Lilies, Nigella and a Girl With a Cat

Well, my brother and his family are off to Heathrow this morning for their return to the USA. Dave and I had them over last night for a farewell dinner -- Dave made flank steak -- and I think we all agree it was a fun and successful visit.

We met up at noon yesterday for a pub lunch in St. John's Wood, and then took a walk to Regent's Park to stretch our legs before circling back to the school where I used to work (and Dave still does). Dave met them there to give them a tour, and I came home and did some photo editing. I am SO BEHIND on managing and archiving all my photos, especially with this huge slide-scanning project happening. I'll be working on that more today.

As you can see above, our yellow lily is blooming again this year. But the Asiatic lily behind it dropped its buds and it looks like we'll get no flowers. That's probably partly due to the two honesty plants also growing in the Asiatic lily's pot. After the honesty sprouted on its own, I thought all three of them might manage in there but with our dry spring I think the Asiatic lily just didn't get enough water and/or nutrients. Oh, well -- there's always next year.

We also have a single love-in-a-mist, or Nigella, that sprouted by the back steps. We used to have tons of it growing there but it's gradually been crowded out by other plants, weeds and grass. I'm amazed there are still seeds out there to sprout. I think this is the only flower so I'm not sure we'll get any more fertile seeds, but if it produces some I may save them and try to grow them on next year.

All during my brother's visit I was continuing to scan and post my rescued slides, about ten per day. The second Flickr album now has 143 photos in it, and more will be forthcoming. The picture above, from 1974, was a long-shot rescue attempt; the slide is so dark that it's almost black and I could barely see the image. So I scanned it and used Lightroom to brighten it up and bring out the contrast. It's sort of ghostly in its effect.

I downloaded the garden cam yesterday and found that the batteries gave out at some point in the middle of the week. So no garden cam video this weekend; I'll save up what little footage I have and put it all together for another video next week. I know you're all heartbroken. 😀

I intend to reappear elsewhere in blogland today and catch up on all my fellow bloggers' lives! Forgive me if I don't go back and answer all my comments from the past week, but I have read and appreciated them all. Frances asked several days ago why Americans are so infatuated with visiting Stonehenge, which she termed "a few old stones in a field." I think it's basically their age -- I can't think of any large-scale monuments in North America that even vaguely approach the age of Stonehenge. Mesa Verde, in Colorado, has been an inhabited site for thousands of years but the existing cliff dwellings there "only" go back to the 1200s or so. There are other ancient sites but they're mainly excavated areas where spear tips, arrowheads and that kind of thing have been found. Nothing as large as a stone circle. So that's my inexpert opinion!