Coral Bells

This is a heuchera, also known as coral flower or coral bells. It's one of the few plants that look like anything at this time of year in our garden. Everything else out there is practically a dead brown stalk. I love the dark purple leaves of this plant and the fact that it's been able to hold its own against our recent frosts.

We have had some hard frosts, too. The water in the birdbath has been frozen solid and there's been ice on the sidewalks in the mornings. This morning it doesn't look quite that cold.

I slept until 8 a.m.! And I mean slept. I wasn't the least bit aware of the world between going to bed at 10 p.m. and waking up. It was fabulous. I wish I could sleep like that every night!

And now Olga and I are both back in bed, and I plan to stay here for as much of the weekend as possible. I'll get out and walk the dog and I might even take more pictures. But my main goal is to take it easy! I love the fact that we have no commitments until Monday. It's a great feeling.

My interviewing talks with the 8th Grade went well yesterday. Thank goodness that's over.

Another Long Day

I've got to be at work early once again -- my colleague is still out sick -- and I just finished showering and shaving. Olga is sitting beside me on red alert because a fox is yipping in the back garden, but it's still dark so we can't actually see it. I've got to get the trash out for collection and walk her before I go in at 7:30 a.m.

We made it to the student concert last night, at the Barbican Center, and it was great -- a Shostakovich symphony and a viola concerto by Schnittke, who I don't recall ever hearing before. The latter piece was a little avant-garde for my taste, but skillfully played. Dave's student, who had several prominent parts, performed well on the oboe.

Today I've got to do my annual dog-and-pony show for the 8th graders about interviewing -- apparently my longtime career as a newspaper reporter qualifies me as something of an expert. (I have my doubts about that, but yesterday I read several articles about interviewing tips and they were all things I'd say anyway, so maybe I really do know what I'm talking about.) I'll be speaking to two classes. I originally had two more to cover on Monday, but Dave will be out that day for a colonoscopy and he needs me around to bring him home -- so we're going to record one of my presentations today and play the recording for Monday's classes.

(Photo: A contribution box for the blind on Finchley Road, similar to a smaller one I photographed a few years ago on Edgware Road.)

The Stress Rash

Remember how I mentioned that Olga had a rash when she came home from the dog-sitter's?

Well, that rash had us really stumped. It looked like poison ivy -- raised red bumps all over her belly, but apparently not on any part of her skin covered by fur. It seemed like she ran through nettles or rubbed against something that irritated her, but she wasn't visibly itchy or in pain. The dog-sitter professed to not know the cause. (Can you tell I'm skeptical?)

I took a photo of her rash to work to show a coworker who also owns a staffy. She gasped when she saw it and suggested we bathe Olga -- a suggestion I'd already made to Dave. We hadn't yet had a chance to do it, but in the meantime I rubbed some diaper rash cream (in Britain, "nappy cream") on her chest -- we had good success with that when she had a milder rash years ago in reaction to a certain kind of pet food.

And yesterday, voila! Her rash all but disappeared.

Could it have been stress? I wonder. She's definitely calmer being home and she's been sleeping a lot. I think she was exhausted.

In that case, I can identify -- today I have to go in to work early because one of my coworkers (not the staffy owner) is sick. Which means I have to get up and out of here by about 7 a.m., concurrent with Dave, which is always a challenge. And then I'm working until 5 p.m. as usual, and we have a student concert to attend tonight.

Lots of people at work seem to be ill. Apparently something was going around during the holiday season. I'm not feeling so great myself, but I think it's partly jet lag.

If I come down with a rash, I'm suing the dog-sitter.

(Kidding!)

Last night we started the fourth season of "The Wire." I'm hoping I can get Dave more into it, and apparently education begins to play a part in the show's plot this season -- being a teacher, he might respond to that. He hasn't loved the series so far. I, on the other hand, have a secret crush on Omar.

(Photo: A laundry on Finchley Road, on Tuesday.)

Garden Cam Vacation Update

While we were away in Florida, I left the Garden Cam set up on the patio, where the fox (or foxes?) sneak under the fence from the neighbor's. We got about two dozen pictures of them -- they seemed very curious about the camera and were often staring or sniffing at it.

All the photos were at dusk or night, though -- which is why they're in black and white -- and they weren't very distinct. It's hard to photograph the foxes at this time of year because it's dark so much of the time.

The only daytime critters that passed in front of the camera were a nonchalant cat...

...and numerous squirrels. Oh, and pigeons.

While the cat's away, the mice will play -- in this case one mouse, slipping down the side of this rock wall like a backwards S. Do you see him? Middle of picture, about a third of the way from the right side. (This was after the foxes knocked the camera askew, an occurrence captured in a series of indistinguishable blurs.)

Fortunately, no two-legged wildlife prowled the patio in our absence!

Olga and Ernesto

Olga is home. She arrived yesterday afternoon with a mysterious rash on her chest, but otherwise lively and full of vigor. (I'm guessing she'd crashed through a patch of nettles, or something comparable, in pursuit of a squirrel.) I took her immediately into the back garden for a round of Kong chasing, and then she came inside, made a nest on the sofa and slept for hours.

I think she's glad to be here.

Surprisingly, I don't have any reports of great mischief on her behalf. She did apparently hunt incessantly (and fruitlessly) on her walks, but that's no surprise.

My Mexican pottery skull from Cozumel, which we have nicknamed Ernesto, also survived (?) our vacation, and transportation in my checked luggage. He's now on the living room windowsill, easily the most colorful non-sentient being in the room.

Dave had a challenging day yesterday. On the way back from the airport, he tried to withdraw cash from an ATM to pay the dog-sitter. Instead, the ATM decided to eat Dave's card and then declare itself to be malfunctioning. (Too little, too late!) Dave called the bank in the taxi on the way to the house, and today he has to visit a bank branch to present ID to get a new card. I swear, Barclay's has it in for him, and we have no idea why. We share an account, and yet I never have any trouble. I later used my own ATM to withdraw money for the dog-sitter, though we couldn't get enough for the entire bill because Monday was a holiday and there's a daily limit on how much one card can withdraw.

Bureaucracy. I hope Olga appreciates all this effort. I suspect she doesn't.

Also yesterday, I finally gave Dave his Christmas presents. I got him a gift card to a local cookshop (for kitchen things) and bought him what, in retrospect, is an astonishingly insensitive cooking device. I found an updated, yet kind of retro, Swiss fondue pot -- and only belatedly remembered he's more or less stopped eating cheese because of his dietary sensitivities. Good grief. I'm a terrible person! But he thought it was funny and pledged to use it anyway.

The suitcases are unpacked and the laundry is done. As happy as I am to be back to routines, I did feel a burst of post-vacation sadness as I lay in bed last night. Our cruise with family was such a great adventure, and one that would be impossible to coordinate again -- especially with my little nieces growing by the minute, and the Moons and all the other participants. It was a once-in-a-lifetime event, for sure.

Lettuce Lake Park

Dave and I are back in England safe and sound, and not too exhausted, all things considered. The flight back was short and, although a bit bumpy, much easier than our overheated, sluggish crossing two weeks ago. I read "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" in its entirety (short but good!) and watched a Marilyn Monroe movie, "Let's Make Love" from 1960 (not one of her best) -- and then, before I knew it, we were landing.

Before I fully recommit my blog to life in England, though, I want to share a few last pictures of Florida. Dave and I had some time to kill yesterday afternoon between dropping off his sister at the airport and returning our borrowed car to my stepsister. So we went to Lettuce Lake Park, in North Tampa -- the "lake" (above) is actually a wide bend in the Hillsborough River.

I hadn't been to this park in years, and I enjoyed wandering among the wintry woods, swamps, palmettos and cabbage palms. I saw lots of wildlife -- woodpeckers, turtles, ibis, limpkins and other critters.

I caught this hungry anhinga in the process of swallowing an unfortunate fish. Amazingly, the bird got the whole thing down.

And I had the quintessential Florida wildlife sighting -- a gator, basking in the sun. Pure dinosaur! (Dave's mom had just served smoked gator jerky at breakfast that morning, but I didn't mention that to this guy...)

Dave sat at a picnic table and worked on a musical arrangement while I walked around. He's always at least a little in work mode -- he worked on music intermittently even during our cruise -- and he's definitely ready to fully reapply himself to the grindstone tomorrow, when we both go back to work.

Olga should be home within a matter of hours!

Happy New Year!

Here we are, with the slate wiped clean and the opportunity for a fresh start. That's how we're supposed to regard the New Year, anyway. I'm not sure it really works that way, but I'm willing to give it the ol' college try.

Dave keeps saying, "2016 really was a lousy year." (The word he uses is a bit harsher than lousy.) We endured his Crohn's illness and surgery, my dad's death, and some major political debacles that seem poised to reshape the world. (Of course, we all endured those.)

On the other hand, we experienced a lot of good things, too -- the opportunity for travel, the ever-happy and enthusiastic companionship of Olga, good jobs and a beautiful garden. And there's no reason to believe at this point that any of those things won't continue on into 2017. Knock on wood.

We spent yesterday mostly with Dave's parents and sister. I zipped away for a quick breakfast with my college friends John and Sue, but otherwise Dave and I enjoyed lots of family time. We went for lunch to a waterfront seafood restaurant in Cortez, where we sat out in the sun (SPF 30!) and watched the wildlife on Sarasota Bay -- mainly pelicans, cormorants and herons. At one point a flock of about eight spoonbills flew overhead, bright pink against the blue sky, and I was momentarily tongue-tied. "Pink! Pink!" was all I could say, pointing up at them. Of course, by the time I grabbed the camera and tried to focus, they were gone. But they were an amazing sight.

As was the new moon, hanging in the sky last night like a bright sliver of fingernail.

We had dinner out at yet another seafood restaurant (is this getting crazy or what?) and planned to open a bottle of champagne back at the house. But when we opened the bottle, it didn't pop -- there was a meager little hiss and the champagne (actually Asti, to be honest) slid wetly into the glasses with noticeable lack of fizz. Sure enough, the cork had gone bad, and the champagne was undrinkable. This is NOT an omen.

And it wasn't a total loss, because I could at least make a cafe chair from the cork wire! Now the one from 2013, still sitting on my mother-in-law's kitchen counter, has a new companion:

I'm just noticing I didn't bend the legs to match the first one, so minor adjustments are still needed! Dave's mom wants a little table to go with them, so I suppose the next time we crack bubbly (hopefully bubbly bubbly) I'll just disconnect the back wire and use the cork-top for the table. That would work, right?

Today Dave and I will take to the skies and return to London. Our flight doesn't leave until this evening, though, and we've got to get his sister to the airport for her flight and then return our borrowed car to my stepsister and her husband, who will then ferry us back to the airport. I'll be glad when we're finally on that plane! I made sure to download my rented movies so they'll be ready to watch in an Internet-free environment, unlike on the flight over, and I have Shirley Jackson's "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" to read, too. So I should stay occupied.

I know I've been neglecting all my blog-world friends, and I really do plan to catch up with you all when I land in London and get back to some semblance of routine!

(Top photo: The view behind our Ramada Inn in Sarasota. It's right on a marina!)