A Touch of the Tropics

The parakeets still come to our bird feeder almost every day -- at least, every day that I remember to put food in it. They and their equally squabbly avian cousins, the starlings, can demolish four suet balls in the course of an afternoon. A lot of it winds up on the ground, where the pigeons and other little birds manage to peck it up. These two were out in the garden yesterday.

I had a quiet day, taking care of some tasks around the house. I watered the orchids and took the citrus tree out into the garden for a hose-down. I think it has spider mites -- the leaves have that vaguely speckled look that plants with mites get. I gave it a bath despite the fact that it's not very warm out there -- a high of 48º F at noon (9º C). Olga tried to sunbathe but it was too cold even for her!

The single little fruit on the citrus has turned decidedly orange. So it is, in fact, a mandarin orange, as my plant app said many months ago. That mystery is solved.

When I lived in Florida I used to hear that citrus trees need chilly (but not freezing) nights to make the fruit sweeter. I have no idea whether this is true or not but maybe being out in the chilly air yesterday, and being bathed by chilly water, will not only knock back any mites but give the fruit a boost.

I also spread our last two bags of mulch, so that task is finally complete. I didn't get achy like before, I suppose because I wasn't out there as long or dealing with as much of it.

And I got out my hand-saw and acted all butch by sawing in half an old fence post that had been left lying in the front garden. (Perhaps I should have sung "The Lumberjack Song" as I worked.) It's been there for years but until our recent garden butchering pruning, it had been hidden by foliage. It sawed pretty easily, probably because it's so old and rotten, and once cut down in size I threw it in the bin.

Here's a close-up of our bird bath. In the right light the poem on the side really stands out:

The kiss of the sun for pardon
The song of the birds for mirth
One is nearer God's heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth

This often-quoted bit of Victorian doggerel comes from a poet named Dorothy Gurney, who (according to Wikipedia, which is never wrong) wrote it in 1882. It's part of her longer poem "God's Garden." I suspect our birdbath is very old and has been standing in this garden a long, long time. The words are weathered and worn away by scratchy little starling feet and not always easy to read.

Oh, and I'm just seeing that our forsythia is blooming! That literally happened overnight.

Eclipsed

I had grand plans to photograph the "Blood Moon" lunar eclipse early yesterday morning. Given our often cloudy skies, it's rare that we get to see a lunar eclipse here (or maybe just rare that I am motivated to try to see one). We were blessed with a clear night so I thought my odds were good. I got my camera ready and based on the visibility predicted in the newspaper, I got up in the pre-dawn darkness to grab some photos.

At 4 a.m., the moon still looked perfectly normal. And that WAS a bit early. So I went back to bed and looked again about 5:15 a.m. But by then, the moon had sunk so low on the horizon that it was behind the apartment buildings overlooking our garden -- the buildings eclipsed my view of the eclipse, you might say. So for me, it was a bust -- but others in the UK apparently got to see it.

Maybe I could have walked up the street and found a clear vantage point, but I wasn't that motivated. Oh well.

Dave is home from his Belgian sojourn. Apparently the kids are all back healthy and in one piece, and the concerts went well. He returned with some Belgian treats like beer and cheese and fruit preserves, so for the next few days I'll be transported to Belgium myself, at least in a culinary sense. Olga was funny when he walked in the house -- it took her a moment to get excited. I'm not sure she recognized him immediately. I wonder if her eyesight is going. She's already quite deaf. But she sees squirrels out on the lawn, so she's not too blind.

Tramp, our local graffiti artist, left this on some uneven pavement on West End Lane. It does make people look, so maybe he saved someone from a stumble.

(Top photo: Flowering quince on our street.)

Life is a Video

Have you ever been out walking, or maybe driving in a car, when a favorite song comes on the radio or your iTunes, and suddenly the scenery around you seems to meld with the music? My girlfriend in high school used to describe that feeling by saying, "Life is a video!" And that's exactly what it's like -- as if you're watching a captivating music video with your very own eyes. You're living the video.

I had that sensation yesterday morning, walking to work. The sun was shining and the music was perfect and I thought, "I wish I could capture this somehow."

I decided to try. On my walk home in the afternoon, I took video of passing scenery, and later edited it together with the song I was enjoying through my AirPods at the time. I started out walking in sunshine and wound up in a hailstorm! (Well, just graupel, but still...) I took more than ten minutes of video, cut it down to three minutes, and voila! You get to experience my walk home, with the musical accompaniment of singer/songwriter Matt Berry.

I think it turned out well, except for me getting my fingers into the frame at the very end. Also, even though I walk quite fast, I never think I'm getting very vigorous exercise -- but as you'll hear I am breathing heavily by the time I get home, so perhaps I really am doing my cardiovascular system some good.

Life is a video!

Ceratob

A pretty quiet day yesterday. I pulled about 100 books for the middle school, and today we're supposed to have some middle school classes coming in, so that will liven things up. The librarian is going to talk to them about "read-alikes," or finding books that are similar to books they're either eager to read or they've already read and enjoyed.

It always intrigues me how much time we spend teaching kids how to find reading that will interest them. I don't ever remember having that problem as a kid. I just went to the library and picked something. And if I didn't like it, I turned it in and picked something else. How hard can it be? Still, this is a major focus of our instruction, and I'm not criticizing the librarians in any way. I do think many modern kids find the choices overwhelming, and granted, there are a lot more teen and young adult books being published these days.

I walked to and from work and then spent a quiet evening at home, reading blogs and catching up on some errands. I'm trying to round up all my tax forms for my tax preparer, a task that has proven rather challenging. But I think I've got most of them now and can submit them within the next few days.

I've noticed that my typing is getting less and less dexterous as I age. When I was young I could type really fast and pretty much error-free. Remember when schools actually taught typing? "Home row" and all that stuff? Does that still happen? (Not at the school where I work.)

I took a typing class in high school but I am mostly self-taught and I do not keep my fingers on "home row." Mrs. Barnard, my no doubt long-dead typing teacher, would disapprove -- but do any of us do that anymore? Most young people who routinely use computers seem to simply develop their own skills and methods.

Anyway, yesterday I tried to type the word "creative" in a blog comment and it came out "ceratob." I fixed it before I hit publish, but not before laughing at my own "covfefe" moment.

Someone has plastered these stickers on posts along my walk to work. I wasn't sure what they meant -- it looks like someone making the "rock on" hand sign, with bandages? Well, I Google image-searched the image, and it turns out it's based on former Israeli hostage Emily Damari, who lost two fingers in the October 7 attacks and waved with her bandaged hand when recently freed. Her gesture of resilience has become a meme in Israel and has even been turned into a tattoo on at least one person.

Also, someone lost the head of their cookie. 😞

Last night at about 11:30 p.m. I was reading in bed when I checked the weather and saw "snow showers" predicted before morning. It wasn't expected to hit freezing, but I suppose temperatures at higher altitudes could still produce snow. So I leapt into action, brought in several plants and managed to cover the avocado -- because although it has proven pretty resilient when it comes to cold, I think snow would do it in. Of course, we had no snow.

I may leave the tree covered for a few more days, though, because we're supposed to hit freezing on Saturday. Winter -- ENOUGH ALREADY!

Train Station Rendezvous

Dave and his students got on their way to Belgium yesterday without too much trouble. Last I heard from him they were at dinner in their hotel, so apparently everyone is accounted for and in one piece.

There was a minor hiccup when one of his co-workers came to my desk around noon and said, "Fancy making a run to St. Pancras?" Turns out one of the students left the bow for his violin behind, and obviously you can't do much with a violin if you don't have a bow. They were all at the train station waiting to board the Eurostar and I could catch them if I left right away.

So I did, taking two tube lines before getting there with time to spare and dropping off the bow. (Incidentally, a bow is a very awkward thing to carry, especially if you don't have a violin case.)

The things I do for love.

Otherwise, yesterday was quiet in the library. I checked in and shelved a cart full of books about Ancient Rome that the 6th Grade had been using, and the Middle School librarian needs me to pull another cart load of books today. Plus I have a spreadsheet of statistics (of course) I'm trying to compile for the head librarian. So I have plenty to do, even with half of the school gone.

As for food, I haven't resorted to peanut butter yet. Dave left a chicken carcass in the refrigerator, the remnants of our dinners on Sunday and Monday, so I picked that clean last night and made chicken salad. It was not very complicated -- I threw in some left over parsley and some mayonnaise, of course. Does that count as cooking? To me it does.

(Photo: A fly on a daffodil in the garden. The insects are starting to move around more and more.)

A Stick Figure on the Stairs

I knew that beautiful weekend weather was too good to be true. We're headed for another cold snap, this one bringing near-freezing temperatures over the weekend. I know it's not as brutal as the cold many people are still facing elsewhere in the world but for me, in mid-March, that seems cold.

Dave is off to Belgium today for a four-day trip with his music students. They'll be performing in several locations on their annual "music tour" before coming back on Friday. So it will be just me and Olga this week holding down the fort. I'll probably be eating peanut butter and baked beans again.

(I really could cook, if I wanted to, but when it's just me I lack the motivation. OK, even when it's not just me, I lack the motivation.)

We're also due for a quiet week in the library because all the high school students are traveling -- if not for music tour then for what's called "Alternatives," which involves international travel with some sort of educational or adventure element. (Nearly all travel is educational, I suppose.) My boss, for example, is off to Spain with a group of kids and some other teachers. I am looking forward to some quiet time, though the middle schoolers are still around so it won't be completely quiet.

Here's a curious drawing I found in a returned book. What on earth could it mean? Any guesses? I see symbols for female, male and both genders combined, as well as flying birds with arrows, a person falling down the stairs and what looks like an angry ghost. I am truly perplexed. I even tried uploading it to Google image search, thinking it was perhaps some kind of psychological model -- an illustration of gender transitioning, or of how people adapt to change in general -- but that just produced a lot of unrelated drawings of stick figures. It definitely looks metaphorical, doesn't it?

When I uploaded the ghost by itself, Google AI told me confidently, "it is a sketch from Henry David Thoreau's journal."

Ummmm...no.

(Photo: Blossoms on our ornamental plum tree.)

An Early Bee

Another beautiful sunny day yesterday. I went out in the garden to take some photos, and as I was focused on our blue lungwort -- always one of the first plants to bloom -- a bee flew into the frame.

It was only there for a moment. I'm not sure it's the first bee I've seen this season, but it's definitely one of the first.

I spent most of the morning reading, and then walked Olga on the high street after lunch.

As you can see, everyone was out and about. (Olga was licking her chops, maybe wondering how she could get a table in that cafe.)

Later, I got a pleasant surprise when I looked at my credit card bill and found that my charge for using the toll roads in Florida was only $23. When I rented our car during February break, I thought the car-rental agent said I'd pay all tolls plus an $8 surcharge PER TOLL. But maybe I misunderstood, because I went through about six toll stations on the Suncoast Parkway while driving from Tallahassee to Tampa and I fully expected to be billed about $60. Maybe it was just a one-time $8 charge plus the tolls. Assuming no more charges appear, I came away from that better than I thought I would.

Dave pruned the hydrangeas in the garden and spent part of his evening watching silly YouTube videos. He has a level of patience for that kind of thing that I do not. I can handle one or two dog or cat videos but I don't want to see 20 of them. I am not much of a "scroller" in general. Dave, however, will sit entranced in his chair for hours, even while we're supposedly watching something on TV, and every once in a while exclaim something like, "Awwww, this meerkat has a sweater!"