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.