Over the Wall

The weather is quiet as I write this -- quite a change from the past few days. We had a full day of rain on Friday, followed by terrific gusty winds yesterday, all from Storm Amy. London was under wind warnings, and all of the Royal Parks -- like Hyde Park, Regents Park and others -- were closed. I looked out occasionally to see the poor avocado tree almost bent double, even though it's in a protected spot on the patio. I'd swear the pot was tipping a bit, as heavy as it is. As far as I can tell we had no damage, but I heard a lot of sirens so I imagine others did.

Despite the wind I did some gardening in the morning. I trimmed the lavender and the buddleia outside the back door, so we can actually see the garden from the living room. I reduced the buddleia's height by about half, which will give us more sunlight indoors. We cut them back every year anyway, usually in February.

The balletic squirrels -- which have already figured out how to join the pigeons in emptying our seed feeder -- have also discovered our suet balls. Argh!

I did laundry, changed the sheets, washed the bathroom rugs. I read about half of John Green's book "Everything is Tuberculosis," a nonfiction history of the disease. It's an unusual topic for John Green -- he's better known for YA fiction books like "The Fault in Our Stars" -- but it's interesting and I'm liking it. I could recommend it to students who are interested in medicine.

Here's the latest from our garden cam. Last week I positioned it to capture the back corner of the garden where all the animals come and go. There's a big plastic compost bin back there that we don't use, and I've always assumed that the animals jump on it to get over the wall. But as you'll see in the video, they don't need to! They mostly just jump right up on the wall itself.

High points:
1. The video starts with Blackie, who goes from our garden over the fence into Mrs. Kravitz's. Pale Cat -- who is actually white and orange, as you'll see -- is tempted to follow a few hours later, but jumps back down into our garden. (Those first few shots, I had the camera positioned too close to the bin, but then I moved it back to get a better view.)
2. At 0:46, we see Bell the Bengal on the ground. Watch closely the top of the wall at upper right, and you'll see another animal checking her out. I can't tell if it's a fox or Pale Cat.
3. At 1:24, a squirrel runs up the tree, across the fence and around the corner. The squirrels use the back wall as a highway, as well as the larger animals. (I deleted 95 percent of squirrel videos, as well as many of the cats, believe it or not. There's only so much of that you need to see, and I probably still gave you too much cat.)
4. At 1:38 the fox shows up, and proves itself just as agile as the cats.
5. At 3:13 the fox returns for several shots, including one in the rain. (It does not look happy.)
6. At 4:49, the fox is in the rain again, giving its fur a shake.
7. At 5:02 we end with Blackie, once again crossing the fence to Mrs. Kravitz's.

You might be interested to see where the animals are going once they jump up on that wall.

As you can see, there's a corrugated roof on the other side (covering some garage or storage sheds for the flats behind us), as well as the brick wall, which I believe continues past several properties well down the block. A land of adventure for the critters, even though it's pretty brushy in places!