Pseudo-Military Squirrel Hunting

Remember those brilliant yellow trees on a neighboring street that I showed you less than two weeks ago? Well, this is what they look like now. As you can see, we're getting foggy mornings lately, too. A very November-ish scene.

I kept myself busy yesterday caring for all the houseplants. I took the variegated rubber tree from our bedroom outside and gave it a bath -- it has thrips, I think, and it's struggling a bit. So I wiped every leaf with a dish-soap solution and then gave the whole thing a rinse. I also sprayed down the jade plant, which has persistent mealybugs. This is just a fact of life around here -- one plant or another always has some kind of bug on it, and I just try to keep them tamped down as best I can so they don't go crazy.

In the afternoon I took Bailey to Hampstead Heath. As you can see, she was hunting squirrels in the treetops even before we got there.

That's her new harness. It's a sort of military-looking thing with the brand name One Tigris, which certainly makes me think of Iraq. But it's great for her because it's very secure and has three straps, as opposed to her other one which has two.

I like it, even though she looks like a dog that Pete Hegseth might own.

We found this beautiful Amanita mushroom. I always thought these were poisonous, but Wikipedia says they can be ingested with the proper preparation and can even have psychoactive properties. Darn, a missed opportunity! (Only joking. There's no way in heck I would eat that under any circumstances.)

Bailey loves the woods and goes nuts for the squirrels. A woman walked past as she was barking madly at the treetops and said to Bailey, "You're not going to talk them into coming down!" Which reminded me of the guy who joked about Olga "barking them down" years ago. Maybe this is a common joke.

Last night we watched "Below" with Josh Hartnett, a TV series we recently started. It's about a fishing village in Newfoundland being terrorized by a giant squid and it's better than you might think, given that description. We've also started a show on ITV called "Trigger Point" about a bomb squad, and I'm enjoying that because it's filmed partly in our corner of Northwest London -- I've seen familiar landmarks like the South Kilburn Estate and a mosque up in Willesden Green. Neither of these are new shows and they both have multiple seasons, so maybe you've seen them already. We're a little slow on the uptake around here!