I love my city

If the last couple of days are an indication of what summer will bring, it's going to be a tough one. Yesterday was 89F with 68% humidity. Today is a little cooler, but with higher humidity and my apartment building won't be turning on its air-conditioning until May 15 at the earliest.

On the plus side, I live in a city where the plants and trees are often labeled. I've found a new tree that I love: Fringe Tree. That article describes them as "slightly fragrant," but in the high humidity, I can smell them a block away across a wide street.

The chestnuts have come into bloom and I'm reminded of Europe with Avenue Tervuren, Unter den Linden, and several Parisian boulevards all lined with them.

In addition, the roses are blooming early, the Iris are coming up straight and strong (seriously, some of them have been four feet tall with multiple blooms on the stem), the azaleas and peonies are rivalling each other for show, and the wisteria have lasted longer than usual.

After such a harsh Winter, Spring is showy and sassy.

RIP Lynn Redgrave

I saw her in Boston several years ago. The story I remember her telling was being scheduled to do a library reading for children in Los Angeles with Charlton Heston. She suggested they do Romeo & Juliet scenes or something else by Shakespeare. Heston suggested they do Moby Dick and that she'd be a marvellous Queequeeg. Her comic timing was perfect when she said, "and I was."

I occasionally wonder whether she'd have been better known had her surname not been Redgrave. Her intelligence and wit shone through, but on some level I think Lynn Redgrave was seen as a "lesser Vanessa" rather than as someone extraordinary in her own right.

As for Vanessa, in the past fourteen months, she's lost one of her daughters and both siblings. Corin died less than a month ago. My thoughts are with her and the whole extended Kempson/Redgrave clan.