The Mystery in the Washing Machine

Dave and I took pictures during yesterday's tie-dyeing extravaganza, but I'm holding them back until my shirts come out of the wash. I want to be able to show you the finished product. I'm a little concerned that they're going to be a solid muddy brown, but we'll see.

The dyeing itself was fun, helped along with some hors d'oeuvres and a bottle of prosecco provided by a coworker. I'll describe the process, such that it is, when I show you the photos.

My problem is, the dye kit we used specified that after letting the dyed fabric sit for six to eight hours, we should hand-rinse it and then wash it in the hottest possible water with the washing machine set to a high water level. Well, our washing machine -- being one of these fancy European ecologically-minded models -- never gets very full. It sloshes the laundry around in a minimal amount of water, and already that water is bright blue.

I'm telling you, this shirt is going to be monochromatic. Stay tuned.

I took Olga for a long romp in Hampstead Heath in the morning. We were out for a couple of hours and she got exhausted. I love to see a tired dog. It gives me a sense of satisfaction, like I've done my job as a dog owner.

By the way, we didn't tie-dye her. I seriously considered making the white tip of her tail bright pink, but I was afraid the dye would be poisonous if she licked at it -- which she surely would.

(Photo: Greencroft Gardens, a street near our flat, on Aug. 16.)

Large Rose Sawfly Blues

Waking up at 7 a.m. this morning, after a work-related reception and dinner last night that ran until midnight. I haven't been out that late in ages. It was fun -- a reception at the Museum of London for all faculty and staff, where we could walk among the exhibits with our glasses of wine. Seems a bit risky -- mightn't someone spill their cabernet onto the Roman coinage? -- but as far as I know there were no incidents, at least not by the time I left. I realized that I need to go see that museum and spend some real time there!

We have a work-related event today, too -- the librarians are coming over to our flat to tie-dye t-shirts in our back garden. (Doesn't that sound like the plot of a farcical movie? "The Groovy Librarians," or something like that?) Every year we take a group photo and we try to have a theme. This year, tie-dye is the theme. I can't even remember why.

We have jokingly threatened to tie-dye Olga, who is after all mostly white, and thus the perfect canvas.

Daniel, our gardener, came back yesterday to mow the lawn. Dave had him plant some bulbs, even though we already have about a million dormant bulbs in our garden. So next spring will be bulb-a-palooza. I suspect we've overdone it, actually.

Also, I just realized that some of our roses are being devoured by tiny green caterpillars. I'm thinking these. I'm going to go out this morning and pick them off by hand.

(Photo: Reflections in West Hampstead, a few weeks ago.)

Leopards and Hippos

Yesterday morning as I went to work, two boys sat down in the seat across the aisle from me on the bus. They looked about 12 years old, had proper British accents, and were clearly on their way to school. During the five minutes we rode together, they had the most hilariously wide-ranging conversation.

When they got on, they were talking about Nazis, and how some had fled to Argentina after World War II. They debated where Hitler was when he and Eva Braun killed themselves -- one said Berlin, the other argued for Poland. (Answer: Berlin.)

"I could never kill myself," one said.

They then proceeded to discuss the worst way to die. One decided the electric chair had to be pretty bad, and described in great detail the employment of the wet sponge that helps deliver the electric current to the chair's occupant. (This led to a digression into the plot of the movie "The Green Mile.") The other argued that being mauled by an animal would be worse. And of the big cats, being mauled by a leopard would be worse than a tiger or lion, he said.

"Tigers and lions go for the neck, but leopards go right for the brain. They have special teeth that can go right through your head," he said.

Then they debated whether or not it was possible to drown a hippo. One said yes, of course, but the other argued that hippos can hold their breath so long, it would be impossible to drown it before it killed you.

And then, much to my chagrin, I had to get off the bus.

(Photo: A sunny evening in Kilburn, last week.)

Goings-On in the Garden

While I've been out madly traipsing around London, Dave has been continuing his work in the garden. Things are looking pretty good out there.

The rose bushes are flourishing, now that we've cut back the surrounding greenery. Some bushes back in the shadowy hedge are seeing sun for the first time this year, and all have put out new growth. Many are blooming. You saw before that we have yellow and red ones -- and here are pink and salmon ones. We've got white, too, and several that we haven't yet seen bloom, so we don't know what color they might be.

All of the rose bushes are very gangly. I think it's been ages since they were pruned, and Dave is chafing to get at them, but we've been holding back because it's not pruning season. I suppose it's still possible that the landlord will hire a gardener to do it, but we haven't heard any more from her about that.

The horseradish plant is quite gigantic. Its lower leaves are looking a bit ratty and spent.

Something has been gnawing the hell out of it, but I haven't been able to find many creatures. I did find a slug once, and I just left him there -- why disturb his dinner? -- so maybe he's what created these holes. I've seen cabbage whites flitting around the plant but no caterpillars so far this year.

The firespikes that Dave planted are blooming healthily. Out of all the plants that we've put in the ground, they seem to have adapted best. Some of the others have barely grown at all or -- like our lilies of the valley -- have been trampled by the dog.

Finally, our hebe bush is blooming. This is another plant that we freed from encroachment by the surrounding forest. It's definitely looking more healthy and happy.

After I turned out the lights last night and prepared to go to bed, I sat in the living room for ten minutes or so, enjoying the moonlight. Lo and behold, the neighborhood fox returned, trotting through the grass and right up to the back door. He circled the patio and seemed to pause beneath the bird feeder, but I can't imagine he found much to eat in our yard. He was much prettier than our Notting Hill foxes -- red and glossy. I think if we'd left the back door open he'd have been in bed with us! (Well, maybe Olga would have fended him off.)

NW6 is Finished!

Well, I did it! After three more photography outings yesterday -- morning, noon and evening -- I officially finished depicting the NW6 postcode for Bleeding London. By my count, I walked 253 streets, alleys and mews in this postcode alone, and took photos of each and every one.

This is the map I carried with me, with the postcode borders shown as a red dotted line. I marked off the streets as I completed them. Those gray lines through the middle that look unmarked are railroad tracks, not roads.

This isn't the first postcode completed for the contest. Other photographers have done theirs, too. It's quite a feat, if I do say so myself.

The photo at the top was taken yesterday on Abbey Road -- yes, THE Abbey Road -- in the NW6 postcode. I like it, but it's not the photo I entered in the contest for that street. I used this one instead:

I mean, what kind of dog is that?!

The much larger piece of Abbey Road in the NW8 postcode, just to the south, is the stretch that includes THE crosswalk. I took a photo of that for the contest, too:

How's that for a London picture? I don't know why any motorists use this road. Getting past this crosswalk, with its ever-present gaggle of picture-taking tourists (and pesky photographers, ahem, taking pictures of the picture-taking tourists) must be a nightmare in a car.

I got home last night to a perplexed Dave, who found that our gas was turned off and he couldn't light the stove to make dinner. Turns out the gas company was working on the meters in front of the house -- and the owner of the upstairs flat showed up and gave them hell for doing work with no authorization. The upstairs flat is apparently being sold, and I think the new buyer may have asked for the meters to be moved -- they're next to the driveway, and he told Dave he thought that was unsafe. But you'd think the gas company would wait for the sale to be completed before acting on his request.

Anyway, long story short, we did not have our planned butternut squash risotto because the gas was out for so long. Instead, Dave baked the butternut squash in our electric oven, sauteed mushrooms and onions when the gas returned (a much shorter process than making risotto) and stuffed the squash. Pretty good pinch-hitting, I'd say.

Yellow Cars

I've noticed a funny trend in my photography over the past couple of weeks. I seem especially drawn to yellow cars.

When I was young, I had a vague idea that I wanted a yellow Volkswagen, and as I recall, yellow isn't a very popular car color in the states. Maybe that's why I still find it so eye-catching.

British people, on the other hand, seem to like their yellow cars.

They can certainly liven up a street...

...or a driveway.

There are old ones:

And seemingly brand new ones:

(Coworkers of mine have nicknamed this neighborhood behemoth the "ice cream truck.")

And how about special credit for a yellow truck next to a yellow house?

It's kind of funny that I shot all these photos over a couple of weeks and only belatedly realized I had a definite theme going!

Olga Threatens the Eternal Rest of the Dead

My computer has really started to drag its heels on some functions. I think it may be nearing retirement age. It's only four years old, but I use it heavily every day, and the ol' girl (or boy?) is running out of steam.

Lately I've been struggling with downloading photos. Used to be, I'd just plug in the camera and they'd all flow effortlessly into iPhoto, as smoothly as a waterfall. Now I have to plug in the camera multiple times before the computer even sees the pictures, and then it often jams mid-download, which means unplugging the camera again. And overall, things are getting quite slow.

Of course, I do ask it to process a hell of a lot of pictures. So there is that.

Yesterday I tried to finish photographing my NW6 postcode for Bleeding London, and I came very close. I walked 37 streets, and I thought I was done until I came home and perused the paperwork. I realized I'm still missing four or five tiny little mews. Fortunately they're all roughly in the same area, so I can polish them off some evening this week. Not tonight, though. Feet are tired.

After my photo outing, Dave and I went to brunch at a nearby deli -- named David's, appropriately -- where I had a Greek scrambled egg/tomato/onion dish that tasted amazing because I was starving. Well, it might have tasted amazing anyway, but being hungry definitely helped.

Then I came home and, suffering from dog guilt, I took Olga for a walk up to Fortune Green and around the cemetery, a route she likes because she can be off leash and the trees in the cemetery are thick with squirrels. She can't reach any of them, but like Walter Mitty, she imagines she can.

Technically, she's not supposed to be off the leash in the cemetery -- a rule I've never understood. I suppose the cemetery folks want to protect the cleanliness of the graves from bad dog owners, if you know what I mean. But we're careful, and if I were dead, I really think I'd find having a happy dog rolling in the grass six feet above me a great honor. (Assuming I could think or perceive anything at all, which I doubt.) Other people run their dogs off-leash there, too, so I'm not too worried about it.

Finally, last night we Skyped with my mom and with Dave's parents, catching up on all the latest news at home. I had just enough energy to make it through a rerun of "The Streets of San Francisco," guest-starring a ridiculously young Martin Sheen, before collapsing into bed. Where I had unsettling dreams about more hidden, tiny little mews that I had failed to photograph.

(Photo: One of our neighborhood cats and its concrete counterpart, on our street in West Hampstead. And a photo-bombing garden gnome, too.)