Small World Edition 276 in Everyday Ramblings

This azalea is lovely, but the rhododendrons are coming on now as well. My place is surrounded by pink turning to white blossoms. I did discover that the two leggy bushes outside my bedroom are more of a peach color and there are a couple more of those up the hill slightly facing the other street. I am partial to flowers in the yellow-peach-orange range which is unusual because they are not usually colors that I favor in clothes or walls or much anywhere else.

This shot is from this morning. The apartment you see is the one above me. My windows are in the same place but on this end mostly underground. I get full on rhododendron wrapping all around the living and dining area.

Last weekend Mrs. Sherlock and I went to visit a residential neighborhood on the other side of the river with lovely front and side gardens that are visible from the sidewalk that we know well. It is flat and one part is a small pocket park. It overlooks the rail yards and shipping areas on this patch of the riverbank with a steep drop off and a glorious view of downtown.

In the park is a very old apple tree in gorgeous bloom. Apple blossoms are special somehow. It was part of an estate earlier with an orchard and some generally amazing trees that survive. As we came into the park there was a late twenties man doing something to a flat part of the tree where a limb had been preciously. There were a set of fancy tools next to him.

I assumed he was doing some sort of neighborhood commissioned art project, but Mrs. Sherlock asked him.

He was carving a heart and initials and some sort of message into the tree and said that he was going to propose to his girlfriend in front of the tree later in the day.

Awww, you might say. How romantic. That is pretty much what Mrs. Sherlock thought.

Until we got far enough away for yours truly to embark on a rant. When I told Kes this she laughed. But seriously. This is a public park. Emphasis on the word public. Would you write your initials and a heart into the pages of a library book? I don’t know, maybe you would, but I wouldn’t.

We live in a society that believes in private property. I have no problem with say… him doing this on the tree in his parents or her parents back lot. He was a good-looking young man. Well-heeled with nice tools and a lot of inherent privilege.

If he were Black, he probably would have been arrested for defacing public property. I was furious. It was a foundational affront to many things I hold dear. Shared public spaces being one of them. The selfish arrogance I see reflected all over this fair land lately. I guess it has always been here, but the pandemic brought it into high relief.

Of course, I didn’t say anything about this to him.

One of my now regular students is our League of Women Voters Discussion Unit leader. This last week she did for the first time some video candidate interviews, and she was telling us about what a novel and expanding experience doing one of these interviews with a Proud Boy candidate was. They were civil and respectful because of the structure of the interviews. She was like, wow, I can talk to someone who stands for so much I can’t stand.

Anyway, I might do some of these interviews for the November election. Eek.

I wrote a couple of weeks back about joining a pleasant online book group with two fabulous facilitators. After 11 months I desperately needed (I felt) to get my hair trimmed and didn’t have a person to go to, so I picked a salon that I used to go to that changed hands a few years back within walking distance.

I called to make an appointment. They don’t have a receptionist. Just individual stylists and their phone numbers. A woman called me back to make an appointment. I will call her Ms. Crow (she has two crows on her card). She sounded older, unusual for a stylist it felt. When I went in for my appointment on Wednesday, a lovely woman, maybe a bit younger than me, early 60’s, unlocked the door. We were in the place all by ourselves.

An ideal salon experience for someone like me. :)

Long story short it turns out she is the life partner of one of the facilitators in the book group and is good friends with the other and had heard about me because I am her friend’s yoga teacher.

We had no problem finding things to talk about and as she has been a stylist for 40 years, I also got a great haircut and much reassurance about my hair loss.

Too cool! Small world. Happy belated Earth Day.

Last updated April 23, 2022