Us, May 10, 2026: John, Leo, Ondine, Roy, with Shadow pasted in from May 24, lol
Us, May 10, 2026: John, Leo, Ondine, Roy, with Shadow pasted in from May 24, lol
Last week the neighbor below us cut down our favorite big, beautiful tree! It was a huge elm-like tree in their back yard. It was home to so many birds, and every morning came alive with birdsong. We loved how the sunrise filtered through its branches, from the dappled rippling gleam of spring to the golden glow on bare winter bark. A hawk pair raised a family in it for a few years in a row, and this year we again saw a hawk in the tree and our hopes soared. But the tree got cut to the ground and its stump jerked out, along with one nearly as big in the front yard. Not a trace of either remains.
In combination with the wrongheaded pruning of our own lovely drapey pomegranate tree, which is now a just few bare arms lifting all the fruit beyond reach, our formerly glorious back yard is a desert. Instead of swaying leafy branches, laden with fruit and birds, we now have an unencumbered view of someone’s bare back patio and on into several streets worth of houses beyond, all the windows blinking in the glare of unaccustomed observation.
The area within 100 feet of our house has lost has lost about a dozen trees in half as many weeks, with the new neighbor across the street ripping out a bunch of palm trees.
The hawk returned one final time this week looking for its home. John heard it crying and looked for it. It was flying around disconsolately, crying continuously and circling, searching. In the end, John saw it sat on our fence by what remains of our pomegranate tree, looking over the destruction in disbelief and crying. John went to cry with it, and it flapped off, still crying. We have not seen or even heard it since. Our neighborhood hawk is gone. We are in mourning. Never in our lifetime will our place be as beautiful as it was just two months ago.
We bought three new solar-powered ultrasound pest repellers to keep the critters away from our pending persimmon harvest. Last year, we didn’t get our repellers up in time, and the still-green persimmons were stripped bare. This year we got them up in time, but a new neighbor behind us complained about the high-pitched beep the repellers made. The new repellers are silent except to animals, and seem to be working, so we may buy a few more of them.
Leo just returned from a road trip with his friend Trent! They visited another friend in Utah.
John made a Mitsuwa run for gohan, natto, benishoga, takuan, and decent sencha, both loose-leaf and in bags. Of course, while he was there he went to BookOff and scored two $1 books: the script for the play Steel Magnolias, and The Usurper King, a study of Henry IV.
Sunday was John’s Aunty Grace and Uncle Mike’s 75th wedding anniversary celebration! Wow! We drove up to
the Los Coyotes Country Club in Buena Park for the gathering of friends and family. Roy went too! Leo was still in Utah,
and Danielle got a new full-time job at the Safari Park, so they couldn’t join us. People shared stories, and there was a
fun little game with gift bags. We sat with Hope and Dan and Joy and John. Here are photos! The first shows John’s plate o’
food. The second shows him with his Mom. The third shows Ondine and John, and Frances, Uncle Mike, and Aunty Grace. The
fourth shows John, his Mom, and his sister Patty, who came all the way from Arizona!
On the way home, we stopped at BookOff again because John really wanted to buy a particular plastic car model kit. It’s a third-generation (1973-1976) Mazda Familia Presto, a slice of his childhood, if he lived in Japan, lol. In a way, it’s related to his Grange Hill and Tucker’s Luck DVDs and books. Ondine found a book in the $1 section, Salt, and John found two more $1 books, Playing to the Gallery by Grayson Perry, and an anthology of Twelve American Detective Stories from the Oxford Press. Detective stories and ghost stories are very closely aligned.
Our 2026 trip to Germany and England is coming up! We’ll be visiting family and friends in Mülheim and Heidelberg, then going to London and then Bristol. Leo is joining us for this trip! Roy couldn’t get off work, having just taken a month to go to Japan with Danielle.
In Mülheim (thanks to Dax und Jürgen organizing), we'll revisit some of our old stomping grounds, like the MüGa, the Gasometer, Landschaftspark Nord, and Köln. Way back in 2004, Leo was too little to go up the Kölner Dom and the towering steel furnaces at the Landschaftspark, but he’s looking forward to it now! We’re especially looking forward to spending time with Dax und Jürgen and some of the friends we made, including Peter und Conny (Peter went with Ondine and the boys to Irrland), Erika und Paul (who babysat Roy and Leo so we could go out to see the Gasometer lit up at night mit Patricia und Gregor), und auch Guido und Ela (Guido is Dan und Jürgen’s son). Wow!
In Heidelberg, we’ll connect with Desiree, Ondine’s college roommate, who came out (with a friend, Carola) to see us at Robin Hood’s Bay after we completed the Coast to Coast Walk!
In England, we’ll spend blocks of time in London and in Bristol, with day trips to Cambridge, Stonehenge, and the Cotswolds. It’s a similar itinerary to only our second big trip together, in 1999, but this time we’ll explore Bristol, a major historic seafaring city, and we’ll have Leo with us!
To follow us on our trip, follow us on Insta, because we won’t be updating this journal until we get home! Ondine is ondine.alegra and John is archaeoka.
Neighborhood gas prices range from $5.09 to $5.69 per gallon for regular unleaded.
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