Another Snapdragon and a Theory

Remember the yellow snapdragon that re-seeded itself in a crack on our front porch? The one the Russians pulled out just before they moved? Well, I just discovered that we have a second, larger one growing in a crack in the brick wall beneath our front steps. Hurray! It's a sort of "nature's revenge" against the hyper-neatness of the Russians. If it sets seed, I'll collect some of them and try to keep them going next year.

Yesterday was slightly better, emotionally. I'm still prone to fits of spontaneous weeping but they are fewer and farther between. It helped that Dave and I got out of the house and went down to Borough Market for lunch. We didn't even eat at the market itself -- we stopped at a nearby pub -- but just being somewhere else felt better. I spent a lot of time in this flat last week, staying with the dog, and I'm a bit stir-crazy as a result. I just want to get out. Fortunately we have a somewhat busy week coming and we've planned a quick trip for the following week, which will help.

Our orange dahlia

I've developed a theory about what happened to Olga. (If you'd rather not investigate the medical aspects of her decline, you can skip the next five paragraphs! I won't be offended!)

You may remember that when we got back from Pevensey Bay, we took her to the vet because of her dizzy spells and her unsteadiness. The vet said she was in good overall health for her age and prescribed a vasodilating drug, Vitofyllin, to increase blood flow to her brain, hopefully improving her energy levels and reducing dizziness. I specifically asked whether this drug had side effects and was told no.

But almost immediately, her health really began to slide. We noticed she would sometimes sort of collapse rather than lie down, and she lost all desire to walk. (The day of that vet visit, we went for a walk along the high street, pretty much the last walk she ever wanted.) Her breathing became more erratic and labored. She mostly just slept. Her appetite, already reduced, basically vanished and when she did manage to eat she sometimes vomited.

I am obviously not a veterinarian, but I think the Vitofyllin, by relaxing her blood vessels, gave her abnormally low blood pressure. Hypotension and vomiting are listed as symptoms of Vitofyllin overdose, and although she was dosed correctly, she was at the low end of the weight range for the size of tablets she was given. That would explain the sudden onset of many of those problems, which Dave and I took to be a sign of further overall decline.

I sort of panicked when I was by myself with her and she could no longer walk and had trouble keeping food down, but if I had it to do over again, I'd have stopped the Vitofyllin and watched for any improvement. (Which, in my opinion, the vet should have suggested when we visited the second time.) She would still have had all the problems that pre-dated the drug -- the masses in or near her lungs, the coughing, the vestibular dizziness, the reduced appetite. But I suspect her sudden decline of the past two weeks may have leveled out, and she may have lived at least a short while longer.

Weirdly, this theory doesn't upset me too much. If anything, it helps me understand what happened. I wish I'd made the call differently, but it all happened so fast and I was by myself and the vet was astonishingly vague about everything.

I'll leave you on a happier note. These are photos I rediscovered a few days ago showing me in 1981, age 14 or so, with our English bulldog Meatball. Check out those groovy shades! (At the time my stepmother was a distributor for Foster Grant, a brand of sunglasses, so we had lots of samples lying around.)

Meatball had evidently just had one of her litters of puppies -- or maybe she was pregnant. As you can see she was definitely lactating!

Anyway, funny pictures -- a blast from the past.

The Woods Are Still There

Oh, me.

Most of you already know this -- you've said it in comments -- but losing a pet is hard. I have been through this before and yet I'm still surprised how hard it is. As I've told several people, I didn't cry this much when my parents died. I loved my parents, but there's something about animals -- their complete devotion, their dependence on us and our decisions, their lack of emotional baggage. We project so much onto them, and when they vanish it leaves a vast empty chasm in our lives and our hearts.

Dave got home yesterday morning, and that has been a huge balm for me, having him here to hug. It helps to talk to him and share my periodic bouts of tearfulness. It's been so long, I wasn't sure I could still feel grief like this. The physical sensations are almost like a panic attack -- pressure in the chest, a gasping feeling of airlessness, a sudden rush of tears at a particular sight or sound or thought. Dave is much more reasonable and sensible than I am, as it turns out. I keep thinking, "What if we had done X differently?" "What if we hadn't given her this drug, or had given her that one?" But Dave doesn't second-guess and doesn't seem prone to these crushing tidal waves of emotion.

By the way, I've got to thank all of you who have commented here. You've done me a world of good, and it's been amazing to see that Olga had dedicated fans all around the world -- including many people I've never seen comment before. I appreciate all of you helping me over this hurdle.

You're going to think I'm a glutton for punishment, but I took a long walk on Hampstead Heath yesterday -- specifically the West Heath, Sandy Heath and the Extension. These are areas I used to walk regularly with Olga. She wasn't able to go that far in recent years, so it's been a while -- I think April 2023 is the last time we went to Sandy Heath, and November 2023 to the West Heath, and even longer to the Extension (though she went there every day in a van with her dog walker).

It was comforting to be back in the woods, to see that it's all still there -- even the little pool of water in the roots of the Lulu Trees where Olga would always stop and have a drink. There weren't many people out because it rained pretty heavily all morning, but I did see other humans with their dogs and that was comforting too. It gave me a sense of permanence -- a reminder that despite our personal traumas and transience, there will always be wonderful dogs out there, having wonderful experiences with their people.

Despite that, toward the end of my walk, I realized that all the photos I'd taken of the familiar Heath landscapes were utterly empty. I was photographing absence.

This, for example, is the same vantage point where I photographed the foggy winter scene of Olga watching for squirrels that I posted yesterday. It looks so different with leaves -- and without dog.

I did sleep last night, which was a relief (after sleeping just three hours on Friday). Still, going to bed, I missed hearing Olga's toenails clicking down the hallway and the soft bonk of her head against the door, nosing it open to join me.

Olga, 2010–2025

Well, yesterday was the day. I tried to wait for Dave to return from Boston but circumstances changed, and he was as convinced as I that we should not delay. I won't go into details, but Olga was visibly uncomfortable and unable to eat. She only nibbled on one of her beloved Dentastix, which she did not finish.

I called the vet and rescheduled her home visit for yesterday evening (I'd originally scheduled it for Sunday). After the quick administration of a sedative, Olga literally went to sleep in the garden, about 7 p.m., lying on the grass. She then got a bigger shot to stop her heart while she was asleep. Dave was with us via video call, watching and listening. We are heartbroken but also happy she was in a beloved place, her nose smelling the grass, the noises of familiar voices, parakeets and squirrels all around her. Within an hour a crematorium collected her.

I thought today I'd post some favorite pictures of Olga through the years. I have thousands of them, but it was surprisingly easy to narrow them down to these -- some of which I have no doubt blogged before. First, above, is Olga in our Notting Hill apartment in February 2013, less than a month after we got her. She was so white!

She was a wild bundle of energy from the very beginning. "Hundred-percent dog," we called her, because she never gave less than full effort and enthusiasm. One of her favorite games was to demolish our mail the minute it was dropped through the mail slot. I'd come home to find shreds of paper carpeting the floor, and Olga leaping up to greet me.

She was pretty much fully grown when we got her, and she was not a small dog, but she was sure she could fit on either of our laps -- as she did on Dave's in the photo above, taken at a cafe in Hyde Park in May 2013.

When we lived in Notting Hill, Olga's normal stomping grounds included Hyde Park and Wormwood Scrubs (above, April 2014). But once we moved to West Hampstead in July 2014, she became a regular denizen of...

...Hampstead Heath. No doubt this is the place most of you will associate with her, as we went there (or to the local cemetery) every weekend, and sometimes twice a weekend. Olga could not get enough of the woods, the ponds, the mud, the squirrels -- she plunged through the undergrowth and ran to her heart's content, carrying her beloved Kong toy (above, December 2015).

In addition to our weekly visits, her dog-walkers, who exercised her on weekdays while Dave and I were at work, took her to the Heath daily. She knew the place like the back of her paw. She even got lost there once, when lightning struck during one of her dog-walker outings and she and another dog ran for their lives -- fortunately someone found them and returned her to us via the information on her microchip. She was only missing an hour or two.

Unfortunately, in recent years, it got to be too much for her to walk all the way to the Heath with me, but until last month she still went with her dog-walkers in a van or occasionally with us via tube. Our last visit together was about a year ago. (Above, on the walk there, June 2016.)

But there was no place like home, and she loved her garden. And her sofa. And her dog bed. (June 2019)

This is my last photo of her -- halfheartedly nibbling that final treat in the garden last night. (The squirrels are ravaging our walnut crop as they do every summer, dropping bits of husk on the grass. They stain Olga's white fur brown. I'm sure the visiting vet wondered why we didn't bathe the dog!)

She had such boundless energy, at least until recently, that this is how I often saw her -- running ahead, scouting out what was around the next bend. She always paused to look back at me, to make sure I was still there. It brings tears to my eyes to think she has finally run ahead to a place where I cannot follow.

Preparing for the End

Here's another hoverfly. We have zillions of them! This one is feasting on our Inula.

Yesterday I took Olga back to the vet for an ultrasound. I really wanted to get an idea of what's happening inside her body. My understanding was that I'd bring her in, the vet would do the scan while I waited and then we'd talk about it -- but no! I wound up having to leave her there for six hours, which I hated to do, and they had to shave a bit of her belly and chest for the scanner to work. This was slightly more veterinary intervention than I wanted at this point in her life, but oh well. She did fine.

Getting her there was once again a struggle. She would not walk. Fortunately, someone abandoned an old wheelbarrow in front of the Kravitz's house. It's been sitting there for about a week, unused, and rather than try to carry the dog I thought, "I'll use that."

I put a plastic garbage bag and an old towel down to give her a more comfy ride. Olga was not thrilled with this adventure but she stayed in the wheelbarrow while I rolled her around the corner.

After dropping her off, I had to keep myself busy. I thought about taking a walk -- I've been pretty much stuck at home for the past week, dealing with the dog -- but I didn't want to be far from the vet in case they called me to come in quickly. So instead I did more cleaning.

I cleaned out our bar cabinet in the living room, where we keep all our wine and cocktail stuff. It had become cluttered with unused glassware and the shelves hadn't been wiped down in years -- I seriously think not since we moved in here, 11 years ago. I wiped the shelves and reorganized the glassware, and took a box of donations to Oxfam.

Finally I went back to get Olga around 4 p.m. The verdict is that although her heart is fine, she has masses in her chest that are interfering with her breathing -- hence the coughing. What these masses are, we don't know. We're not even sure whether they're in the lungs or adjacent. The vet conjectured that they're cancer, but it's hard to say with Olga -- she has lots of lumps and bumps both internal and external. The vets have suggested twice before (years ago) that she may have cancer, and then when we've tested the growths they're benign. We don't see any bleeding or weight loss, which I would think we'd see with a malignancy, but what do I know? And in a way it doesn't really matter. The growths are causing her discomfort and interfering with her life.

The vet gave her some diuretic medication to hopefully help her process some of the extra fluid that has built up in her abdomen, which could then ease her breathing. That's a temporary fix.

I called Dave in Boston and we agreed that euthanasia is probably the best option, within the next couple of days. I'd like to wait for him to get home on Saturday morning, but Olga wouldn't really eat last night, so who knows how quickly things will move. I am in the process of arranging for a vet to come to our house, perhaps Sunday.

The fact is, she is very diminished. It's shocking for me to watch the "vicious fox hunter" video I posted just a week ago, because we don't see that much activity from her now. It's hard to get her to even walk outside. When Dave and I put down Ernie and Ruby, the old boxer dogs we brought with us from the USA, they were ill but even they were more able-bodied than Olga is now. If Dave were home I think we'd move on this immediately.

But then again, I watched Olga last night, dreaming on her bed, her paws twitching. I could tell she was chasing squirrels. Maybe it's OK to give her a few more nights of sweet dreams of her youth.

Beans from Kenya

Here's another dahlia. Overall, my dahlias seem to be having a very slow year. Some of the bushes haven't even bloomed yet, though all of them have buds. I blame the compost mix I used to pot them in the spring. This compost seems of rather dubious quality -- the water runs through it and then it's dry again in about a day.

God, I wish it would rain. A good, long, soaking rain. Heaven! I think my wishes will come true starting on Saturday, if the forecasts are correct.

I gathered more blackberries yesterday morning. I love being able to forage my own food from our garden! Not enough to want to deliberately grow food -- although I admire vegetable gardeners and am always impressed by the crops they manage to produce, I've never been interested in growing my own. (Hey, we have our one tomato plant -- we're doing our part!)

I did notice as I made lunch yesterday that my broccoli from the local grocery store came from Kenya, just like the string beans I made the day before. That seems insane to me. Surely someone in the UK is producing string beans and broccoli at the height of summer. Why on earth are we flying in vegetables from Kenya?

I know, I know, we could go to the local farmer's market, blah blah blah. Except I am not in charge of groceries in this family. I eat what Dave buys.

Miss Olga, aka the Dowager Countess of West Hampstead, sat with me in the garden most of the day. She likes to lie as close to the teasels as possible, even pushing her back against them until the whole plant is quaking. They have little thorns so maybe they're like back-scratchers to her.

I also did some housekeeping, moving the furniture in the living room and giving all the floors a good vacuuming. I found a ticket from the dry cleaners from March, and wondered if we ever picked up the cleaning. I took it by the shop in the afternoon and yes, in fact, we had picked it up. Whew! It would be pretty embarrassing if we'd left clothes at the cleaners for four months and didn't even miss them. I'm pretty sure I'd notice they were gone. We don't have that many clothes.

Last night's movie entertainment was a double feature: "Earthquake," one of my all-time favorite camp disaster movies from the '70s, which I have seen so many times I practically know the script by heart; and "Tony Rome," Frank Sinatra's outing as a Miami detective in the late '60s. Dave won't be sad to miss either of those.

Blackberries

Several of the orchids that I rescued from my neighbor's garden waste bag a couple of years ago are putting out flushes of flowers now. All the plants from that batch have blossoms this color. Not too shabby, right? I'm happy with them!

Also, in a sign that we are definitely in the midst of high summer, our blackberries are out in sufficient quantity that I can pick them for my cereal:

I didn't think we'd get any blackberries to speak of this year, because the gardeners who came to clear our ivy in February decimated our stand of blackberry vines. But no, blackberries are resilient. They're back with gusto.

I spent yesterday morning reading in the garden. I finished "The Flâneur," Edmund White's book about roaming the streets of Paris, which was OK. I found it a little dull, to be honest, and it's hard to make Paris dull. Fortunately it was a short book.

I spent some more time tidying the garden. I noticed our new upstairs neighbor closed his French doors overlooking our patio with part of the window curtain hanging out. I'm not sure the doors were even really closed because this was not a small amount of fabric exposed to the weather. I thought, "The Russians would lose their minds if they could see that!" Fortunately he came home and fixed the problem before we got the barest whisper of rain last night. Overall, we're still dry as a bone.

Last night I watched the movie "Project X," which was a sort of "Risky Business" on steroids -- teenage boy makes bad decisions, winds up hosting a gigantic house party, repercussions ensue. Dave and I watched an episode of the show "Trainwreck" on Netflix that focused on a real-life "Project X"-type incident, and that prompted me to watch the movie, which I'd never seen (or heard of) before. I enjoyed it, but it made me glad I'm not a teenager now. A house party in my day was a much less risky proposition -- more John Hughes and less Grand Theft Auto.

The other day, Catalyst from "Oddball Observations" used my Blogger profile photo in one of his blog posts. It made me take a closer look at my profile pic, which I've pretty much ignored for years. It's a cropped version of the picture above, which was taken on Nov. 3, 2006, when I went to Key West with my friend Sue for my 40th birthday. So, yeah, it's a very old picture. I was much more buff then, even though I look a little like Hugo Weaving in "The Matrix" (but bald and less menacing). I suppose I should update my profile pic to something more current! I'll think about it.

More Patio Cleanup Amid Slow Inevitability

I took this photo on Hampstead Heath the other day. I believe those are red soldier beetles -- so named because British soldiers, aka "redcoats," used to wear that color.

Dave got launched on his journey to Boston yesterday morning. He was conflicted about going, partly because of Olga's health, but he'll be back on Saturday so it's not a long trip. Meanwhile, I am loving having the house to myself. The first thing I did was clean our end tables, so Dave's pile of debris has been temporarily tamed!

Meanwhile I waited for British Gas to come and do our annual gas inspection. The guy was supposed to show up between 8 a.m. and 12 p.m. He finally rolled up at 12:30, pushing the window a bit, but fortunately I was still home -- I had to get the dog to the vet at 2 p.m.

Getting there was a challenge in itself, even though the vet's office is literally around the corner. Olga has no stamina these days. I had to carry her halfway there and halfway back. The vet listened to her heart and said once again that it sounds fine -- she's convinced Olga doesn't have heart failure. Although Olga looks a little rounder to me, the vet said she isn't accumulating fluid. She did witness Olga's coughing, which she prompted by massaging her throat, and prescribed an anti-inflammatory to treat that. She's going to do an ultrasound Thursday, which doesn't require anesthesia and shouldn't stress Olga out, and perhaps that will reveal what's going on.

I also got some information about having a vet come to our home to provide euthanasia. If we have to go that route -- more "when" than "if" -- I'd like Olga to pass on her bed in the garden, where she spent so many sunny hours.

Of course this is a somber situation, but I am surprisingly calm about it. It's a bit like witnessing my mother's final years, albeit on a smaller scale. By the time my mother died, so much of her personality had already vanished in the fog of dementia that her physical death was easier for me to process. Likewise, much of Olga's energy and vitality have already departed. She seems to be fading by the day, and I know it's not something I can stop or prevent. I do, however, need to understand it, for some reason. I need to know what's going on medically.

I continued my cleanup of the patio by dumping this large, underused pot and replanting our tomato and a toadflax in it. The tomato, of course, is an annual so at the end of summer we'll pull it out and then the toadflax will be there for next year. That tomato was in a small pot and needed more room, so this will make it happy.

I also reorganized the patio to give a little more room to our cafe table, and trimmed and weeded some other stuff here and there.

Here's our white hydrangea, growing in a pot in the garden. I found this plant back in 2022 and it was in sad shape, but it has bounced back beautifully.

In the evenings I'm going to watch movies Dave doesn't want to see. Last night was a repeat viewing of "Condominium," a very '70s tale about coastal construction and hurricanes in Florida. It was a popular TV movie but I don't think it was ever remastered for video distribution or streaming. The version I have -- which I bought as a bootleg DVD about 20 years ago -- is a fuzzy transfer from an old videotape of an Australian TV broadcast. The same version is now on YouTube, minus a chunk of the opening credits, which unfortunately deprives YouTubers of most of the groovy disco theme music. (Part 2 has the credits mostly intact.)

Old Dog Blues

This is what happens when you're sitting in the garden after lunch and wondering, "What would it look like to take a photo through the bottom of my water glass?"

As you can see, I clearly did not have enough to do yesterday. I read an entire New Yorker and part of my current book, Edmund White's exploration of Paris called "The Flâneur." But otherwise I mostly just sat with the dog, who seems to be struggling a bit. I am taking her back to the vet today after all, to get her breathing evaluated and perhaps some medicine to help her breathe easier. Even though the vet said last week that her heart is OK, I'm convinced she's slowly developing heart failure -- she's occasionally coughing and breathing heavily, seems to be retaining some fluid, and doesn't want to move around much. I remember with our other old dog, Ruby, that we got some medicine to make the heart pump more strongly and that did her a world of good, so I'm hoping for the same for Olga.

It's astonishing to me now that we walked all the way through the neighborhood housing estate less than a month ago, because now I can barely get her to walk out the front door. I'm hoping I can get her to the vet without having to carry her. She's a lot of dog to carry.

In a stunningly unfortunate example of bad timing, Dave is leaving this morning for a conference in the USA. He'll be gone all week. We had a talk yesterday about Olga and the fact that I may have to make decisions if she worsens while he's gone, though I think it's unlikely things will get that desperate that quickly. (Knock on wood!) Anyway, he told me to do whatever I have to do.

Ugh.

On a brighter note, I went into town yesterday evening to meet up with some visiting friends, Alan and Greg, who I haven't seen in years. I went to high school with Alan, and aside from our 20th reunion in 2004, I haven't seen him much since graduation in 1984. And I went to college with his husband Greg, who I definitely haven't seen since 1987 or so. Greg and I were involved in the LGBTQ+ student group on campus. It's just a fluke that these two guys I knew independently of each other wound up getting married.

And now they have a 16-year-old son, Derek, who I met for the first time. We had a great dinner full of reminiscing at a Brazilian place in Chinatown -- yes, there's a Brazilian place in Chinatown, for some reason -- and we exchanged stories and memories and probably bored poor Derek to death.

As Sandy Denny sang, "Who knows where the time goes?"

The Patio Table

This is one of my favorite roses in our garden. It starts out bright orange, like this, and after a few days the blossoms gradually fade to a sort of dusky pink. So we wind up with flowers of multiple shades between orange and pink, all on the same bush, before they drop their petals. And the insects like them because the flowers are open with accessible centers.

Yesterday morning, bright and early, after I gave all the houseplants their weekly watering, I decided to assemble our new patio furniture. Remember, it was delivered Friday, in a disturbingly compact box? Well, I opened the box and pulled out all the bits, and there weren't as many as I feared -- basically two chair backs, two seats, four pairs of legs, a tabletop, three table legs and a center brace. And a ridiculous number of nuts, washers, screws and little plastic things you put on top of the bolts so the ends aren't exposed. And a mini wrench and screwdriver. And two cushions.

I spread it all out on the floor in the foyer and went to work.

Olga supervised from a comfortable spot on the dining room carpet.

It took an hour or maybe an hour and a half, but the process went smoothly and with no major gaffes. At the end I wound up with this:

That was yesterday evening, when Dave and I had our French onion soup on the patio for dinner. (Yes, Dave made French onion soup, on a nearly 90º day -- I tried my best not to question the lengthy use of the stove and the oven in such weather, but I did point out that it was an interesting choice. He said he was trying to use up all our surplus onions, so points to him for wasting nothing. It was good.)

Anyway, patio table done, I got to work on some garden projects -- mowing the grass, staking up some plants and trying to widen some of our paths so that we can move around without too much hindrance. Around this time of year I start to get impatient with having to shoulder my way through undergrowth like Henry Stanley. Olga, meanwhile, lazily enjoyed the sun on the grass:

She's lying by my feet now, watching squirrels, as I blog from our garden bench.

Here, by special request, is the "beaded farmyard" as I mentioned yesterday -- sheep, frog and pig. (I guess a frog isn't a typical farmyard resident, at least not in any formal sense, but whatever.) I bought the tiny pig and the frog in Botswana -- the pig was a gift for my father, because he collected them. I reclaimed it after he died.

It's much cooler today, with an expected high of 81º F (or 27º C). I'm going to do my best to catch up on some reading.

Beaded Sheep

I was sitting in the garden on Thursday when this speckled wood butterfly passed through. It fluttered around the roses before settling on our fig tree, and obligingly sat with its wings spread so I could take pictures.

It looks like we have new upstairs neighbors. I don't know anything about them yet -- I've only met the man, and apparently there are (or will eventually be) kids as well. He got some stuff delivered yesterday and the driver left it with us, so I met him when he came to pick it up -- a fortyish guy, nice enough. Strangely, the real estate listing for the flat is still up, though it does say that it's "under offer." Maybe the broker leaves it up for a while just to attract eyes to their other listings.

I would love to know if the Russians are really getting £5,200 a month for it. But of course that's not something one can ask, is it?

It was very warm yesterday -- about 89º F. Today is supposed to be slightly cooler and by next week our highs will be back down in the 70's. I ordered a new patio table and chairs, and they were delivered yesterday in a disturbingly flat box that seems to indicate a lot of assembly is required. I'll probably be working on that today.

When I was near Hampstead Heath on Thursday, I passed a house with a box of stuff sitting outside, free for the taking. Included was this little sheep, made of beads strung on stiff pieces of wire. Of course I grabbed it, because who could resist? Besides, I have a couple of other beaded animals that I got while in Botswana -- a frog and a pig -- and this goes with them quite well. A beaded farmyard!

I finished "The Man with the Golden Arm." Good, but not for the faint-hearted. I'm glad I read it, but literally everything that happens in that book is depressing.

As I was sitting in our garden and typing this post, some small creature ventured behind me -- a squirrel, probably. Olga streaked to the corner of the garden and chased it over the wall, then promptly got very dizzy and staggered back to where I was sitting before awkwardly collapsing on her haunches. She thinks she's very fierce.

Highgate in the Heat

We are supposedly in the middle of a heat wave, but to me it doesn't feel that uncomfortable. It's warm -- about 30º C or 86º F yesterday -- but we've had much worse. I took a walk over to Highgate yesterday and I debated whether or not I should go, given the heat, but it turned out not to be a problem.

I wanted to see a show of paintings by an artist named David Evans at a Highgate art gallery. I read about it in the paper a couple of months ago and made a mental note of it, and I didn't have a chance to follow up on it until now. (The gallery is only open on Thursdays and weekends.)

In the decades before he died in 1988, Evans owned a classical music record store in Kensington and made fanciful and highly detailed watercolors of city life -- nightclubs, concert halls, traffic jams -- as well as landscapes, portraits, drawings and collages. The show is small but I'm glad I went as I loved his large colorful paintings, which seemed both very '60s and timeless. I bought the catalog for £15.

To get to Highgate I took the overground to Hampstead Heath and walked from there, after fortifying myself with a coffee from Starbucks.

I crossed the Heath and walked up Parliament Hill to check out the view. That's looking southeast toward Canary Wharf (L) and the city (R). That view has changed a lot in the 14 years we've lived in London. If you look at the last picture in this post you'll see what it looked like back then -- there was a lot more open space, rather than the wall of buildings we see now.

I also passed that yellow house in the top photo. I was taken by the painter's orange overalls. That road had so much traffic I only had a chance to take two shots and I'm glad that one worked out.

I found this six-spot burnet on knapweed on the Heath -- the first one I've seen this summer.

After checking out the show and wandering up and down the Highgate high street, I walked back across the Heath to home -- about two and a half miles. It felt good to get some exercise and cross something off my list of things to do.

I've been posting so many pictures of Olga sleeping that I thought I'd show you a more lively video. This was yesterday morning, as she sniffed around where the foxes tend to wander in the back of the garden. The old beast still has some bark in her, though as you can see, she is a bit wobbly!

A Better Day

This bug may look intimidating, but it's harmless. It's a hornet-mimic hoverfly (Volucella zonaria), which as its name suggests, makes a career out of looking like a scary hornet. Supposedly that helps keep away predators. It's the biggest hoverfly species in the UK.

Here it is next to another, much smaller type of hoverfly. I've seen this hornet-mimic hoverfly in the garden for several days now, usually around this dusty miller plant (Senecio), but I didn't have my camera handy until yesterday.

I promise I won't turn this blog into daily updates about Olga, but she seemed to have a better day yesterday. We have not scheduled another vet appointment. We got some medication from our vet visit earlier this week that's supposed to help blood flow to her brain, which might help her balance -- so we'll try that first. Despite my desire for more specific diagnostics, I don't want Olga to spend her last days or weeks going back and forth to the vet, if we can help it.

I think we've entered a phase when she's going to have good days and bad days, and that's just how it is.

She spent most of yesterday snoozing in the garden...

...with me either beside her on a blanket or sitting on that bench in the background. I've been reading more of "The Man with the Golden Arm" and it's growing on me. I'm about 160 pages in -- basically halfway through. I have developed an attachment to the characters, which helps, because this is a very character-driven book, as opposed to plot-driven. The more I read it, the more I focus on the people and their motivations instead of the card games and boozing.

Olga's Twilight

Our "Stargazer" lilies are blooming once again. I'm putting "Stargazer" in quotes because, although that's what we've been calling them ever since we planted them many years ago, I'm suddenly not convinced that's what they are. Stargazers are supposed to point upward -- hence the name -- but ours do not. They also don't have any speckles on the petals, which I think are a Stargazer thing. When I search this lily with my "Picture This" plant-identifying app, it says it's Lilium brownii var. viridulum, which seems possible.

This little ant doesn't really care what kind of lily it is, as long as there's sweet sticky stuff on the flower.

Despite my good news yesterday about Olga's checkup, she is still struggling. We took our walk yesterday morning, but then in the afternoon she got kind of agitated and seemed unable to get comfortable, and she kept making strange coughing/panting sounds. A couple of times she got suddenly weak or dizzy and collapsed at my feet. She did the same this morning -- I got her out of bed, she ate some breakfast and came out to the garden and wandered around, did her business, and then suddenly seemed unable to walk further. She lay down abruptly next to where I was sitting and didn't move for ten or fifteen minutes.

I think we're going to take her back to the vet tomorrow. I'd like some more precise diagnostics than I've gotten so far. The vet says her heart and lungs sound fine, but we've had nothing more than a superficial (it seems to me) physical exam. No blood tests, no x-rays. Maybe I'm thinking like an American, but if we're going to make decisions about Olga's care, it would be nice to have more specific information.

The bottom line, though, is that Olga is coming to the end of her life. I understand that much. Of course this isn't a surprise -- she's about 15 years old. It's entirely possible this is all merely old age, in which case we just have to deal with it. We'll take care of her until she seems like she's no longer enjoying herself. On the other hand, if it's something treatable, we need to know so we can address it. Right?

"If I lie with my face in the sun, then I am sunbathing."

I started a book yesterday that I think I might hate -- "The Man with the Golden Arm," by Nelson Algren. It's a famous book from 1949 about drug addiction. I'm about 60 pages in and so far I'm a bit overwhelmed by all the references to card sharps and wise guys and dive bar culture. Everything seems rough and bleak and smoky and gray. I don't know what I expected but I think it may all be too macho for me. I find nothing more boring than cards and gambling, except possibly fishing and auto racing.

King Zack Stands Deprived

Another day, another butterfly! This comma showed up on our buddleia yesterday afternoon, flashing bright orange as it fluttered through the air. I love how nature seems to color-coordinate both the comma and the peacock (see yesterday's post) with the flowers they feed on.

So much happened yesterday I'm not even sure where to start. Let's go with Olga first -- we took her to the vet, and despite her recent dizzy spells she got a pretty clean bill of health. She weighs 23.4 kilos, which is normal. The vet said her heart and lungs sound good and she looked in Olga's nose and mouth and palpated her abdomen and saw no sign of abnormality, beyond all of Olga's regular lumps and bumps. She has a lot of lumps and bumps, as many old dogs and particularly bulldog breeds do, and the vet said there's no way to know what they are without biopsies -- and honestly there are so many of them it would break the bank and cause the dog no end of misery to try to biopsy them all. But she said that none of them felt worrying. I think they're all benign lipomas and other harmless growths, so we'll just take our cues from Olga and how she feels overall. As long as she's eating and enjoying life, no need to meddle with all of that.

We did get a prescription for a medicine that's supposed to help dilate blood vessels in her brain, perhaps increasing blood flow and reducing dizziness. We'll see how that goes. Unfortunately vestibular disease, if that is in fact what's going on here, is not something that can be cured -- it has to subside on its own.

As if to prove to us she's fine and more veterinary attention isn't warranted, Olga took me on a walk of the high street afterwards, which is more of a walk than she's managed since our return from Pevensey. She seemed to enjoy it. Lots of sniffing.

I also did a ton of stuff around the house. I cleaned the entire kitchen counter, back in the corners and under the microwave, and now it's sparkly white. I cleaned the windowsill and the exposed shelving. And Dave and I went through the spice cabinet and threw away some old spices that we've had for ages -- like ginger and tarragon that expired in 2014. It felt good to get all that stuff out of there.

Then I went out and weeded the patio (above). I didn't really mean to do the whole thing, but I got started on one flower pot and it just snowballed from there. Now, I know you're going to say, "But I still see weeds!" Yes, I left behind the coltsfoot and the lady's mantle growing between the paving stones because I like them.

Our patio is still ridiculously crowded. I think we need to reorganize some things. I have vague plans to put a new cafe table and chairs out there but at the moment I'm not sure they'd fit!

I also weeded and swept the side return. Similar story -- I left behind the campanula and the St. John's wort, which I and the insects enjoy. But the campanula is greatly reduced in size and spread. I filled a whole yard waste bag with weeds and swept-up leaves and debris from these two areas.

There were other small things, like laundry, and I was busy for the better part of the day.

Oh! And I scheduled our citizenship ceremony. August 13 is the day we will join the ranks of His Majesty's subjects. That's the earliest option they gave us. Woo hoo!

The recent wind and rain broke a flower head off one of our hydrangeas, so Dave brought it inside. I told him, "Hey, that would be perfect for King Zack!" (Remember King Zack is a vase -- there's an opening in the top of his crown.) But Dave is not a fan of King Zack -- don't get me started -- so he insisted on putting it in a glass vase within view of King Zack, as if to taunt us both.

As for all that debris on the end table, well, this is a subject of endless debate. Dave likes to keep everything he might need within reach of his recliner, which means that tabletop is always crowded with junk. I like a clear surface and his collection of pharmaceuticals, vitamins, snacks, paperwork and loose pencils and pens makes me nuts. But hey -- marriage, right?