pots, again

They are coming along.  To be sure, not every single one of these pots is yet planted, but our front yard is starting to look more loved - and no small part of this is the pruning that's happened to the bushes between this little yard and the street.  Everything is now much more opened up, and even though that means that there's now a much better view from the kitchen of, say, the various dogs being walked up and down the street, it's good to enjoy that extra space ... And the pots are flourishing, and waiting for a few more plants to arrive ...

 

Gramsci and the Bean

Our Grammy has a new favorite toy - a green bean.  Long ago, Sappho used to be a bean fanatic,  but I haven't met a cat since her with this particular predilection, until now.  I always like to indulge Gramsci in his hobbies, and this one looks like it'll have staying power.

 

shelved

Sunlight coming in this morning, on a bright red pot from Seagrove, in North Carolina, and a bronze sculpture of a horse by Auguste Louis Barrye - which a friend gave to my father for his 99th birthday, and he loved ... I was happy to give it a good home.  There's something very pleasingly minimalist about this arrangement (I'd be the first to admit that decorative minimalism isn't my strong suit) - a minimalism that was very suited to this year's Thanksgiving, which was very largely spent reading departmental job applications, although I did, indeed, bake a fine pumpkin cheesecake (with that strawberry in the middle, of course).

 

a Thanksgiving strawberry

I thought that there were going to be three of these - but, you know, Raccoons.  Still - it's pretty impressive to be able to pick one's own strawberry the day before Thanksgiving, and know that it'll have pride of place in the middle of the pumpkin cheesecake.

 

a plate for peace

A window on campus ... I'm sure I've taken an image of the array of pots and jars and plants before, but they've now been joined by a plate.  At first, the plate seems jarring out of place with the faded blue and green aesthetic, and maybe it is, but unlike the other objects (at least, so far as I know), it's making a clear point: the rather sad looking rabbit, standing between two karge olive branches, is waving a Palestinian flag.

 

strange sights while driving to and from work

I have seen many strange discarded things on the streets of LA in my time, but this is the first jettisoned coffin.  I'm pleased to report that it's empty.  But ... why?  We are a long time out from Hallowe'en.  Pointing out the obvious, it's the kind of receptacle that's used for open casket viewings - but that doesn't explain anything.

And then, coming home, the juggler.  Strictly speaking, he's not strange, in that I've encountered him before, at the same set of traffic lights on S. Hoover Street.  And not strange, either, when I think of all the jugglers (and tumblers forming human pyramids) on the outskirts of Mexico City that I've seen - admittedly several decades ago, but I'm sure the performances continue.  It was an entertaining couple of drives today, to say the least.

 

after the rain / bee rescue

It was beautiful enough, this morning, walking by the reservoir after the overnight rain.  But the added bonus was the B11 guys, selling honey - they fed us little tastes on spatulas (spatulae?) and obviously it wasn't possible to choose one over another, since they were all delicious, so we bought a little sample tray with jars of all three.  B11 rescue bees - hives/colonies that have set themselves in places up where they're nor welcome - and relocate them, and harvest some honey on the way.  So if you have any bees that need gentle and sympathetic rehoming, you know who to call.  Also, checking them out on line, they seem to have some absolutely delightful goats who'll do landscaping for you, too.

 

leaf

 

Evidence that we do, indeed, get autumn/fall in Southern California, hanging in our back yard ... a grey and even, at times, drizzling day.  And if it's like this - yes, it must be nearly Thanksgiving, and impossible to find parking at Whole Foods, and the roads are full of crazy, crazy drivers.  Yes, of course, there are many scarier problems out there, but I'm concentrating, just now, on elementary challenges like souring ricotta and pumpkin puree.

empty pots, waiting

Today was a major day in the garden.  A year after it was first planted out - and a few weeks after we'd done an assessment with Max, who's in charge of all the plants and their maintenance - we moved things around, planted up pots with geraniums and other things, replaced straggling vegetation that wasn't doing well in the more shady parts with plants that need less sun; moved sun-loving sages into the sun, and so on.  When I say "we," I mean Max, and above all his crew of Rose and Joann.  Our role was largely confined to saying Yes! That looks wonderful!, and to Alice baking a rather good chocolate cake with which to feed everyone.  I can't promise update pictures tomorrow, when it's probably going to be grey and drizzly (good for the plants!) and very (for LA) chilly, but it's been exciting both to see some little transformations (much pruning) taking place, and also to take on board quite how much has grown, and has grown well, during the last year.

 

guarding Hecuba

It's that time of the year again ... when the statues of Tommy Trojan and the dreadful white horse faintly resembling Traveler, on the main part of the USC UPC campus, and Hecuba - seen here - in the University Village are mummified in some kind of grey plastic substance, and students keep a round the clock guard on them, lest they suffer depredations at the hands of UCLA in the few days leading up to the USC/UCLA football games.

Round the clock.  I am so proud of our students ... of course, all "overnight camping" is currently banned on campus, following the protests in the summer.  Seemingly, the university gave permission for this noble Trojan tradition, blah blah blah, to continue, all the same.  But the students said - no, they didn't want to be complicit in this double standard.  So ... no overnight guard.  Mind you, it would be really, really hard (though I'm sure mot impossible) for UCLA attackers to breach campus security ...We'll see.  Maybe a Trojan horse?

 

posing, again

Gramsci, aka Mr Whiskers Akimbo (I have never known a cat with such untidy whiskers), looking alert.  Actually, he has the expression of a cat who is extremely concerned that his non-blood sister, Moth, might be about to get some kibble when he isn't being offered any.

It's so good to be back with the young man.

 

back!

One couldn't mistake this tiny slice of my drive home for Hampstead ... although, of course, it's an interesting question why not.  It's often a recognition game that I play with myself: how, if I take a random view like this, do I know I'm in X country.  Here - not a palm tree in sight, so it must be ... I always think that telegraph wires and other bits of communications infrastructure are the most obvious giveaway - so that might include the road markings.  And then there are the strange flat gates, like solid flags.  Anyway, I'm back.

 

mice at both ends

On my walk to Hampstead Village this morning - the most English of autumnal walls, somehow, and then a set of mice leaping along a wall - rather like the ones that bounced along the walls at the V&A's Beatrix Potter show a couple of years back.

And now, some hours later, Gramsci - with one of the toy mice that he's been rounding up in my absence.

That was a long Monday.

 

Hampstead Heath

It was such a beautiful morning that the only thing to do was, obviously, to go for a long walk on Hampstead Heath - which was stunningly autumnal, and managing to look just like an uncountable number of Victorian paintings.

But my real discovery was the Hill Gardens and The Pergola - which Lord Leverhulme decided to build at the bottom of his rather fine gardens, in 1904 - with the garden architect Thomas Mawson.  It does rather render our own garden revamp - what should I say? - modest.  This may have become my new favorite place in London ...

There was a music video shoot going on, of course - made me feel as though I was (almost) back in LA.

I am sure that it's lovely in all seasons - I hope to come back at wisteria time - and the gardens below are beautiful, too.  

I then went down, past the wonderfully named, tucked away little street - or enclave - The Vale of Health - to the Viaduct, and Viaduct Pond, built by Sir Thomas Maryon Wilson in the mid 1840s.  Sir Thomas thought he'd build 28 large villas - surrounded by parkland (Dickens, among others, hated the idea) - so he constructed this viaduct across the swampy land so that they could be reached by road ... and then gave up, seemingly.  It's a viaduct to nowhere.  If you look very closely there's a fine grey heron in there.

I came off the Heath to walk down Well Road (complete with old mineral springs well), to check out where John Constable lived when he lived in Hampstead;

and then back by the churchyard where he's buried - a wonderfully Gothic churchyard - to pay my respects.

And finally, into the parish church of St John - another wonderful surprise. I guess I spend rather a lot of time seeking out the Victorian: this, built in the 1740s, was the antithesis, all white and spacious and like being inside a very tasteful wedding cake.  And I'd found out quite accidentally, earlier in the day, checking something about Hopkins, that GMH, Arthur, and Everard's father - Manley Hopkins - was a church warden here.  Who knew?

 

festive ...

Today, to Guildford, to see cousin Peter and cousin-in-law Kate - the other Kate Flint (a fact of nomenclature that really troubled my mother, for some reason, but that amuses me endlessly - I love getting a photo of her new puppy, say, that seems to have come from me).  This is a misleadingly sparse photo, taken right at the end of a meal that, I promise you, contained a great deal more indulgence than the crumpled tablecloth and empty glasses suggest at first glance.

England already seems to be going into full-on Christmas mode: brass band playing carols on Waterloo Station; a very large snowman wandering down the concourse; decorations everywhere.  This includes windows above a kebab shop in Oxford Street (Oxford Street?  On a Saturday before Christmas?  Yes, it's a sure sign of a visiting expat of a certain age and with well established habits, I suspect, that at some point during her trip she'll head off to M&S to renew her supply of socks and underwear).

What I am not used to is the army of cycle rickshaws that now pedals around Central London, festooned in neon, and blaring out music from their boom boxes: Christmas music, of course, but also Funky Town, and I Want To Dance with Somebody.  With apologies for the bad focus ...  Oxford Street was, in fact, an ordeal.  I know I've probably shrunk an inch since my tallest, but I swear that the average height of everyone in England has increased by six inches during the same period.  People literally don't see me, because they're on their phones ten inches above my head.  I think I should move somewhere where people are my height, like Oaxaca.  Or Leeds.

 

London blue

Into Central London for a couple of things - and was struck by the blueness of the sky, and the blueness of a building.  Above are the Christmas lights that are hanging over the Seven Dials monument: back in the mid nineteenth century, this was the site of one of the most notorious slums in London.  Now it's all trendy boutiques and restaurants ... close to this building below there used to be a decidedly untrendy Indian restaurant - but it was cheap - very cheap - and close to what was then the British Museum Reading Room, so very useful if one was a graduate student - but I think the last time I went to it, sometime in the 1970s, was when a mouse ran over my foot at lunchtime ...

 

Kew, and back to The Hive

First, the picture postcard view.  When I arrived at Kew this morning, it was looking impossibly beautiful.

I'd come for a couple of meetings, but also to see what The Hive is like in winter.  Maybe it wasn't quite wintery enough, because it was still humming away - a low hum, which one might even call an underhum - but still giving the impression of some wings reverberating in a hive, somewhere.   But there were still plenty of flowers in bloom in the gardens - lavender, wild roses - which presumably would furnish a little nectar for wandering bees.  There hasn't been a hard frost yet. I don't recollect there being bird song on the sound tape before, but that - coupled with some geese honking away outside - was, well, very un-bee like. That's to be pursued ... 

One of the things that struck me very strongly, though, was a different form of organicism: the Hive structure took on something of the appearance of bare branches.

And here it is, looming, a bit like a geodesic dome, behind a plane tree.

Elsewhere, plants are getting trimmed and chopped and winterized;

and inevitably it became grey and clammier.

Back inside, I was thrilled to have a tour of the Economic Botany collection - fascinating curatorial organization by raw materials, not finished artifacts, and yet they were, co-existing, on the shelves - raw rubber next to the world's first (1817) rubber flask.  And yes - a real, original, let's-get-plants-to-Kew Wardian Case.  You can't imagine (well, I know a couple of you can) how exciting I found this encounter with what's almost a legendary object.

 

Democratic government, and other bits of London

As T---- starts to put together his Cabinet of Horrors, it's a good day to post a symbolic reminder of a country that at least has something resembling a democratic government, whatever its problems.

The Houses of Parliament are looking very clean and glittering.  This was on my way back from an expedition to the wonderful Garden Museum, in an old church next to Southwark Cathedral,

with an installation, The Vitrine, by Rebecca Louise Law, on the way in,

and an absolutely fascinating exhibition on The Lost Gardens of London.  Here's just one ... well, there are market gardens in the foreground - it's a Big Dust Heap.  All those of you who have read Our Mutual Friend ...this was on the corner of Gray's Inn Road and Euston Road - i.e. pretty much at King's Cross.

And as a bonus, a statue honoring Mary Seacole, outside St Thomas's: Seacole was from Kingston, Jamaica, and among many other things was a formidable nurse during the Crimean War.

 

Hampstead

The truly weird thing about being in Hampstead is how very like 20 Hillside it feels when I look out of the window (it's a little too chilly for sitting outside).  Much of today I had my head down working, but I did go for walks this morning and afternoon to try and orient myself a bit better.  Observations: it's very hilly!  (so, for that matter, is Wimbledon).   There are lots of huge - really huge - red brick houses, and, in West Hampstead, lots of very tall, imposing mansion blocks.

Then, as it started to get darkish in the afternoon, the Heath was - well, leafy, and somehow wilder and not at all like the Common.  

I wasn't, I think, in the best part for views - this is looking towards Cricklewood, I suspect, not the city, and nor did Constable paint any clouds like this here - not that I remember, anyway.  Indeed, it's got that sickly yellow Millais look ...

Oh, and then, heading down the hill, there are some shops with covetable items.