Wires, Glass Art and More Garden Footage

From my walk through Queen's Park on Friday

I decided my task for yesterday would be to tame the wires in the alcove by the front door -- the ones strewn like giant spaghetti noodles behind the rainbow unicorn. In late morning I went to the hardware store and bought more cable clips, and affixed the phone line (which carries our internet) around the perimeter of the wall. I cut off the coaxial cable, which does nothing functional -- I think it's a remnant of a very old, outdated cable TV installation. I coiled up the detached cable and put it in a cabinet in the bathroom that we never use.

And voila! The floor behind the unicorn is now clear and it looks so much better.

Hey, it's a small thing, but I consider it a step in the right direction.

Also, I took the plunge on planning a little trip for next month. My old friend Bill from New York recently moved to Vienna with his husband. I haven't seen him in years, so I'm going to fly there for a few days in mid-May. Woo hoo! I last went to Vienna in 2023, so not that long ago, but I liked it and I'm happy to go back, especially to see things from the perspective of someone who actually lives there. Plus I spent most of my days on that last visit in librarian training, and this will all be free time!

I took a closer look at the art glass vase that I got from my stepmother's house in March. I remember my dad buying this vase when he got his bachelor pad at the La Place Apartments in Tampa following my parents' divorce in 1974. I think he bought it at an art show. In fact my brother and I may have been with him at the time.

I wanted to try to figure out who made the vase. The signature looks like "J Buron / 74" and I couldn't find any glass artists online with that name. But there is a man named John Byron who signed his works in an identical style and made similar vases from that same time period. I think this is a Byron vase and the signature got slightly obscured when he leveled the base. I don't know anything else about Byron, such as where he worked or sold his creations, but I'll keep looking.

And finally, I downloaded the garden cam for another wildlife-watching extravaganza! Who needs David Attenborough, honestly?!

We start out with Tabby the cat sauntering past, followed 15 minutes later by a fox with a stick or bone in its mouth. I sure would love to know what they're carrying around out there. The fox makes a circuit of the garden and stops behind a pot of hostas to give itself a scratch.
-- At 0:36, a squirrel works its way perilously far out a branch on our Japanese maple. They always nibble bits of the maple as it's budding. I imagine the tree's sap is rising and the new growth tastes sweet? Just a guess.
-- At 0:51, we get a quick daytime glimpse of Pale Cat.
-- At 0:55, later that same afternoon, we get a bee buzzing past the camera with Pale Cat sitting magisterially atop the back garden wall, surveying his domain.
-- At 1:09, a squirrel hops down from the bench and toward the camera.
-- At 1:23, a curious cat comes right up to the camera for a sniff. It might be Pale Cat, but I can't quite tell because it's so close to the camera you can't see its markings.
-- At 1:33, we get a partial glimpse of another cat. I think it's Blackie.
-- At 1:38, we see a series of visits by foxes hours and/ or days apart.
-- At 2:14, I put down a fish skin for the foxes. One finds it about 20 minutes later and carries it farther back in the garden, eats it and then sniffs around looking for more.
-- At 3:25 a different fox (Crooked Tail) comes a couple of hours later, drawn by the scent of the fish skin, but it's long gone.
-- At 4:32, we see another squirrel prowling cautiously through the green alkanet, a common weed/wildflower with blue blossoms that the bees love.

You may notice that the perspective of the garden cam changes several times. I've been moving it around to see where I can get the best footage, and to change up the background so we're not always seeing the same thing. OK, it's not quite Attenborough.