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.)