![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I continue very excited about my allotment
On Saturday afternoon I met a slow worm. Ridiculous little what-the-fuck shoelacey noodle of a not-snake. I think it is the first time in my adult life I have knowingly met one? I shifted some composty bits to move them into the bin and there it was, doing a startle-freeze of SUDDENLY A SKY PREDATOR, and I stared at it and it stared at me and after a while it decided that Fuck Alla This and slithered further down into the pile to eat more woodlice, and I very gently replaced the top bundle of grass etc that I'd lifted up and backed away. A. just about caught a glimpse of its tail as it finished vanishing.
I then had a certain amount of confusion when looking it up to confirm that I really had seen a real-life actual slow worm, because I was very certain that the thing I'd seen was bright yellow with a black stripe down its back, but all the sources were describing female slow worms (THERE MIGHT BE BABIES) as "golden-grey". It took me A While to work out that I needed to translate from "ordinary people" to "geologist", i.e., yes, the fucker was bright yellow, we're all good.
On the vague topic: having fed the ridiculously extravagant compost bin a relatively parsimonious amount over that preceding week, I was a little alarmed when I showed up to feed it on Wednesday (with packing peanuts, thank you relevant friend) and found it was only at an internal temperature of 40degC. I was therefore very relieved on Thursday to find that, having got started digesting a lot of dandelion leaves and bindweed and paper and cardboard in addition to the packing peanuts, the internal temperature had risen to 50dgeC again.
It is a ridiculous extravagance and I'm still delighted about it. I haven't actually tested the "mulch out in 30 days, mature compost out in 90" yet -- it hasn't been in situ that long -- but I can feed it pizza boxes! I can feed it my moulted hair! I can feed it actual perennial weeds and it will just cook them yea verily unto death and turn them into compost for me! It will eat compostable kitchen bags that you can't cold-compost! I don't have to turn the heap! It's warm and you can hug it! The local cat has not yet quite worked out whether it is A Good Warm or A Kitten-Eating Monster!
Also my fennel looks increasingly like incredibly weedy fennel, and one of my butternut squash vines has an actual flower. Given how late I got them germinated I'm not holding my breath for actually getting any fruit off them before we get frost, but hey, it is An Adventure, and they're growing a flower.
I then had a certain amount of confusion when looking it up to confirm that I really had seen a real-life actual slow worm, because I was very certain that the thing I'd seen was bright yellow with a black stripe down its back, but all the sources were describing female slow worms (THERE MIGHT BE BABIES) as "golden-grey". It took me A While to work out that I needed to translate from "ordinary people" to "geologist", i.e., yes, the fucker was bright yellow, we're all good.
On the vague topic: having fed the ridiculously extravagant compost bin a relatively parsimonious amount over that preceding week, I was a little alarmed when I showed up to feed it on Wednesday (with packing peanuts, thank you relevant friend) and found it was only at an internal temperature of 40degC. I was therefore very relieved on Thursday to find that, having got started digesting a lot of dandelion leaves and bindweed and paper and cardboard in addition to the packing peanuts, the internal temperature had risen to 50dgeC again.
It is a ridiculous extravagance and I'm still delighted about it. I haven't actually tested the "mulch out in 30 days, mature compost out in 90" yet -- it hasn't been in situ that long -- but I can feed it pizza boxes! I can feed it my moulted hair! I can feed it actual perennial weeds and it will just cook them yea verily unto death and turn them into compost for me! It will eat compostable kitchen bags that you can't cold-compost! I don't have to turn the heap! It's warm and you can hug it! The local cat has not yet quite worked out whether it is A Good Warm or A Kitten-Eating Monster!
Also my fennel looks increasingly like incredibly weedy fennel, and one of my butternut squash vines has an actual flower. Given how late I got them germinated I'm not holding my breath for actually getting any fruit off them before we get frost, but hey, it is An Adventure, and they're growing a flower.
no subject
Mmmm fennel. Mmmm butternut. Even if you don't expect any fruit, I quite like eating the flowers.
no subject
And also very excited about making miscellaneous butternut-and-fennel things. :D
no subject
Even better, dip it in beaten egg and breadcrumbs and fry it!
People are silly about how much better food you have grown yourself tastes, but they are not wrong.
no subject
no subject
Best slow worm description ever :-)
no subject
It is possible that I spend too much time on tumblr :-)
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
"It is not a snake, it is a legless lizard!!!" I said, to A, all excitement.
"... u wot m8," he said, approximately, being a City Child who broadly considers these things interchangeable.
Whereupon I delightedly taxonomied at him.
no subject
(I.... have an actual degree in biology, is the hilarious bit here. Also, I grew up in rural Tennessee. Admittedly, no actual field work in biology was involved in that degree as it was only undergrad, but still. *g*)
no subject
Aren't they ADORABLE, though.
no subject
also (from wikipedia): The "slow-" in slowworm is distinct from the English adjective slow ("not fast"); the word comes from Old English slāwyrm, where slā- means 'earthworm' or 'slowworm' and wyrm means "serpent, reptile"
so that's neat!
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
I saw one in the wild once (panicking and fleeing off a path where it had been sunbathing) and was so thrilled.
no subject
This continues right up until they're pretty much about to step on it, whereupon the branch slithers off sharpish into the undergrowth.
no subject
Could I collect my compost in a fancy compostable kitchen bag and then give it to you? I am currently just binning it, and keep thinking I should get organised to find a friend who can use it. Do the bags keep it from stinking up the house, at least for a short period?
no subject
To minimise smell, you would pretty much EITHER want to put at least a couple of handfuls of shredded paper in with it (to absorb the liquid) and see me at least once a fortnight, or (possibly more usefully) keep one of said bags in your freezer and keep everything frozen up until we manage to get our acts together to share space. (To minimise smelliness & misc liquid the aim is to minimise anaerobic decomposition versus aerobic composition, and also to absorb liquid that does form; doing so for medium-term storage can be tricksy.)
I am also super happy to take pizza boxes that can't go in general recycling -- the bin eats them very happily, too :-)
no subject
Random, sorry if obvious: If you can find some, wood ash is a great additive for various micronutrients (also P and K) and managing pH.
In Mali I learned that termite mounds are also full of good things for compost (plus termites take the place of earthworms as soil aerators because worms can't survive the dry season), but that is less relevant and more "interesting fact."
no subject
we're allowed fires from November to April so on-site wood ash generation is achievable; also someone in the row of houses just the other side of the wall was burning? most of the hazel tree? this afternoon??? on the site????? which means there's an additional pile of wood ash, which we have EVERY INTENTION of liberating for anti-slug and general fertilising purposes :D
Termite mounds are great for SO MANY THINGS. Do you know the thing about gold/diamond exploration and termite mounds? Would you like to? :D
no subject
They are such neat critters, even if I did have to keep moving test plots around in Mali to avoid the old mounds messing up my experiments ('data excluded because termites' and 'data excluded because accidentally goats' were two common notations)
and yay for convenient sources of wood ash :)
no subject
It's more that -- okay, so, Traditionally, In Days Of Yore, the way people went prospecting was to take a map, and plonk a bloody great grid down over the top of it, and just mechanically sample at every grid intersection regardless of whether what was there was in fact e.g. an elephant. (I exaggerate only slightly.)
This led to some really weird patterns: a single geographically-isolated sample, f'rex, that contained in comparative terms A Fucktonne of diamonds, just sort of floating like an island in the middle of an otherwise diamond-free expanse of land.
... it was a termite mound.
It was always a termite mound.
It took them A While, however, to actually get enough data points and pay enough attention to notice this.
It turns out! That some of the reason termite mounds are great for soil aeration! Are exactly why they are also full of gold and diamonds: they dig down A LOT, and bring actually very impressive amounts of material back up from the depths with them.
... material that sometimes happens to be a seam of diamonds.
So these days quite a lot of industrial prospecting boils down to "eh, let's go poke a termite heap": sampling surface rocks is unlikely to show up any diamond seams that people didn't actually already know about, frankly, because if they were that accessible they were that accessible, but termites? Termites are GREAT. Termites do ALL THE DIGGING FOR YOU.
:D
no subject
(Þe letter þorn contributes to þis post because I accidentally typed one at þe beginning and þen þought it would be fun to include þem.)
no subject
no subject
Bin this filth!
I'm told they are quite common, but I have never seen one.
Also: not that I'm stalking you or anything but, as a result of this DW post, I have now been prompted for the *perfect* romantic gift for my beloved.
Re: Bin this filth!
no subject