Mothering Sunday

It's Mother's Day in the UK, or as it's often called, "Mothering Sunday." Even though I am not a mother in any way, shape or form, I celebrated by having a lie-in, sleeping until 7:30, which is pretty unheard of for me. I woke up at 6:30, glanced at the clock and thought, "You know, I'm just going to lie here for a few more seconds." And before I knew it, an hour was up.

I found the little paper cone above on Friday, on the sidewalk next to a bus stop and overground station. It was obviously someone's school project for Mother's Day, complete with a little daffodil. I debated what to do about it -- it had already been stepped on and given that the child in question was probably already on a bus or train I decided to pick it up and bring it home. I showed it to Dave and he said with his usual wry economy, "Some kid is bawling right now."

I wasn't sure whether the daffodil would open, given that it was a bit smushed, but it did...

So, kiddo, whoever you are, please know that your creation brought me happiness, even though I am not your mother. (I think I might take the paper part back and tape it up somewhere near the bus stop, on the off chance that the kid will pass by again and recognize it. Then they could at least bring that part back to Mom.)

This was yesterday's project -- spiffing up the front garden. See that bundle of sticks on the sidewalk in front? That's the dead bush that I removed. It was so dead that I pulled out the stump by hand. I chopped it all up and put it in a yard waste bag, and then planted a hydrangea in the dark middle of the garden and a buddleia where the dead bush used to be. And I pruned that big heather in front, which was largely dead inside and needed some spiffing up.

Here's the "after" shot. I hope that hydrangea isn't in too much darkness, there in the middle, but if it struggles I can trim things around it to bring in more light. They usually don't mind shade.

I had the last of the front porch squash for lunch, blending it into soup form. I was in a race against time to use it up, given that I had to abandon it in the fridge while I was in Florida, but it is now all gone.

Then I gave the grass its first haircut of the year! And I did some trimming to neaten things up in the garden, though there's still plenty more to be done. I have three full yard waste bags and that's the most the council will take per week, so any more work will have to wait.

Finally, I repotted two purple heart plants, combining them into a single pot. Do you remember how the windowsill in the library was overflowing with purple heart plants, all from cuttings from my big plant? Well, I brought several of them back home, in preparation for my retirement and because they were badly in need of new pots. I now have five pots here at home filled with purple heart -- not counting three still in the library, which will stay there after I leave. That stuff is a blessing and a curse! But you know how I am about cuttings. I have a terrible time throwing them away when I know I can root them so easily.

I also polished off two New Yorkers, and I was struck by this essay by a father whose son has transitioned to become his daughter. The dad is pretty much an ideal liberal parent, but he writes openly of his own perplexity at the changes in his daughter's life, including some unconventional relationships and a move overseas. I found it a sympathetic and realistic account of a parent navigating the lives and choices of grown children in today's complex world.

Arrowhead

Here's another photo from my recent Florida trip. Several of these flowers were growing in the wilderness down by the lake at my stepmother's house. I didn't know what they were, but my plant-identifier app tells me they're Sagittaria lancifolia, commonly known as Bull-tongue Arrowhead. Which is quite a mouthful.

I have to give you a Florida picture because I haven't been very inspired photographically this week. I've been walking back and forth to work as usual, but not much has jumped out at me as picture-worthy. I think I just need some leisurely time to take a better look around.

Thank goodness it's the weekend, and I have nothing scheduled, so I can finally write a proper blog post rather than dashing something off before leaping into the shower! From your end this will probably seem no better or worse than any other post, but from my end it's much more relaxed.

It will be interesting to see if my blog posts change once I have more time, after mid-April. I keep thinking I should be plumbing the depths a bit more -- talking about thoughts and feelings and issues. Then again, what can I say about issues, other than how horrifying they all are? I'm not sure I have any more light to shed on world events.

I hope to get some more stuff done around the house this weekend, like sprucing up our front garden, which is looking truly abysmal. As I mentioned before, we have a dead bush out there and it needs some other minor weeding and trimming. I also have some plant maintenance to do in the back garden, and I may even mow the lawn. And I still have a stack of New Yorkers to get through! I am deliberately not starting a new book because I want to focus on reading all those. I made a dent in them during my trip to Florida but I'm still months behind!

I've been taking my New Yorkers to work and sharing them with a colleague -- he has the newest issues, which he will give back to me so I can eventually read them. I reminded him yesterday that I'm leaving in a few weeks, though. As I said, "The gravy train stops after April 15!"

Pounded

We had a lot of rain and heavy winds overnight -- I woke up around 2 a.m. and heard the avocado being thrashed, and peered out the windows to make sure it and the other plants weren't being traumatized. Not that I could have done anything if they were. Everything looks fine this morning. As Dave said, it's good for plants to get knocked around a bit. It makes them stronger.

Dave's been staying home from school the last few days. He had a bout of discomfort stemming from his Crohn's. I, meanwhile, feel like I am being squeezed like a citrus fruit for my last few weeks of work. Is it just because I'm anticipating leaving (18 days!) that I feel like I'm having so much trouble keeping up? I've also got to start telling kids that I'm retiring. I don't want to just disappear and have them all wondering what happened.

We finished the first season of "Broadchurch," which I really enjoyed, but I'm not entirely convinced by the ending. It seemed a bit forced and, frankly, a little hard to believe. There's a second season which we're about to launch. We also finished "The Big C" and (spoiler alert!) that's good because if Laura Linney's character hadn't finally died Dave would have killed her himself.

(Photo: Another cat sticker on Finchley Road, on Wednesday.)

Catching Up

Another view of our Primula in its hanging basket, scruffy leaves and all. With flowers like those, we can forgive a little scruffiness in a plant that is surely by now a senior citizen in the plant world. (It's been in that basket at least five years.)

I thought I'd have some time yesterday to catch up in blogland, but that was not to be. I was nonstop at work and didn't even take my full lunch break. My co-worker is out with an illness in her family, so we're short-handed and I had to clean up everything that hadn't been done by the substitute while I was away.

Having a sub in my position is never easy. It's not a difficult job -- barring the occasional physical demands of lifting and kneeling -- but it does require use of the computer system, which means training, and knowledge of lots of little internal matters like how to handle books on hold, or what to do when a kid comes in to pay for a lost book. My previous boss found that it wasn't really worth all the work to bring someone up to speed just for a few days. It was better to just struggle through with no sub. I wonder if my new boss thinks the same.

Fortunately I'm almost never absent!

They still haven't hired someone to fill my position but I think they're close.

Here's a snapshot that I found at my dad's house that I tucked into my suitcase to bring home. It's weirdly captivating, isn't it? That's my stepmother at right, with one of her brothers behind her and my stepsister at left. It was taken in the early '80s, I believe in my step-grandmother's living room, and I just love the composition and the expression on June's overexposed face. It's one of those pictures you could stare at for hours, picking out all the little details of the room and thinking about the circumstances and relationships.

Off to work!

A Vase in Spring

Home Sweet Home! I got back yesterday about 11 a.m. and although my flight was fine, with no major discomforts (and significantly less alcohol than last time), I am so relieved my traveling is over for the foreseeable future. We've decided to spend Spring Break here in London, so my feet will be on the ground for a while.

I didn't sleep on the flight at all. Sometimes I can but this time, no. So my mission yesterday was to keep myself as busy as possible in order to stay awake. I did laundry, I vacuumed, I cleaned the bathrooms, I took care of some minor stuff in the garden. If I tried to read or do anything on the computer my eyelids would sag like bargain-basement window blinds. Finally I went to bed at about 9 p.m. and slept soundly all night. Hopefully I'm more or less back on London time now, since I wasn't away for long.

It's funny that I spent all of yesterday cleaning, because that's also what I did in Florida the day before. Everyone else had gone home so I cleaned up our guesthouse and did all the laundry before getting on the plane.

That's the state of the garden, above. It will be time to mow the lawn soon! The wildlife cam is back in place so we'll be able to reacquaint ourselves with the local foxes.

The forsythia has burst into bloom...

...and indoors, the Rhipsalis or bird's-foot cactus has more flowers than ever before, I believe.

This is the one item (aside from some loose pictures and my dad's Europe slides) that I took from their house. It sat on some shelves above their TV for years. I believe my dad got it when he lived in the La Place Apartments in Tampa right after his divorce from my mom and before he married June. I seem to remember it came from an art show. It's quite heavy, and signed and dated 1974. I can't quite make out the signature but I'll give it a closer look one of these days.

I've always believed this vase to be black, but it's clearly blue. It was in such a dark location in their house that I've never perceived the color correctly!

Florida Critters

Here it is -- the moment you've all been waiting for. (Not really, I know.) I downloaded the data from the wildlife cam yesterday morning and found a few interesting clips. I captured a pretty big raccoon sauntering across the back yard at my stepmother's guesthouse, another raccoon snuffling the camera and trying to figure out how to take it off the tree (!) and finally, an armadillo nosing around a rotted part of our dock, where there are probably plenty of bugs. For just four nights' recording, and not knowing where I was likely to encounter animals, I was pretty happy with that glimpse of nocturnal Florida!

I am programming this to post automatically, because I'm not landing until 9 a.m. Tuesday. I'll fill you in on my journey on Wednesday, if there are any stories to tell!

Bombax and Road Rage

I came across this jungly scene while driving through Bradenton yesterday with my brother. Doesn't it look like something from "Tarzan," or maybe one of those "Road" movies from the '40s -- "Road to Zanzibar" or "Road to Bali"? That tree with the red blossoms is what grabbed my attention. It's a kapok, more appropriately called a Bombax, and it has huge, rubbery, prehistoric-looking flowers that fall in profusion at this time of year.

I was happy to see one blooming.

We also passed this magnificent pink Tabebuia, a relative of the yellow one I posted a couple of days ago. (My brother took this photo at my request, and I can hear him now: "STOP TALKING ABOUT PLANTS!")

Yesterday was the day to go visit Dave's family. My brother and I got into his low-slung shiny blue Subaru -- it's so low that it makes me groan when I get in and out of it -- and drove down to Bradenton over the Sunshine Skyway bridge. We met up with Dave's sister Dawn at the family mobile home in Cortez, and then took his parents to lunch at the Anna Maria Oyster Bar. (Or actually, they took us, since his dad paid as usual.) I had fish tacos with mango, which were delicious, and we said hi to Pearl, the robot waitress, who has lost her coconut bra since the last time I saw her.

We all video-chatted with Dave in London via Facebook, and then my brother and I headed back to Tampa. My brother has loved cars since he was a tiny kid, and he loves to drive and spends a lot of time on the road, and he has lots of opinions about the proper ways to drive. Those opinions emerge in his hilarious habit of psycho-analyzing all the drivers around us. Most of us see someone driving crazy and say, "Wow, that guy is a jerk." My brother sees them and says, "That guy is a frustrated slave to the manosphere who's boiling with rage and fears he's an incel." He will judge someone's character based on whether their truck has racing stripes from Amazon or a certain style of hubcap. About 35 years ago I sold him my own car, a Honda, and he still holds it against me that I had spilled coffee on the center console and it had sticky spots. To hear him tell it, I replicated a Jackson Pollock painting inside that car.

He has an eagle eye for any kind of highway oddity. He spotted one pickup truck with a sagging back end that looked so scary and unworthy of the road that I couldn't believe it was legal to drive. Once he pointed it out I was astonished, but I know if I'd been in the car by myself I'd have breezed past without a glance.

Today I'll be helping my stepsister and her husband tidy up the house after all their hosting this weekend, and then I'm off to the airport in the afternoon for the journey back to London. I'll let you know tomorrow whether the wildlife cam picked up anything interesting in my stepmother's yard. (I'm sure you can't wait!)