Musings

Archaeologists use the term activity area for places where people do the same activities over and over. Think of kitchens…. Many types of activities have obvious and easily recognized suites of artifacts and features.

The upper photo features a front porch, a place for a wide variety of activities such as relaxing, child play, and perhaps shelling peas. This is a new porch, added to the house this spring…and it matches…nice. The second photo shows evidence of lots of ball-play. Look at all the different colors of balls! More relaxation activities….

Posted at 5:42 PM | Comments Off on Activity areas

I couldn’t choose.

I rather like the “life” in the sprinkler-cement-rabbit shot. I also like the starkness and angularity of the patio area of the closed burger place.

Posted at 7:05 PM | Comments Off on You get both

Even if you’ve been in this space, you probably don’t recognize it.

This is the entry area of the back porch. Which is the back porch if you think of the side of the cottage facing the water as the front. If, however, you think of the main entry/door as the front, it’s the front porch—there’s only one door to the whole building.

In either case, we’ve added new rugs, indoor/outdoor that can be taken outdoors and hosed off for a serious cleaning. We also brought the long chest in the back right downstairs to make a seating area for shoe removal/replacement. So that’s new to the porch. I love the shade of blue of the box and the oxblood lid. I think my dad (not a woodworker by preference) made it for blanket storage and as a linen closet. It’s been years since we used it that way, however. It IS rodent-proof.

We’ve also begun reorganizing the functional activity areas farther back on the porch. More on that to come.

Posted at 7:17 PM | 3 Comments »

Sometimes, in the changing of the guard and the ebb and flow of inhabitants here, there’s no real evidence of change, except the people are gone. Here are watchdog chairs, awaiting the return of their masters. If anthropomorphized.

In contrast to yesterday’s crashing surf, the breeze today came from a different angle, and the dock was, essentially, becalmed. Still, I looked for leeches. None near the lake-edge.

I didn’t go in to look farther (and tempt fate).

Posted at 10:25 PM | Comments Off on Human-scale, temporary

We crossed many bridges today. Uncounted. Including two very large ones.

This is a large free one, with an extremely checkered construction history. The internet indicates that the latest problem has been “bridge bearings.” I wonder what they are.

This one is a toll (not tool) bridge, also high enough that lake freighters can pass beneath safely. This one has not been plagued by construction problems, but during the summer you can assume that one lane (aka carriage-way) each way will be closed to make room for the workers and equipment necessary to repaint exposed metal, including underneath the vehicles.

Unusual in our experience, only two cash toll (not tool) booths were open. There’s now a transponder option, also two lanes, but I didn’t see a single vehicle do that while we were in line. Times change slowly?

Posted at 10:22 PM | 1 Comment »

Out in the wee hours, with the chipmunks and the robins…I found this plastic fence almost glowing in the streetlight. Turns out the English word picket is from the French piquet, meaning pointed stake. Pike, as in the defensive weapon, is a related word. And the fish is so named for its pointy jaw.

The other day we enjoyed pesto from our Genovese basil. Tonight, we feasted on Thai basil added to Thai curry sauce, hauled home from TJ’s.

These are among the quotidian topics at this ranchero. Meanwhile, the country has moved a bit forward with grieving in Charleston, ending the escapees’ travel plans in NY state, and a(nother) Supreme Court ruling I didn’t expect (feeling very cynical about some members of that bunch; yea! for majority rule).

Posted at 7:57 PM | Comments Off on Night moves

When I was taking this picture, I liked the various shapes, rounded and straight, repeated and random, best. When I downloaded it and looked at it “big,” I liked the reflection of the sky best. Now, maybe I like the dark red top of the narrow vase best—and the companion piece back by the fence.

Posted at 7:04 PM | Comments Off on Look…and look again

Spotted this airplane-car with the lovely fender-fairings tucked back in this yard and had to smile—what dynamic design.

Posted at 7:31 PM | Comments Off on Background foregrounded

One benefit of enduring (embracing) the east-to-west time change is that I’m awake pretty darned early. Given that this week the highs are predicted to be in the mid-90s, early is required for endurable (outdoor) exercise. So, I was out well before the sun brought much light to the sky, and all the night-security lights still lit up…even this venerable bar (aka pub).

Posted at 9:43 PM | Comments Off on Pabst everywhere

Turns out we are B people; turns out B on this train is the quiet car…nice! The train-cars on this long-distance route (London–Edinburgh, I think) have alphabetical designations A through F, plus K and I forget what else. The Guru found mid-day, off-time tix for us for £13 apiece each way, London–York—a great deal!

While northbound our car, and I think the train in general, was lightly occupied; southbound, today, there were only a few empty seats. We got lucky, and only had companions at our table for about a half-hour of the ride, an older couple en route to visit their daughter in Sardinia for a month….

The Henry Moore Arch, with a display-management strategy that imitates Stonehenge, where the hoi palloi are kept at bay by fences. Rabbits, however, at least here, were dining by the half-dozen on the edge of the fenced-off greensward. (Would not normally use that word, but it fits here in London….)

We’re staying in a “new” neighborhood, near Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. They are one contiguous green on my smartphone map with two named zones, confusing…plus I found this on an official website: “Kensington Gardens covers 242 acres and was originally part of Hyde Park.”* We strolled in both, after an early dinner….

We started at the Italian Gardens, where we began to discover heavy use across the park at this hour by Iranian(?) couples and small groups. The women tended to accent black with florescent or bright orange, e.g., in sneakers. Is this some kind of nationalism? A signal of availability? Mystery….

This Royal Park celebrates many royals, including this relief of Queen Victoria in the Italian zone. The quoted price of making the stone sculptures in the Italian Garden was around £200, if I remember correctly. Not sure what that is in modern £s.

Check out this giant installation honoring a gold-crusted Prince Albert. He’s seated in a style we saw the Romans use, and I assume they borrowed/imitated from the Greeks. For the Romans anyway, seated on a special chair was a big deal for the leaders. I don’t know if it carried more status than seated on a horse, or if it was a different connotation entirely (e.g., referring to non-military leadership?).

Anyway, the sheer extent of this park in such a populous city is amazing. After all the cities we visited in Scotland, almost all with a castle on a high point, London’s layout, on comparatively flat ground, feels quite different.

* Apparently, in 1536 good ol’ Henry VIII created the park as a private/crown hunting ground. It was opened to proper members of “the public” (thus, only the few) in 1637.

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Moving on…