A Stick Figure on the Stairs

I knew that beautiful weekend weather was too good to be true. We're headed for another cold snap, this one bringing near-freezing temperatures over the weekend. I know it's not as brutal as the cold many people are still facing elsewhere in the world but for me, in mid-March, that seems cold.

Dave is off to Belgium today for a four-day trip with his music students. They'll be performing in several locations on their annual "music tour" before coming back on Friday. So it will be just me and Olga this week holding down the fort. I'll probably be eating peanut butter and baked beans again.

(I really could cook, if I wanted to, but when it's just me I lack the motivation. OK, even when it's not just me, I lack the motivation.)

We're also due for a quiet week in the library because all the high school students are traveling -- if not for music tour then for what's called "Alternatives," which involves international travel with some sort of educational or adventure element. (Nearly all travel is educational, I suppose.) My boss, for example, is off to Spain with a group of kids and some other teachers. I am looking forward to some quiet time, though the middle schoolers are still around so it won't be completely quiet.

Here's a curious drawing I found in a returned book. What on earth could it mean? Any guesses? I see symbols for female, male and both genders combined, as well as flying birds with arrows, a person falling down the stairs and what looks like an angry ghost. I am truly perplexed. I even tried uploading it to Google image search, thinking it was perhaps some kind of psychological model -- an illustration of gender transitioning, or of how people adapt to change in general -- but that just produced a lot of unrelated drawings of stick figures. It definitely looks metaphorical, doesn't it?

When I uploaded the ghost by itself, Google AI told me confidently, "it is a sketch from Henry David Thoreau's journal."

Ummmm...no.

(Photo: Blossoms on our ornamental plum tree.)

An Early Bee

Another beautiful sunny day yesterday. I went out in the garden to take some photos, and as I was focused on our blue lungwort -- always one of the first plants to bloom -- a bee flew into the frame.

It was only there for a moment. I'm not sure it's the first bee I've seen this season, but it's definitely one of the first.

I spent most of the morning reading, and then walked Olga on the high street after lunch.

As you can see, everyone was out and about. (Olga was licking her chops, maybe wondering how she could get a table in that cafe.)

Later, I got a pleasant surprise when I looked at my credit card bill and found that my charge for using the toll roads in Florida was only $23. When I rented our car during February break, I thought the car-rental agent said I'd pay all tolls plus an $8 surcharge PER TOLL. But maybe I misunderstood, because I went through about six toll stations on the Suncoast Parkway while driving from Tallahassee to Tampa and I fully expected to be billed about $60. Maybe it was just a one-time $8 charge plus the tolls. Assuming no more charges appear, I came away from that better than I thought I would.

Dave pruned the hydrangeas in the garden and spent part of his evening watching silly YouTube videos. He has a level of patience for that kind of thing that I do not. I can handle one or two dog or cat videos but I don't want to see 20 of them. I am not much of a "scroller" in general. Dave, however, will sit entranced in his chair for hours, even while we're supposedly watching something on TV, and every once in a while exclaim something like, "Awwww, this meerkat has a sweater!"

Mulch

This was my project yesterday -- mulching the garden. We've never spread mulch in the whole time we've been here, but after having that ivy cleared we were left with large expanses of bare dirt. For years we've also had a problem with black spot fungus on the roses, which apparently happens when the fungus overwinters on leaves and other debris scattered at the base of a rose bush. I'm hoping that by removing all those leaves and spreading mulch, the fungus will less effectively spread.

So I ordered ten 100-liter bags of bark mulch from Wickes, and let me tell you, that's a lot of mulch. Two guys delivered it yesterday morning, leaving it at the side of the house just inside the garden gate, and I fully intended to spread it gradually over the next week or two. But I hoisted one bag into the garden and opened it up just to see how easily it would spread and how much ground it would cover, and once I did that one it seemed like I should do the next one, and so on.

Pretty soon a couple of hours had elapsed and I'd spread eight bags full.

First I did the area under the hideous camellia, which had been full of ivy, taking care not to cover the corms of the irises that will come up and bloom in May.

Then I figured, what the heck, I'm already filthy, I may as well do the center flowerbed too. This is a little trickier because we have some plants that haven't come up yet and I had to try to remember where they are.

I only spread the mulch about an inch thick, so water can still get to the roots of the plants when it rains. I know that won't entirely stop weeds -- especially ivy -- but it should be discouraging, at least. And it smells so good! Kind of piney, or maybe a bit like turpentine. It's conifer bark chips (old Christmas trees?) so that makes sense.

By the end I was exhausted and sore and I have no idea what I'll do with the remaining two bags of mulch. Maybe just wait and see what areas need more. Or I could mulch the south side of the garden, under the walnut tree and the big hydrangea.

Another spring project more or less done!

Last night, as I was reading the NYT, Dave and I were talking about the news and I saw that Gwen McCrae had died. Dave didn't know who she was, and I said, "Oh, come on, you don't know 'Rockin' Chair'? You'd know it if you heard it." I played him this fabulous '70s video, which is so bizarrely produced that you just can't look away. Spinning color wheels, a dancing shirtless mime in green overalls -- what's not to like?!

Apparently McCrae was from Miami, part of the same music scene that produced KC and the Sunshine Band. I knew "Rockin' Chair" because I somehow had a 45-rpm single of it when I was a kid. Where I got it I have no idea. I'm sure I didn't buy it. The song is pretty obviously about sex, but as a young person I only ever pictured a chair!

Second Sun

On my walk home yesterday evening I found my usual quotient of beheaded daffodils on the sidewalk. It's an annual ritual -- someone will pick or mangle some daffodils and leave behind the remains, which I will collect and take home and try to salvage as a bouquet. So here's yesterday's haul, displayed on the kitchen windowsill. No flower left behind!

Yesterday we cleaned up all the DEAR paraphernalia and activities in the library. I can't remember if I already mentioned this or not, but one of the activities we developed involved me shredding several old books, putting the shredded pages in a big glass jar and having the kids guess the number of books and their titles. Despite my visceral dislike of tearing apart books, I found some old demolished paperbacks of popular kids' books and did the deed. I kept the covers so I would know which books I used and how many there were.

As we cleaned up yesterday, we read the kids' guesses to determine the winner. One girl matched the number exactly and got five of the six titles, so she emerged victorious. Even I misremembered how many books I'd used, so it's a good thing I kept those covers.

Otherwise it was a relatively uneventful day, but busy as usual -- so busy that I am once again behind in blogland but I will endeavor to catch up this weekend.

A house two doors down from us recently went through some renovations, and now there's a very bright security light in the garden -- so bright that when I got up at 5 a.m. to let the dog out, I noticed it bouncing off the buildings behind. Whoever lives in those apartments can't be too happy about the glare.

Here's how it looks over our fence and our next-door neighbor's dark garden. I hope this light is a temporary thing and not something that stays on all the time. It'll kill every moth for miles, not to mention annoying the rest of us. At least we can't see it from our bedroom, but I bet our neighbor can.

Oh, DEAR

Yesterday was super-busy in the library. It was World Book Day, and we had our annual "Drop Everything and Read" (DEAR) promotion. Students, staff and faculty were encouraged (but not required) to set aside their usual work for an hour in the afternoon and read for pleasure. No screens -- we're talking printed books, newspapers or magazines.

It's a great idea, but of course for me it's never very relaxing, because there are always a hundred kids who don't have anything to read and who wait until the last minute to come to the library and check something out. So the first part of my DEAR hour is consumed by checking out books. Also, we have research classes going on in the library at this time of year, and those teachers almost always opt out of DEAR. So, ironically, the library is about the least peaceful place in the entire building!

I did get some reading done, starting my next book, which is about Q-Anon and its effects on the American family. I bought it several months ago after hearing the author on the Q-Anon Anonymous (or QAA) podcast. She describes the ways in which previously sensible people slip down the Internet rabbit hole of Q-Anon and are pretty soon alienating spouses and children and everyone close to them with their insane beliefs and conspiracies. They're very personal stories and quite compelling.

Many of these people began getting into Q-Anon even before the pandemic, but the isolation of lockdowns and the government's advocacy of vaccines seems to have really poured gasoline on the whole Q-Anon and Internet conspiracy movement. You know, I don't think I fully appreciated at the time how damaging pandemic lockdowns were for people psychologically. I don't recall having a problem at all -- if anything, I appreciated more time in the garden. But I didn't have family nearby that I was unable to visit, and I wasn't trying to keep a business afloat or dealing with depression or grief or many of the other issues that confronted people head-on during that period.

Anyway, it's a very interesting book.

I think I may once again have induced root-rot in one of my Christmas cacti. I have one that looks a little peaked and I think that's what's going on -- which annoys me to no end because I know not to overwater and I've managed to do it twice now. It's the salmon-colored one that is struggling. I'll give it a little more time to sort itself out. Maybe now that spring is arriving and there's more sun it will come around. I only water them weekly but even with good drainage I suppose that might be too much during the winter.

Graffiti seems to be my pictorial theme today, so here's a photo of Olga nosing into the frame while I'm trying to photograph some graffiti on a utility box. Graffiti may be unsightly but I am intrigued by the handstyles of some writers -- it's a bit like admiring someone's penmanship. Olga's expression brings to mind the word "hangdog."

Polyanthus

The Polyanthus that I bought five years ago, just as our first big Covid lockdowns were beginning, is back again and blooming. It's a very persistent plant! Every year it dwindles away during summer and I think it's going to die, and then the next spring it bounces back. Not bad for a plant that I bought only to save it from withering away in a closed garden center. It has even lived longer than the Homebase store where I bought it, which has since been closed and torn down.

Olga had an upset stomach last night. We ran out of Dentastix for a brief period last week, and Dave bought some replacement treats that are made of dried chicken wrapped around a stick of rawhide. Olga loves them but I suspect she's having trouble digesting the rawhide. She's under the blankets this morning, not showing much enthusiasm. Guess we won't be giving her those treats anymore. Maybe I should cancel her walk today.

Dave is making plans to go to Michigan for Spring Break, to help his sister sort out their parents' house and its contents. The house will be sold, along with some of the contents, while other stuff will be trucked down to their new assisted-living apartment in Florida. He bought his airline ticket last night and it cost a fortune, I guess because it's Easter week and schools are out. I'm staying home with the pooch.

Speaking of which, my iPhone spontaneously made another fun video from my pictures of Olga. It's a little freaky that the phone does this by itself. Every few months I get a notification of a new "memories" video, and this is the kind of thing that appears, complete with musical accompaniment! They are fun to watch, though.

(Late edit: The video was blocked by YouTube because of a copyright claim on the music. Why my phone would use copyrighted music, and where it came from (because it's not from my iTunes), is a mystery to me. I replaced the music with the first tune of appropriate length -- something called "Fluffing a Duck" by Kevin McLeod -- that I could find in the YouTube Creative Commons music library. As soon as the video is done editing it should be viewable. What a pain!)

Lasagna Landslide

Our crocuses are coming up and looking beautiful, briefly, before the squirrels get to them and nibble the flowers apart. Often this is what I see when I check out the bulbs -- this or worse. Soon after I took this photo something tore apart the rest of these flowers, leaving petals like purple confetti strewn on the ground.

Here's another one, pre-squirrel, that has since been demolished.

Ah, nature.

I must admit I have not seen the squirrels in action, so I suppose the culprit could be birds. Pigeons, maybe?

As long as I have a photo of the flowers I feel they've been appreciated.

I've mentioned a couple of times that houses on our street seem to be perpetually under renovation. Here's the situation down the road at the moment -- two gigantic scaffolding "sheds" constructed over houses on either side of one in the middle, still untouched. The one in the middle is the bathing beauty's house. It must be a drag to have all that construction happening on either side. And I thought I had it bad with the Russians!

Dave and I had a dramatic mishap last night at dinner. I was sitting on the couch watching TV, and Dave brought out two plates of lasagna from the kitchen. He handed me one on a potholder, and said, "Careful, it's hot." I took the plate but my thumb touched the china, which was indeed blisteringly hot -- straight out of the oven. I jerked my thumb back which caused the whole plate to come tumbling down onto me and the couch. Olga immediately leapt to attention, seeing an opportunity, but we held her back while I scooped up what I could and then got in the shower. Dave cleaned the rest of it up.

Fortunately, I didn't get burned, except for my thumb and that was minor.  And fortunately, we have a dark-colored couch that is near the end of its long lifespan, and which somehow shows no visible evidence of this episode.

Dave got me a fresh piece of lasagna, which I asked him to put in the microwave, which makes the plate much less hot than the conventional oven. (He prefers the oven because he says the microwave makes things soggy.) Last night as we went to bed I apologized for throwing his lasagna on the couch, and he apologized for dumping it on me. This is how marriages work, right?!