall art, including my very blue picture.

The only piece that gets really short shrift is an installation shown toward the end -- two side-by-side iPads, playing a looped series of videos created by one of our art teachers. The videos are fascinating to watch but I couldn't really capture them in my own short video, so you mostly just see the setup.

Finally, continuing our artsy theme, I created a few "paintings" with my Waterlogue app -- including this one of Olga napping in the garden near the hollyhock, which you'll remember from this post. I think it turned out well.

If Olga is going to do any outdoor napping this weekend, it will have to be this afternoon. We're getting possible rain this morning and then more certain rain tomorrow and Monday. That's OK -- the plants and grass need it!

(Top photo: A folded sticker on the sidewalk on Finchley Road, on my walk home yesterday.)

Exhibit

I passed this theater in Islington on the bus the other day when I went to Hackney. On the way home, I got off the bus specifically to photograph it. I'm not sure why "Beetlejuice" is spelled out two times and then broken off mid-word the third time. Is it a joke from the movie? (I've never seen "Beetlejuice," believe it or not.) And how can I possibly pass up a midnight showing of "Rambo: First Blood"?

Yesterday was pretty quiet at work, but I made major progress on several long-overdue books. I had about ten high school kids with books that were due last spring! Of course I've been sending them notices and writing their parents, but I wasn't seeing a whole lot of progress. Finally, yesterday, I wrote several of them telling them to see me right away, and if they didn't I'd come and find them in class.

I should know by now that all I have to do is threaten to embarrass a kid in front of their classmates and I get results. I got everything back or paid for except one boy who said he will return his book today. (We'll see.)

Our school community art show opened yesterday, and as you can see, there's quite an assortment of submissions on display. My very blue picture is right in the middle there. The well-meaning organizers put it in a glass frame, and I'm a little concerned that there's now too much glare to see the subtle detail in the photo. But I got lots of compliments on it, so who knows. There's an accompanying guide that includes a statement from each artist, and there are also some free-standing pieces in the middle of the room -- pottery and sculpture and fiber art.

Points for humor to the guy who drew the "Birds of Regent's Park (as seen from a distance)" at upper right!

There was an opening party yesterday afternoon -- I snuck away from the library for half an hour -- but of course I wound up mostly talking to the other exhibitors, rather than paying closer attention to the works. So I'll have to go back when the gallery is empty and check everything out. Maybe I can get a better, more complete photo.

Manny Two

This is the much-graffitied wall of Abbey Road Studios, which I walked past yesterday evening on my way home from a post-work pub gathering. One of my co-workers, the other library assistant, is leaving at the beginning of next month and the school has decided not to immediately replace her. For a while, at least, I'll be doing the work of two assistants (and splitting it with the other librarians). Remember how I was talking about how to spend my free time at work? Yeah, that whole conversation is pretty much moot now. Anyway, our pub gathering was to celebrate our departing colleague. She's moving to Spain where she's going to hike and learn Spanish and not work at all. Must be nice!

I started off yesterday with a dentist's appointment -- just a checkup after my recent cleaning. There's no news to report, thank goodness. The dentist still wants to replace one of my aging fillings and, ideally, do a root canal on a slightly discolored tooth in the front, but I'm in no pain and nothing is urgent so I just keep putting it off. If it ain't broke don't fix it. (And as far as I'm concerned, it ain't broke.)

I also double-checked my US voter registration which is still valid and active, so no nefarious voter-roll purges have targeted me, fortunately.

Here's our newest patient in the plant hospital, a Monstera I found yesterday morning walking the dog. In fact, I found it on the pile of trash on the problem corner I mentioned in yesterday's post. (Of course, more trash had been deposited there!) The plant was bone-dry, so I brought it home and gave it some water, and I'm letting it recover in the dining room. I thought it would perk up significantly but it still looks pretty much like that, so recovery may be a process. It needs a clay pot, some fresh soil and some TLC.

Dave and I had a Monstera when we lived in New Jersey that we named Manny. So we're calling this one Manny Two.

Pizza Fraud

I got a surprise yesterday evening when I noticed our yellow rose had not only leaves, but five blossoms or buds! I mentioned before that our roses were looking pretty dire at the end of the blooming season. They struggle with black spot and some were down to bare twigs -- including this yellow one. But since then many have produced a second round of leaves and some flowers, and I was glad to see this one bounce back. In the past it's been one of our hardiest and most productive roses but it's had a tough year.

We're going to pay closer attention to rose care next spring.

I got another surprise last night when I logged on to our bank account to send a routine payment. I was looking over our statement, as I try to do at least once a month, when I noticed four charges on Monday from Domino's Pizza. We never order Domino's, and we certainly didn't order it four times on Monday. So I began looking more closely at our past charges and discovered to my horror that we'd been charged by Domino's 12 times in recent weeks, a total of £360!

I fault myself for not being more on top of this, but we've been so busy with starting school and various other things that I just haven't watched the bank account closely enough. It all started August 19 with one charge of £27.96, and escalated from there.

Strangely, there seem to be no other suspicious charges. Whoever is bilking us is apparently just a pizza lover. ("Kids," Dave says, but I'm not so sure.)

Anyway, I called the bank and it turns out the perpetrator was using Dave's debit card number. We have no idea how they got it, but his card has been cancelled and the money is being provisionally refunded to us, pending an investigation.

I certainly did not need that little bit of excitement in my evening.

Here's more excitement I didn't need:

This pile of debris was sitting in front of an apartment building around the corner from our flat for days and days. There was a wooden pallet, some furniture, and lots of household rubbish. I finally reported it to the council -- along with two other rubbish/furniture piles on nearby corners -- and they cleared it all. I was so happy when I came home that evening and saw the area clean.

The next morning, I walked Olga and found:

SO ANNOYING!

I reported it again and allegedly this has been cleared too (I haven't been out to check yet) -- but this is one of several problem corners in our neighborhood so I'm sure it won't be long before there's another mountain of junk there.

Mermaid Mystery Solved

Well, I did it. I have vanquished Barbra Streisand's autobiography -- all 960 or so pages. When I took it to work yesterday I said to myself, "I am not hauling this book home again!" I managed to finish it off during lunch and checked it in then and there.

I had to laugh when she said in the acknowledgements that the book took ten years to write, and even then her publishers had to basically pry it out of her hands. That's so Barbra.

Oh! And I solved -- well, sort of -- the mystery of the mermaid.

I took my good camera to work yesterday and got this picture of the tiny sticker -- the best I could do to capture the detail. When I came home, I ran it through Google image search and found this. Yes! It's the same image, and much prettier in color, posted by an apparently Korean artist using the name Kim Sanho. The same artist has an Instagram here.

(Wikipedia has an article about a South Korean comic book artist by that same name, but he's 85 years old and his style seems much more old-school, so I don't think this is his -- perhaps it's by an admirer who has adopted his name as a tribute?)

From what I can gather, the characters are from a story called Rain and Yuyeong, or Yoo-young, and the image was drawn to commemorate an award won by a project called Local Private Life 99 (or sometimes Local Privacy 99). This appears to be a series of comic books by various artists, each based on a particular Korean city. On this web page, one of the books -- focusing on the city of Busan -- is described:

So that seems to be our story, but interesting that the writer is here called Coral. The image itself is signed Sanho. Who knows what the artist's real name is! Apparently the sticker shows the characters after they've met and the mermaid is past her paper-bag crisis.

Anyway, that's probably way more than you wanted to know, but funny how a tiny sticker on a lamppost in South Hampstead led me down that rabbit hole of Korean comic books and graphic novels.

(Top photo: A fallen rose petal on one of next year's teasels, in our garden.)

Hackney

You might recall that another of my goals for the weekend was to get out of the house. After spending all of Saturday on various household tasks, I decided to go yesterday on a photo outing to Hackney, in east London. The weather was beautiful and rather than spend time underground on the tube, I also decided to do all my traveling by bus. That way I got to enjoy the scenery (?) between here and there. Or at least the daylight.

I took a bus down to Baker Street, and then another bus from there to Hackney. (I could have ridden that bus all the way to Hackney Wick, which is even farther east, but I'll save that for another day.)

I got off the bus near Balls Pond Road and walked south past the majestic Empire theater and the town hall.

The cynical among us might see this sticker and think, "Don't we always?"

I headed toward London Fields, a large green park where people were out sunbathing, romping with dogs or climbing on sculptures (top photo). Granted, that particular sculpture -- a pair of flower sellers -- includes benches, so it's meant to be climbed or at least sat upon. I photographed it before, way back in 2012, and I'd completely forgotten about it, so it was fun to revisit it.

These guys were having a game of cricket, looking very official in their whites.

I walked down Broadway Market, where there was lots of lively street activity. I bought a falafel wrap for lunch and took it back to London Fields to eat near the flower sellers sculpture, and then popped into a neighborhood bookshop. I was happy to find "Smiling in Slow Motion," the second volume of Derek Jarman's diaries, there. You may remember I bought and read the first, "Modern Nature," several years ago and loved it. (It inspired me to visit his cottage at Dungeness.)

I made my way down to Hackney Road, where I passed this shop. It's not very remarkable now, but 13 years ago I took one of my favorite shopfront photos here. It had more character then. (The whole area has gentrified tremendously, but there's still plenty of graffiti.)

I gradually headed eastward and then north again along Kingsland Road, back up to Balls Pond Road where I caught the bus back home. I didn't get any reading done yesterday, so alas, I did not finish Barbra -- my one unaccomplished weekend goal. Perhaps today.

A Carnival of Dust

This seed pod of the colorfully named "stinking iris" looks like it's grinning at me with orange teeth. I usually try to cut down these pods to prevent the iris from spreading -- it can be a bit thuggish -- but I left this one. It's growing in an area of the garden where not much else grows, so frankly, if we get a few more iris there it wouldn't be a bad thing.

I got a lot done yesterday. I vacuumed, watered all the plants, did laundry, changed our bedsheets and read another 80 or so pages of Barbra. I also downloaded a few more of her songs from iTunes. Back in the mid-'80s I went to Peaches Records and Tapes in the University Collection shopping center in Tampa, and bought an album of hers called "Emotion." Barbra does not look upon it fondly -- in her book she called it a "hodgepodge" that she barely remembers making, mainly to fulfill a contract. She's on the cover wearing a pink off-the-shoulder "Flashdance"-style sweater. I listened to some of it again on iTunes and it is indeed pretty terrible -- very synth-pop. But I remembered liking three songs: "Clear Sailing," "Here We Are At Last" and the somewhat overwrought "Left In the Dark Again." So, for nostalgic purposes, I downloaded those and played them while doing my chores.

How about some dramatic before-and-after cleaning pictures?

In our bedroom, we have two IKEA-style white armoires. They were here when we moved into this flat ten years ago, and they're the closest thing we have to bedroom closets. I had never tried to move them and I've often thought it must be pretty dusty under there.

Yesterday I muscled them away from the wall and as you can see, I was not wrong.

But after vacuuming and cleaning the floor, as well as taking out that unused coil of ancient coaxial cable, I was left with this:

I totally forgot there was an electrical outlet back there. If I ever knew it.

Anyway, I did this with both armoires and they were easier to move than I expected. So maybe I won't let this job go for another ten years. I had fantasies of finding all sorts of things behind or under them -- missing clothes? Money? But all I found was a clothespin. Sad trombone.

Finally, I mowed the lawn, including tying up the leaves of all the remaining teasels so I could mow more carefully around them. I found this hardy little cyclamen blooming in one of our flower beds. We planted those things not long after moving in, and every year one or two still come up. (The squirrels ate many of them.)

I also took out an old, dying lavender bush. It was actually sort of an accident -- I was cutting the dead part out but accidentally cut the live part too. Oh well. It really was dying.

Dave and I are watching "The Perfect Couple" on Netflix. It's entertaining, but Nicole Kidman's character speaks with the strangest accent. It's not Australian, it's not English, it's not mid-Atlantic theatrical, and it's not patrician New England. (The show takes place on Nantucket.) It sounds like nothing I've ever heard. I hope it gets explained at some point.

Mermaid

This peculiar little sticker is stuck to a light pole that I pass on my walks home from work. It's a tiny thing and very hard to photograph, but it seems to show a girl in a pleated skirt walking up to a mermaid with a very long tail. Maybe it's a scene from a comic or cartoon that I'm not familiar with. I want to try to get a better picture, maybe when I'm carrying my big camera and not just my phone.

I have a boatload of things to do this weekend, most of them small tasks like laundry and mowing the lawn. But I'd also like to get out of the house, and I am determined to finish Barbra's autobiography. I think I have about 150 pages left. I'm up to her relationship with the Clintons and her political views, which unsurprisingly seem very much in line with my own. I've teased her about privilege in past posts, but she is very generous philanthropically and very sensible politically, and I love her for that.

And yet, yesterday I read another of her stories that amused me, about her relationship with the Warner Brothers studio and its chief executive, Steve Ross. Warners, she said, "once rescued me from the vacation in hell."

Jon and I, with our kids, along with friends and their kids, had rented houseboats on Lake Powell. And then everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong. Our friends' boat broke down, so suddenly we had eleven people on ours, with only one tiny bathroom. And then the rains came, and the water got rough. Winds were rocking the boat, and bats were swooping down at night. All I could think of was rabies, because Robert Redford had been bitten by a bat on Lake Powell just before we started filming "The Way We Were," and had to undergo weeks of painful injections in his stomach. Just the thought of those shots made me feel sick. And then Jon drove the boat into a sandbar. That was it. I called Warners and said, "Get me out of here!"

And by golly, Warners sent a company plane and retrieved Barbra from her dismal vacation. It's kind of like very fancy travel insurance, I guess.

Workplace Philosophy

I love it when the hydrangeas get old and dappled like this in the autumn. You can see on the right that the purple asters are blooming too. We don't seem to have as many of them as usual -- maybe I was too thorough in my garden-clearing last year.

I realize I must have sounded ridiculously entitled in yesterday's post, complaining about feeling pressure to not read blogs at work. I should make clear that no one has told me not to do that, so this is mostly my own assumption (guilt?), but we are going through some changes in our department that make me think it would be frowned upon. And of course I understand why that is. They're not paying me for blog-reading, obviously.

But here's the thing: My job is almost entirely focused on helping kids when they come into the library. If I have no kids at any given moment, and I've done the background tasks that are also part of my duties (re-shelving, book displays, contacting people with overdue books, that kind of thing) then I literally have nothing to do. I've always felt that if I get the job done, and done well, then reading on the side shouldn't be frowned upon. It's pretty much my only option for killing time, unless I'm just staring into space. There's only so much shelf-neatening a person can stand.

I certainly don't want to be given some unnecessary task so that I can spin on a hamster wheel to look busy. I've been fortunate enough all my adult life to have jobs that allow me to hold this philosophy, but I've certainly heard stories about workplaces that time bathroom breaks and that kind of thing. So I know it's not everyone's experience.

(Also, in my defense, I usually only take about 20 minutes of my lunch hour, so I figure that other 40 minutes goes into my down-time over the course of the rest of the day -- though, granted, I don't measure or track that time in any official way.)
 
So do I sound like an entitled, spoiled, self-justifying jerk? Maybe. But that's how I think about work.

Maybe instead it's time to think about retirement! Hmmmm...

Flickr just billed me for renewing my mom's account -- £111 for two years. I maintain this account because years ago we scanned and uploaded a bunch of family photos there, like the one above of me, my mom and my brother swimming in the lake behind our childhood home in Florida. Of course my mom is no longer alive and I've downloaded all the pictures onto my computer, but somehow I can't bring myself to close or delete the account. (The online pictures are all set to private so only I can see them.) I suppose I should, though. That's a lot of money for a redundant family archive. (And it's non-refundable, so at this point I have the account for two more years, no matter what.)

Finally, I belatedly realized I've already shown you a video of this, but I made another one last night so you're seeing it again. This is Olga wiping her face on the outside shrubbery after she eats in the evening. This is her daily routine, followed without fail. It always amuses me. (And if we don't let her do it she wipes her face on the couch!)