Musings

The botanist avoided magnolias for our yard (no super-protected place, as we were at the northern limit of their cold-tolerance)…but I remember one in town that our bus route went by, and I’d watch it through the spring. Love deciduous magnolias!

What’s this about a new human organ? How many centuries have people been doing research and surgery? Personally, I’m loving my interstitium*! Embracing my inner self!

* Spell-check currently does not know this word…. [Great irony and a small measure of sarcasm.]

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Beyond blooms

I always struggle to get a nice photo of redbud blooms. This time I went for the downers.

Posted at 10:22 PM | 1 Comment »

I got distracted into photo metadata and learned a smidge about big-endian (and its opposite little-endian—duh; collectively: endianness), and their distant “friend” circle of confusion.

I think I have spent some time in a circle of confusion, but today I just felt like that was a distant memory.

Posted at 9:40 PM | Comments Off on Minutia

My first mystery: what is this flower called? I don’t ever remember an ID on it…. Kinda like a stalk of violets…which seems impossible.

My other mystery: pemmican. I read about a buffalo jump (stone walls for driving bison to a cliff, where they’d fall and be butchered) near Cut Bank, Montana…which we remember for the giant penguin statue (yeah, Goo it!). The archaeologists concluded that the folks processed the carcasses for several special items, including bone grease. For pemmican.

Just how many paleo-diet freaks today make bone grease? An almost lost art?

Posted at 9:37 PM | 2 Comments »

I was quite flattered today when the Guru asked me for a France picture I had taken, then turned into a good desktop background. Good to me is dark, so the icons show up. The photo is an asymmetrical shot of the down-pyramid at the Louvre, heavily tweaked.

And this is a shrub I bought so long ago I have forgotten its name. Turns out that it thrives with spent coffee grounds dumped on its roots, and little additional horticultural attention.

Posted at 8:08 PM | Comments Off on Of architecture and horticulture (briefly)

Sorry, you people in the NE, for sending your way the brrrr weather that came through here. #jesssayin …plus, it’s still cold here.

How many of yesterday’s flowers will be zapped tonight? Predicted overnight low in this neighborhood is right at freezing (33°F). Brrrrrr.

Posted at 9:22 PM | Comments Off on Botanical endurance

I’m calling this fancy azalea; I probably messed with the photo levels and skewed the image too much….

So, last night we heard the weather was coming our way, and we got in the new and fancy car, with iPads and laptop, and went to a nearby parking garage just before 11:30pm. The predicted weather included winds over 60mph and hail 2 inches in diameter. Who wouldn’t want to be safe, no?

What happened in our neighborhood was wind and rain, but not as dramatic as the weather that was predicted and the tornadoes that hit elsewhere. We hid out for less than an hour, but the parking garage rounded up; we paid with minimum grumbling. Yawn. We were safely in bed by 12:30am or so.

I’m calling this regular azalea—the pink—and a yellow-blooming shrub I don’t know the name of.

Tonight’s weather story is that the lows are supposed to be below 40°F, but not down to freezing. In our neighborhood. Welcome spring!

Posted at 8:45 PM | Comments Off on Night weather: Twice

’Tis dogwood-blooming time. If I were naming the seasons or parts of the year by plant activity, I’d call this Heyday of the Dogwood-Blossoms…something along those lines.

Posted at 9:05 PM | Comments Off on Decent proposal?

We took the Metro underground and made a connection to an above-ground tram, which meant we had a view! We rode oh-so-quietly along the Seine downstream, picked a station to hop off, and headed toward the Bois de Boulogne—a huge park that once was a hunting preserve outside the city, much like Windsor was to London. In 1783, this was where the first Montgolfier hot-air balloon was flown untethered. In 1814, after Napoleon’s defeat, abdication, and exile to Alba, 40K British and American troops camped here, cutting down trees and otherwise intensively occupying the landscape, leaving it quite ravaged. The park was created in the 1850s. The builders installed an extensive irrigation system with pipes going everywhere. Crews planted lawns, meadows, and 420K trees (says Wikipee).

We encountered this sign above a restaurant not far from the trolley station. I thought that’s not the kind of place I want to eat…rather have the not-bones part of the fish….

We crossed the Seine safely on a vehicle-busy bridge, then continued downstream.

We passed this building undergoing rehab, slowly. Interesting architectural details.

Here, outside the paving stones and micro-mananged enviroment on the old city, I found wildflowers! Fleur jaune.

Tiny fleur bleu.

Fleur mauve.

We left the Bois and passed over this almost-moat and into a garden—jardin.

The main part was a large central conservatory (the palm house, natch), and six flanking arch-topped greenhouses in two trios.

Fleurs rouge.

Fleurs blancs.

Fleurs jaunes.

Then, we turned back toward the apartment. First, we passed through a poets’ corner…this is Jean Moréas (1856–1910), who was born to an Athens family and originally named Ioannis A. Papadiamantopoulos. He came to Paris to study law. I think of him as Mr. Moustache.

Back in our neighborhood, we made a quick store stop (milk for coffee!), and I found this carefully packed box of white button mushrooms (champignons de Paris), stunningly aesthetic and appealing.

Okay, food pick—tonight’s quiche foursome. Plus salad.

Posted at 3:31 PM | Comments Off on Flower day

We set off for the southeast quadrant of the city—inside the walls, of course. Somewhere central to the old city, I found this gnarly garden peeking over the second-story wall. Wonder how mossy it is inside.

A bit farther, we found this looming belltower, with the “teeth” detail on the spire. If I were a better historic preservationist, I would know the real name for those zipper-teeth features.

We finally reached the street of the dyers, which has a creek running alongside it. This chapel has its own footbridge for worshippers to cross into it.

They have left a few waterwheels intact in the creek, and they slowly turn turn turn. In the walls, we could see the sockets for the axles of missing ones. Not sure what the waterwheel power was used for; the adjacent buildings are mostly residences, with a few converted(?) into offices. Nothing looks like the workplace of dyers.

We lunched at the restaurant under the curved awning around the curve in the rear-ground.

I had the veg lunch: hot leek puree soup, a quiche of onion with sweet potato chunks on top, and a salad with assorted veg, including raw bicolor beets.

From there, we went to the south city wall, crossed outside briefly, then made our way north, toward the river, staying east of the ex-pope-complex.

We crossed outside the wall, and managed to dash across several lanes of traffic (when the traffic wasn’t there), to walk along the river. I wondered how close the water was to the city walls in medieval times.

We wandered west along the water, saw a free pedestrian ferry that crosses to the island, back and forth. It doesn’t look like an island because it’s a big one. We watched the ferry get caught in the swift current, and maneuver against the river’s force.

One of the tourist spots of Avignon is this bridge stub, originally built between 1177 and 1185. It was the downstream-most bridge of the river, and I imagine toll collection was a fierce business. The bridge was destroyed and rebuilt in the 1200s, and these arches are often dated to the 1340s. The bridge was abandoned in the mid-1600s. The bridge went across the island and a second branch of the Rhône, so it was much longer than it looks here. [Note dandelions flourishing in the lawn.]

We crossed back through the wall, re-entering the old city. As near as I can tell, nowhere along the wall can tourists access the top. The walls seem narrow, but high. Now, anyway.

We took a break, then went out for a hot meal. This is my plate, sea bream with assorted veg, including yellow potatoes, purple potatoes, roasted tomatoes orange and red, roasted sweet orange pepper, fresh pea shoots and alfalfa sprouts, with a bit of tasty gravy and fresh bread.

I’ve been craving veg, and I got them today!

Posted at 3:50 PM | Comments Off on Upward views, but not only upward