Gin & Tonic with Miss Sweden

When I was walking down a mostly empty Charing Cross Road on Monday, I passed a shop window filled with cufflinks. Check these out!

You can tell which ones I'm focusing on:

HOW FANTASTIC ARE THOSE?! Judging by the shape and color of the bottles, they're even my brands, Gordon's gin and Schweppes tonic.

There are many practical reasons why I didn't buy them. First, of course, the shop wasn't open. Second, I only own one shirt that requires cufflinks and it's got colorful stripes, which these wouldn't match. And third, they were something like £39, which is insane.

But they are great.

In other news, it looks like I probably will be returning to work next week, for just two weeks. I'll be doing stuff in our still-closed library to get it ready for summer book checkouts. Basically, I'll be checking in any returned materials, getting them back on the shelves, and doing our annual inventory to find out what's gone missing over the course of the school year. The library won't be open yet so I won't really be dealing with people -- just stuff. My co-worker will then come in the last two weeks of school to do actual checkouts for parents and students who visit campus. (This all assumes that the government announces a loosening of our lockdown restrictions, which is anticipated on Sunday. Our school won't reopen for classes until the fall.)

See that big red lupine on our old patio table? I picked it up at Waitrose on Tuesday. Beautiful, isn't it? It's a variety called Beefeater. The red lupine we had last year doesn't seem to have survived the winter, so I was happy to get this one -- and then pose it next to our laundry for a photo. Ha!

Apropos of nothing, I was thinking yesterday about a woman who briefly rented a house across the lake from us when I was growing up in Florida. She was a statuesque blond who we used to call Miss Sweden -- or was it Miss Norway? -- and she allegedly really was a former Scandinavian beauty queen. She used to sunbathe on her dock, drift around in filmy blouses and once came to our door looking for a missing cockatoo. (This sounds like a dream situation for an adolescent boy, but it did nothing for me, which should have told me something.)

Anyway, she wasn't around for very long and the memories are so hazy that I'm honestly not sure how accurate they are, but I wonder who that woman was. This all happened in the late '70s, and she wasn't very old. I looked at a list of former Miss Swedens but the names mean nothing to me, and as I said, she could have actually been Norwegian or Danish. Maybe she wasn't really a beauty queen at all. That could have been a neighborhood rumor. When you're a kid you take everything you hear at face value.

Anyway, we lived in a fairly insular area, and having such an exotic person in our midst, with an international pedigree, made a big impression on me. It's a mystery that will probably never be solved!

Dunnocks and Dock

Come into the garden, its magical trees
Dapple the sun as they sway with each lazy breeze
They'll set your mind at ease

So begins Carly Simon's song "The Garden," from 1971, still a favorite of mine. It seems appropriate for today's post because aside from Monday's London walkabout, the garden is where I've been spending virtually all my waking hours.

It's in an especially fertile period, when everything is blooming and the critters are nesting. Little brown dunnocks, like the one above, are chasing each other through the branches in their amorous dance, and we've seen tits and robins and magpies and parakeets on the feeders. The parakeets have finally figured out how to fit their heads between the squirrel-proofing bars on the seed feeder, so they can snack all they want.

Here's our clematis, which is blooming like crazy right now. All the newly potted dahlias have sprouted and are growing by the day.

Most of yesterday, though, was spent working, rather than mooning about under lazily swaying Simon-esque trees. Remember how I mentioned dock, that pestilential weed that bedevils English gardens and fields? Even the UK government has classified it as noxious. I got to work on clearing ours.

The problem with dock is that you have to pull it up by the root. Leaving even a little bit of root apparently allows it to regrow. And getting the whole root is a challenge because it's a long, brittle taproot and it's usually very securely anchored. Above you can see that I did a good job pulling the one on the left, a so-so job in the middle, and a terrible job on the right. That right-hand plant will probably be back in a matter of days.

But look at how much I took out! I was proud of myself, even if some of the roots did break and I'll have to revisit the situation one of these days. At least I caught them before they set seed. (Apparently the seeds can remain viable in soil for fifty years!) I also took out other weeds and mowed the grass.

Someone asked in the comments a few days ago if dock also grows in North America. According to Wikipedia, broad-leafed dock (Rumex obtusifolius) is found on all temperate continents. There are many other types too, all broadly known as docks or sorrels, including some that I remember from my years in Florida. I'm not sure they're all as problematic.

In other news, my employers are talking about having the school library staff come back to work, even though classes will not resume on campus for the rest of this school year. I guess the plan is to have us available to check out books for students and their families -- once they're allowed to revisit campus under government restrictions -- before the start of summer break. I'm fine with that, provided we come up with adequate safety measures and controls. The details are still being worked out, but my furlough ends as of this coming Monday so I guess I could be working as soon as next week -- probably on some back office projects initially.

My flight to Florida in June has been officially cancelled by British Airways, and in exchange I applied for a voucher to use in future travel. I thought it was unlikely that trip was going to happen. Dave and I still haven't heard about our planned trip to Brazil in July, but I'm sure that's pretty much scuttled as well. Last I heard, Brazil wasn't doing well on the coronavirus front, partly because they have a president who's just about as disconnected from science and reality as Donald Trump.

Locked-Down London

Ever since our coronavirus lockdown began in late March, I've been staying mostly in West Hampstead, wondering what the rest of the city looks like.

I decided to take a longer walk yesterday so I could see for myself. I started at home and without taking public transportation of any kind, walked down through Camden and Westminster to the Thames and back again. According to my phone, I walked about 12 miles. There were smatterings of people here and there, but shops were closed and the typically crowded tourist areas were empty.

These first two photos are from Camden Town, where the sidewalks are usually thronged with shoppers. I did see long lines at the grocery stores and post office, but most other places were closed.

The top of the BT Tower had a circling message that said in part: "Stay home -- protect the NHS."

This is Leicester Square, which is usually quite crowded, surrounded by restaurants and ticket booths for theaters. Of course, both restaurants and theaters are closed now.

The pigeons had Trafalgar Square almost entirely to themselves.

The Horse Guards on Whitehall were still on duty, without anyone to crowd around their horses for selfies.

Westminster Bridge was empty of all but a few pedestrians, some of them taking pictures like me.

This is South Bank, an area that is usually so thronged with people that it's hard to walk through, much less run or bicycle. As you can see, a few people were out getting their exercise. The runners must love all these open streets and sidewalks. The London Eye is now closed.

A couple of women paused in Covent Garden for a socially distant chat.

Here's Piccadilly Circus. I don't think I've ever seen the statue of Eros without hordes of people sitting on the steps around it.

And here's Carnaby Street, a famous shopping district. You can see tumbleweeds. (Oh, never mind, those are garbage bags.)

And finally, this is Oxford Street at Oxford Circus. Again, this is normally such a congested area that just walking the sidewalks is hard. Do you see the Transport For London employee at right, splashing disinfectant on the sidewalk outside the tube station? I'm not sure what good that does, really, but I suppose it can't hurt.

I felt like I stayed pretty safe the whole time. Twice, I did unthinkingly press buttons at crosswalks to cross the streets -- but I was very careful to not touch my face until I could get home and wash my hands. (Of course, I touched my camera, which then touched my face, so who knows.) And once a street-sweeping machine passed me, which freaked me out as I imagined all sorts of little virions being kicked up by its brushes. But I didn't stop anywhere to eat or drink or interact with anyone. So, fingers crossed, my extra-long day of exercise shouldn't affect me or anyone else negatively -- and I really did need a long walk.

Dandelion and Dock

Not much news today. More time in the garden, where I photographed this perfect dandelion. Most people think dandelions are weeds -- and they are -- but they're good for bees so we don't exterminate them too eagerly. Only when they grow in truly unacceptable places do we get rid of them.

In fact, we're pretty tolerant of weeds in general. The only weed I simply can't stand is dock. It's terrible and so tenacious. We have a lot of it coming up every year and getting rid of it is a nightmare, requiring a trowel to dig out the taproot. I haven't tried to take any out this spring but I see a lot of it so I suppose I should get to work.

I took Olga to the cemetery, as usual. On the way we passed this bike, the likes of which I'd never seen before. What a cool idea -- a dedicated bike for essential workers! Apparently you have to e-mail to get access to it, maybe with a code or something? (I have no idea.)

Here's the obligatory cemetery photo, complete with a branch of blooming hawthorn.

We saw the turaco again, way up in a tree, and in fact while I was watching it a guy came up to me and said, "Are you looking at the turaco?" I said yes, relieved that I'd finally met someone else aware of the existence of this crazy bird, and I was hoping he'd have some information about it -- but it turns out he'd read my blog post from last summer! So that was gratifying. He said his wife's been hearing it for years, so maybe it's been around a lot longer than I've realized. The mystery continues!

Azaleas and Asteroids

Olga and I went back to Hampstead Heath yesterday, just in time to catch the azaleas at Athlone House in peak bloom. We saw them back in 2017, but it's been hard to time our visits to catch them in subsequent years, so I'm glad we did this time.

Do you see the one in the background on the left -- the yellow one? That seems pretty unusual. I don't think yellow azaleas (or maybe it's a rhododendron) are all that common.

Anyway, we had a good long walk, with time for a back-scratch on a handy tree!

The Heath was about as crowded as I've ever seen it. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, on a sunny Saturday after a rainy week, but I was, given our current crisis. The only way to maintain social distancing was to walk off the paths. This picture of crazy Olga is actually meant to show all the people on the path in the background -- there are at least 40 people in the shot. We stuck to the grass.

To make things more complicated, it seemed like every visitor was in a family of about five, with everyone running figure-eights around each other -- so they took up a lot of space. My walk was like playing the old video game Asteroids, in which unthinking objects hurtle towards you and you have to evade them -- except, of course, in Asteroids you shoot them.

I heard one woman tell her kids, "The street where we left our car is this way." Which is more evidence that our lockdown appears to be slipping. Remember how we're not supposed to drive anywhere to exercise? Still, I can understand that parents must have been desperate for something to do outdoors with the kids.

Next weekend is the first May bank holiday, which always attracts tons of people to the Heath. So it's just as well we visited this weekend instead of next -- if we have good weather it's likely to be madness. (And actually it should have been this weekend -- it's usually the first Monday in May. This year the British government switched it to Friday to coincide with the 75th anniversary of VE Day.)

This photo is from my "London Shown to the Children" book, which is about 100 years old. It describes the Heath as normally "open, clean and deserted," but adds:

"On Bank Holidays Hampstead Heath is the Cockney's paradise, though its popularity has waned a little in recent years, since the revellers find it increasingly easy to go farther afield. But a great fair is still held here every Bank Holiday; marquees and merry-go-rounds are erected, swing-boats, and all manner of side-shows; and holiday-makers throng over the Heath, eating, and littering the helpless ground with paper bags and orange peel, and shouting, singing, swinging their wooden rattles, laughing, till the noise of their merry-making echoes for miles around."

Fortunately people are generally better about littering nowadays!

Anyway, Olga and I made our normal circuit of the Heath (skipping Parliament Hill, which I had a feeling might be crowded). On the way home, we passed this art studio in Hampstead, with a colorful "Stay Strong London" paper-flower display out front.

Last night we watched "Joker" with Joaquin Phoenix. I'm normally not a huge fan of comic-book movies, but since he won an Oscar for it, I figured we should give it a try -- and man, it is dark. It was really good and I hope I never see it again!

The Plant Hospital

Thursday morning I was doing dishes when I noticed the sun hitting this glass in just the right way, creating a halo on the counter. Kind of cool!

All this hanging around the house is starting to get to me. Yesterday felt very frustrating. I walked the dog; I went to the grocery store. I'm usually the kind of person who finds enjoyment even in small, routine tasks, and I'm not easily bored. But the sameness of my days feels numbing.

Sure, I still have things to do. I read (still not caught up on my New Yorkers!), I shuffle around in the garden. I think I need to take myself on another long dog-free walk -- I need to stretch my legs, and Olga, who is usually such a reliable walker, has become much more finicky about when and where she wants to go. She used to refuse to walk in the rain; sometimes now she refuses on sunny days, for no apparent reason at all. She's just not in the mood, I guess. But then I wind up not walking, and that's not good.

Anyway, I know this is nothing different from what many of us are experiencing. We've all mentioned the "Groundhog Day" phenomenon.

While at the grocery store, I picked up a couple of bedraggled foxgloves that appeared to need a home. I always go for the saddest ones on the plant shelf -- these two were droopy and broken and in desperate need of water. We've already got a million foxgloves but we can always use a few more; the bees love them.

Speaking of rehabilitating plants, here's an update on our plant hospital:

I rescued this jade plant from Mrs. Kravitz's garden waste bag. It sat untended at the side of her house for weeks and many of the leaves had turned yellow; she pulled it up and threw it away. But it still had plenty of roots attached, so I thought I'd try to rehabilitate it. As you can see, it's doing quite well -- the yellow leaves are turning green again, which I didn't even know was possible.

I found this sad-looking pelargonium about a week ago in the cemetery. Someone had dumped it out of its pot near the back wall. I brought the entire root ball home (it was very dry) and put it in a pot. It has perked up since then, but it's probably not going to look like much this season. We'll see!

Remember the discarded ficus tree I rescued back in February? Well, this is what it looks like now. The top is still just dry sticks, and is probably mostly dead. But we have new little leaves sprouting from the bottom. I'm going to wait a bit longer, until it leafs out more, and then I'll prune the dead stuff away. This is apparently going to be a slow recovery.

To the right you can see a Christmas cactus I grew from some pieces that broke off our library cactus last September. The bigger pieces didn't survive -- they were on woody stalks that apparently were unable to grow roots -- but the smaller ones are growing like crazy.

That dracaena in the background, immediately behind the ficus, is a rescue too. When I found it, it had no pot and barely any leaves (fourth photo down in this post) but now it's looking happy.

Incense, Orchids and the Bathrobe Woman

And now for something completely different, as Monty Python would say.

This is the remains of a box of incense that I bought in Marrakech, Morocco, in 1992. Even when I bought it I thought it looked old, like it had been hanging around the shop for a couple of decades -- perhaps from the era of Jimi Hendrix and the other counterculture types who traipsed around Morocco in the late '60s. It was incredibly dusty, as I recall. I must have used the incense -- I honestly don't remember -- and when it was finished I cut up the box and glued it into my journal, because I loved the artwork so much. Groovy!

My only excitement yesterday was walking the dog and having a Zoom chat with my library colleagues. While walking Olga I spotted this woman, another of our neighborhood free spirits. She walks around the high street rather dramatically wrapped in unusual clothing -- in this case what looks like a bathrobe. Sometimes it's a bedsheet done up like a toga. Her dark hair is usually loosely pinned with a big red flower -- the flower is there in the photo above, but you can't see it under her furry hat. And those cork-heeled platform shoes!

Anyway, it's not a very good picture, and one of these days I'll have to get a better one. But you get the idea.

Off the Black Path by the railroad tracks, I spotted a pair of books lying in the ivy behind the fence. And not just any books -- LIBRARY BOOKS! Well, as you can imagine, I couldn't let that stand. I looked around and found a long squeegee on a nearby rubbish pile. (There's always handy rubbish around in London.) I used it to pull the books through the fence. Of course, because we've had rain over the last two or three days, they were completely ruined. As it turned out only one was a library book -- from Montreal, of all places -- and believe me, they wouldn't want it back. I returned the squeegee to the rubbish heap and threw the books in a trash can.

Olga is watching my right hand in the photo above because I was holding her Kong. That's all she cared about.

(As an aside, if you type "Montreal" into Google, it prompts you to search for "Montreal Screwjob." I had no idea what this meant, so I did it -- with some trepidation, admittedly. Turns out it was a controversial 1997 incident in professional wrestling, in which wrestler Bret Hart was deprived of his championship title. The things you learn! Google prompts can sometimes be pretty interesting.)

Finally, here's a photo showing some of our blooming orchids -- the ones in the dining room. It put them all on the table for a "group shot." They're looking really good right now -- kind of psychedelic, like my incense box! The three pink orchids are all rescues, plants I picked up on the street that other people had discarded. The orangey one on the left we bought several years ago and it reliably blooms every year.

Dave and I have been watching "The Mandalorian" at night. We had to buy a subscription to Disney+ to get it, but it's not very expensive, and we've wanted to see this series -- a "Star Wars" prequel featuring the infamous Baby Yoda -- for a while. It's good so far.