Scratcher of heads, rubber of bellies
It’s been about 10 years since the viral “I Like Turtles” zombie kid video, a video I’ve thought about many times in the intervening years, so in tribute I’ll post this brick of turtles Ellie and I passed on our walk through the neighborhood.
Our cat Emma also liked turtles. For the record, so do I.
I was up earlier than normal for a Saturday so Ellie and I headed out for our walk in the beautiful light of a sunny spring morning. At Irving Park I took a self-portrait with her even if one of us is only represented in shadow. The dog park is on the other side of the tree, and when we leave it to head south into the neighborhood we head out to my left and her right, down one of four streets of her choosing. She gave me a nice long walk on this morning, a lovely start to the weekend.
Beautiful outdoor art on an old garage? Are they trying to seduce me?
“What would you like to know?” asked the Oracle.
“What year will I die?”
“The answer is at your feet,” she said.
I looked down as numbers suddenly appeared in the concrete. “2146? Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure!”
“It’s just that it’s 130 years from now, and I’m already 50.”
“Ah, well, you’ll be mostly robot by then.”
“I see. Will my death be peaceful?”
“For you or the dinosaur?”
“What?”
“I’ve said too much!”
A couple of weeks ago I woke up early (for a Saturday) so Ellie and I got an early start to our walk. It was a lovely spring morning and since I take the new camera a lot on our walks now, I took a couple of pictures of her at the dog park before we spent the next hour walking the neighborhood.
What a difference a few months make. One picture from a beautiful spring morning, one from a beautiful winter morning, three months between them.
I was sent this picture by a version of myself in a parallel universe, where he says things are pretty great. He’s kind of a jerk to be honest.
Last fall the good folks at Habitat Gardens landscaped half our yard. The most visible change is the front, where we replaced a mass of juniper bushes that covered the front slope (shown below) with a garden with terraced rock walls (above, covered in a dusting of snow). It’s hard to tell from the angle of this picture, but there’s a nice gentle curve to the rock walls, and we love the natural look of the stacked rocks. The garden above this, below the big picture window, was also replaced with a rain garden, and the gardens on the side of the house to the right were also replaced, including a French drain and another rain garden.
I love seeing this view when I walk home from the train station, it will be more work to maintain (and I need to learn how to prune all the new plants) but it feels more like home. Mandi was great to work with, we said we wanted either native or drought-tolerant plants so that once established everything would be fine with our dry summers without need for a watering system, and she picked out this wide variety of plants, as well as everything for the rain gardens. It was all very easy on our end and we love the result.
I hoped to test out my old macro lens with the new camera as the plants have started blooming but it’s been a bit too breezy the last few weekends.
It’s too bad you can’t make a living photographing the old garages of Irvington. I didn’t pay much attention to them for years, as while I walked a lot, it was mostly on the same route to the train station. But then we adopted our dog Ellie and we started taking long walks through the neighborhood, and since I let her dictate our meanderings I’ve passed a lot of houses and apartments I wouldn’t otherwise and I’ve fallen in love with the variety of these old, small garages.
Boolie 