A Stick Figure on the Stairs

I knew that beautiful weekend weather was too good to be true. We're headed for another cold snap, this one bringing near-freezing temperatures over the weekend. I know it's not as brutal as the cold many people are still facing elsewhere in the world but for me, in mid-March, that seems cold.

Dave is off to Belgium today for a four-day trip with his music students. They'll be performing in several locations on their annual "music tour" before coming back on Friday. So it will be just me and Olga this week holding down the fort. I'll probably be eating peanut butter and baked beans again.

(I really could cook, if I wanted to, but when it's just me I lack the motivation. OK, even when it's not just me, I lack the motivation.)

We're also due for a quiet week in the library because all the high school students are traveling -- if not for music tour then for what's called "Alternatives," which involves international travel with some sort of educational or adventure element. (Nearly all travel is educational, I suppose.) My boss, for example, is off to Spain with a group of kids and some other teachers. I am looking forward to some quiet time, though the middle schoolers are still around so it won't be completely quiet.

Here's a curious drawing I found in a returned book. What on earth could it mean? Any guesses? I see symbols for female, male and both genders combined, as well as flying birds with arrows, a person falling down the stairs and what looks like an angry ghost. I am truly perplexed. I even tried uploading it to Google image search, thinking it was perhaps some kind of psychological model -- an illustration of gender transitioning, or of how people adapt to change in general -- but that just produced a lot of unrelated drawings of stick figures. It definitely looks metaphorical, doesn't it?

When I uploaded the ghost by itself, Google AI told me confidently, "it is a sketch from Henry David Thoreau's journal."

Ummmm...no.

(Photo: Blossoms on our ornamental plum tree.)

An Early Bee

Another beautiful sunny day yesterday. I went out in the garden to take some photos, and as I was focused on our blue lungwort -- always one of the first plants to bloom -- a bee flew into the frame.

It was only there for a moment. I'm not sure it's the first bee I've seen this season, but it's definitely one of the first.

I spent most of the morning reading, and then walked Olga on the high street after lunch.

As you can see, everyone was out and about. (Olga was licking her chops, maybe wondering how she could get a table in that cafe.)

Later, I got a pleasant surprise when I looked at my credit card bill and found that my charge for using the toll roads in Florida was only $23. When I rented our car during February break, I thought the car-rental agent said I'd pay all tolls plus an $8 surcharge PER TOLL. But maybe I misunderstood, because I went through about six toll stations on the Suncoast Parkway while driving from Tallahassee to Tampa and I fully expected to be billed about $60. Maybe it was just a one-time $8 charge plus the tolls. Assuming no more charges appear, I came away from that better than I thought I would.

Dave pruned the hydrangeas in the garden and spent part of his evening watching silly YouTube videos. He has a level of patience for that kind of thing that I do not. I can handle one or two dog or cat videos but I don't want to see 20 of them. I am not much of a "scroller" in general. Dave, however, will sit entranced in his chair for hours, even while we're supposedly watching something on TV, and every once in a while exclaim something like, "Awwww, this meerkat has a sweater!"

Mulch

This was my project yesterday -- mulching the garden. We've never spread mulch in the whole time we've been here, but after having that ivy cleared we were left with large expanses of bare dirt. For years we've also had a problem with black spot fungus on the roses, which apparently happens when the fungus overwinters on leaves and other debris scattered at the base of a rose bush. I'm hoping that by removing all those leaves and spreading mulch, the fungus will less effectively spread.

So I ordered ten 100-liter bags of bark mulch from Wickes, and let me tell you, that's a lot of mulch. Two guys delivered it yesterday morning, leaving it at the side of the house just inside the garden gate, and I fully intended to spread it gradually over the next week or two. But I hoisted one bag into the garden and opened it up just to see how easily it would spread and how much ground it would cover, and once I did that one it seemed like I should do the next one, and so on.

Pretty soon a couple of hours had elapsed and I'd spread eight bags full.

First I did the area under the hideous camellia, which had been full of ivy, taking care not to cover the corms of the irises that will come up and bloom in May.

Then I figured, what the heck, I'm already filthy, I may as well do the center flowerbed too. This is a little trickier because we have some plants that haven't come up yet and I had to try to remember where they are.

I only spread the mulch about an inch thick, so water can still get to the roots of the plants when it rains. I know that won't entirely stop weeds -- especially ivy -- but it should be discouraging, at least. And it smells so good! Kind of piney, or maybe a bit like turpentine. It's conifer bark chips (old Christmas trees?) so that makes sense.

By the end I was exhausted and sore and I have no idea what I'll do with the remaining two bags of mulch. Maybe just wait and see what areas need more. Or I could mulch the south side of the garden, under the walnut tree and the big hydrangea.

Another spring project more or less done!

Last night, as I was reading the NYT, Dave and I were talking about the news and I saw that Gwen McCrae had died. Dave didn't know who she was, and I said, "Oh, come on, you don't know 'Rockin' Chair'? You'd know it if you heard it." I played him this fabulous '70s video, which is so bizarrely produced that you just can't look away. Spinning color wheels, a dancing shirtless mime in green overalls -- what's not to like?!

Apparently McCrae was from Miami, part of the same music scene that produced KC and the Sunshine Band. I knew "Rockin' Chair" because I somehow had a 45-rpm single of it when I was a kid. Where I got it I have no idea. I'm sure I didn't buy it. The song is pretty obviously about sex, but as a young person I only ever pictured a chair!

Second Sun

On my walk home yesterday evening I found my usual quotient of beheaded daffodils on the sidewalk. It's an annual ritual -- someone will pick or mangle some daffodils and leave behind the remains, which I will collect and take home and try to salvage as a bouquet. So here's yesterday's haul, displayed on the kitchen windowsill. No flower left behind!

Yesterday we cleaned up all the DEAR paraphernalia and activities in the library. I can't remember if I already mentioned this or not, but one of the activities we developed involved me shredding several old books, putting the shredded pages in a big glass jar and having the kids guess the number of books and their titles. Despite my visceral dislike of tearing apart books, I found some old demolished paperbacks of popular kids' books and did the deed. I kept the covers so I would know which books I used and how many there were.

As we cleaned up yesterday, we read the kids' guesses to determine the winner. One girl matched the number exactly and got five of the six titles, so she emerged victorious. Even I misremembered how many books I'd used, so it's a good thing I kept those covers.

Otherwise it was a relatively uneventful day, but busy as usual -- so busy that I am once again behind in blogland but I will endeavor to catch up this weekend.

A house two doors down from us recently went through some renovations, and now there's a very bright security light in the garden -- so bright that when I got up at 5 a.m. to let the dog out, I noticed it bouncing off the buildings behind. Whoever lives in those apartments can't be too happy about the glare.

Here's how it looks over our fence and our next-door neighbor's dark garden. I hope this light is a temporary thing and not something that stays on all the time. It'll kill every moth for miles, not to mention annoying the rest of us. At least we can't see it from our bedroom, but I bet our neighbor can.

Oh, DEAR

Yesterday was super-busy in the library. It was World Book Day, and we had our annual "Drop Everything and Read" (DEAR) promotion. Students, staff and faculty were encouraged (but not required) to set aside their usual work for an hour in the afternoon and read for pleasure. No screens -- we're talking printed books, newspapers or magazines.

It's a great idea, but of course for me it's never very relaxing, because there are always a hundred kids who don't have anything to read and who wait until the last minute to come to the library and check something out. So the first part of my DEAR hour is consumed by checking out books. Also, we have research classes going on in the library at this time of year, and those teachers almost always opt out of DEAR. So, ironically, the library is about the least peaceful place in the entire building!

I did get some reading done, starting my next book, which is about Q-Anon and its effects on the American family. I bought it several months ago after hearing the author on the Q-Anon Anonymous (or QAA) podcast. She describes the ways in which previously sensible people slip down the Internet rabbit hole of Q-Anon and are pretty soon alienating spouses and children and everyone close to them with their insane beliefs and conspiracies. They're very personal stories and quite compelling.

Many of these people began getting into Q-Anon even before the pandemic, but the isolation of lockdowns and the government's advocacy of vaccines seems to have really poured gasoline on the whole Q-Anon and Internet conspiracy movement. You know, I don't think I fully appreciated at the time how damaging pandemic lockdowns were for people psychologically. I don't recall having a problem at all -- if anything, I appreciated more time in the garden. But I didn't have family nearby that I was unable to visit, and I wasn't trying to keep a business afloat or dealing with depression or grief or many of the other issues that confronted people head-on during that period.

Anyway, it's a very interesting book.

I think I may once again have induced root-rot in one of my Christmas cacti. I have one that looks a little peaked and I think that's what's going on -- which annoys me to no end because I know not to overwater and I've managed to do it twice now. It's the salmon-colored one that is struggling. I'll give it a little more time to sort itself out. Maybe now that spring is arriving and there's more sun it will come around. I only water them weekly but even with good drainage I suppose that might be too much during the winter.

Graffiti seems to be my pictorial theme today, so here's a photo of Olga nosing into the frame while I'm trying to photograph some graffiti on a utility box. Graffiti may be unsightly but I am intrigued by the handstyles of some writers -- it's a bit like admiring someone's penmanship. Olga's expression brings to mind the word "hangdog."

Polyanthus

The Polyanthus that I bought five years ago, just as our first big Covid lockdowns were beginning, is back again and blooming. It's a very persistent plant! Every year it dwindles away during summer and I think it's going to die, and then the next spring it bounces back. Not bad for a plant that I bought only to save it from withering away in a closed garden center. It has even lived longer than the Homebase store where I bought it, which has since been closed and torn down.

Olga had an upset stomach last night. We ran out of Dentastix for a brief period last week, and Dave bought some replacement treats that are made of dried chicken wrapped around a stick of rawhide. Olga loves them but I suspect she's having trouble digesting the rawhide. She's under the blankets this morning, not showing much enthusiasm. Guess we won't be giving her those treats anymore. Maybe I should cancel her walk today.

Dave is making plans to go to Michigan for Spring Break, to help his sister sort out their parents' house and its contents. The house will be sold, along with some of the contents, while other stuff will be trucked down to their new assisted-living apartment in Florida. He bought his airline ticket last night and it cost a fortune, I guess because it's Easter week and schools are out. I'm staying home with the pooch.

Speaking of which, my iPhone spontaneously made another fun video from my pictures of Olga. It's a little freaky that the phone does this by itself. Every few months I get a notification of a new "memories" video, and this is the kind of thing that appears, complete with musical accompaniment! They are fun to watch, though.

(Late edit: The video was blocked by YouTube because of a copyright claim on the music. Why my phone would use copyrighted music, and where it came from (because it's not from my iTunes), is a mystery to me. I replaced the music with the first tune of appropriate length -- something called "Fluffing a Duck" by Kevin McLeod -- that I could find in the YouTube Creative Commons music library. As soon as the video is done editing it should be viewable. What a pain!)

Lasagna Landslide

Our crocuses are coming up and looking beautiful, briefly, before the squirrels get to them and nibble the flowers apart. Often this is what I see when I check out the bulbs -- this or worse. Soon after I took this photo something tore apart the rest of these flowers, leaving petals like purple confetti strewn on the ground.

Here's another one, pre-squirrel, that has since been demolished.

Ah, nature.

I must admit I have not seen the squirrels in action, so I suppose the culprit could be birds. Pigeons, maybe?

As long as I have a photo of the flowers I feel they've been appreciated.

I've mentioned a couple of times that houses on our street seem to be perpetually under renovation. Here's the situation down the road at the moment -- two gigantic scaffolding "sheds" constructed over houses on either side of one in the middle, still untouched. The one in the middle is the bathing beauty's house. It must be a drag to have all that construction happening on either side. And I thought I had it bad with the Russians!

Dave and I had a dramatic mishap last night at dinner. I was sitting on the couch watching TV, and Dave brought out two plates of lasagna from the kitchen. He handed me one on a potholder, and said, "Careful, it's hot." I took the plate but my thumb touched the china, which was indeed blisteringly hot -- straight out of the oven. I jerked my thumb back which caused the whole plate to come tumbling down onto me and the couch. Olga immediately leapt to attention, seeing an opportunity, but we held her back while I scooped up what I could and then got in the shower. Dave cleaned the rest of it up.

Fortunately, I didn't get burned, except for my thumb and that was minor.  And fortunately, we have a dark-colored couch that is near the end of its long lifespan, and which somehow shows no visible evidence of this episode.

Dave got me a fresh piece of lasagna, which I asked him to put in the microwave, which makes the plate much less hot than the conventional oven. (He prefers the oven because he says the microwave makes things soggy.) Last night as we went to bed I apologized for throwing his lasagna on the couch, and he apologized for dumping it on me. This is how marriages work, right?!

The Red Pest and a Wheel-Skater

I mentioned antique shopping a couple of times on my recent trip to Florida, and in addition to a stack of old photos I also bought some old postcards. (Well, to be completely accurate, Mary Moon's daughter Jessie bought a few of them for me.) They always make a good blog post!

Above, mailed Aug. 20, 1936 from Jacksonville:
"Dear Mary Jane -- This is the same red pest. I sure miss camp, do you? Please write me & tell me about your trip. I'm sure I would enjoy it. -- Betty Jean"

The card depicts the flame vine, Bignonia venusta, presumably what Betty Jean is calling a "red pest." At the time, Mary Jane lived in this house in Miami, where the card was sent. Google Street View shows vines on the landscaping even just a few years ago, right before the house was torn down. Could it be the red pest?!

Mailed from Sarasota to West Reading, Pa., June 29, 1967:
"Dear Neighbor -- Summer is here and I don't like it. Have purchased an air conditioner so I have some relief but I prefer fresh air. We have had much rain but not for the last week so things are dry again. I water your tree orchid and vine when I do mine. Have a wonderful summer. I am going to Connecticut in September. Best wishes -- Edith Bartlett"

This unmailed card, from the Sea Breeze Motel in Miami Beach, promises "tastefully decorated bedrooms and efficiencies" with air conditioning, free TV and a telephone in every room -- not to mention the "spacious all-grass patio." (Can a patio be grass? Wouldn't that make it a lawn?)

From what I can tell online, the Sea Breeze appears to have been torn down.

Mailed from Fort Lauderdale to Minneapolis, March 22, 1967:
"Hi -- Down in beautiful, wonderful Florida. Arrived last Wednesday and rented the same apartment on the inter-coastal that we had 4 years ago when the Reicherts were with us. The weather is warm, although we have had a couple of cool days the first few days we were here. Driving to Marathon, Fla., 150 miles south of here, tomorrow to meet friends from back home who are wintering there. Hope we can see you when we get home. We'll be back on the 3rd or 4th of April. -- Helen & Cliff"

According to the card's slightly hyperbolic caption, "The constantly changing flower displays attract thousands to the beautiful gardens at Patrick Murphy's Candlelight Restaurant at Bahia Mar, Fort Lauderdale."

This never-used card depicts "the Sun Lounge -- delightful, patio-like club car on Seaboard Railroad's Silver Meteor, between New York and Florida." Oh, for the days when people dressed up to travel. That woman at lower right looks like she's not thrilled with that book. She can't quite hold it open.

This one wasn't mailed either, and looks like someone's personal photo that was made into a postcard during processing. There's a handwritten note on the back:
"A bunch of 20 grapefruit on one stem from a grove near here. The man holding the two, one in each hand, is the father of V. M. Franks, the world-famous trick skater. We saw him one night at Keith's skating on a single bicycle wheel on each foot."

I can't find anything online about V. M. Franks, and I can't quite picture the bicycle wheel thing, so that will remain forever a mystery. But at least we have visuals of the grapefruit!

Daffodils and a Senior Dog

As the almost-springtime sun gets steadily brighter, it has given us another blooming cactus -- the Rhipsalis, or bird's-foot cactus, on the front windowsill. This plant is an offspring (via a cutting) of a plant given to me by my babysitter/surrogate grandmother, Mrs. Kirkland, back in the '70s. I've had it most of my life. Hard to believe! It just sits in the front window and except for a weekly watering I mostly ignore it, which is probably what makes it happy.

Our other blooming cactus has put out a second flower.

It's such a joy to watch the sun get brighter. We've had a really good weekend of sunny days, albeit a little cold. Yesterday morning Olga really wanted to sit out in the garden, but as usual she wanted me to sit with her -- so we did a complicated dance whereby I'd let her out, but she'd stare at me through the glass door until I let her in again, then she'd stand at the door asking to go out, etc. This only ended when I brought her dog bed and a chair and sat next to her in the sun with my New Yorker, which meant I needed a sweatshirt, hat and jacket because it was about 48º F (or 10º C). 

In the afternoon I walked her up to Fortune Green so we could check out the daffodils. Olga was a bit hesitant to walk that far but in the end she made it just fine and even chased her tennis ball. (Well, sort of.)

We paid the price last night, though, when despite her usual half-paracetamol with dinner she had trouble getting comfortable in bed. She woke us up twice scratching around and asking to go outside (which is what she does when she can't relax). Her achy bones demanded a second half-paracetamol, after which she finally settled down.

Otherwise, what did I do yesterday? I watered some plants, I cleaned the house. I finished another New Yorker. Normal stuff.

Citrus and Research

Remember when I said the blooms on our mandarin orange tree never fully open? Well, never mind. The tree is now covered with lots of lightly-scented white flowers. It's still indoors, and maybe the flowers last better inside rather than out. Just a guess. We'll see if this brings us any fruit!

I worked in the garden all morning yesterday, neatening things up after the gardeners' visit during the week. It may seem silly that I needed to do anything at all, but there were some jobs I didn't ask them to tackle (like deadheading all the hydrangeas) and others that needed some minor tweaks.

For example, we have a large Hebe bush in the back garden and although they cleared the ivy all around it, they didn't clear under the bush. So I wanted to neaten that up. I trimmed the frost-nipped leaves off the banana, cut down the tall grasses to prepare them for a new year of growth, cut down the last of the teasels, trimmed some of the ferns, stuff like that.

Altogether I filled three yard waste bags, and I think now we're going to order some mulch to help keep weeds down where the ivy has been cleared. (Since the gardeners removed all my carefully preserved fallen leaves -- argh!)

While I did all this, the lady of the house lay in the sunshine nearby for some strenuous napping. I love seeing her enjoying her sunbathing for another year. It wasn't particularly warm (48º F or 9º C) but the sun was bright and I didn't feel cold at all -- and apparently neither did she.

I also did three loads of laundry -- still catching up after Florida -- and caught up in blogland. I particularly enjoyed the vigorous debate at John Gray's blog about Trump and Zelenskyy. (And is it Zelenskyy or Zelensky? Different sources spell it different ways. Remember how, in the '80s, no one could decide how to spell Muammar Gadaffi's name using a Western alphabet? A problem that evidently persists even now.)

I find it so interesting that Trump supporters often say "don't trust the media" and "do your own research." What constitutes research in their minds? I doubt they're reading through primary source documents or interviewing participants in world events. They're simply reading alternative media, or more likely spreading it via shares on Facebook and Twitter. That's not research.

Some high-profile scandals and missteps over the years have given people reason to mistrust the media, but professional news organizations -- especially those that attempt some degree of objectivity -- are still the best sources of fact-based information out there. A lot of professionally trained people have a hand in news presented via The New York Times or The Guardian or the Times of London or the BBC or CNN, whereas something posted on Facebook or a 4Chan message board may come from just one person with no editor and no real idea what they're talking about. I know that sounds like a very old-fashioned perspective -- particularly regarding objectivity, a word we seldom hear these days -- but having toiled in this field myself for many years I understand the industry and I can tell you reporters and editors at reputable news sources, for the most part, are trying their best to tell it like it is. I'll trust them any day over a possibly doctored video or some snippet of "fact" floating around online.

I do think there's value in reading a variety of professional news sources, which is why I read some on the right (and even the far right) as well as the left. Different perspectives can be helpful. But you've got to consider your source, and again, I wouldn't call that "research." It's just more media from another viewpoint.

Last night Dave and I watched "The Substance," the movie for which Demi Moore is nominated for an Oscar. It's a sort of dystopian horror film about a mysterious medical treatment that can restore youthful beauty, but at a terrible cost. There's quite a bit of blood but it was riveting and we both enjoyed it. It questions society's expectations about appearance, particularly for women, and takes the consequences to an absurd level. Some of those scenes are going to live in my mind for quite a while, for better or worse!

Double Booked

I'm getting a late start blogging this morning, having slept in a bit. Olga and Dave are still snoring away. Ah, Saturday!

I had a busy day yesterday, first at work and then having double-booked myself for social events in the evening. I told the LGBTQ+ Affinity Group at work (yes, we still have one of those, as Trump's tentacles have not reached us here) that I would go with them to a museum exhibit, and Dave told a co-worker that we would have dinner with her and her husband. To be fair, he checked with me first and I said yes -- I forgot about the museum thing.

The exhibit access was for 4:30 p.m. and our dinner was at 5:30 (early!) but nonetheless I managed to do both. I had to leave the exhibit early; I'll probably go back and finish it another time.

Here's a shot from the show, at the Tate Modern, which focuses on queer performance artist Leigh Bowery. I'd never heard of Bowery before, but it was a fascinating show about how he arose as a sort of "club kid" on London's nightclub scene in the early 1980s and eventually grew into an artist who explored the boundaries of clothing and body image. Above are some of his clothes from the early and mid-'80s, which he designed himself, against Star Trek wallpaper (!) identical to some used on the walls of his flat and documented in a film from that time.

I only made it through three rooms of the exhibit before I had to take off and catch the tube to Marylebone to meet Dave. We had dinner at Fischer's, a Viennese restaurant; I had pork sausages and Dave had schnitzel. We enjoyed the food.

It was during dinner that Dave, scrolling his phone, turned to me and asked if I'd heard about Trump and Zelenskyy's meeting at the White House. He told us how Trump and Vance had scolded Zelenskyy in front of the press corps, and their peace proposal had fallen apart. It was immediately clear to me that the whole thing was a setup from the start, meant to humiliate Zelenskyy and pressure him to accede to Russia's demands. Trump is working on behalf of Putin.

(Tom Friedman, in a column about the meeting, called it an "obviously planned ambush" and pointed out that it is unprecedented for a U.S. president to side "with the aggressor, the dictator and the invader against the democrat, the freedom fighter and the invaded.")

So I managed to survive my double-booked evening, but not without some degree of stomach upset. Once again, who have we become as a country? What does the USA stand for?

(Top: Marylebone at sunset, on my way to Fischer's.)