Butterflies and the Art Show

I've mentioned several times the dearth of butterflies in our garden this summer. I've seen a few cabbage whites, a few common blues and I think one single red admiral, and that's about it. It's been a terrible year considering we usually get commas, peacocks, Jersey tiger moths and others.

Well, now I'm seeing articles about how we're not alone. It's apparently been a disastrous summer for butterflies across the country. Some of it might be due to the climate, but according to experts cited in this article, "the declines in butterflies and other flying insects appear to be more than seasonal fluctuations relating to bad weather." As a result, Butterfly Conservation wants a ban on all neonicotinoid pesticides -- Britain and the EU banned them in 2018 but then the UK exempted the sugar beet industry from its ban. So those potent pesticides are flying around once again, instead of our beloved butterflies.

Isn't it amazing that 62 years after Rachel Carson and "Silent Spring," we're still having this conversation -- still waging this battle?

On a brighter note, I made a video to show you more of the community art show at the school where I work. I tried to do it all in one take -- it's not a very big show -- but people kept walking through the gallery so I had to do some splicing. I also tried to film in a way that shows the works but not the names of the exhibitors, for privacy reasons. So this will only give you a taste of what's on display, but it's better than nothing. I added the contemplative Asian-themed music mostly to drown out extraneous sounds of people talking, floors creaking and doors opening and closing, but it seems to complement the art, doesn't it?

You'll see pottery, embroidery, an architectural model, a decorated boom box, a painted pair of sneakers and a wooden sculpture of a jungle cat. And of course paintings and drawings and photography and all manner of wall art, including my very blue picture.

The only piece that gets really short shrift is an installation shown toward the end -- two side-by-side iPads, playing a looped series of videos created by one of our art teachers. The videos are fascinating to watch but I couldn't really capture them in my own short video, so you mostly just see the setup.

Finally, continuing our artsy theme, I created a few "paintings" with my Waterlogue app -- including this one of Olga napping in the garden near the hollyhock, which you'll remember from this post. I think it turned out well.

If Olga is going to do any outdoor napping this weekend, it will have to be this afternoon. We're getting possible rain this morning and then more certain rain tomorrow and Monday. That's OK -- the plants and grass need it!

(Top photo: A folded sticker on the sidewalk on Finchley Road, on my walk home yesterday.)

Exhibit

I passed this theater in Islington on the bus the other day when I went to Hackney. On the way home, I got off the bus specifically to photograph it. I'm not sure why "Beetlejuice" is spelled out two times and then broken off mid-word the third time. Is it a joke from the movie? (I've never seen "Beetlejuice," believe it or not.) And how can I possibly pass up a midnight showing of "Rambo: First Blood"?

Yesterday was pretty quiet at work, but I made major progress on several long-overdue books. I had about ten high school kids with books that were due last spring! Of course I've been sending them notices and writing their parents, but I wasn't seeing a whole lot of progress. Finally, yesterday, I wrote several of them telling them to see me right away, and if they didn't I'd come and find them in class.

I should know by now that all I have to do is threaten to embarrass a kid in front of their classmates and I get results. I got everything back or paid for except one boy who said he will return his book today. (We'll see.)

Our school community art show opened yesterday, and as you can see, there's quite an assortment of submissions on display. My very blue picture is right in the middle there. The well-meaning organizers put it in a glass frame, and I'm a little concerned that there's now too much glare to see the subtle detail in the photo. But I got lots of compliments on it, so who knows. There's an accompanying guide that includes a statement from each artist, and there are also some free-standing pieces in the middle of the room -- pottery and sculpture and fiber art.

Points for humor to the guy who drew the "Birds of Regent's Park (as seen from a distance)" at upper right!

There was an opening party yesterday afternoon -- I snuck away from the library for half an hour -- but of course I wound up mostly talking to the other exhibitors, rather than paying closer attention to the works. So I'll have to go back when the gallery is empty and check everything out. Maybe I can get a better, more complete photo.

Manny Two

This is the much-graffitied wall of Abbey Road Studios, which I walked past yesterday evening on my way home from a post-work pub gathering. One of my co-workers, the other library assistant, is leaving at the beginning of next month and the school has decided not to immediately replace her. For a while, at least, I'll be doing the work of two assistants (and splitting it with the other librarians). Remember how I was talking about how to spend my free time at work? Yeah, that whole conversation is pretty much moot now. Anyway, our pub gathering was to celebrate our departing colleague. She's moving to Spain where she's going to hike and learn Spanish and not work at all. Must be nice!

I started off yesterday with a dentist's appointment -- just a checkup after my recent cleaning. There's no news to report, thank goodness. The dentist still wants to replace one of my aging fillings and, ideally, do a root canal on a slightly discolored tooth in the front, but I'm in no pain and nothing is urgent so I just keep putting it off. If it ain't broke don't fix it. (And as far as I'm concerned, it ain't broke.)

I also double-checked my US voter registration which is still valid and active, so no nefarious voter-roll purges have targeted me, fortunately.

Here's our newest patient in the plant hospital, a Monstera I found yesterday morning walking the dog. In fact, I found it on the pile of trash on the problem corner I mentioned in yesterday's post. (Of course, more trash had been deposited there!) The plant was bone-dry, so I brought it home and gave it some water, and I'm letting it recover in the dining room. I thought it would perk up significantly but it still looks pretty much like that, so recovery may be a process. It needs a clay pot, some fresh soil and some TLC.

Dave and I had a Monstera when we lived in New Jersey that we named Manny. So we're calling this one Manny Two.

Pizza Fraud

I got a surprise yesterday evening when I noticed our yellow rose had not only leaves, but five blossoms or buds! I mentioned before that our roses were looking pretty dire at the end of the blooming season. They struggle with black spot and some were down to bare twigs -- including this yellow one. But since then many have produced a second round of leaves and some flowers, and I was glad to see this one bounce back. In the past it's been one of our hardiest and most productive roses but it's had a tough year.

We're going to pay closer attention to rose care next spring.

I got another surprise last night when I logged on to our bank account to send a routine payment. I was looking over our statement, as I try to do at least once a month, when I noticed four charges on Monday from Domino's Pizza. We never order Domino's, and we certainly didn't order it four times on Monday. So I began looking more closely at our past charges and discovered to my horror that we'd been charged by Domino's 12 times in recent weeks, a total of £360!

I fault myself for not being more on top of this, but we've been so busy with starting school and various other things that I just haven't watched the bank account closely enough. It all started August 19 with one charge of £27.96, and escalated from there.

Strangely, there seem to be no other suspicious charges. Whoever is bilking us is apparently just a pizza lover. ("Kids," Dave says, but I'm not so sure.)

Anyway, I called the bank and it turns out the perpetrator was using Dave's debit card number. We have no idea how they got it, but his card has been cancelled and the money is being provisionally refunded to us, pending an investigation.

I certainly did not need that little bit of excitement in my evening.

Here's more excitement I didn't need:

This pile of debris was sitting in front of an apartment building around the corner from our flat for days and days. There was a wooden pallet, some furniture, and lots of household rubbish. I finally reported it to the council -- along with two other rubbish/furniture piles on nearby corners -- and they cleared it all. I was so happy when I came home that evening and saw the area clean.

The next morning, I walked Olga and found:

SO ANNOYING!

I reported it again and allegedly this has been cleared too (I haven't been out to check yet) -- but this is one of several problem corners in our neighborhood so I'm sure it won't be long before there's another mountain of junk there.

Mermaid Mystery Solved

Well, I did it. I have vanquished Barbra Streisand's autobiography -- all 960 or so pages. When I took it to work yesterday I said to myself, "I am not hauling this book home again!" I managed to finish it off during lunch and checked it in then and there.

I had to laugh when she said in the acknowledgements that the book took ten years to write, and even then her publishers had to basically pry it out of her hands. That's so Barbra.

Oh! And I solved -- well, sort of -- the mystery of the mermaid.

I took my good camera to work yesterday and got this picture of the tiny sticker -- the best I could do to capture the detail. When I came home, I ran it through Google image search and found this. Yes! It's the same image, and much prettier in color, posted by an apparently Korean artist using the name Kim Sanho. The same artist has an Instagram here.

(Wikipedia has an article about a South Korean comic book artist by that same name, but he's 85 years old and his style seems much more old-school, so I don't think this is his -- perhaps it's by an admirer who has adopted his name as a tribute?)

From what I can gather, the characters are from a story called Rain and Yuyeong, or Yoo-young, and the image was drawn to commemorate an award won by a project called Local Private Life 99 (or sometimes Local Privacy 99). This appears to be a series of comic books by various artists, each based on a particular Korean city. On this web page, one of the books -- focusing on the city of Busan -- is described:

So that seems to be our story, but interesting that the writer is here called Coral. The image itself is signed Sanho. Who knows what the artist's real name is! Apparently the sticker shows the characters after they've met and the mermaid is past her paper-bag crisis.

Anyway, that's probably way more than you wanted to know, but funny how a tiny sticker on a lamppost in South Hampstead led me down that rabbit hole of Korean comic books and graphic novels.

(Top photo: A fallen rose petal on one of next year's teasels, in our garden.)

Hackney

You might recall that another of my goals for the weekend was to get out of the house. After spending all of Saturday on various household tasks, I decided to go yesterday on a photo outing to Hackney, in east London. The weather was beautiful and rather than spend time underground on the tube, I also decided to do all my traveling by bus. That way I got to enjoy the scenery (?) between here and there. Or at least the daylight.

I took a bus down to Baker Street, and then another bus from there to Hackney. (I could have ridden that bus all the way to Hackney Wick, which is even farther east, but I'll save that for another day.)

I got off the bus near Balls Pond Road and walked south past the majestic Empire theater and the town hall.

The cynical among us might see this sticker and think, "Don't we always?"

I headed toward London Fields, a large green park where people were out sunbathing, romping with dogs or climbing on sculptures (top photo). Granted, that particular sculpture -- a pair of flower sellers -- includes benches, so it's meant to be climbed or at least sat upon. I photographed it before, way back in 2012, and I'd completely forgotten about it, so it was fun to revisit it.

These guys were having a game of cricket, looking very official in their whites.

I walked down Broadway Market, where there was lots of lively street activity. I bought a falafel wrap for lunch and took it back to London Fields to eat near the flower sellers sculpture, and then popped into a neighborhood bookshop. I was happy to find "Smiling in Slow Motion," the second volume of Derek Jarman's diaries, there. You may remember I bought and read the first, "Modern Nature," several years ago and loved it. (It inspired me to visit his cottage at Dungeness.)

I made my way down to Hackney Road, where I passed this shop. It's not very remarkable now, but 13 years ago I took one of my favorite shopfront photos here. It had more character then. (The whole area has gentrified tremendously, but there's still plenty of graffiti.)

I gradually headed eastward and then north again along Kingsland Road, back up to Balls Pond Road where I caught the bus back home. I didn't get any reading done yesterday, so alas, I did not finish Barbra -- my one unaccomplished weekend goal. Perhaps today.

A Carnival of Dust

This seed pod of the colorfully named "stinking iris" looks like it's grinning at me with orange teeth. I usually try to cut down these pods to prevent the iris from spreading -- it can be a bit thuggish -- but I left this one. It's growing in an area of the garden where not much else grows, so frankly, if we get a few more iris there it wouldn't be a bad thing.

I got a lot done yesterday. I vacuumed, watered all the plants, did laundry, changed our bedsheets and read another 80 or so pages of Barbra. I also downloaded a few more of her songs from iTunes. Back in the mid-'80s I went to Peaches Records and Tapes in the University Collection shopping center in Tampa, and bought an album of hers called "Emotion." Barbra does not look upon it fondly -- in her book she called it a "hodgepodge" that she barely remembers making, mainly to fulfill a contract. She's on the cover wearing a pink off-the-shoulder "Flashdance"-style sweater. I listened to some of it again on iTunes and it is indeed pretty terrible -- very synth-pop. But I remembered liking three songs: "Clear Sailing," "Here We Are At Last" and the somewhat overwrought "Left In the Dark Again." So, for nostalgic purposes, I downloaded those and played them while doing my chores.

How about some dramatic before-and-after cleaning pictures?

In our bedroom, we have two IKEA-style white armoires. They were here when we moved into this flat ten years ago, and they're the closest thing we have to bedroom closets. I had never tried to move them and I've often thought it must be pretty dusty under there.

Yesterday I muscled them away from the wall and as you can see, I was not wrong.

But after vacuuming and cleaning the floor, as well as taking out that unused coil of ancient coaxial cable, I was left with this:

I totally forgot there was an electrical outlet back there. If I ever knew it.

Anyway, I did this with both armoires and they were easier to move than I expected. So maybe I won't let this job go for another ten years. I had fantasies of finding all sorts of things behind or under them -- missing clothes? Money? But all I found was a clothespin. Sad trombone.

Finally, I mowed the lawn, including tying up the leaves of all the remaining teasels so I could mow more carefully around them. I found this hardy little cyclamen blooming in one of our flower beds. We planted those things not long after moving in, and every year one or two still come up. (The squirrels ate many of them.)

I also took out an old, dying lavender bush. It was actually sort of an accident -- I was cutting the dead part out but accidentally cut the live part too. Oh well. It really was dying.

Dave and I are watching "The Perfect Couple" on Netflix. It's entertaining, but Nicole Kidman's character speaks with the strangest accent. It's not Australian, it's not English, it's not mid-Atlantic theatrical, and it's not patrician New England. (The show takes place on Nantucket.) It sounds like nothing I've ever heard. I hope it gets explained at some point.