Grounded for Lack of Toilet Paper

Well, yesterday turned out to be wall-to-wall activity! My morning went pretty much as usual, blogging and uploading pictures to Flickr, and cleaning the house to prepare for my brother's visit. He, his wife and my niece had an eventful day of travel. The first leg of their Delta flight was grounded by a broken tissue or napkin dispenser, believe it or not, and then the ground crew couldn't find the plane's maintenance log book -- which I suspect was the real reason for the delay. All of this meant an extra 45 minutes in Jacksonville before takeoff, which meant they missed their connecting flight in Atlanta and had to board a later plane for London. This put them here six hours later than they'd anticipated.

But they did finally arrive. I journeyed out to Heathrow to meet them, and just missed getting caught up in this snafu. When I entered the tube station, a notice board said trains weren't running to Heathrow. I was trying to figure out an alternate plan but then my train did indeed go all the way, so I suppose the system was just getting back on its feet after the earlier disruption.

The tube was running back into town with no problem, so soon after I met them we were zipping back to West Hampstead. They came to our flat and we sat out in the garden in the almost-sweltering warmth. My brother does read my blog, so I imagine it was fun for him to see first-hand all the stuff I've been writing about, from the ladybird larvae in the yard waste bag to the starlings on the bird feeder.

(Incidentally, I retrieved another ten or so ladybird larvae from the bag yesterday, so I decided to dump out all the garden trimmings in the back "wildlife area" of the garden. That way whatever's living on that alkanet can crawl to nearby living plants. I don't want to be responsible for killing all those little critters.)

After a while, my brother and his family took an Uber to their hotel in Bloomsbury, and I joined them there after a couple of hours so we could go to dinner. (Dave, who has been feeling under the weather, didn't join us -- but he was happy because the recliner repairman had come earlier in the day, and his chair is now fully functional once again!)

The gigantic mural above is one of several in the neighborhood near their hotel. We walked to a nearby pub called The Swan, where we ate, and then wandered the streets surrounding Queen's Square and the Great Ormond Street children's hospital. Here's some more of what I saw during the evening:

Door in the men's loo at the pub

Today my brother and family are going to rest up and then Dave and I are meeting them for a Sunday pub roast. Maybe before that I can get caught up in blogland!

Larvae, and a Musical Neighbor

Speckled wood butterfly on our "Bowl of Beauty" peony

I pre-wrote some of this post last night, thinking that rather than blogging, I would be on my way to Heathrow airport early this morning to pick up my brother and his family. They're visiting for a week from the USA -- the first time they've come to England! A landmark occasion for all of us.

But then my brother texted in the middle of the night and said the first leg of their flight landed late and they'd missed their connecting flight to London, so they're on a later plane, coming in around 1 p.m. (They're going to be exhausted.) And I'm blogging as usual.

With that in mind, I spent yesterday getting the house ready for visitors. I mowed the lawn, for example, and dealt with simple cleaning. There's more to be done but it's presentable, which is about as good as it ever gets around here. (They're not staying with us -- they have a hotel -- but the place still needs to look decent.)

While cleaning up the garden I threw out lots of flower stalks from the green alkanet. The flowers have more or less faded and I don't want them going to seed. We already have more alkanet than we can handle.

But while throwing them in the garden waste bag, I saw several little larval ladybirds like the one above (which was on a hellebore). They're attracted to any plant with aphids, which they eat -- and alkanet has plenty of aphids. So then I had to extract the alkanet from the yard waste bag and examine the stalks to make sure I saved what larvae I could find. I retrieved about ten of them and put them on some of the remaining alkanet in the garden.

This is why I hate weeding. It not only kills the weeds, but whatever critters are living ON the weeds!

Then, in the afternoon, I went to a pub outing with some former co-workers. It was a farewell hurrah for another guy who's retiring, and for my former boss's boss, who's also leaving. It was fun catching up with everyone from work again. Have I really only been gone six weeks? It feels like a lifetime! I have one more going-away event to attend on June 12, our end-of-the-year luncheon, and then I will be well and truly finished with that job.

Here's a weird little video for you. Through all the warm weather last week, I kept hearing a woman singing operatically. I couldn't figure out where it was coming from, and in fact I still don't exactly know. It's from one of the apartments behind us. Apparently we have a neighbor who's a singer, or fancies herself one.

I thought I'd share this little urban peculiarity. In the video I think she's just singing scales, or some rudimentary vocal exercise. The sound isn't terribly clear but if you crank the volume you should hear her right at the start, and then around the 15- and 30-second marks.

We often have perplexing music coming from those apartments. Remember our flutist from years ago? I'm not complaining, though -- it's better than listening to leaf-blowers and lawn mowers!

Incidentally, it's interesting to see -- in that linked video clip of the flutist -- how healthy our mock orange (Philadelphus) looked. It's quite straggly this year, with few leaves and flowers. I'm not sure why.

New Pots, and I'm Locked Out!

Flowers on our purple heart (Tradescantia)

Yesterday was the day to take care of some long-standing issues among our plants. I got myself motivated early in the morning, while it was still relatively cool, and got to work.

First I dug up and discarded our dead tamarisk tree and our ailing broom. This is much easier said than done because the ground is as hard as iron right now, having had no rain to speak of for almost two months. (The BBC says parts of Southeast England have had their driest April on record, with just over a third of the rainfall we'd get in an average year, and May hasn't been any better. Apparently we're not technically in a drought because we had a lot of rain over the winter, but that's not helping the garden plants now!)

Then I grabbed my garden-shop gift card and headed down to Maida Vale on the bus. I went back to Clifton Nurseries and picked up some more supplies: A gigantic pot for our olive tree, two nice big pots for a couple of other plants that needed new homes, and some bags of soil. I also bought a new Brugmansia purely on a whim.

I brought everything home in an Uber and got to work on some heavy-duty repotting. The result is...

...a new home for this previously rootbound prayer plant...

...and for this ficus, which used to be a bunch of dead twigs...

...and for the new Brugmansia, now in the pot that used to hold the prayer plant.

I still have to deal with the olive, and I'm not sure how to go about that. Our passionflower vine, which grew of its own accord from a seed, is living in the same pot and growing up a wall, so it's going to be hard to maneuver the olive tree into a new pot while not damaging the vine. I just couldn't deal with it yesterday because I was already tired and sore after all that other work.

In the middle of all this, who should reappear but Mrs. Russia! You'll recall that she and her husband rented out their apartment above us, and I haven't seen her since last summer. She stopped in to trim the shrubs out on their terrace. We chatted a bit and she asked about Mrs. Kravitz's air conditioner and whether it was noisy. I said I hadn't even noticed it -- I didn't realize the Kravitzes (next door) even have an air conditioner -- but Mrs. Russia is annoyed that it's been installed within earshot of her own terrace. "Maybe we should buy one and point it at them!" she said.

Dueling air conditioners!

Then I got a bit paranoid about her wielding pruning shears, so I told her we'd planted some new bushes in the front garden so she wouldn't mistakenly cut them down. She got a bit snippy (no pun intended) about why we'd planted bushes without her approval, and I said we got our landlord's approval, and it was up to the landlord to keep her informed. And that was pretty much the end of our exchange.

But again, I got worried. We have a lot of beautiful campanula growing around our front steps, along with some pink valerian and some other wildflowers. The Russians have long chafed at my tendency to allow those plants to grow -- they like the steps pressure-washed and tidy as a hospital.

So I went out and made a video of the steps, including the bees loving the campanula. I figured if Mrs. Russia tore it out I'd at least have a record of it. I later added some music because there was a lot of street noise, including conversations from passing pedestrians, distant sirens and my own front door slamming and me exclaiming "Sh*t!" because I didn't have my house keys on me!

Yes, I was indeed locked out. I called Dave and he made plans to send a co-worker to our flat with his keys, but I knocked on the Kravitzes' door and as luck would have it someone was home and I was able to get into their back garden and, using a ladder, boost myself over the garden fence. Our own back door was open so that got me back inside our house. Criminy!

Anyway, Mrs. Russia did not trim anything in the front or weed the steps, so those worries were unfounded, at least in the immediate moment. But I'm sure she went back to wherever she's living now grousing that we're allowing the place to go to pot, not to mention fuming over Mrs. Kravitz's air conditioner. I try to be friendly with her but I hope she doesn't move back here.

Bee Scrutiny and Garden Losses

It can be surprisingly hard to get a decent photo of a bee. You'd think it would be the easiest thing in the world -- bees don't move very quickly. But they also hunch over on themselves, and their black eyes blend in with their black fur, and what you often wind up with is a dark furry blob with no distinguishing features. So I was happy with these shots, with the bee's face visible.

The bees do love that wallflower, which we've had for several years now. A co-worker gave it to me as a seedling. It seems to be losing some of its vigor so I suspect we'll have to replace it before too long. Wallflowers don't live forever.

We seem to have lost a couple of other garden plants as well. Tammy the tamarisk tree, where the goldfinches loved to perch and nibble on the buds, has apparently died. There's no green growth visible at all -- just dry brown sticks.

Likewise, our orange broom (top photo here) seems to be mostly dead. It has no flowers or leaves, and several dry brown stems. There are a few areas that are still green, but I'm thinking it's toast.

I'm not broken up about either of these losses. I'll remove the plants in the next week or so and maybe we'll put something new in there. (Though maybe not something large -- I've always thought Tammy was in a bad location, in the middle of the roses.) Fortunately I still have about £100 on the garden shop gift card my co-workers gave me for my retirement. Maybe I'll run that errand today.

Yesterday proved to be warmer than expected -- we topped out at about 87º F (or 30º C) but it felt much more tolerable than the days before.

Still Hot, But Not Humid

The magenta spreen lambsquart is back! It returned all on its own, two of them, growing in one of our planters. Not really a surprise since it's an amaranth, which is known as a tenacious weed. But I like it.

We were back up to 92º F (about 33º C) yesterday, similar to the day before. Somehow it didn't feel quite as oppressive, though. Maybe I just got used to the heat. Still, it was the UK's highest-ever May temperature for the second day in a row, and I'm relieved that today we're only getting up to 79º F (or 26º C).

Yesterday's comments about air conditioning were interesting. I think one's comfort with a/c all depends on what you're used to, don't you? In my home state of Florida, where it's not only hot but incredibly humid, a/c is a blessed relief. Walking into an air-conditioned space on a hot summer day is like a religious experience. I don't know how my ancestors ever lived there without it. (And yet they did!) At least here in England the humidity is nothing like that. I checked yesterday and it was somewhere around 32 percent, which is half what it was yesterday in Tampa -- and it can go much higher there.

Anyway, I couldn't get motivated to get on the tube and deal with the urban crush in that kind of heat, so I just stayed home. I sat out on the garden bench in the afternoon and had more watermelon, and read "The Hunting Party," which I've almost finished. It's an entertaining book but I don't think I've ever met a more distasteful cast of characters in my life. I'm kind of hoping they all get murdered.

At one point I looked up at Totoro, hanging in the tree overhead, and admired the green bead that now functions as his bell clapper. I found that bead in the cemetery more than six years ago and wired it to Totoro to replace one that was lost. It has worked out pretty well. Poor Totoro has had quite a dramatic life in our garden.

I also spent part of yesterday arranging for someone to repair Dave's recliner. The other day he pulled the lever on the side of the chair to get it to recline, and the handle broke. This is a crisis. Dave is now unable to recline the chair, which is possibly his favorite place in the entire world. So I communicated with a repair guy and sent him pictures and he said he could do it, but he has yet to schedule his visit. Hopefully it can happen soon.

In the late afternoon, I took a walk. I felt the need for some exercise so I walked up to and around the cemetery and back down through the neighborhood on the other side of the high street. I was proud of myself for getting out and about.

Dave had a concert last night so I was on my own for dinner. I had some leftover chicken, made a martini and watched an "Absolutely Fabulous" movie, "The Last Shout," which I have already seen approximately 600 times. It was a good conclusion to an extremely warm day.

Hot

Dear God, it is hot. Just a week or so ago I needed a blanket on the couch and we were running the heat for an hour in the mornings. Now, after just a few days of a happy medium, I can't stay cool. As I understand it, cooler temperatures will return, but yesterday when I checked in the afternoon it was about 92º F (or 33º C). I realize that's pretty typical for some of you in summer, but for May in the UK it's unheard of. Remember that no one in this country (including us) has air conditioning!

So I stayed pretty quiet yesterday, mostly reading "The Hunting Party," taking pictures in the garden and watering our poor parched plants. I walked down to the high street in the late morning to get some watermelon -- it seemed like a perfect day for a summery treat. Dave and I sat out on the garden bench and ate it in the afternoon.

Like everyone, we have a drawer in the kitchen that's full of random utensils like a garlic press, a pie server, a can opener, peelers and slicers and that kind of thing. You know, that drawer. Well, the other day Dave pulled it open and part of it broke -- the front panel disconnected from the drawer itself on one side. Our cabinets are very old and this drawer has always been jankety, so this wasn't exactly a surprise.

I took it out onto the patio along with the super glue and managed to repair it. Now that I write it down, it seems like a small, insignificant thing, but at the time I felt pretty darn capable. I slid it back into the cabinetry and put only the most frequently used utensils inside so it wouldn't be as heavy. We stuck the others in the pantry. We probably could get rid of them and never notice, but you know the minute we give away the melon baller Dave will need it.

I'm trying to think of some place to go today that will be cooler. The Tate, maybe. I'm not thrilled about using the tube to get there, but at least I would be comfortable while I'm indoors.

(Top photo: Fallen maple seeds on our "stinking iris.")

Garden Hunters

This is our "Bowl of Beauty" peony, which is giving us lots of flowers this year. We got just one or two last year, and nothing the year before, so we're happy with this haul. I guess it needed a rest. The ants seem to like the peonies, partly because there are always aphids on the buds.

I stayed busy yesterday but not really on anything blog-worthy. I washed a rug and the sofa throw, because we're in a period of ideal drying weather and I need to take advantage of it! There's also been a lot of plant-watering going on. I was just out there this morning before sitting down to blog, in fact. It was 87º F when I looked about 4 p.m. yesterday, and it's supposed to be even warmer today and tomorrow -- into the 90s F. (That's 32º C.)

The good news is, my flower seedlings are growing at last. They appreciate the warmth.

I finally started a book, having worked my way through all but four of my back issues of The New Yorker. It's a mystery called "The Hunting Party" by Lucy Foley, and it's good so far -- about a bunch of privileged city dwellers who descend on a remote lodge in Scotland, get snowed in, and then encounter a murder. I picked it up a couple of months ago from the Little Free Library at work.

Here's a curious find in my slide collection. This slide is unlike any of the others because it's glass, completely square and black-and-white in its original form. It looks like it was probably made for the military or some aerospace corporation. I'm not sure what this guy is doing -- measuring something coming out of those jet engines, apparently. Is that a Geiger counter? I love how he has no protection at all, not even earplugs or goggles, but he has a white coat so we know he's a professional.

Google AI is ridiculously, and perhaps erroneously, specific in its analysis: "This photograph captures a technician from the Atomic Energy Research Establishment checking for strontium during the 1960s. The scene likely documents research into nuclear safety or the effects of radioactive fallout on aircraft. The equipment pictured is a specialized portable radiation detector used for monitoring. Images similar to this highlight early nuclear research and experimentation in the mid-20th century."

OK, then.

I downloaded the week's footage from the Garden Cam. We see the foxes carrying around their mysterious dog treats -- I still have no idea who's giving them those. We also see the return of the rat, a fox that has captured a mouse, and something mysterious involving a bird.

-- We start with a fox trotting up and dropping a dog treat. These treats are blocky marrow-bone shaped things that I occasionally find buried in the garden. I think Crooked Tail brings the treat, but then Q-Tip comes sniffing around afterwards.
-- At 1:10, we have a very bouncy little bird.
-- At 1:16, Pale Cat makes an appearance.
-- At 1:29, a fox comes by and stops for a scratch.
-- At 1:47, I drop a piece of pork chop for the foxes. I know I said I'd stop doing this, but we hadn't seen any evidence of the rat for more than a week so I thought it might be safe.
-- And indeed, at 1:56 (a few hours later) Sharpie comes and eats it, thank goodness.
-- At 3:05, a fox checks out the camera. You can hear it sniffing.
-- At 3:29, a fox is back with another dog treat. Where are they coming from?!
-- At 3:58, two pigeons battle it out.
-- At 4:16, check out the squirrel in the background. What is up with that tail? At first I thought it was a monkey!
-- At 4:46, the rat is back! Ugh!
-- At 5:38, Pale Cat jumps out of the bushes and runs off. I saw this happen in real time, when I came out the back door and startled him or her.
-- At 5:42, a fox runs past with something in its mouth. I give us a slo-mo instant replay and freeze frame, but it's still hard to see. I think it's a mouse. Good!
-- At 5:52, we get a glimpse of Tabby.
-- At 5:59, one of the foxes is looking intently at the ground, evidently hunting. Good!
-- At 6:16, another vigorous scratch and some inelegant grooming.
-- At 6:31, we see a little robin next to another bird quivering on the ground. I can't tell what that bird is doing. Is it injured or ill, or has it captured some prey? It doesn't look big enough to be a raptor, and if it were a predator I doubt the robin would be so close to it. I give us a close-up, and a few minutes later it's gone.
-- At 6:54, a magpie.
-- At 7:12, a few final fox encounters.

Jinkx as Judy

Whew! I was out and about almost all day yesterday, because I had theatre tickets in the afternoon. I came across this sculpture near Liverpool Street on the way to the theatre. (More about that in a moment.) It reminds me of the Atomium in Brussels, though obviously not as large.

The day began quietly enough. I watered all the plants and finally did some maintenance on our big yucca.

You may remember this yucca used to have two stalks, and both were scraping the ceiling. Dave and I have been debating what to do with it. I considered planting it outside, but I don't think it would survive a cold winter. We moved it onto the patio several weeks ago, and the top got pretty badly sunburned because it wasn't used to being outdoors. So yesterday I cut off one stalk and cut the other shorter, but left some leaves so the plant could continue to photosynthesize. The cut stalk should grow new sprouts, and when that happens I'll cut down the other tall one too.

Anybody want yucca cuttings? I have a ton of them.

My theatre ticket was for 2:30 p.m., so just after lunch I left the house and headed to Walthamstow, in northeast London. Getting there involved taking public transport in a sort of V shape on the map, going southeast into Westminster and then back out again, if you can imagine that. Unfortunately, I discovered midway there that part of the tube was shut down for an emergency and I had to devise an alternate route, which made me a little late -- but I was meeting some friends so they arranged for me to pick up my ticket at the window and all was well. I only missed the first ten or fifteen minutes of the show, and I was hardly the only one, given the transit snafu.

I was seeing Jinkx Monsoon as Judy Garland in a play called "End of the Rainbow." Monsoon became famous more than ten years ago on "RuPaul's Drag Race," which I have never watched. Many of the audience members were young people obviously there to see Jinkx and familiar with her Drag Race persona -- I wondered how much they knew or even cared about Judy Garland. But it was a good play, if a bit strenuous, and Jinkx did well singing Garland's famous songs and portraying her struggle with disastrous addictions. It's great that she's helping to bring Garland's legacy to a younger generation.

It struck me that if the audience members were 25 or so, as many appeared to be, their seeing this play would be like me seeing one about Mary Pickford or Jean Harlow -- actresses so far back in the foggy past that I can only barely picture their faces. Then again, everyone sees "The Wizard of Oz," so that gives Garland a sort of evergreen fame.

Afterwards my friends and I decamped to this terrific pub in Walthamstow. It had a huge outdoor seating area both in front and in back, so we could enjoy the summery weather while we had some food and a couple of pints.

The window grill in the men's room made clear which loo I was in. Yes, the women's room said "Girls girls girls."

Afterwards, as I walked back to the tube, I passed this building, known as the "Ancient House." It turns out that it may indeed be the oldest house in London, built in 1435 or thereabouts, during the reign of King Henry VI. Inside it has been remodeled and looks quite comfortable.

Fortunately, by this time, the tube was running normally and getting home was much easier!

Rambling Roses

Our rambling roses are starting to come out. They're a little later than the tea roses, and unlike the teas they get pruned in summer after they stop blooming. They then produce new growth and that's where next year's flowers appear.

If you'd told me 15 years ago that I'd know anything about the pruning cycles of roses, I'd have laughed hysterically. We just never know where life will take us, do we?

Here's a blossom from another rambler -- a white variety.

Yesterday's weather was ideal. Warm temperatures, sunshine, pretty much the perfect day. I sat out on the garden bench with the intention of reading, but all I could do was gaze around at the garden. I just couldn't get enough of it. As we get older we become aware that such days are precious, don't you think?

I washed the tablecloths, which had lately been where I sorted all my slides. God only knows what pestilence they contained. I built the tablecloth monolith again and they dried in short order on such a beautiful day.

I also deadheaded the roses and did some watering. The weather was ideal for me, but it's still a bit dry for the plants.

In the afternoon I took a walk over to Kilburn and up the high street, listening to a podcast as I went. The barricades above surround the spot where the "zeal your zest" cafe used to be. Apparently they've torn it out and who knows what's going in its place.

I'm glad to see some Republicans pushing back on Trump and his plan for the slush fund to compensate the Jan. 6 insurrectionists. I certainly don't want any of my tax money going to those people. (I live in the UK, but also still pay taxes in the USA -- one of the joys of American citizenship.) I suppose Trump is now more vulnerable since many of his MAGA acolytes are questioning his decisions in Iran. Let's hope this translates into votes for Democrats, or at least resistant Republicans (outside the Trump strongholds of Kentucky and Louisiana).

Last evening, as we watched TV, Dave and I saw a tiny little fledgling wren flitting around on the patio. Well, "flitting" is an overstatement. Flying clumsily, more like. But it could indeed fly, at least, and it made a surprisingly loud peeping sound. I love seeing new birds out and about. Nature renewing itself!

Hometown Connections and Rootbound Ferns

Just in case someone needs a reminder of where they are. I have no idea what that little thing is -- a key chain? A letter opener? A hood ornament? I found it shoved into the top of that post, and left it there.

I worked my way through more slides yesterday morning. I went back through the second-look pile and decided which of those need scanning and which don't, and I put the "don't" slides into a plastic storage box so they're out of my way. I'm now ready to launch into scanning this new batch, probably tomorrow.

I came across this slide, from 1981, marked "1st Christmas, Pan-Am plane from Tampa to Miami." And sure enough, that is Tampa International Airport in the photo. You could have knocked me over with a feather. What are the odds that I'd buy a pile of random slides in London that contain an image of my hometown airport, taken when I was 15 years old and living about 20 miles from that very spot?

When I was in high school, my friends and I used to go to the airport for fun. Back then you could wander right up to the departure gates without any identification or boarding pass, and we'd explore every public corner of the terminal and page each other on the PA system and generally be silly teenagers. It seemed so exotic and exciting to see people boarding planes for Europe and Mexico and New York. It fueled my dreams of traveling the world.

Incidentally, I discovered that if you enter the tail number of a plane online, you can get information about its use and ownership. The plane above entered service with National Airlines in 1978 and became part of Pan-Am with a 1980 merger, according to this page. (For all you aircraft junkies out there.) In the background are planes from United and the now-defunct Ozark Air Lines.

Here's a detail from a 1984 slide with another hometown connection. That random little kid, sitting in his back garden, is drinking from a cup marked MacDill Air Force Base -- which is in Tampa. I don't know whether he's in England or the USA. The same family is probably responsible for both slides.

Anyway, after lunch I set all that aside and went to work in the garden. We had some ferns in pots that have been struggling, so I planted them in the ground. They were indeed quite rootbound, so I hope they prosper with space to spread out.

Digging in our garden is always an adventure. For one thing, our clayey soil can be hard and heavy, and it's also chock-full of rubbish -- bits of brick and rock, old square nails, you name it. I think when our houses were being built more than 100 years ago, any construction debris just got dumped in the garden, and it's all still there.

Here's some of what I unearthed planting my ferns -- a piece of bright blue tile and some kind of gigantic iron bolt. I tossed the bolt but I kept the tile and added it to my collection of pottery bits. Was our bathroom or kitchen ever that color? Not that I know of.

I also repotted this fern, known as a "golden polypody," according to my Picture This plant identifier app. The app helpfully informs me that "this plant looks sick!" and I'm sure it does, because it was rootbound as all get-out. Repotting it was not easy because I had to remove a fibrous mat of roots growing out the bottom of the old plastic pot, and then I had to cut that pot off because I couldn't get the plant out of it. Then, while repotting, I had to try to preserve those heavy, spreading rabbit's-foot-like roots that have grown over the sides. I wound up breaking a few of those off but I just stuck them in the dirt of the new pot and who knows, maybe they'll grow.

One thing I've learned over the past few weeks, having repotted our tree fern and now replanted these three, is that ferns have a root system from hell. I always thought they were these ephemeral little forest plants, but no, they are freaking prehistoric monsters. I guess that's why they've survived for millions of years.

Filthy Pictures

Well, that got your attention, didn't it?!

As you can see, though, I'm not talking about those filthy pictures. I'm talking about literally, physically dirty and corrupted slides.

I'm almost finished posting all the scanned slides from my first two batches to Flickr. You can see them here. The album has 181 pictures in it as of early this morning, and I think I have about 20 more to go. Two hundred images is a nice round number, though it's bigger than I'd ideally like a Flickr album to be, so I'll start a new one for future scans.

On Monday I began sorting yet another bag of slides that I bought as part of this haul. It definitely contains work by the same photographers whose images I've already been scanning. Some of the people and locations in the pictures are the same. They're like old friends at this point!

I ran into numerous photos that are pretty badly damaged. They look like they got wet, which caused the emulsion on the slides to degenerate and even grow mold. Maybe they were stored in a damp garage or maybe someone had a flood at home.

I began putting them in the trash pile, but then, as I found more, I noticed how cool they look. I remembered Linda Sue saying that accidents can be fuel for art, and in a way these are accidents -- of storage, rather than photography skill. I especially liked that picture above of Corfe Castle and the Greyhound Inn (which is still in business). It almost looks like a painting.

Here are some more slides that were pretty heavily damaged by dampness. The images are all from the mid-'80s to the early '90s, from what I can tell.

There is an artistry to them, isn't there? Be glad you don't have to touch them, though. Believe me, in person, they are pretty nasty.

I wound up pulling them out of the trash and setting aside these favorites. I don't know if they'll continue degrading or if they're stable now that they've dried out, but I sure don't want any residual mold to spread to the other slides, so I'll store them in a separate plastic baggie. Kind of mesmerizing, aren't they?

Anyway, I got through that whole bag -- probably about 1,200 slides -- and as before, I looked at every image and tossed about 2/3 of them because they were boring, flawed or both. I then had to go through the discards a couple of times to pull out the damaged ones above, because I'd belatedly decided to keep them, and to make sure I hadn't made any sorting mistakes.

I'm now down to a few hundred slides, and I will clean, scan and post the best of those over the next couple of weeks. And then two more bags to go!

Mosaics and Tracey Emin

I decided to go out on the town yesterday. I needed some exercise and after a couple of days at home I was ready for a change of scene. So after breakfast I got on the tube and went down to the Tate Modern.

As I walked to the museum from the Southwark tube station, I wound through some little back alleys and found myself in a pocket park off Gambia Street. It featured a couple of mounds or berms, paved with stones and inlaid with little London-themed mosaics like the fox above.

And here's a Jersey tiger moth. I loved those little mosaics. There were about two dozen of them and I could have photographed them all.

I got to the Tate just as it opened, and went first to the Member's Cafe and had a coffee and croissant. I was the only one in the space for a while, sitting by a window overlooking St. Paul's Cathedral and the Thames. (One of my retirement goals is to use my Tate membership more often!) Then I wandered downstairs to see the Tracey Emin retrospective.

Although Emin is quite famous in the UK, I'm not sure I'd heard of her before I moved here. One of her best-known artworks is "My Bed," above, an installation featuring not only her bed but the detritus of everyday life one might find in a bedroom -- underwear, Kleenexes, condom wrappers, slippers, a stuffed dog, a vodka bottle. Its suggestion of intimacy and the squalor of our deepest private places is quite striking. (Behind it is a separate piece in neon, "It's Not Me That's Crying, It's My Soul.")

I came away from the show with a much better understanding of Emin and her work. A lot of it is focused on the sheer brutality involved in being a woman -- the judgements from the men in her life, sexual violence, pregnancies both real and imagined, abortions, body image, illness, aging and death. I'm making it sound dark and bleak but Emin tackles these subjects with vigor, dominating them through energetic painting, sculptures in wood and bronze, photographs and written pages, and bright appliquéd fabric blankets bearing messages. I found it both interesting and energizing.

After the Tate I walked up through St. Paul's, around the cathedral and through Farringdon, Gray's Inn, Fitzrovia, Bloomsbury and Marylebone to Baker Street station, where I caught the tube. Above is Doughty Mews, a picturesque little street near Coram's Fields. As you can see, we did get some sun yesterday. Today is supposed to be pleasant though cloudy, so hopefully I can open some windows and get some fresh air into the house.

I see that Trump critic Rep. Thomas Massie lost his Republican primary in Kentucky to a Trump-endorsed challenger. Along with Sen. Bill Cassidy's loss in Louisiana, this shows how thoroughly some voters remain under Trump's spell. I don't understand it at all. Granted, we're talking about two of the most conservative red states in the country, but this seems like a bad sign for the midterms and it's stunning to me -- stunning -- that any voters still support Trump's agenda. I feel like I'm living on another planet, and maybe I am. Maybe there are things about living in rural modern America that I just don't get -- not just because I'm living in England, but because I have resources and advantages that others don't. I'm not sure. All I know is, I am mystified once again by American voters.

More Baby Birds

I spent part of yesterday watching baby tits on our bird feeder. They're either great tits or coal tits, I'm not sure which. The young birds could already fly, so I guess "baby" isn't really the right word -- more like adolescent? Anyway, they would follow the mother to the feeder and ask her, by vibrating their tiny wings and opening their mouths, to select seeds for them to eat.

The young bird above flew to our nearby quince bush and picked a dead blossom from its branches. It wrestled with it a while before deciding that it wasn't really food.

Here are the babies on the feeder with Mama bird:

Not a great picture because of course they were clustered at the back of the feeder, probably hiding from me (even though I was watching from inside the living room 15 feet away and behind a window). Mama is down below, picking out seeds, and a baby is above her, with its mouth open. Another baby is at the top of the feeder. I think there were three babies altogether.

So, yeah, that was part of the excitement around here yesterday! Otherwise I did some housework -- cleaned the bathroom, vacuumed, put away laundry. Then I went out into the garden and did some weeding. I haven't weeded anything all season but I finally decided to pull the dock and a few other odds and ends. The dock will grow back because, like a dandelion, its taproot is as firmly implanted as a tooth in a jaw. If I don't dig it out, it breaks off at soil level -- but at least that keeps it from going to seed.

Our figs are still on our fig tree, about the size of a golf ball and looking very promising. They're not ripe yet -- in fact I think they have another few months to go -- but Dave saw a squirrel make off with one the other day, so I still don't expect that we'll ever taste them. Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.

In the afternoon I walked to the cookshop on the high street and bought an espresso pot. Bill had one in Vienna and it made fantastic coffee, especially with the Austrian grounds I bought while I was there. I usually use a French press and it works fine, but the Austrian coffee didn't taste as good in it. So now I can duplicate my Viennese coffee at home.

Petunias

We may be having a chilly spring, but it hasn't slowed down our petunias or other patio flowers -- the geraniums and African daisies are blooming up a storm. I don't think the daisies have ever had a better year. There are three petunia plants crammed into that little hanging basket and I fully expect them to outgrow it eventually, but for now they look fine.

We got some sun yesterday, which was a welcome surprise given the cloudy forecast. I mowed the lawn:

As you can see, I've left a little patch for No-Mow May. I considered not mowing the whole lawn but it was becoming a shaggy mess. That unmowed area contains some bulbs and ragwort as well as that big teasel, so it makes sense to leave it alone.

I've also left the area around the birdbath wild, but so many birds peck their way through that grass -- which is right beneath the bird feeder -- that I can't imagine it contains any live insects.

And look! Something's been pulling the fluff out of Curlie the Pig. I suspect pigeons. Whether they're actually building nests with it, who knows -- but I'm glad it has at least interested some critter.

Otherwise, I was home all day yesterday. I polished off another New Yorker, including this riveting article about Nick Fuentes and the frightening drift of many young men to the political right. I don't understand this drive to destroy our system that some of them seem to feel. Won't that just be a form of self-punishment, while letting the billionaires skate? It's astonishing how adept people are at blaming defenseless scapegoats for their problems, while the true culprits deflect responsibility. I worry we are headed toward even darker times. The one potential upside -- many of these young guys have turned against Trump. They've decided he's not their guy, and they don't love Vance either.

Anyway, I've cut the New Yorker backlog down to five issues, which I think is pretty good, so maybe I'll begin reading some books again.

I really need to do something about my glasses. I have two pairs from the optometrist, one of which is broken and the other very old. The broken pair has those bifocal lenses that I hate, and don't really need. When I retired, I grabbed a spare pair of readers from my desk at work, and yesterday I began using those -- they give me clearer vision than either of my regular glasses, but they're cheap and plastic and probably won't last long. I'm glad I'm getting some use from them but they're not a permanent solution. I wonder, though, if I should just buy drug store glasses when I need them instead of going back to the optometrist for a pricier solution. Off-the-shelf readers seem to serve my needs just fine.