Balham to Richmond

I took another long walk yesterday on the Capital Ring, from Balham to Richmond. I've now been all the way across South London, from the Thames to the Thames. Yesterday's walk was about ten miles.

I began the walk near Wandsworth Common, and passed the rather forbidding front entrance of Wandsworth prison. (Like all prisons here it is officially prefixed HMP -- "Her Majesty's Prison.") It was built in 1851 and has imprisoned the likes of Oscar Wilde and "Great Train Robber" Ronnie Biggs.

Leaving HMP Wandsworth, I wound through the Wandsworth Cemetery to the community of Earlsfield, where I took pictures on the High Street and popped into a Cafe Nero primarily to use the bathroom. (I bought an orange juice, too, because I felt like I had to buy something.)

Near Wimbledon Park, I passed a shopfront bearing these old decorative tiles. They're a little the worse for wear, but still beautiful.

I then crossed onto Wimbledon Common, where I passed Wimbledon Windmill. (Say that three times fast!) It's the last remaining hollow-post flour mill in the country, according to my map. I have no idea what that means, really. There's a museum -- where I no doubt could have learned about hollow-post windmills -- but I didn't go.

There's a beautiful memorial to the fallen of World War I near Kingston University, on the western edge of Wimbledon Common. It wasn't even mentioned on my map, which was surprising.

Then, because I was next to Putney Vale Cemetery, I took a little side trip to visit...

...the grave of Sandy Denny, one of my favorite singer-songwriters. I blogged about visiting this same spot back in 2011, a few months after we moved to London. (My first time using British buses!) That seems like a long time ago.

Denny's grave was decorated with little objects left by fans -- a card, some coins, a few trinkets and what appeared to be a VIP pass from a Richard Thompson concert. Thompson was Denny's bandmate in Fairport Convention.

Back on the trail, I passed into Richmond Park, London's largest Royal Park at 2,500 acres. Some of the park's oaks are reputedly 700 years old -- that would make them acorns at the time of Robin Hood! This example (above) is so old and hollow that it's surrounded by a fence for protection.

Richmond Park is also home to a famous herd of deer ("FENTON!") and I saw several of them lolling around. This buck must have thought his antlers blended nicely with that dead tree.

I climbed a hillock known as King Henry's Mound. Henry VIII is said to have waited there in 1536 for a flare from central London telling him that Anne Boleyn had been executed. I have no idea whether that little story is true -- I somehow doubt it -- but you can clearly see the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral, neatly framed by trees, using a handy provided telescope. It's a protected view -- nothing can be built that blocks that sight line.

Unfortunately I didn't get a picture. There were several people waiting behind me, and to complicate things even more, I injured my hand unlatching the gate leading to the mound. So I was too busy trying not to bleed on the telescope!

I did get a nice shot of the tower of the former All Saint's Church peeking up through the trees.

I stopped for a yummy vegetarian lunch at the Hollyhock Cafe in Richmond before making my way to the Thames riverfront, where I encountered this nosey giraffe peering in someone's window. The nerve! I caught the overground train home from there, somewhat tired and sore but (thankfully) no longer bleeding.

Fun Fair

Dave and I had plans yesterday afternoon, so I knew if Olga and I were going to get a long walk, it would have to be in the morning. Right after breakfast I took her up to the Clitterhouse Playing Fields, where we discovered a fun fair had been set up with rides and whatnot.

Olga wanted to ride the Viking Boat, but alas, nothing was open yet. Besides, she probably wouldn't meet the height and/or weight requirement.

Then we walked over to Basing Hill Park, which we'd never visited before. It was no great shakes -- just a big grassy field -- but good for some Kong-throwing. We came home through Child's Hill Park, home of this goofy trash can.

I did some laundry before Dave and I caught a bus to Notting Hill for a pub lunch with our friends Chris and Linda. These are our pro-Brexit friends, and I'm always afraid we're going to wind up in a political conversation -- but even Brexiteers have trouble defending Brexit these days, the whole thing has become such a hash. Chris wound up grousing about politicians in general, and I know he was thinking they've mucked things up. But it's pretty much impossible NOT to muck up such an impractical and foolhardy proposal, isn't it? No matter how much you dress up a pig, in the end, it's still a pig.

Anyway, lunch was fun (we had lively conversations about other, less onerous topics). Then Dave and I came home and I mowed the lawn:

I got a strange letter from Citibank on Friday, telling me they're canceling my credit card. This isn't a huge problem, since I almost never use it, but I've had it for thirty years (yes, since 1989!) and it's my only one. I have two debit cards that I use much more often. Their letter said the account would be closed on July 17 "because Citi no longer services U. S. card products with a mailing address in your country of residence." They added helpfully, "Your creditworthiness wasn't a factor in our decision."

I wonder if this is a Brexit thing.

Honestly, I've considered canceling this card anyway, so I'm not too worried about it. But it seems like maybe I should have at least one credit card, doesn't it? Isn't it bad for my credit rating to not have one? Maybe I should transfer the billing address to one of my relative's houses in Florida. (I get paperless bills, anyway.) Or maybe I should just apply for a new card here in England. Decisions, decisions!

Fortifications

This is how I spent yesterday morning -- planting more seedlings. I put four honesty plants in this big clay pot and coated the top with a layer of gravel, hoping that will deter digging squirrels. We'll see.

The pot itself I found in a dumpster last week. It's painted white and has a French phrase written on the side:

Garden of lavender

aromatic flowers

garnishing the summer air

I wouldn't buy it new, but hey, it was free! And we always need more pots.

This is a burdock plant, which I put in the ground in our garden, surrounded by a copper "slug ring" and more gravel -- hopefully fending off squirrels, snails AND slugs.

Again, we'll see.

And here are some hollyhocks, in a pot with some stones to deter digging.

Every planting is a fortification!

And then there's this tall plant stand, also scavenged from someone's streetside trash during a recent dog walk. I put a couple of seedlings in small pots atop it, hoping it would make the plants remote enough that squirrels won't bother them. (Squirrels are basically opportunists, interfering with what's closest at hand.) So far, so good. But I guess things could backfire if a squirrel gets up there and knocks the pots off!

Overall, I planted 16 seedlings yesterday, in both pots and in the ground. And I still have these:

Jesus God! How did I wind up with so many plants?! And only a fraction of my seedlings sprouted!

Yesterday afternoon Dave and I went to see the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra's Film Music Gala at Royal Albert Hall. It's exactly what it sounds like -- a performance of movie music. There were old favorites including "Star Wars," "Raiders of the Lost Ark," "Star Trek" and even the very '70s theme from "Rocky," which really called for a spinning disco ball descending from the ceiling, but I guess you can't have everything. There were also some slightly less well-known pieces from the likes of "Dances With Wolves" and "Edward Scissorhands." Most of it was from the 90s and 2000s -- the oldest was "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" from 1966. We had a great time! I'm not sure when I've so enjoyed a musical performance. It reminded me of watching Arthur Fiedler conduct the Boston Pops on PBS when I was a kid. We intend to get tickets for next year's gala, too!

One funny moment -- some boys were slipping past us to get to their seats in our row when one pointed at me and said, "You work in the library!" I had no idea who he was, but clearly he goes to our school. I felt like a celebrity, being recognized in public!

Last night, inspired by the gala, we watched "Edward Scissorhands" again. It was filmed about five miles from where I grew up, north of Tampa, and I remember visiting the neighborhood afterwards to see all the brightly painted, rainbow-colored houses. I also used to shop at Southgate Plaza, in Lakeland, which features prominently in the movie -- I specifically remember getting a pair of sunglasses repaired there, near where Joyce puts the moves on Edward in the beauty salon. Does that make me two degrees removed from Johnny Depp?

Happy Springtime News

Since I'm always grousing about slugs and squirrels in our garden, let's take a look at a few things that are going right.

First of all, our Chinese lantern plant is looking great. The photo above was taken about ten days ago -- it's even more green and lush now. We thought it was dead all autumn and winter, when it was just a pot of dank soil, so this is a happy surprise. Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

The Solomon's seal is also looking great. Fencing it off, as we did a couple of years ago, has made all the difference. It keeps Olga away from the brittle stalks and allows the plant to prosper.

This is a clematis that Dave just bought. We put it at the side of the house, where the passionflower vine used to be. (The one that I killed by over-pruning. Sob!) We can't really take credit for this flower since we just bought the plant a few weeks ago, but still -- it's a promising garden addition.

The hostas are looking dense and lush in their pots.

And the comfrey, back in the wildflower garden, is already blooming. We have three comfrey plants, and one of them is this bright magenta color. The others are a slightly bluer shade. Funny how they vary.

There's a lot more I could show you -- the azaleas are popping, the purple wallflower has been looking great, and I've still got about a million honesty, burdock and hollyhock seedlings that I need to do something with. (More repotting today, I think.) All the seedlings seem like they're taking their time in growing, which may be because of temperature -- it's been chilly these past few weeks, ever since Easter. Today's high is 52º F and the low is 38º F! Those little seedlings are just hanging back, waiting for things to warm up a bit.

Snail Eyes and Richard Maxfield

Yesterday evening, just as I was coming home from work, we had some rain -- real rain, not just misty dampness. It's been weeks since we've experienced rain like that, and Dave and I were happy to have it. After I got home we stood at the back door and listened to it falling in the garden. I imagined all the plants sighing.

Within half an hour, the snails were out and about.

I was going to caption this, "a face only a mother could love" -- but its mother probably laid thousands of eggs and never met any of her children, much less loved them. It's lonely being a snail mom.

Here's what I discovered yesterday about snails: Looking closely at those little eye stalks, which seem so ineffective, I couldn't help wondering if they could really see much. Well, it turns out that some of their eyes (depending on the species) have lenses, so not only can they see, but they can see images and objects, as opposed to just light and dark. Apparently they can't focus, though, and they don't see colors.

Don't say you never learned anything from my blog.

Of course I read up on snail eyes via Google. Here's something else, on a completely unrelated topic, that I discovered via the miracle of the Interwebs:

I've written in the past about my appreciation for the poet Diane Wakoski. For many years I've had a book of Wakoski's containing a poem called "The Story of Richard Maxfield." Maxfield was a composer of experimental electronic music in the '50s and '60s who committed suicide in 1969. Wakoski wrote a few years later about his life, his death and his music, particularly a piece called "Cough Music" made up of the sounds of people coughing at concerts.

It's been almost 35 years since I first read her poem, and I've always wondered about "Cough Music." Of course, hearing a Richard Maxfield piece decades ago was no easy matter. But it recently occurred to me to look online and see if "Cough Music" was available. Et voila!

It sounds nothing like I thought it would. In fact, it doesn't even really sound like coughing -- more like a recording of seals barking in a storm drain, played backwards. (I think there's a lot of tape distortion -- Maxfield's "Night Music" is much clearer and more interesting.) But I never imagined I'd be able to hear "Cough Music" at all, and even though I wouldn't say I'm a fan, thanks to the Interwebs for satisfying my curiosity!

Car Crashes, Real and Cinematic

The other day I was walking Olga (I know, I know -- ALL my posts begin that way) when I came across some damaged cars at the end of our street. They were parked against the curb, and I saw one of the owners -- a neighbor of ours -- standing over them. I asked him what happened. Turns out someone rounded the corner at 3 a.m. going too fast, lost control and slammed into two parked vehicles. Yikes! Somehow Dave and I slept through it.

My neighbor said the driver insisted that his steering had failed. Yeah, right! With the help of a half-dozen vodka tonics!

Anyway, he said he collected insurance information from the guy, as did the owner of the other damaged car. I'm unclear on whether or not the police showed up.

That's pretty much the only drama we've had around here. I've been doing inventory in the library, which means I've been working on scanning every single one of our 27,000 or so books. It's an annual ritual, to assess what's gone missing during the previous year. (There's always something. Usually several somethings.) It's kind of fun -- I can daydream and at the same time I have the satisfaction of occasionally correcting a problem. So far I've found one book that wasn't in our catalog at all, even though it had a bar code (it probably got deleted by accident at some point), and another that belongs in the library downstairs for the little kids. My need to organize is indulged!

This is a plaque on a house gate in Hampstead. I've been walking past it for years, thinking, "I should take a picture of that." So on Sunday I finally did. I've always liked that tree. Do you suppose the owners named the house after the creepy mansion in the Shirley Jackson book?

We're continuing to chafe under the tyranny of the squirrels. They upended one of my burdock seedlings and dug up one of my dahlias. I think both plants will survive, but I swear, every day, it's something. On the bright side, I'm pretty sure I saw starlings eating slugs on the lawn!

Dave and I watched "The Ten Commandments," the old Charlton Heston movie, over two nights this week. Dave loves that movie. Believe it or not, I don't think I'd ever seen it. Anyway, Dave always says he doesn't appreciate camp, but as I watched the glowering Yul Brynner and the floridly dramatic Ann Baxter sweep through scenes in all their tinkling Egyptian metalwear, I said to him, "You don't think this is campy?" Seriously, it's over the top. It probably won't surprise you to hear that I got a huge kick out of it.

A Rainbow Cake and More

Here are some more miscellaneous pictures that have collected on my phone over the past few weeks!

First, here's Olga, lying on the floor of the Overground train on the way to Wormwood Scrubs. I heard a boy standing nearby say to his parents, "She looks like a chicken!" Dave says the same thing -- he calls this her "spatchcock" pose. I guess it keeps her belly cool.

We saw this sign outside a cafe where we had brunch a couple of weekends ago.

"I don't get it," said Dave.

I told him I thought it just meant that avocados please everyone.

"But that's just it," he said. "I don't think they do."

Creative hedge-clipping in West London.

This ratty traffic cone stands under a tree on our street. The sticker says, "For charity -- do not move." We've all dutifully obeyed, but I'll be darned if I can see how that cone is benefiting any charity.

One of my co-workers gave us three seed potatoes so we could grow our own potato plants. I'm honestly not very enthusiastic about this project, but once he gave them to us I felt like we had to follow through. So I bought three 25-liter bags of compost, lugged them home and planted a potato in each bag. We'll see what happens.

Someone made a rainbow cake and left it in the staff lounge at work. I didn't eat any, but it sure was colorful!

And now, for the free stuff! First, a weird table I found around the corner from our flat. Dave says those notches are meant to serve as umbrella stands. Apparently he learned that from going to antique stores -- which surprises me, because he hates antique stores. Anyway, I didn't pick it up, but someone did because it was gone a short time later.

Another weird table (or bench?) abandoned on our street. What's up with those handles?

Finally -- free toys and random plastic junk! Olga might have gone for the balls, except that they were almost all flat. Which begs the question -- who would want them?!

PS -- I was really tempted to headline this post "A Spatchcock and Free Balls," but I just couldn't do it.