the ruins in the neighborhood

If only all the neo-classicism that is being spuriously erected in DC could suffer the same fate ... but this is just one more house being stripped, flipped, updated.  This neighborhood is under a state of permanent reconstruction: you wouldn't think that there was inflation, or a high mortgage rate.  Part of this phenomenon is that when we bought here, thirteen - nearly fourteen - years ago, there were a lot of old family houses, and as people our age and a little older downsize or move on, so there's what a realtor would call plenty of scope for these properties to be Reimagined.  The result is a constant parade of workers and dumpsters and portapotties and cement mixers and pool installers and all the rest of it.  I doubt that these crumbling pillars are destined for recycling ...

 

fall geranium

The garden is starting to look a bit grey and faded and fin de saison, and various plants have died that one wishes hadn't died, and so some areas just look ... bare.  It's been far too hot an end to the summer, and the temperature is due to hit unpleasant heights this weekend again (is this better than all the rain in Santa Fe?  Alice is heading there tomorrow, and will report back.). But here, at least, there are a couple of geraniums on their second, or fifth, or tenth go-around blooming, and I celebrate them...

 

... and back to the library

This is not a heading designed to open up some glib reference to the Book of Nature, but - as plenty of you will recognize from this image - a celebration of getting back into the Huntington.  Over the past far-too-many years, it's been far too rare a thing to get there: Covid, of course, but before and after that, the endless demands of chairing and being DGS, and despite my avowed intent to clear a weekly library and research day, that happened more in theory than in practice.  But now that I'm on leave, I can head over very easily to my very favorite library ... or rather, what would be my favorite library if it wasn't currently undergoing so much reconstruction and earthquake retrofitting and the like that the benefits of being able to access what I need on open shelves aren't, alas, available.  However, the sheer pleasure of working in uninterrupted quiet was there; as was the pleasure of coming outside at the end of the working day and seeing flowering trees and mountains; as was this further pleasurable treat of a bamboo-filled courtyard on the way to the reading room ...there used to be a second such court, where one could sit and eat one's lunch, but unfortunately this encouraged Rodents, and alas the bamboo in that particular space is no more.

 

back!

That's not just me, back from two far-too-short days in Iowa City, but the rugs, which are home from their summer vacation - i.e. being deep cleaned, and stored, and quarantined, after the Unfortunate Episode of Fleas in May.  We still have no idea where they came from, and it wasn't as though the whole house was hopping, but still - fleas.  And poor Alice had to cope with the invasion while after a few days I disappeared to Argentina and could be of little practical assistance.  Bur - all fingers and paws crossed - let's hope that this springtime eruption was a one-off.  As for Gramsci - he is absolutely delighted to be able to stretch out on his favorite, and flattering, surfaces again.

 

dioramas

A real treat this afternoon.  Our sessions were in a room in the Natural History Museum, which includes this 1914 cyclorama of Laysan Island - one of the north Hawai'ian islands - which resulted from a university expedition there in 1911 - one of the first cycloramic bird displays in the US.  And there were cases and cases of mammals and other birds in their habitats, mostly from the very late 1920s and the 1930s, so far as I can tell from the Museum's website.

Note the very fine dandelion in with the buffalo.

I also particularly liked agricultural Iowa in 1880.

Indeed, all United States habitats were here ...

 

on the farm

Aren't these amazing huge cabbages?!  After a very academic morning, of the kind that reminded me why I love this profession (ideas! people!), off we went to Johnson County Poor Farm, just outside Iowa City.  This - reaching back to 1855 - was an asylum for the unhoused, and for those with mental disabilities, until 1988, growing their own food - up to 70 people were residents here at one time.

But now, the farm is a community-led space (space? 160 acres!), growing all kinds of things; encouraging people to become vegetable farmers; growing food for food banks and schools and farmers markets, and most wonderfully of all, perhaps, giving opportunities to local immigrants to grow their familiar foodstuffs, and practice familiar methods of cultivation - I wish we've overlapped with one of their markets.

Here we have okra - I had no idea it had such beautiful flowers -

and birdfeeder gourds.

And we were set to work!  I was part of the tomato patch crew, taking down twine and pulling up stakes and getting the patch ready for autumn;

I could have opted to prepare garlic that had been dried, ready for planting.

We finished up in the cow shed - a pioneering cowshed in its time - admiring the fibreglass cow.  This reminded me very strongly of - maybe 2003? - when I went on a four and a half day Rutgers tour of New Jersey for new faculty, which included (among many other wonders) a dairy farm, with very live cows... 

Also, so far as my career as an agricultural laborer goes, I have a blister from cutting tomato twine.

 

wallpaper

Quite an eyeful, here in the Graduate Hotel in Iowa City - my bathroom, and the hallway - from which one can tell that yes, I'm in the agricultural mid-west.   It's Vcologies time - my favorite workshop/mini-conference.  

There must have been some reason why I thought that Des Moines was the best airport for Iowa City.  It certainly wasn't the directions given by our host ... On the other hand, I did come on a direct flight from LAX, and I couldn't have forecast that I'd be greeted by an apocalyptic deluge that made driving a rental car down I-80 for a couple of hours less than a load of fun.  The wallpaper cheered me up!