Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

gingicat gave me "tile, magnolia, trail" as things to talk about.

tile: Our kitchen trivet/hotplate is a plain square blue tile that I trash-picked while walking down a street in Chinatown on my way to the subway. I took this one from a pile of eight or ten tiles, presumably left over from a construction or remodeling job. We used to have a smaller, decorated tile that was made and sold for kitchen use, but I dropped and broke that years ago and haven't replaced it, even though there are times that it would be useful to have two or three trivets. Maybe after we move, when we have a kitchen large enough that a second trivet wouldn't immediately prompt the question "but where would we put it?"

Magnolias aren't one of my favorite trees, even though they bloom early in the spring, but I once I had to get blood drawn for some test or other, at a new-to-me-location, in February. I got off the bus and smelled something pleasantly floral, looked around, and was pleased to see one magnolia in bloom, in a row of several that were still in bud. Smelling that tree was all I got out of that trip: the person who told me to get the blood test had forgotten to tell me not to eat beforehand, so I had to reschedule for another day. (I no longer remember what the test was for.)

"Trail maintenance is everybody's job," and I extend that to things that aren't exactly trails: it doesn't matter why there's a dead branch across the sidewalk, if I can lift it and there's somewhere obvious to move it to where it won't be in anyone's way, I do it. I used to carry a Swiss army knife, which includes a small saw blade. That blade isn't why I got the knife, and I didn't use it very often, but it was occasionally handy when wandering through Inwood Hill Park picking berries, and more than handy the day there was a fire in our apartment building and cattitude and I went down the fire escape. Somewhere around the third floor, I had to cut through chinaberry vines that had grown up a tree and then across the fire escape. (Once we got the all-clear and went back to our apartment, I called the fire marshal to report the hazard: I had cut through just enough of the vine to be able to pass, and was worried about it growing back.