It's Dahlia Time, and Movie Music

I barely left the house yesterday, so here's another picture from my walk through Fulham on Wednesday. I thought that corner shop with the clock face was intriguing. Looks like it's for rent.

And here's a mystery. I passed a little plot of land off Colehill Gardens that was positively engulfed in weeds, but in among the weeds I could see chairs and benches. It looked like a small park or open space that had been allowed to run wild. Google Street View shows it 13 years ago as a cleared (if still rather viney) space containing tables and chairs. I wonder if it's a fenced garden belonging to the adjacent houses, or perhaps to a single owner, and they have simply chosen to let it be a wild space? On Wednesday the gates were locked and it looked like no one had been in there for a long, long time.

Here's our own garden, which looks only slightly less wild. Although I was home all day yesterday, I was working. My mission: to get the dahlias out of the shed and prepared for another growing season. Having inadvertently used lousy compost last year, I was determined to give them a better life this summer, so I bought new soil and repotted every single one of them. I also pulled apart and rinsed the tubers, and divided some of the plants so they'd have more room in their pots. Hence, we now have 13 pots containing dahlias, which is a completely insane number.

A lot of the tubers had rotted since I last examined them, which is strange. I don't know if I overwatered them last summer or if they got damp (or froze) in the shed over the winter, but in any case I clipped off all that rotten material when I repotted them. I didn't lose any entire plants, as far as I could tell.

It took a couple of hours and two trips to the hardware store for soil, but I finally got all that accomplished. Some of the tubers already have little sprouts emerging.

Dave and I also went on a houseplant cleanup binge. This started because we decided to get rid of a big, misshapen ZZ plant we had in the foyer. It wasn't looking too healthy and I've never liked it, because it was so heavy I could barely move it to clean. We lugged it outside, Dave chopped up the apparently diseased plant for the yard waste bin, and I put the still-heavy empty pot at the back of the garden with the proviso that whatever we put in it needs to be an outdoor plant in a permanent place. I am never moving that pot again.

Getting rid of the ZZ gave me access to the windowsill holding the Rhipsalis cactus (above), which I realized has a mealybug infestation. So I moved it out to the patio and rinsed it off. I'm planning to let it live outdoors for a while. That usually helps bring bugs under control.

I also moved a bunch of other plants outside for the summer -- two rubber trees, our big aloe, the gigantic yucca in our bedroom and the jade plant, which also has some kind of pest problem. I'm hoping some outdoor time gives them all a boost. I have been feeling a bit oppressed by the quantity of our indoor plants so this is a welcome change. I can actually access the dining room windowsill now, which needs a good cleaning of its own.

ISN'T THIS EXCITING?!?!?

What is exciting is my cosmos seeds are beginning to sprout! Woo hoo!

I also found another dead rat in the garden yesterday morning, which was very weird. Two rats in two days. I buried this one too. Is Pale Cat leaving us gifts? Is someone flinging them over our garden fence? Are they ingesting poison somewhere and coming here to die? I don't see one this morning, so hopefully that grim streak has now been broken.

Last night, aching from the day's exertion, Dave and I went to the Barbican for a performance. One of his students gave him a Barbican gift certificate for Christmas in 2024, and all last year we failed to use it. It actually expired, and when I realized that, I e-mailed the Barbican to plead for an extension, which they generously granted. One of my Spring Break goals was to use this freaking gift certificate, so I found a performance of movie and TV soundtrack music, part of the London Soundtrack Festival, and we went.

It was called "Homegrown Heroes -- From Bond to Thunderbirds." The first half was a collection of themes by various composers, performed by an orchestra of seasoned studio musicians, from well-known productions including "Wallace & Gromit," "Enola Holmes," "Atonement" and, indeed, "Thunderbirds." The second half was devoted to the work of composer David Arnold, and if you've seen movies such as "Independence Day," "Godzilla" or "Stargate," not to mention Bond films including "Quantum of Solace," "Casino Royale" and "Tomorrow Never Dies," then you've heard Arnold's music. He was actually there, receiving an award, which was an interesting and unanticipated brush with fame. Not that I shook his hand or anything.

Oh, and apologies to those of you who have apparently been counting down and thought yesterday was my last day of work. I'm actually on Spring Break this week, so my countdown has been paused. Work begins again on Monday, but only for three days -- next Wednesday is my final day before blissful retirement.