The Kid on the Trellis

Here are some of the old snapshots I picked up at Covent Garden market on Monday. Some of you mentioned that you didn't know Covent Garden had an antiques market -- it's only on Mondays, in the Jubilee Market section. There's lots of knickknacks, china, glassware, stamps and coins, books, old jewelry, stuff like that -- and invariably someone will have a box of old photos.

I liked the strong light and graphic patterns in the photo above. It was only after I scanned it that I realized there's a kid climbing the trellis! (Most of these photos are very small in real life, as a lot of old snapshots used to be, so it's not easy to see details.)

A very 1930s-looking tennis game. Remember Monty Python's skit "Salad Days"?

Again, this picture is tiny in real life -- no bigger than a postage stamp. Thank goodness we can wear more comfortable clothes nowadays. That collar seems awfully stiff.

(Late edit: Is this the same guy as on the left in the tennis photo above?)

This is the only one of these photos to have a note on the back: "Eileen with Francis, Lucy and Martin Cassar, Villa Shangrila, Ta' Xbiex, Malta. April 1965."

More kids, on a distinctive duck-shaped bench. Speaking of which, the kid in the back looks like he's goosing that girl. I can't tell what the older girl is holding in her hand. I tried reverse image-searching this photo to see if the duck bench turned up a location, but no luck.

And finally, a typical '60s-looking beach scene. Someone's little brother is creeping into the frame from the left. Are we still in Malta, or back in England? Or somewhere else? Who knows.

I have a few more, and as usual, they'll all go on Flickr.

A Butterfly on the Tube

Yesterday I decided I had to get out of the house, so I headed down to Westminster for a photo walk. How long has it been?! I've taken lots of incidental pictures here and there on other urban outings, but it's been ages since I've deliberately walked with photography as my primary purpose. I needed the exercise, and I brought my big camera rather than my phone, to make it a more intentional effort.

I started at Green Park and walked east through Soho to Covent Garden. Along the way I stopped at a Caffè Nero on Old Compton Street, where I sat outside with my Americano and watched the world go by. This Italian cafe was across the street. The blue plaque on the wall says John Logie Baird first demonstrated television in that building, in 1926. Talk about opening Pandora's box!

It's been so long since I've been able to get out and do some street photography. Maybe once I retire this is something I'll focus on more (no pun intended, honest).

Finally I got to Covent Garden and went to the market, where I spent some time combing through old photos. I bought a handful to add to my online archive of anonymous found photos, and you will no doubt see them in coming days. The guy charged me £7.20, and I gave him £12.20 thinking I could get rid of some coins and he could give me a £5 note back. But no! He gave me £5 in even more coins than I gave him! So ridiculous. Why didn't he just tell me he didn't have a fiver?

Weirdly, I ran into a guy named Patrick who I met the night I went to The Moth. He's a friend of my co-worker Staci's friend Chrissy (if you can follow that). So basically, a friend twice removed. We chatted a bit about good antique markets. So random.

I'd intended to buy Dave a birthday present, but I didn't find anything he'd want. I went to Nisbets to get him some new baking sheets but I couldn't find any. I wound up buying a cutting board instead, to replace one that Dave bought that doesn't fit in our dishwasher -- good to get but it didn't address the birthday issue. And then I had to lug it around.

On the way back to the tube in Bond Street I passed the Mexican embassy, which is all decked out for Pride. It's heartening to see that Mexico has joined the modern world, while the United States of America furiously backpedals against it.

On the way home I was surprised to see a red admiral butterfly trapped in the tube car. Considering we were underground this was a bit of a surprise. I'm sure it flew onto the car when it was parked in a train yard at either end of its route. Well, I couldn't leave it there, so right before I got off in West Hampstead I gently captured it in my hands. By that time we were above ground, so all I had to do was step off the train (a bit awkward carrying my camera bag, a cutting board and a butterfly) and release it into the air. It flew away in the sunshine.

"Thank you!" called a woman from the train just before the doors closed.

That's the first red admiral I've seen this year, and in such an unexpected place!

Magenta Spreen Lambsquart

Dave and I went to breakfast on the high street yesterday morning. Along the way, we passed this beautiful plant growing beneath a street tree. I took a photo and ran it through my plant identifier app. The answer came back "tree spinach," aka "magenta spreen lambsquart," which gave us a good laugh.

"That would make a great password," Dave said. "No one would ever guess it."

Turns out "magenta spreen" and "giant lambsquarters" are common names for Chenopodium giganteum -- the app somehow combined and truncated them. It's also called "purple goosefoot" and "fat hen." It's an amaranth, a relative of quinoa.

We want to try it in the garden. It grows five feet tall, and you know how much I love my dinosaur plants! We might try to transplant this one, or we might wait to collect seeds. Like many amaranths they are apparently prolific re-seeders so we might have to keep them in check.

Anyway, we went to breakfast, and Olga came along. We tried to sit outside but in the early morning the breeze was still too chilly, so we moved indoors for our pastries and coffee at Gail's. As the hours passed the temperatures warmed and by afternoon they were perfect, in the low 70's (F) with a partly cloudy sky.

The Solomon's seal sawfly larvae are back on the Solomon's seal. I'm leaving them for now. Biodiversity and all that. I used to worry that they'd kill the plant and I'd try to remove them, but they reappear every year and the plant always bounces back. Cycle of life!

I did some routine garden trimming, mostly deadheading and cutting blackberries out of the flower beds. I also had a Facetime call with my brother so I could fill him in on my retirement plans. He's retired already himself -- and he's younger than I am -- so he wholeheartedly approves!

It continues to be a banner year for ladybirds/ladybugs. Here's a little video to show you the many stages I'm finding -- larvae, pupae and mature adults, some of them just emerged. Oh, and a bumblebee, busy on our Turkish sage (Phlomis). I like the way it has to lift the lid on each flower to get to the good stuff.

Many years ago I plucked this lantern from someone's trash and brought it back to our garden. It's been hanging there ever since and it had become filthy, and yesterday I almost threw it out. But then I scrubbed it up with an old toothbrush and it looks respectable again.

Last night we had leftover pasta bolognese and I set up a table in the garden so we could dine al fresco. We put a candle in the lantern and set it in the middle of the table atop a colorful tablecloth. It all would have been quite idyllic except that Olga CANNOT tolerate us sitting in the garden if we're not paying attention to her. She barks incessantly. It was a noisy meal.

Two-Spot Afternoon

Our red geranium (or, to be absolutely proper, Pelargonium) has finally bloomed after a spring spent looking rather spindly and terrible. I'm glad it's bouncing back with more sun and warmer weather. Several of our geraniums are looking a bit worn and next year I probably need to give them all a hard prune. (I say this every year but I'm always reluctant to prune anything and so I never do it.)

I had a very relaxed day yesterday. I changed our bedsheets, folded and put away laundry, and sat in the garden with Olga. The temperatures were perfect.

I couldn't decide which of these pictures to use so you're getting both of them! Although you can see my computer sitting on the chair above (I was reading blogs and catching up on comments), I spent most of my time reading "A Visit From the Goon Squad," which I finished. I really, really enjoyed that book. It was masterfully constructed and just so interesting. I have a Louise Doughty mystery to tackle next.

Some of the pupating ladybirds/ladybugs seem to be emerging. I'm seeing more mature beetles around, and the pupa I blogged about a week ago, standing on its end, is now empty. Nature keeps on truckin', to quote R. Crumb.

The ladybird/ladybug above is a two-spot, which is a native variety and not one of the Asian harlequins. I am glad to see the native species holding their own. I was reading last night that although the harlequins are invaders, there's mixed evidence about whether they out-compete native varieties. Maybe we really can all live together in harmony. At least if we're ladybirds/ladybugs (and we're not on Twitter).

I tried once again to find evidence of any protests in London and saw nothing online. Only in the evening, after I'd made my start-of-summer martini, did Dave see a post from a Facebook friend about a protest at the U.S. embassy. Drat! I knew I should have gone down there. (But when? And where? I like to have a plan before I set out on such an expedition. Next time they need better publicity.)

Anyway, I am heartened this morning to see so much visible resistance in the USA, in all 50 states. You've gotta be a brave person to attend an anti-Trump march in Alabama and Mississippi and a lot of other conservative areas, but people did it, protesting our own governmental Goon Squad. Bravo all around!

Free at Last

Yesterday was our last day of work until mid-August. Woo hoo! And it was barely a workday. I had almost no customers in the library, and everything was pretty much already cleaned up and put away for the summer, so I just did a few small tasks here and there.

I took Jerry, the library Christmas cactus, down to the Lower School patio garden and hosed him off to ease his mealybug infestation. (A fifth-grader named Jerry last year when she saw me daubing his leaves with alcohol to kill the mealybugs. She decided he needed a name. I have no idea why she chose that one, but whatever.) I did the same with another Christmas cactus that I then brought home to try to rehabilitate. It needs some work.

I discovered this dinosaur fantasy (above) in a pool or fountain in the middle of the courtyard.

And these fearsome monsters were off to the side.

We had our year-end lunch at noon, where we heard speeches and said goodbye to several departing colleagues, and then we were free!

Someone left these flowers outside the office door of a co-worker. Unfortunately I think she'd already gone home, so I e-mailed her to tell her they were there and I put them in some water. Hopefully she'll come back for them.

I walked home and found these nicely framed prints along the way, offered up for the taking. They need a cleaning but they look good otherwise. Rothko, I think? Or maybe a Rothko imitator? In any case I did not take them.

In the afternoon I lay in the garden with Olga and read. I got very sleepy, which I attribute to the two glasses of wine I had at lunch. It's certainly not the fault of the book, Jennifer Egan's "A Visit From the Goon Squad," which I love. An English teacher recommended it to me and I'm so glad she did. It's a novel made up of interconnected stories about people loosely arranged around a music producer, and I think both the construction and language use are interesting.

Last night we were supposed to get "torrential" rains, according to the weather forecast. We got rain but it was hardly torrential, at least as far as I could tell before I fell asleep. Nothing like the toad-stranglers I've witnessed in Florida!

Authoritarianism and Australian Spam

I'm going to start right out by mentioning the scary state of affairs in the USA -- Trump's mobilizing of the military against our own citizens, and against the wishes of state and local leaders in California, not to mention the handcuffing of a U.S. senator for daring to ask a question at a press conference by Kristi Noem. I said to Dave yesterday morning, "This is martial law." Where does it stop? This is authoritarianism. It's happening now. As I say pretty much every day nowadays, Trump's America is not the country I grew up in.

If we were having anti-Trump protests here tomorrow I might go, but I'm not aware of any. (And I've looked.) As I've said in comments on other blogs, part of the problem might be that the "No More Kings" slogan doesn't really work in the UK. It's a branding problem! I bet if I went down to the embassy or maybe Trafalgar Square something would be going on. Meanwhile, I'm protesting here on my blog.

More trivially, what was up with the onslaught of Australian spam comments on my blog yesterday? Did any other bloggers experience this? I've deleted it all -- which I almost hated to do because YP made funny replies to several of them -- but it was the strangest thing. I had about eight comments trying to sell me pool maintenance and bank loans and all manner of stuff, from businesses all based in Melbourne, I think. Those crafty Australians, hacking Google's firewalls.

Yesterday at work I did my first aid training and my fire safety training. The latter was a three hour online video course, and involved far more detail than I should have to know given that my only responsibility as a fire warden is to make sure everyone leaves the library if the alarm goes off. I don't need the legal origins of the fire codes and statistics about fire casualties blah blah blah, and although it's helpful to know about the various types of fire extinguishers it's highly unlikely that I would ever be in a position to fight a fire at work myself. Not only that, but some of it was stunningly obvious. Here's one actual directive from the video: "Once you believe the fire is out, stop using the extinguisher." Yeah, no shit, Sherlock!

Today is our final all-school meeting and lunch, where we say goodbye to departing colleagues and that kind of thing, and then we're off for the summer. It's also Olga's last walk with her dog-walker. A momentous day!

Oh, and Mr. K returned from his travels yesterday. He mowed his lawn and I told him how I'd closed their shed. Mrs. K is supposedly coming back today, so normalcy appears to be returning to my little corner of London.

(Photo: A neat house I often pass on my walks to and from work.)

Beetle

Here's one of our masterworts, or Astrantia, which I divided and replanted a couple of years ago. Half of the original plant is in the flower bed in the center of the garden and half in a pot. Dave said of these blossoms the other day, "That's not a very nice color." And it's true that it's not as bright as another of our masterworts. But I still like it, that dusty pink.

Yesterday was very quiet in the library. We got a few more books back from people who waited until the very last minute -- and incidentally, there are still quite a few out. I think the student overdue list is about three pages long at this point. The kids will just have to deal with all that in the fall. I am not a miracle-worker.

I only worked through the morning and came home around 1 p.m. -- just in time to see Olga dropped off by her dog-walker. He and I had a brief chat about her age and condition. I think he's sorry to lose her as a client after so many years, but he understands that at this point she'd probably rather just lie around the house and garden. Her last day walking with him is tomorrow.

This is a scarlet lily beetle, living on one of our Asiatic lilies. A severe infestation can defoliate a lily -- in fact, you can see the leaf directly above the insect has been nibbled. The RHS advises to tolerate them if possible, and we don't have much of an infestation so for now I'm leaving it alone. (I think they're kind of pretty, actually.) It doesn't seem to love these particular lilies, but we used to have a crown imperial fritillaria that the beetles hungrily devoured. I've picked them off and killed them by hand in the past, but it's difficult -- they're really hard. Smashing them is like trying to crush a pebble between your fingers.

So anyway, Mr. Beetle is safe for the moment. If I see a lot of larvae or eggs I'll take steps.