Friday, 5 February 2021
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw green in a dogwood with nice buds, but nothing else: winter.
I laughed inside thinking that the dogwood (yes, anthropomorphizing) was trying to move the arrival of spring up with a captured leaflet from another tree. Or pretend to.
Wednesday, 3 February 2021
I’ve been thinking the theme of my walks each of the last few days has been Keeping Carotids Warm…and my (absurdly expensive—and worth it!) Grrrrrr-tex neck buff does the trick.
The leaves on this vine tend to hang down, but the cold today has made them more limp than usual.
Bonus photo: so strange that in this bright, bright sunlight, this otherwise perfectly grey panel looked greenish. I’ll check it again tomorrow to see if it’s back to matching the body color.
Sunday, 31 January 2021
We’ve now watched the entire first season of “Bordertown,” which is set in Lappeenranta, in southern Finland, and shot in Finnish. Or we are watching it in Finnish, with subtitles. Turns out, after listening to hours of Finnish dialogue, I got nothing. Well, perhaps yes and no…just checked: they’re juu/joo and ei…so, hmm, perhaps not?
And this tree, every time I walk by it, I think: Araucaria. After a wee internet dive, I may be wrong about that, too.
Friday, 29 January 2021
I imprinted on my Midwestern childhood weather patterns and January is not supposed to have pleasant, warm, sunny days. Warm meaning over 50°F. [Ah, yes, below freezing overnight…that fits.]
However, I try to work (huffing and puffing, I admit) against type and accept my present reality. With blooms! And a t-shirt as I do my (present goal) 4mi walks.
Sarcasm is tricky even face-to-face. Recorded pundits struggle to make it work…without ambiguity. In text, in the written word, perhaps even more tricky. I bow to reality…and I very much enjoyed today’s weather. Without any Brexit BS involved. heh
Thursday, 28 January 2021
Stiff wind and I was nearby, so I deemed it safe enough to visit the BeltLine…not many people, and MaNachur was moving any and all germs right along, away from meeee….
I only traversed two short blocks…which was enough to remind me what I’ve been missing…the many public art installations along the route! I am uplifted!
Wednesday, 27 January 2021
Currently binge-watching “Lupin,” which has nothing to do with flowers.
Picture…is it thyme? Or not-thyme?
Monday, 25 January 2021
I came across this…”ten million trillion trillion” and mentally stopped dead.
Finding phages is not in itself particularly challenging: they are by far the most abundant biological entities on earth. According to one estimate, there are ten million trillion trillion phages, which is more than every other organism, including bacteria, combined. The average teaspoon of seawater holds five times more phages than there are people in Rio de Janeiro; for every grain of sand in the world, there are a trillion phages. But the best place to find phage that will kill drug-resistant bacteria is where people or animals have shed them—in other words, sewage.
That’s a gigantic number—actually, exceeding an “order of magnitude” greater than gigantic….
Quote is from “When a Virus Is the Cure,” by Nicola Twilley, in the December 21, 2020 issue of “The New Yorker,” and dated December 14, 2020. [This link may work.]
Sunday, 24 January 2021
I walked past this wall a time or two…then I began to cross the street when I came to it because it seemed a bit…menacing. Now I see that specialists have been called in to remedy the excessive lean/destabilization.
Is this sequence/situation a metaphor for the White House?
Saturday, 23 January 2021
I found today’s sunlight almost summer-ish in its intensity. Here’s a backlit leaf, although it’s hard to tell that’s what it is.
Friday, 22 January 2021
Not a today-photo.
Ebullient Anthony Fauci talking to RMaddow in front of my eyeballs right now. It is a good thing.