6 August 06
Return -- of a Kind
When I was in boarding school (late 19th century progressive) in the East Midlands in the 70s, and my siblings in boarding school (Quaker) in Cumbria, my father joined a London club in Sloane Square so we could rendezvous before catching a flight out of Heathrow to Madrid the following day. It wasn’t very London-clublike, whatever that is, and it wasn’t very hotel-like, and we were definitely fish out of water in that Laura Ashley dining room, but we managed to establish a London beat. It included the National Gallery and Selfridges and John Lewis and good off-beat theatre but never, I’m ashamed to say, the British Museum or the V&A.
My focus after boarding school was definitely the Midlands. I’ve neglected London for a long time. So much has changed since 1979: there is good food, and lots of varieties of it; entire areas that were then pretty rough are now London’s pride and joy; and my tastes have changed too.
So in early September, after a jaunt to Madrid for a wedding and a jaunt to rural Sweden to recover from it, I’m getting ready to rediscover London. This rediscovery will not include Harrod’s or Selfridges. It has been a complete blast to tell certain people about this and have them tell me what I absolutely shouldn’t miss (in five days). Ha.
But go ahead: why not suggest your own unmissable London haunts? At some point I’ll publish a compilation. It will say a lot about my friends, that they suggest these things to us…
4 August 06
Rhode Island Reds and Governors Mansions
With DocRock visiting I took the day off today (well, I needed to make up for Avian Flu hours from last weekend, dang). After a leisurely morning we ambled to Vacaville on a fruitless expedition for shorts, to Higby’s the feed store in Dixon (26 Rhode Island Red chicks were for sale) for three straw bales for mulch for my garden; and to Sacramento where we took a tour of the Old Governors’ mansion.
1950s formica mixed with 1880s velvet. Water balloons hoisted on trick-or-treaters mixed with First Lady teas. Dynamite attacks in the pantry mixed with claw-foot bathtubs. No wonder the Reagans decided to abandon the mansion, originally in the “country” but now on a truck route, for a ranch-style house that could accommodate adequate Cold War security. It was wacky. The weirdest thing was Maria Shriver narrating the tour on the video in the gift shop, showing footage of her uncle John F. visiting the mansion, with no mention of where she and the current governor live.
Sacramento has its charms. I tend not to look into them much, but am glad of the opportunity of an interested visitor to explore.
31 July 06
Epidemic
West Nile virus is back in full swing here. For awhile it looked like we’d be spared a bad season. It was very wet early in the spring—lots of spots for the mosquitos—but in May it quickly dried out, and of course we’ve had our heat wave in July. But birds are dying now, and a few people are falling sick. In town they are planning to spray for mosquitos, which predictably for Davis is drawing protests from a small but ardent crowd that is constitutionally incapable of doing risk-benefit calculations. Around our house these past several days we’ve had two dead crows, and more sadly this evening, we saw a fledgling Swainson’s hawk in the field to the south who was lacking the energy to get airborne, though not for lack of trying.
28 July 06
Layer of Fog
Looking to the south this morning, we saw Mt. Diablo poking out of a layer of fog in the interior of the East Bay. This is wonderful to see after our heat wave since it means we’re back to the normal summer weather pattern here. The fog comes in during the late afternoon in the Bay Area, and at the same time the Delta breeze comes up from south here, cooling us off rapidly. We have a good breeze tonight, and the temperature has dropped 20 degrees F by now from today’s high of 91 degrees F.
16 July 06
Herman, Fup, Mango, and Chocolate
We just got back from a weekend trip to Portland, where we visited our blogging friends Dale and Susan. They were grand hosts, and they introduced us to Dale’s old buddy Herman the 10-foot sturgeon at the Bonneville Fish Hatchery, Susan’s faun-colored kitty Mango, her affectionate tortoiseshell cat Bit, and her ball-obsessed dog Joey. I also learned that Oregon is a fine state for chocolate, starting with the Moonstruck Chocolate café downtown, and moving south to Dagoba chocolate made in Ashland. At Powell’s, where I spent about three-and-a-half hours all told, they were having the 18th birthday party for Fup, the store cat at the technical bookstore two blocks from the mother ship.
All in all, Portland is a wonderful place.
11 July 06
Wind
There’s a strong southerly breeze at the moment. When the wind’s out of the south, we get much cooler days. The wind will veer north by the weekend and we’ll be in triple digits again. A hot, drying wind that blows topsoil across counties into the Delta.
I don’t have much of a bike commute these days but it’s enough to notice when I have a strong head or tailwind. I notice the sunflowers I planted struggling against it; the squashes are big and heavy enough now to withstand this much but who knows how much else? I’m hoping the tomato cages are sturdy enough.
The mockingbird was singing furiously into it this evening while I filled my final raised bed with soil and compost.
Tom Montag of “The Middlewesterner” often writes haikus about the wind. It must be very much a part of his corner of the world and I find myself nodding in recognition. This, for instance, his lines for July 7 :
Add nothing
to nothing –
you’ve got
the wind.
3 July 06
The Horses are Back
There’s a paddock outside my window at work. It’s been emtpy for nearly a year. A delivery of contaminated sand led to a horrible injury (a horse stepped on a nail, got a bad infection, had to be put down).
The place has been thoroughly combed with metal detectors. There are now horses back in there, a gentle presence when I”m trying to think of a synonym for “part” that isn’t “component” which in my opinion is a word that should only be used in connection with cars.
I like having them back.
30 June 06
Like and Unlike
Botany
keys
yes no one zero
differentiated or opposite
five petals or four
a series of
cancellations
Madrone is not
manzanita
smooth bark
but different leaves
quieter
less showy
hidden in the
chaparral
yes
no
not
a
cancellation,
its bark says
smooth and red
peeled and sheer
me
I’m here
I am
madrone
the sweet smell
in late sun
oak titmice
and ravens
say
oh, sure,
that’s madrone,
not a
nothing
you
blindhuman
afternoon
sun
Madrone
submitted for Festival of the Trees Carnival
28 June 06
Birders Passing In The Night
I don’t think I can count hearing the spotted owl on Saturday’s trip. At dusk we went on a two-mile circuit through this nature preserve in Placer County. Kevin who was leading us was doing his best spotted owl imitation and losing his voice in the process. About halfway through, Kevin was convinced he heard one calling in response, and we continued on, past some very fragrant western azaleas. Finally I heard the bird as well, calling faintly to the left and upslope. We walked quietly through the darkening forest, and I remarked to Kevin that the owl was probably back at the parking lot. We emerged up on the dirt road to hear the owl calling close by. Except when we walked on, it turned out there were two cars in the parking lot, rather than just ours. Outside of the second car was another birder, Stan, who seemed to recognize Kevin. Stan had been, naturally enough, trying to call in the owl himself.
16 June 06
Hiatus
My friend Linda arrived today. We’re going up to the mountains tomorrow morning to escape the fearful heat that seems to have arrived all of a sudden and to look for the Hammond’s flycatcher, a dull brown bird that looks almost exactly like the dusky flycatcher which shares a similar, but not identical, habitat. (Marcel said this evening as we ran into him outside Pluto’s to be very careful to note the primary projections.)
This means I’ll miss most of the Saturday soccer, but I’m hoping to catch at least a bit of Sunday’s…
[Postcript: we saw at least three individual Hammond’s and one Dusky at Yuba Pass. Also a pair of evening grosbeaks flycatching over the parking lot there. No black-backed woodpecker, alas, but a wonderful fleeting glimpse of mountain quail and a nest, with eggs, of a Townsend’s solitaire on Chapman Saddle Road…]