A Bird's-Eye View

Another late start to blogging, mostly because I didn't sleep well last night and thus stayed in bed later than usual. I woke up around 1:30 a.m., rolled over and began feeling a sharp pain in my chest -- which of course had me concerned right away. I got out of bed and walked around, and felt fine standing or sitting up, but then when I returned to bed I got the same pain again. I reasoned that it couldn't possibly be my heart, or it would be constant, right? But in an abundance of caution I called the NHS medical advice line, which fortunately for me is a 24-hour operation, and they seemed to believe it wasn't an emergency but they're going to have a doctor call me later today. (Of course, it being the weekend, my regular GP's practice is closed.)

I did eventually go back to sleep, but not before reading the news. I saw that Robin Morgan died -- her ground-breaking anthology "Sisterhood is Powerful" was a popular book among some of my women friends in college. It seems significant that she died just a few days after Gloria Steinem. It's been a tough week for second-wave feminism.

Here's a view of our garden that we don't often see. Our upstairs neighbors, Ian and Sarah, had us over last night for some snacks and drinks on their terrace, so we got a bird's-eye perspective on our growing space. You can see some dry sticks to the right of the bird-bath -- that's one of our big buddleias, which pretty much died in the drought. I cut it back yesterday, even though it's the wrong time of year, in the hopes that it will leaf out again, but we shall see. I think we may have lost it entirely. You can also see the whitish-silvery look of the dahlias, in a row to the left of the central flower bed. They're that color because once again they've become afflicted with powdery mildew. It's just something that seems to happen to them late in the season.

Here's our patio from above. A regular jungle, isn't it? There's the avocado on the left, the tree fern bottom center, the banana top center, a bay tree upper right, the Brugmansia on the patio table in the middle and the neighbor's climbing rose, aka "The Monster," at right.

There really is a patio down there somewhere.

And here's the view to the north out one of their attic skylights, looking up the street. I've never seen any of these perspectives so it was neat to see the neighborhood and the garden from a new angle!