A Day in the Sun

So yesterday, Olga and I walked past the twee bakery on the high street and I'll be darned if the dog bowl didn't have water in it! What are the odds? Did they read my blog yesterday?!

I swear that is the first time that's happened.

This (above) is how we spent our entire morning -- sitting on the bench in the garden, Olga comfortably atop her Union Jack dog bed. Dave was still out of town so we had the entire day to ourselves. I sat and read an entire issue of The New Yorker, and started my newest book, "The Woman in the Window," which is good so far. Olga snoozed in the sun.

Here's the obligatory annual photo of bluebells in the garden...

...and the bleeding hearts, aka dicentra, are blooming too. In fact, so much is suddenly blooming at the moment -- the aquilegia and the candytuft, our yellow wallflower, our white camellia. It's crazy out there. And I'm seeing bees and hoverflies and early butterflies, like cabbage whites and holly blues.

Speaking of dicentra -- and there really is a connection here -- I just learned that my old apartment in New York is on the market again. I was on Zillow looking at something else, and I tried some of my old addresses just out of curiosity, and found the listing. The apartment looks much swankier than it did when I lived there. They remodeled and expanded the kitchen and put it some fancy appliances. The bathroom, however, looks exactly the same.

(The dicentra connection is that there was a dicentra in the back garden of the apartment building, and I looked forward to it blooming every year.)

And finally, at the risk of seeming completely insane, I want to show you my newest t-shirt. New to me, that is. Yes, I found it, on one of my walks. It was discarded in a field with some other clothing that I did not rescue, because after all I was walking and besides, one has to be selective about these things. As you can see it got a bit faded from lying in the sun -- but I like that. Call it fashionably distressed. The logo is pretty small, in the center of the chest. I dig this shirt, and given the message, finding it seems appropriate!

Pink Trees

It's pink tree season here in London -- the cherries are out and looking vibrant. Olga was especially impressed with this one. (OK, I was impressed and Olga was indifferent.)

And then there was this one, which we found in Hampstead on the way to the Heath. It had musical accompaniment from someone in a nearby house who was playing the flute. Not some middle-school kid, either -- someone who knew what they were doing, which gave the scene a very cultured air. I love it when spring comes and people open their windows and share their sounds with passersby.

We passed another house in Hampstead where electric guitar was pouring out of the windows. Good electric guitar. I thought, is that a record? Or maybe someone famous lives there, and they're practicing? Could I be passing the house of a '60s rock legend and have no idea?

It was a perfect day for walking, overall -- sunny and cool. And then we got quite a bit of rain in the night, and now, this morning, it's sunny and cool again! Ideal garden weather!

Speaking of which, I think the slugs are eating my wildflower sprouts. Argh! I thought, being wildflowers, they would be somewhat immune to pests. But apparently not our pests, which are seemingly bionic. I just went out to look at the seed patch and there were several little worm-like slugs crawling around on it, and some gnawed leaves on the sprouts. I also interrupted two earthworms mating, which was a puzzling sight. (Sorry about that, worms!)

Yesterday I ran some errands on the high street. A new-ish bakery moved in a few months ago, down by the Thameslink station, and I've decided I don't like that place at all. It's just a little too twee. Dave and I went there once and I think we concluded it was fancy looking and a bit expensive and just not very impressive. Plus they have a dog bowl out front that never has any water in it. It's always dry as a bone. Olga sticks her nose in it every time she passes and comes up with nothing. Somehow I find that incredibly annoying.

Bootcamp and a Tulip

Another spectacular day, weather-wise, although I spent most of it indoors in "Google Bootcamp" training at work. We learned about all the various gizmos Google offers, from spreadsheets to web-page building to file transfers and sharing. It was actually quite fascinating, and I immediately realized several applications for these programs that ought to simplify what I've been doing up to now.

I even thought of a way to send my brother those audio files of us as children that I had digitized, via Google Docs. And I had already used Google Slides to make the slideshow that I used last week to talk to the eighth graders about street photography and street art. It's all very handy stuff!

I got the results of my lumbar MRI -- according to the experts, my "vertebral alignment is fairly well preserved," but "there are mild degenerative changes seen of the lower two levels." These include a "mild central disc protrusion causing impingement of the thecal sac" on one vertebra, and "a mild diffuse disc bulge with associated disc deydration" on another. What this means, I have no idea, but I think I basically have a 50-year-old back.

As I said, my pain had mostly gone away even by the time I had the scan, so I think whatever was bothering me earlier this year was transient. The doctor recommended physical therapy if necessary, but I consider the matter closed unless I start hurting again.

Remember our ragged, slug-damaged tulips? Well, we have successfully coaxed a flower out of one of them. I think we may get another bloom, too -- but then it looks like that will be it for the tulips this year. I'm happy just to get one!

Also, did I mention that I re-seeded the wildflower bed? You may remember I planted it at the beginning of April, when the weather was still pretty cold and wet, and I tried walking the seeds into the ground but probably wound up with many of them stuck to my shoes. In any case, I haven't seen a whole lot of sprouts. So I put another packet of seeds down, as well as some verbena seeds. Maybe now that the ground is warmer and the sun brighter, we'll see more activity!

(Top photo: Near the West Hampstead tube station, yesterday.)

Goings-On in the Garden

We've been working a bit in the garden, and now that spring has finally decided to arrive (we've turned off the heat, and I'm wearing shorts!), I wanted to show you what things look like out there.

I had to mow the lawn a few days ago for the first time this season. It always amazes me how quickly the grass grows back once the early-spring rains stop and the yard dries out and gets less muddy.

See that flower bed at lower right? Dave created that last weekend -- he expanded the existing bed and gave it a bit of a curve. In that space he planted foxgloves and a hydrangea that he moved, and I put in some nasturtium and snapdragon seeds.

The Solomon's seal is coming up, and I put a little garden fence around it to keep the dog out. She always breaks off a bunch of those stalks, but this year (so far) she hasn't. The fence is surprisingly effective!

Remember the foxglove sprout I rescued from the side alley, where it was growing in a pipe joint? I rooted it and planted it last year, and it's now huge. I hate to count my chickens before they're hatched, but it should bloom this year. Stay tuned!

This is a close-up of the central bed. Look at all those forget-me-nots! And we don't plant them -- they just self-seed, every year. I love them.

Our poor horseradish plant has been virtually overrun in its blue pot. There are a few daffodils in there, and a big clump of valerian seeded itself there, and there are violets as well. The horseradish hasn't even appeared yet -- it's just a few tiny sprouts poking above the ground. The daffodils and violets will fade as the horseradish grows, so I think it should be fine. Everything I've ever heard about horseradish emphasizes how indestructible and vigorous it is.

One of my seed trays! As I mentioned, I got some free packs of cosmos and zinnia seeds from a magazine at work, and I found a packet of echinacea seeds in a returned library book. So I planted them all. The cosmos and zinnia are doing well (there's another tray besides this one), but as you can see, the echinacea didn't sprout at all. The seeds were several years old (packed for 2012) and I guess they were no longer viable.

Oh -- I think the sweet pea seeds I saved from our plants last year have sprouted, too. I haven't seen any activity from the hogweed and it's too early to tell about the poppies.

I've put some of the outdoor pots in "plant jail" -- just as if they were DEA or mob informants, this is for their own protection! They contain planted seeds, and the wire mesh keeps out the squirrels. I'll remove the mesh once the seeds sprout and have a fighting chance. This pot contains nasturtiums. Again, stay tuned!

Field Trip to Shoreditch

Yesterday I helped chaperone a group of students on a field trip to explore street art and street photography in Shoreditch, East London.

I've done this for the last few years around this time. It's a good springtime activity and it gets the kids out of the classroom and lets them have some creative fun. Before we go, I give them a slide show about how to compose photographs and showing them the work of some famous street photographers, like Henri Cartier-Bresson and Vivian Maier.

The walk is guided by a street-art expert, who tells the kids about the artworks and the artists who create them. Giving them a focus -- the graffiti and murals -- helps avoid a situation where they're just wandering around whining, "I can't find anything to take a picture of!"

We got lucky yesterday with amazing weather and some good opportunities for street photos. There are definitely varying degrees of interest among the kids, but you'd expect that, right? They're not all going to be into it. All I know is, I had a great day, we didn't lose any students and it was nice to be out of the library for a change!

Me and My MRI

You may remember I was having pretty severe lower back problems a couple of months ago. My back was aching in ways I had never experienced before -- a combination of dull ache when I was motionless and sharp, stabbing pain when I moved, accompanied by an overall feeling of unwellness. As far as I know, I hadn't injured it at all, so I was mystified about the source of the problem.

In late March I went to a doctor and got a referral to get an MRI. My insurance declined to cover it (of course), but the doctor knew a clinic that did them relatively inexpensively, so on Monday I had it done on my own dime.

I had a CAT scan about 33 years ago, when I was having some severe headaches in college. (They weren't from drinking, I swear!) But I'd never had an MRI. They're not the most fun -- lying inside a surprisingly small tube, surrounded by a huge piece of machinery that buzzed and clanked and beeped. I don't know yet what was revealed, if anything -- the clinic gave me a CD containing images from the scan, but my computer can't open the files so I haven't seen them. A separate set of images were sent to a radiologist for interpretation, and at some point a report will be sent to my doctor.

My guess is it won't show anything of note. (Here's hoping, anyway.) Since just before I got the referral the pain has been much better. I suspect whatever was bothering me has mostly healed up on its own. I still get twinges, but nothing like before.

Anyway, I will report back, if I learn anything more.

Dave and I have been watching the new "Lost in Space" on Netflix. In January we went through a brief flirtation with the old '60s series in reruns -- until we just couldn't stand it any more because it was so bad. The new one, on the other hand, is really good. There's a darkness to the characters that the earlier show didn't even begin to explore, the women finally have more to do than serve coffee, and the robot is fantastic. It's a very effective reboot!

(Photo: A fire hydrant cover in a sidewalk in Hampstead.)

Our Exotic Garden

We had a bit of excitement at the bird feeder on Sunday when these two parrots showed up. Dave said they were back yesterday, too. In just a few weeks we've gone from the frozen north to the tropics without leaving our living room!

(I think they're officially known as rose-ringed parakeets.)

They danced around on the feeder for a while. I would have thought they'd have trouble getting to the seed, as big as their heads are, but they got in there easily enough.

They even fed each other!

(Here's a closeup of the shot above...)

They weren't always graceful. In true parrot fashion they seemed a bit clownish. But they sure brightened our day!