Scratcher of heads, rubber of bellies
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.
This is not my beautiful house and this is not my small automobile, but I was drawn both by the old Honda and the abundance of maroon, one of my favorite colors. The Civic was red but on the damp day, and against the maroon house and maroon tree branches, seemed maroon in spirit. I never had a Civic this old but the first car I owned, and the first car I enjoyed driving, was a little red 1984 Nissan Pulsar that my step-father found for sale. Within a couple of years of buying that car I had earned enough to buy my first new car, a 1992 Honda Civic Si, that I loved and drove for many years and many miles.
And though the house isn’t mine, the neighborhood is, Ellie and I passed this scene on the far end of our walk as we turned back towards the general direction of our house. I’ve loved living here (we’ve been here 15 years) and this little scene reminded me both of my past and my present. An old car and an old house, both making me smile.
The machine I use to generate the letters and numbers that go into the posts you see here is an old one, full of knobs and dials and pneumatic valves. I’m a little jealous of the speed and convenience of keyboards I see on people’s laptops when I’m on the train, able to tap a key labeled ‘B’ and see a ‘B’ appear on the screen. But where’s the noise, the drama, the emotion?
It may be time to upgrade though. My machine can’t generate ‘@’ or ‘#’ signs, which is really holding me back on social media. I’ve been hoping the company would create an add-on (they call them Helper Outlets), like when Q, R, S, and T were added to the English language, but sadly that’s not going to happen.
I first came across this machine when I didn’t have my camera with me, it was being used to raise a house up several feet off its foundation. I kept forgetting to go and photograph it but finally got some pictures on a Friday when I had a few extra minutes in the morning, and took a few more on the way home at the end of the day. I’m glad I did, I next walked past two days later while walking Ellie and the machine was gone.
In early December, I wanted to photograph this maple in fall color in Irving Park with the Door of Hope church as a backdrop. Even though it is just a few steps from the dog park, I had to bribe Ellie with treats to even get her this far, as she was ready to head into the neighborhood. That’s not Ellie walking across the leaves in the first picture, she was by my side, fortunately another dog filled in as my model. We’ve had many great memories in this little park, the pup and I.
I’ve spent many nights covered in cats, but this happy sleeper is part of a mural at a dialysis treatment center I often walk past on the way home.
One downside to living in an urban neighborhood is that I don’t see much wildlife near the house. But perhaps I just haven’t been looking closely enough, as while walking Ellie I noticed a frog, a bird, and some rabbits, all within a block of each other.
They were clearly accustomed to not only humans but also dogs, as they didn’t seem to be bothered by either my presence or the faithful pup waiting beside me.
Boolie 