The shattered do not break
Yesterday was officially canceled when I hit my head on the cast-iron freezer door of our ancient and janky refrigerator when it swung open above me just as I straightened from putting away some groceries. I lay on the couch and ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch brought me cold things out of the freezer to ameliorate the nauseating pain and checked my pupils for concussion and eventually I just went to bed with the complete short stories about Sherlock Holmes and therefore I have no idea why I dreamed about hanging out with choco_frosh to discuss a late, new novel by Susan Cooper in The Dark Is Rising Sequence, but at least I was asleep for almost eight hours while doing it.
Today was mostly spent on work and therapy over the phone, but I had a lovely conversation withrushthatspeaks in the evening and in the late afternoon I got out of the house with Rob right before we lost the last of the light.
The weeping cherry is still at it!
I've been seeing these trees come into blossom all over the neighborhood. According to the tree inventory maintained by Somerville's Urban Forestry Division, they are a species of Japanese flowering cherry.
With something of a tendency to devour houses.
I liked the Edward Hopper light—and the tree shadows—on the side of the Winter Hill Post Office.
It was the Winter Hill Theatre until 1918.
We had no idea about the mural hiding in the bricks behind its parking lot. It turns out to be Liz LaManche's "Goddess of Winter Hill."
You can see the back garden of our duplex from this angle, but not our actual back deck: there's a lilac tree in the way.
I am just very taken with the eye-filling fluffiness of this late-blooming cherry.
I have to make about half a dozen phone calls tomorrow that I woke too late for today. One of them is to the governor. I already called the city to tell them that someone has almost knocked over the new little elm tree and I personally would like to see it safely replanted. I said I felt protective and I meant it.
[edit 2020-05-08 15:22] After about eight minutes on hold, I got a staffer at the office of Governor Baker and expressed my strongest possible reservations about even cautiously reopening the state on May 18. I cited the advances we haven't made in medicine, identified myself as a chronically ill person in the double bind of high-risk and treatment on hold, and praised the governor's previous handling of the crisis and desired him not to blow it at the last minute and set us up for a lethal spike in June. And then I thanked the staffer for listening, because I imagine that he's hearing a lot of this sort of thing lately. I hope it makes a difference.
spatch brought me cold things out of the freezer to ameliorate the nauseating pain and checked my pupils for concussion and eventually I just went to bed with the complete short stories about Sherlock Holmes and therefore I have no idea why I dreamed about hanging out with choco_frosh to discuss a late, new novel by Susan Cooper in The Dark Is Rising Sequence, but at least I was asleep for almost eight hours while doing it.Today was mostly spent on work and therapy over the phone, but I had a lovely conversation with
rushthatspeaks in the evening and in the late afternoon I got out of the house with Rob right before we lost the last of the light.
The weeping cherry is still at it!
I've been seeing these trees come into blossom all over the neighborhood. According to the tree inventory maintained by Somerville's Urban Forestry Division, they are a species of Japanese flowering cherry.
With something of a tendency to devour houses.
I liked the Edward Hopper light—and the tree shadows—on the side of the Winter Hill Post Office.
It was the Winter Hill Theatre until 1918.
We had no idea about the mural hiding in the bricks behind its parking lot. It turns out to be Liz LaManche's "Goddess of Winter Hill."
You can see the back garden of our duplex from this angle, but not our actual back deck: there's a lilac tree in the way.
I am just very taken with the eye-filling fluffiness of this late-blooming cherry.
I have to make about half a dozen phone calls tomorrow that I woke too late for today. One of them is to the governor. I already called the city to tell them that someone has almost knocked over the new little elm tree and I personally would like to see it safely replanted. I said I felt protective and I meant it.
[edit 2020-05-08 15:22] After about eight minutes on hold, I got a staffer at the office of Governor Baker and expressed my strongest possible reservations about even cautiously reopening the state on May 18. I cited the advances we haven't made in medicine, identified myself as a chronically ill person in the double bind of high-risk and treatment on hold, and praised the governor's previous handling of the crisis and desired him not to blow it at the last minute and set us up for a lethal spike in June. And then I thanked the staffer for listening, because I imagine that he's hearing a lot of this sort of thing lately. I hope it makes a difference.
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The flowers are lovely, though. We don't have any flowers here yet.
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It felt very unnecessary to me!
The flowers are lovely, though. We don't have any flowers here yet.
You are rather more northerly than we are. What are your first flowers? Or even your regular spring ones?
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I'm looking forward to seeing what my delphiniums do this year. I put them in late last summer and they bloomed flamboyantly all through the frosts -- I actually cut some flowers that were literally frozen and brought them in and they thawed out just fine. Now they have little green shoots coming up when nothing else is; it hasn't turned green here either (though it's close). They are turning out to be astonishingly resilient to our harsh climate, for a domestic flower.
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The pictures are beautiful, and I'm glad that you got to go on the walk. The hiding goddess is great.
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At least we had plenty of cold things in the freezer?
The pictures are beautiful, and I'm glad that you got to go on the walk. The hiding goddess is great.
Thank you! I would normally be spending so much more time out of the house than I am, so the walks are important, and I love that so far they seem to be rewarded by the discovery of things like post-industrial goddesses.
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Another lovely bunch of pics which add mightily to the keeping sane.
I've made all those lockdown era pic posts of mine public if you know anyone who could do with nice things to look at! :o)
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We also froze a lavender cold pack in the shape of a heart so that I could put it on my head, which felt like some weird symbolism.
Another lovely bunch of pics which add mightily to the keeping sane.
Thank you! I am glad they serve that purpose for people besides me!
I've made all those lockdown era pic posts of mine public if you know anyone who could do with nice things to look at!
I've been enjoying them very much!
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That mural is a very timely discovery, the goddess in lockdown ...
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Thank you! It was also reassuring when I woke up, since for most of my life I have not been a medically anxious person and these days I think things like "Am I tired and blurry because I haven't slept for two days or it is a subdural hematoma and I just won't wake up?"
That mural is a very timely discovery, the goddess in lockdown ...
Oh, that's poignant. That makes me imagine that when it is safe to come out again, those boarded-up windows will be empty, she'll appear somewhere else.
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Beautiful photos!
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I am, thank you! I'm just very cautious around the refrigerator now.
Beautiful photos!
Thanks! I figure if the only thing I can visit right now is my neighborhood, I can at least try to do it justice.
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They do! Now I am envisioning one of his springy, stretchy people delicately picking one between backswept forefinger and thumb.
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Have an up-close sibling of your cherry.
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Our fridge, like many of the accoutrements of our apartment, is really rather terrible, but it is not within our budget or responsibility to replace it. I have an active grudge against it now, though.
Have an up-close sibling of your cherry.
Thank you! That's lovely. Near you?
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And yep -- it's at a church near me, while I was also hunting down deep purple tulips.
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You should post the tulips, too, if they came out.
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More in my journal.
Also, thank you for your letter, I will call Baker's office and say similar-but-not-exactly-the-same things on Monday.
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I shall check them out!
Also, thank you for your letter, I will call Baker's office and say similar-but-not-exactly-the-same things on Monday.
You're welcome. And thank you in advance. I want it to make a difference.
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Those are fine trees, and thank you. On my (short) walks yesterday and Wednesday, the cherries seemed basically done and the lilacs were thinking about opening their buds, but not quite there.
In case I can deal with more calls, what do we need to lean on the governor for right now? Or would a call to the Somerville government me more useful, and if so, where is the tree? (I no longer live in Somerville, but I saved the non-311 version of the all-purpose city phone number when I did.)
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Thank you! It does in fact hurt less today.
Those are fine trees, and thank you. On my (short) walks yesterday and Wednesday, the cherries seemed basically done and the lilacs were thinking about opening their buds, but not quite there.
You're very welcome. I thought our local cherries were done and then the yae-zakura (since
In case I can deal with more calls, what do we need to lean on the governor for right now?
Not reopening the state!
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Same. I figure I'll give it five to ten minutes and then send an e-mail. [edit] I got a person! I told them everything I had told the internet and slightly more. I hope it makes a difference.
Thank you for your effort!
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But nice trees!
*hugs*
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Those double cherries are called in Japanese yae-zakura, which means literally eightfold cherry (though it's translated simply as double cherry)
I love that goddess of Winter Hill! Wonderful!
And you next-door neighbors seem to have a bit of an allotment garden going on?
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The freezer door has behaved badly since we moved in, but it had never been violent before. I didn't appreciate the shift.
Those double cherries are called in Japanese yae-zakura, which means literally eightfold cherry (though it's translated simply as double cherry)
Thank you for telling me their proper name. "Japanese flowering cherry" was just so indefinite.
I love that goddess of Winter Hill! Wonderful!
I'm so glad to know she's there.
And you next-door neighbors seem to have a bit of an allotment garden going on?
I don't know if they grow anything to eat! I will ask, now that we're talking from our respective decks. They certainly grow trees and flowers and lawn chairs and pinwheels.
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(I dreamed I had decided it was finally time to finish a really compelling manga that I'd been reading several years ago; unfortunately, I only realized the manga did not really exist when I started mentally rhapsodizing about the peak comedy of one character from this mystery manga who is, in fact, a character in The Untamed.)
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Thank you! It was, actually—you should probably tell
(I dreamed I had decided it was finally time to finish a really compelling manga that I'd been reading several years ago; unfortunately, I only realized the manga did not really exist when I started mentally rhapsodizing about the peak comedy of one character from this mystery manga who is, in fact, a character in The Untamed.)
That's very unfair!
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Thank you!
*hugs*
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Thank you! I have always enjoyed flowering things, but I feel like this is the first year I have really made an effort to document them. It's what I can get outside to see right now.
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Those are lovely trees.
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Thank you! I think it was stupid.
Those are lovely trees.
I really like having them around.
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The photos are wonderful. Raphael and I are watching "Dispatches from Elsewhere," with a somewhat wary eye, but just in terms of appearance, the urban landscape is similar to some of these photos. The show is set in Philadelophia.
I really specially appreciate late-flowering anything, but most specially that cherry.
P.
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Thank you. I was perhaps unnecessarily worried for much of the night. I am feeling much better today.
The photos are wonderful. Raphael and I are watching "Dispatches from Elsewhere," with a somewhat wary eye, but just in terms of appearance, the urban landscape is similar to some of these photos. The show is set in Philadelophia.
I don't know the show at all. I hope it has good trees.
I really specially appreciate late-flowering anything, but most specially that cherry.
If this quarantine continues another month, I will ask my parents to send me pictures of Rosabella, the late-blooming dogwood in their side yard. She is eight years younger than I am; she was entrusted to me when I was twelve. Her blossoms are salmon-pink and I am used to visiting her.
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Retroactively forever.
But your letter was good. It sounds as smart as I would like to sound when addressing the subject, but I left the salt out of the chickenghetti this evening so that’s not going to happen.
Thank you. It felt imperative. I hope it makes a difference.
(Salt works after the fact! This simple cooking hack has saved many soups of my acquaintance.)
Love.
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Thank you! It was really stupid.