Balsam and Blackberries

Another weekend, another walk on the Heath. I continue to marvel at how well Olga's responded to her anti-inflammatory medication. She's like a new dog -- queen of the hill, you might say. She shows much more energy and enthusiasm. And she's got to feel better, not being arthritically achey. I wish we'd known sooner that that's what was slowing her down.

We saw Himalayan balsam on our walk -- it's a pretty flower but it's also an invasive species. Only afterwards did I wonder if I should have pulled it up myself.

This guy was practicing his guitar out in the woods -- playing for a tree stump. He sounded pretty good, but I didn't stick around to listen. I'm not sure he wanted an audience, aside from the stump.

Anyway, we made a full circle of the Heath and even climbed Parliament Hill before ambling back home, where Dave...

...had made a blackberry pie!

Remember how I said we had a bumper crop of blackberries in the garden this year? Well, yesterday morning I picked a big bowl of them -- a bowl bigger than Olga's head! Dave was impressed at the quantity, and I couldn't even reach the berries at the top of the vines. While Olga and I walked, Dave got to baking.

Here's the end result! It reminds me so much of the blackberry cobblers made by Mrs. Kirkland, the woman who took care of me and my brother after school when we were small children. I had a profound "food memory experience," I believe Dave called it, as I was eating that pie.

Burnets

Yesterday Dave and I took Olga to the cemetery for a rare family walk. I always love it when all three of us can go! And I was glad to find the six-spot burnet moths making their annual summer appearance.

They're black, with red spots, but sometimes when the light hits them a certain way they look shiny and iridescent.

Here's one in flight -- not the best shot, but you can see its bright red underwings. Often when flying they just look like a red blur.

And here's one joined by a bee on a thistle. Look at all the bright yellow pollen on the underside of that bee!

Anyway, we had a good walk, and I got some other pictures too, but I'll save those to fuel my blog's summertime bug-a-day theme.

I also found this very peculiar feather. There aren't a lot of green birds flying around -- except feral parakeets, and I suspect that's where this came from. Then again, maybe it's a turaco feather! (I haven't seen the turaco in a while, but I've heard it recently so it's still here.)

I suddenly realized yesterday that we're just a few weeks away from going back to school. The plan as it stands now is for all our students and teachers to return, with limited class sizes and activities, more physical barriers, distancing, masks in certain places and at certain times of the day and that kind of thing. Dave and I are both nervous about it, but we also recognize that life goes on. I'm not sure exactly what date I return -- I think it's a month from today. Just when I was getting used to all this down time!

Calamus and Canna

I finished Mark Doty's book about Walt Whitman yesterday morning, sitting on our garden bench. I found the book a little uneven, a bit like a sandwich -- drier at the beginning and the end, but juicier in the middle. It was most interesting when Doty wrote about his own life and Whitman's relationship to it; less interesting, I found, were Doty's dissections of Whitman's linguistics and poetic structure.

I was most intrigued by Doty's descriptions of Whitman's "Calamus" poems, including one from 1860 that always stands out in my memory:

I dreamed in a dream, I saw a city invincible to the attacks
          of the whole of the rest of the earth,
I dreamed that was the new City of Friends,
Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love – it led
          the rest,
It was seen in every hour in the actions of the men of that city,
And in all their looks and words.

I was living in Manhattan on 9/11. A few days afterwards, I was walking through New York's Union Square, which like many parts of the city featured a huge impromptu memorial to the victims of the catastrophe. Someone had written that poem on a poster or flier and left it there, among the flowers and candles, and it made a huge impression on me -- an almost prophetic assertion of New York's beauty and resilience.

It turns out that wasn't the original, though. Doty quotes a slightly different earlier version of the same verse:

I dreamed in a dream of a city where all men were like brothers,
O I saw them tenderly love each other – I often saw them,
          in numbers, walking hand in hand;
I dreamed that was the city of robust friends – Nothing was greater
          there than manly love – it led the rest,
It was seen every hour in the actions of men of that city, and in all
          their looks and words. –

Doty points out that Whitman's original version of this verse is more specifically male-oriented, with men tenderly loving each other, hand in hand. The friends are "robust," the love is "manly." Doty wonders if the "attacks" in the later version come "because of that tender love?" In other words, the original version is gayer -- a vision of a sort of queer utopia, albeit also brotherly, to be read and interpreted by both "insiders and outsiders" according to their perspectives.

At any rate, Whitman still isn't my favorite poet. Although Doty extolls his use of everyday language in his quest to write uniquely American poetry, I still find him difficult, rambling and circuitous. I guess I'm just a more direct communicator. (My journalism training!) Perhaps I would feel differently about what seemed to me the drier parts of Doty's book if I were more into Whitman in general.

On a completely different note, remember our new and struggling canna lily? Well, it was just beginning to produce a new leaf, and I was thinking it was going to survive -- and then, BOOM. I went out yesterday morning to find the plant ravaged (above). I have no idea what got into it -- either a very large and angry squirrel or perhaps even a fox. It was sitting beneath the bird feeder, and perhaps some suet dust sifted down onto the pot.

Anyway, I repotted it, but the new leaf is toast. I moved the pot away from the feeders. We'll see if the canna makes another comeback.

(Top photo: Some colorful steps in Soho.)

Look Smart!

A few more pictures from my walk on Wednesday. I love the retro name of this cleaner. No one uses "smart" as an adjective relating to appearance anymore, do they? As in, "you look smart today," or "that's a smart-looking dress." To me it seems very '50s.

Here's another Soho neighborhood character. I had my camera out and he basically got in my path and put his arms up until I took his picture. When I complied, he exclaimed, "I've been shot!"

I liked the lunch special on this sign -- uncertainty with a side of guac. (They're still closed.)

While I was walking on Wednesday, Dave ginned up his courage and got a haircut. He said the experience felt pretty safe -- there were only four other people in the barber shop, three of them stylists, and everyone had protective equipment (including Dave). He looks a million times better and I know he must feel better too.

Yesterday I got motivated to send in my ballot for the primary election in Florida. I consulted with a friend who works in journalism in my home town, marked my ballot and mailed it off. As some of you mentioned in the comments on my post a few days ago, I was afraid not participating would affect my ballot for the big election in November, and we wouldn't want that!

I'm still the only person wearing a mask when I go into many shops, but supposedly that's going to change on July 24, when they become mandatory throughout England -- despite hesitation from some lawmakers like the conservative MP who decried "this monstrous imposition against myself and a number of outraged and reluctant constituents."

Garbo and Crisco

I've been hanging around the house and our immediate neighborhood for weeks, and although I am always happy to spend time beneath the susurrant* trees of our garden, occasionally I need to remind myself that I live in London. So yesterday I took a long walk down to Soho.

I tried to follow a slightly different route than the one I took in early May when I photographed the emptiness of our streets during the height of the lockdown. I passed through a housing estate in Camden that was full of amazing street art and murals, like this blue tit by the artist Aspire.

But I still wound up walking through Camden Town, where I found some crosswalks painted in rainbow colors. At first I thought it was for LGBTQ Pride, but then I realized it's probably part of the rainbow NHS tribute phenomenon. In any case, this is the closest I'll get to celebrating Pride this year.

I made my way through Holborn and Covent Garden, past grand colonial-era edifices like the one above, Africa House, a historically listed building from 1920-22.

On Old Compton Street, I paused for lunch. The restaurant had an interesting coronavirus-inspired drink menu. Talk about making lemonade from lemons! I had to look up Muriel Belcher -- apparently she was a legendary Soho club owner and artistic muse in days of yore. In any case, I passed on her face mask and had coffee instead.

As I ate, I watched a couple have a loud argument in the street. "How much money did you give her?" a woman, wearing impossibly tight jeans, yelled at a man lazily brandishing a smoking doobie. "You're having sex with her, aren't you?!"

Street life is never boring in Soho.

And then, as I was finishing my meal, I saw a colorful neighborhood character wander by:

I'm sure you don't remember, but I've photographed this woman before. I caught up with her and asked her if I could take her picture, and she agreed, but not before pointedly telling me to step back and maintain my distance. (I was so intent on getting her picture, I probably was a little too close.)

Her name is Garbo, or so she said. And her dog is Sadie.

An aside, now: Dave and I were talking just the other day about how we can't find Crisco in grocery stores here. Dave wanted some to make a pie crust. Well, after photographing Garbo, I wandered over to Prowler, which is a gay-themed store selling books and fetish wear and gifts and other stuff. And what did they have on the shelf? Crisco! I will leave it to your imagination why that was the case, but at any rate, I bought a can. Now Dave can make a pie crust!

From there I headed toward home, happy to have finally gotten some exercise and reconnected with the city.

*In a comment to another blogger, I pledged to use this word in my blog post today!

Berry Season

I'm just going to start calling my blog Bug-a-Day, because that's basically what it's become. We found this in the garden yesterday morning. It's a green lacewing, and it's the first lacewing I believe I've seen. A few years ago Dave and I bought some lacewing larvae and set it loose on the plants, but we never saw a single adult. Maybe they hid, and this one is a descendant.

Also, the first flower has appeared on the big inula near the patio. The plant is so tall -- about eight feet high -- that I can only see the blossom from below!

I had a few minor errands to run yesterday. I packaged and mailed some seeds to a pal who'd asked for some -- foxgloves and lupines -- and hopefully they'll be viable. There's really no way to tell until they're in the ground and sprouting. Or not.

I've also been wrestling with what to do with my Florida primary election ballot, which arrived last week. The election is in the middle of next month, but all the races are for local judges and school board members, and let's be honest -- I don't have a clue who any of those people are. I don't think the local newspaper has even made endorsements, so I have nothing to go on. I firmly believe in voting, but I think I may sit this one out. As an overseas voter I really have more at stake in the national elections in November.

It's blackberry season! The berry vines are suddenly exploding with ripening fruit. This particular cluster is way at the top of the vine, in an area I can't reach, so these will be for the birds.

I've long had a vague idea that birds eat blackberries, but I'm not sure I've ever watched it before yesterday. While sitting on the garden bench, I saw a blackbird land about ten feet away with a berry in its beak. It pecked it apart, keeping a wary eye on me the whole time, and finally hopped behind the acanthus to finish its meal in private.

I've been picking them to put on my cereal. Dave doesn't really like our blackberries -- he calls them "acid balls" -- but I like the tartness. And they're free, from our own garden, which makes them even better!

Adventure Fly

This little blue-green fly was very focused on one of the ragwort plants in the garden. It buzzed from flower to flower, probing each blossom. I didn't realize houseflies paid any attention to flowers or drank their nectar, but that's what it seemed to be doing.

Not much to report from yesterday. I read, I watered plants, I stripped aphids off the lupines. Ho-hum.

Blog pal Beth made this digital scrapbook page for Olga, which she called "Olga's Adventure." I don't know a thing about digital scrapbooking, but I guess it's basically embellishing or collaging photos using graphic elements from online kits. You'll recognize the photo as one taken by dog-walker Francisco a couple of weeks ago. The page is very cute, but as I told Beth, I think Olga might eat many of those small animals if she came across them in real life. (Maybe not the deer.)

Anyway, Beth, Olga and I both thank you for your kindness.

I read an interesting lockdown-inspired article in The New York Times yesterday about how challenging it can be to spend all day with your partner and still communicate well. When your every waking moment is spent together, at the end of the day, it can be hard to find things to talk about -- after all, you've shared all that day's experiences and there are no tales to tell. I haven't felt that way with Dave, but I have noticed that we spend a lot of time with our faces planted in our respective computer screens. Dave often uses noise-cancelling headphones, too, which gives him an added layer of isolation. (It can be very frustrating when I'm trying to get his attention, waving my arms frantically from across the room.)

The article recommends intentionally creating new experiences together, and fortunately we get that with the garden and with the shows we watch in the evenings -- and of course I have my dog walks with Olga and my little forays to run errands in the outside world. They do give me some stories of my own. Probably not very exciting ones, but hey -- beggars can't be choosers.