vital functions
Feb. 2nd, 2020 10:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberettReading. The Gifts of Imperfection, Brené Brown. I'm going to have a go at writing this up properly, being as I took five pages of notes; I think there's a lot of overlap with the other two books of hers I've read, but then that's not terribly surprising. Again, overall a mixture of "huh, that's a useful framing", "I... am not sure that's actually how this works", and "YOU ARE EXTREMELY WRONG". Less "huh, maybe useful" than I got out of Daring Greatly, but that's entirely plausibly just because I read this last.
The Will to Change, bell hooks. Also borrowed from the local library as an ebook; I'm somewhat disconcerted that the only bell hooks available to borrow in this fashion is The One About Men, and I think I am going to try to get my act together to request some more. So far I'm the introduction and part of a chapter down, though, and I am finding it so refreshing.
Watching. Planet Earth: fresh water. Once again, you just get an unfiltered liveblog.
Oh no why are we describing Venezuela as mysterious -- GOOD sandstone yesssssssss (tepuis? I think it was) i.e. Tall Flat-Topped Mountains, which get moist air evaporated from the sea, and then Suddenly A Weather -- which gets us rain, which gets us RIVERS, which eventually go to the sea, fresh water is DESPERATELY IMPORTANT sparkle tada (at least for land animals, which it did speify)
ooooh that's a lovely shot over the edge of a waterfall and into a rainbow (ha, Angel Falls, excellent) -- 1000m fall, water gets blown away as a fine mist before it reaches the canyon below (or at least.... most of it is? or all of it? hmm)
alright we've got rapids low in nutrients but high in oxygen.... with things that HOLD ON HARD hello invertebrates that mostly live upstairs!!!! hellgramite???? what is one of YOU you are FUZZY -- black fly larvae have a Ring of Hooks on their tail, with a bonus silken safety line -- okay I don't actually hate bamboo shrimp (and the music human was having an EXCELLENT time)
glacial meltwater???? ooooh -- spring melt produces MONSTERS,apparently -- oh no it has FEET with LITTLE TOES -- giant salamanders!!!!!!!! two metres long, or almost!!!! -- music human still having EXCELLENT time -- ooh salamanders have v v v slow metabolism, live up to 80 years, hunt at night (for fish), have poor eyesight, BUT they have SENSORY NODES to detect CHANGES IN WATER PRESSURE by thing DO AN SWIM -- do they hibernate the rest of the year or what?????? oooooh hold on no they get a Tasty Treat when SALMON go ALL THE WAY UP leading to MUCH HIGHER FOOD DENSITY
Salmon: world's largest freshwater fish migration (lol) -- oooh, across the northern hemisphere???? -- fewer predators to eat Baby Salmon upstream, but ... bEAR. MUSIC HUMAN. MUSIC. HUMAN. BEAR BALLET.
Why is it a Very Special Canadian Grizzly? Because... it's learned to dive. Is that special? Huh.
... more excellent music human for the Baby Bears that do Not go All In THe Water yet because WHY. WHY WOULD YOU DO THA. it make little disgrontle noise!!!!!!! oh no they make such good wee floof noises
"rivers are erosive!!! THE GRAND CANYON was made by a river, did u know" well that's a segue -- important sweeping dramatic horn music -- excellent Sedimentary Layers
...and now Elemphamp. "As rivers leave the mountains behind!!! they warm and begin to support more life"
OTTER -- Indian, Most Social Otter, smooth-coated otters with family groups up to 17 -- "group rubbing refreshes their coats AND strengthens social bonds" -- fishing practice begins when cubs = 4 months old ("only the adults have the speed and agility needed to make a catch") -- apparently most otters are solitary but RIch Warm Waters = more food = groups that aid fishing... and also Hide From Mugger Crocodiles (SUCH a fun msuic human, SUCH good otter squeaks) -- the ottem try???? fight???? crocodile? THEY DO. THEY FIGHT THE CROCODILE. THE CROCODILE RUN AWAY.
East Africa - Mara River -- does an good meanders -- Slower Rivers Make A Shape Did U Know -- BOINGY BOINGY WILDBEEST -- rivers contain Drinking Water and also An Predator -- Nile Crocodiles -- grow over 5m long, are REALLY CROSS AND SQUINTY
Sometimes There A Big Lake Instead Of A Sea -- ooh, worldwide lakes hold 20x more fresh water than all the rivers. Lake Malawi (smallest of three in EAR) still bigger than Wales!!!! gosh that is Big it has Waves look at it FEEEEEEESH -- >850 cichlids evolved from a single common ancestor isolated In The Past!!!! -- what are these shapes??? are they a volcanoes??? NO THEY ARE FISH-BUILT 2m WIDE CRATERS they are SEXY HOLES for SEXY BEHAVIOOUR apparently they are Bowers for Courtship -- OH NO THEY ARE BROODING THE YOUNG IN THE MOUTH TH EBABIES ALL SWIM IN THE MOUTH PELICAN MOTHU V COMFY
... After Dark we get Dolphin Fish -- they are electric!!!!! they make a field and go CRACKLE
-- floor drops 700m into AN ABYSS -- lake fly midges go BLOOP BLOOP BLOOP -- oh holy hell "early explorers told stories of lakes that smoked, as if on fire, but these columns -- hundreds of metres high -- are mating flies" nO do NOT this is BAD w h a t
World's Largest Lake: Baikal in eastern Siberia wait I've heard of this is it the permafrost or is it just the Beatles
-- 400 miles long, >1 mile deep, >1/5 of all fresh water on earth
- five months of year, sealed by ice sheet >1m thick, ooh these are some pretty below the ice shots
- Life Flourishes Here In Isolation
- 80% of species found nowhere else on earth, for some reason
- ... INCLUDING WORLD'S ONLY FRESHWATER SEAL LOOK HOW ROUND IT IS
- ooh and it has Sponges and they are Green
- oh no there are Terrible Hecking Shrimp Things No
- water!! too cold!! for bacteria that normally do a decomposition!!!
Amazon Is The Biggest River etc etc etc (as much water as the next top ten biggest rivers combined)
- oh hi Peru
- yes hello the Rio Negro & Amazon Mixing Of The Waters with your sediment loads
- more species of feesh than in the whole of the atlantic ocean
- ooh do we get to say hello to the dolphins again? bah no not yet, first we just get Feesh -- NO DOLPHINS HIIIIIIIII botos LISTEN to you goin gSqueak with your Long Noses
- extremely Music Human who is Enjoying setting Bouncy Frantic Feesh to like upbeat dance music
- botos are Highly Social -- wait haven't we already done the boto sex thing??? but I mean okay let's be told about their Unique Sex Thing -- They Pick Up Rocks In Their Jaws And Flaunt Them To Their Attending Females
- Did You Pick A Nice Rock Bro
- The Amazon!!!! Has Rapids!!!! and Waterfalls!!! it is VERY EXCITING THAT WE KNOW THIS hi that's pretty oooooh
- big waterfalls are only found in the lower courses of rivers, we're told, but not w h y
- flood plains happen -- Pantanal is world's largest wetland and ISN'T it pretty
-- oooooh pretty underwater forest things filed with feesh
- o good grief I'm not sure I approve of the weird reflections of the spectacled caiman
- dorado -- "river tiger" -- big stripey predatorfish
- roseate spoonbill!!!! oh no LOOK at your shit babies
- ... the caiman is Wearing A Flower Crown and oping birds will Fall Into The Water
okay now we're doing a Big Delta over in India & the associated mangrove forests
crab-eating macaques adopted amphibious lifestyle in Indonesia!!!!! fish out fallen food, have coifs, and appear to do A Big Underwater Swim (>30s) just... for fun? just for fun
oooh now we get salt marsh grasses for One Of The Most Productive Habitats On The Planet with BIRBS
-- GREATER SNOW GEESE Atlantic coast of US go hOMPK
Making of!!!
+ we mostly haven't tried filming piranha feeding frenzyies in the wild because WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU
+ Biggest Challenge Of The Dive Team
+ I'm Not Sure I Wanna Go In The Water With These say the locals
+ but The Team Is Confident...
+ I don't Believe Piranhas Exist says the cameraman
+ "don't remain still too long, and maybe also dooooon't go too much into the dark under the vegetation"
+ ... they actually ran away and Pete was Extremely Grumpy
Listening. There's been a drive down to Cornwall, so... lots more TMA. Spoilers up to episode 16. 13 (Alone) didn't really work for me as a piece of art; it's the first episode where we get a statement given directly onto tape, and I just could not suspend my disbelief about the delivery. When it's just Jon Sims reading out a written statement, I can accept the clear precise diction and the slow speech and the lack of hesitation; when it's someone apparently speaking ex tempore, about something deeply distressing, and it sounds that rehearsed and that lacking in hesitation or deviation... does not work for me. Particularly in contrast to the more natural speaking style at the beginning and the end, in conversation -- and yet the witness wasn't prompted to speak slowly and clearly at all; they just... did. I... have a hobby horse about THAT'S NOT HOW PEOPLE TALK, okay.
Episode 15 (Lost John's Cave really highlighted the ways in which I'm not a good target audience for a horror podcast, in that (1) I was shouting "NO WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT YOU WOULD NEVER REASONABLY CHOOSE TO CAVE DIVE LIKE THAT" but, much more significantly, (2) I'd have found it much more upsetting if the rescuers had found a body.
16 (Arachnophobia), in a similar vein, I mostly just found adorable. Like. Oh sweetheart. Oh SWEETHEART and your VENDETTA AGAINST SPIDERS and I just... isn't it a good spider. Good Spider. Well Done.
By which you can tell that I'm mostly still at the stage where most of my engagement is neutral-to-quibbles rather than enthusiasm, but I am observing the Encroaching Plot and I'm finding the auditory processing manageable, and we're heading back upcountry again soon, so I will keep going! And probably get invested eventually, but I'm not sure how good we're going to be at sitting down to listen to it at points when we're not Doing A Long Drive, so it is as yet unclear how long it will take...
Cooking. Scones! I do not entirely understand what I am doing differently, but I am unambiguously levelling up at scones! So far as I've articulated it (having now had tentative success on two occasions in close succession), some amount of what's happening is that I'm being braver about kneading the dough at all (as opposed to just bringing it together as best I can with a knife, which isn't very) and some is that I'm not pressing it out so far. They are a more convincing shape! I'm very happy!
I have also got slightly more the hang (again, will this process ever end) of how soon after feeding the sourdough wants using, so I've been managing slightly taller bread.
Additionally: the just-over-two-kilos of tiny olives really did only seem to want two weeks of curing in brine, so they're now in jam jars (as many of them as I had convenient jam jars for) in brine, with rosemary and garlic, topped off with a little olive oil; and then we've got three additional tubs in the fridge, which we're going to need to eat forthwith, Oh No.
Upcoming: I'm keeping half an eye on Seville oranges in the supermarkets, because at some point there'll be a batch of them reduced and then it will be MARMALADE O'CLOCK. I'm sufficiently a fan of the bergamot marmalade that if at all possible I want to do it again, but I'm going to have to see if I can shake Waitrose hard enough to actually get it to disgorge discount bergamot in good time (as I managed year before last).
Exploring. An excellent view of Stonehenge! Lovely weather for it. I have said hello also to the retired rescue chopper, and to various of the beaches.
Creating. Vieussieuxia fugax started! Here's an original plate. So far: part of one leaf (with which I am reasonably contented). I have not brought it with me down to Cornwall on the grounds that I don't have any sensible way to transport my brushes (yet) ("a knife roll" and "a small brush roll" are both very much on my Consumerism Wishlist), so while on the one hand I shan't be making any progress, on the other this might give me a space in which to go digging for More Information About Mixing Watercolour Pencil Pigments usefully. (-- ha! Apparently greens are known to be hard!)
Growing. Hatching at home: another two pepper seeds (we're up to five, now), I think another of the chilli seeds, three passion fruit, and a bonus broad bean (for a total of four, so far).
Rather than have them sit around feeling sad and unloved and unwatered while I was in the Celtic fringes, I got A to stop off at the allotment on our way out of London yesterday and I got the broad beans into the ground; I sort of suspect I'll return to find they've been eaten by slugs, but such is life. The Warm Plant Box, meanwhile, travelled down in the cab of the van, and is on a windowsill in the cottage gently steaming away to itself.
Lemon tree: still distressingly Sad. I've reached the point of picking scale insects off it by hand, which is... indicative... of how concerned I am about it. It's had a third round of (plant-based) pesticide and I'm continuing to give it regular feeds. I've got my act together to also be able to mist it with water on the regular in case higher humidity helps. We will see. (I am Extremely Sad that it remained cheerful and enthusiastic and happy right up until the end of December -- it made a ridiculous number of flowers -- and has subsequently declined rapidly. I want to Fix It. I am doing my best by the poor thing.)
A valiant bonus: a tiny oak tree decided it wanted to Happen in the lemon pot, I'm not entirely sure how, my best guesses are "it was in the manure???" or "a squirrel???" Anyway, it was growing up remarkably rapidly and Could Not Usefully Stay There, so I somewhat indelicately uprooted it on Friday night and subsequently -- largely via the assistance ofhalojedha -- got it potted up into something that will almost let it spread all its roots out and definitely has better long-term prospects should it survive the shock of being moved. But, hey, it hadn't started wilting by the time we left on Saturday, so fingers crossed for it. (Adam thinks it is the bravest little thing ever to adventure, and cannot bear the thought of just consigning it to death, so we are now investigating bonsai, on the grounds that it's that or sneak into the local park with a trowel and wish it luck. Cross your fingers for us/it.)
Next intended steps: get myself a suitable container to plant up the tulip bulbs I acquired cheap from the National Trust at the end of last season (they've been in the garage ever since and are starting to produce some intrepid sprouts); encourage A to get started with the mushroom kit I found in a charity shop; start thinking about tomatoes (with the minor issue that my Warm Plant Box is currently quite full so I'm going to have to get them going in the bathroom or something).
Observing. AN OWL, on the drive down to Cornwall, I'm pretty sure. (Something large and fluffy and white on its underneath.)
There is a profusion of snowdrops. The daffodil fields are being harvested, and the cauliflower are standing and waiting to be shipped off.
Playing. More Portal 2 co-op! And horn playing. But nothing particularly especial to report, I think.
The Will to Change, bell hooks. Also borrowed from the local library as an ebook; I'm somewhat disconcerted that the only bell hooks available to borrow in this fashion is The One About Men, and I think I am going to try to get my act together to request some more. So far I'm the introduction and part of a chapter down, though, and I am finding it so refreshing.
Watching. Planet Earth: fresh water. Once again, you just get an unfiltered liveblog.
Oh no why are we describing Venezuela as mysterious -- GOOD sandstone yesssssssss (tepuis? I think it was) i.e. Tall Flat-Topped Mountains, which get moist air evaporated from the sea, and then Suddenly A Weather -- which gets us rain, which gets us RIVERS, which eventually go to the sea, fresh water is DESPERATELY IMPORTANT sparkle tada (at least for land animals, which it did speify)
ooooh that's a lovely shot over the edge of a waterfall and into a rainbow (ha, Angel Falls, excellent) -- 1000m fall, water gets blown away as a fine mist before it reaches the canyon below (or at least.... most of it is? or all of it? hmm)
alright we've got rapids low in nutrients but high in oxygen.... with things that HOLD ON HARD hello invertebrates that mostly live upstairs!!!! hellgramite???? what is one of YOU you are FUZZY -- black fly larvae have a Ring of Hooks on their tail, with a bonus silken safety line -- okay I don't actually hate bamboo shrimp (and the music human was having an EXCELLENT time)
glacial meltwater???? ooooh -- spring melt produces MONSTERS,apparently -- oh no it has FEET with LITTLE TOES -- giant salamanders!!!!!!!! two metres long, or almost!!!! -- music human still having EXCELLENT time -- ooh salamanders have v v v slow metabolism, live up to 80 years, hunt at night (for fish), have poor eyesight, BUT they have SENSORY NODES to detect CHANGES IN WATER PRESSURE by thing DO AN SWIM -- do they hibernate the rest of the year or what?????? oooooh hold on no they get a Tasty Treat when SALMON go ALL THE WAY UP leading to MUCH HIGHER FOOD DENSITY
Salmon: world's largest freshwater fish migration (lol) -- oooh, across the northern hemisphere???? -- fewer predators to eat Baby Salmon upstream, but ... bEAR. MUSIC HUMAN. MUSIC. HUMAN. BEAR BALLET.
Why is it a Very Special Canadian Grizzly? Because... it's learned to dive. Is that special? Huh.
... more excellent music human for the Baby Bears that do Not go All In THe Water yet because WHY. WHY WOULD YOU DO THA. it make little disgrontle noise!!!!!!! oh no they make such good wee floof noises
"rivers are erosive!!! THE GRAND CANYON was made by a river, did u know" well that's a segue -- important sweeping dramatic horn music -- excellent Sedimentary Layers
...and now Elemphamp. "As rivers leave the mountains behind!!! they warm and begin to support more life"
OTTER -- Indian, Most Social Otter, smooth-coated otters with family groups up to 17 -- "group rubbing refreshes their coats AND strengthens social bonds" -- fishing practice begins when cubs = 4 months old ("only the adults have the speed and agility needed to make a catch") -- apparently most otters are solitary but RIch Warm Waters = more food = groups that aid fishing... and also Hide From Mugger Crocodiles (SUCH a fun msuic human, SUCH good otter squeaks) -- the ottem try???? fight???? crocodile? THEY DO. THEY FIGHT THE CROCODILE. THE CROCODILE RUN AWAY.
East Africa - Mara River -- does an good meanders -- Slower Rivers Make A Shape Did U Know -- BOINGY BOINGY WILDBEEST -- rivers contain Drinking Water and also An Predator -- Nile Crocodiles -- grow over 5m long, are REALLY CROSS AND SQUINTY
Sometimes There A Big Lake Instead Of A Sea -- ooh, worldwide lakes hold 20x more fresh water than all the rivers. Lake Malawi (smallest of three in EAR) still bigger than Wales!!!! gosh that is Big it has Waves look at it FEEEEEEESH -- >850 cichlids evolved from a single common ancestor isolated In The Past!!!! -- what are these shapes??? are they a volcanoes??? NO THEY ARE FISH-BUILT 2m WIDE CRATERS they are SEXY HOLES for SEXY BEHAVIOOUR apparently they are Bowers for Courtship -- OH NO THEY ARE BROODING THE YOUNG IN THE MOUTH TH EBABIES ALL SWIM IN THE MOUTH PELICAN MOTHU V COMFY
... After Dark we get Dolphin Fish -- they are electric!!!!! they make a field and go CRACKLE
-- floor drops 700m into AN ABYSS -- lake fly midges go BLOOP BLOOP BLOOP -- oh holy hell "early explorers told stories of lakes that smoked, as if on fire, but these columns -- hundreds of metres high -- are mating flies" nO do NOT this is BAD w h a t
World's Largest Lake: Baikal in eastern Siberia wait I've heard of this is it the permafrost or is it just the Beatles
-- 400 miles long, >1 mile deep, >1/5 of all fresh water on earth
- five months of year, sealed by ice sheet >1m thick, ooh these are some pretty below the ice shots
- Life Flourishes Here In Isolation
- 80% of species found nowhere else on earth, for some reason
- ... INCLUDING WORLD'S ONLY FRESHWATER SEAL LOOK HOW ROUND IT IS
- ooh and it has Sponges and they are Green
- oh no there are Terrible Hecking Shrimp Things No
- water!! too cold!! for bacteria that normally do a decomposition!!!
Amazon Is The Biggest River etc etc etc (as much water as the next top ten biggest rivers combined)
- oh hi Peru
- yes hello the Rio Negro & Amazon Mixing Of The Waters with your sediment loads
- more species of feesh than in the whole of the atlantic ocean
- ooh do we get to say hello to the dolphins again? bah no not yet, first we just get Feesh -- NO DOLPHINS HIIIIIIIII botos LISTEN to you goin gSqueak with your Long Noses
- extremely Music Human who is Enjoying setting Bouncy Frantic Feesh to like upbeat dance music
- botos are Highly Social -- wait haven't we already done the boto sex thing??? but I mean okay let's be told about their Unique Sex Thing -- They Pick Up Rocks In Their Jaws And Flaunt Them To Their Attending Females
- Did You Pick A Nice Rock Bro
- The Amazon!!!! Has Rapids!!!! and Waterfalls!!! it is VERY EXCITING THAT WE KNOW THIS hi that's pretty oooooh
- big waterfalls are only found in the lower courses of rivers, we're told, but not w h y
- flood plains happen -- Pantanal is world's largest wetland and ISN'T it pretty
-- oooooh pretty underwater forest things filed with feesh
- o good grief I'm not sure I approve of the weird reflections of the spectacled caiman
- dorado -- "river tiger" -- big stripey predatorfish
- roseate spoonbill!!!! oh no LOOK at your shit babies
- ... the caiman is Wearing A Flower Crown and oping birds will Fall Into The Water
okay now we're doing a Big Delta over in India & the associated mangrove forests
crab-eating macaques adopted amphibious lifestyle in Indonesia!!!!! fish out fallen food, have coifs, and appear to do A Big Underwater Swim (>30s) just... for fun? just for fun
oooh now we get salt marsh grasses for One Of The Most Productive Habitats On The Planet with BIRBS
-- GREATER SNOW GEESE Atlantic coast of US go hOMPK
Making of!!!
+ we mostly haven't tried filming piranha feeding frenzyies in the wild because WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU
+ Biggest Challenge Of The Dive Team
+ I'm Not Sure I Wanna Go In The Water With These say the locals
+ but The Team Is Confident...
+ I don't Believe Piranhas Exist says the cameraman
+ "don't remain still too long, and maybe also dooooon't go too much into the dark under the vegetation"
+ ... they actually ran away and Pete was Extremely Grumpy
Listening. There's been a drive down to Cornwall, so... lots more TMA. Spoilers up to episode 16. 13 (Alone) didn't really work for me as a piece of art; it's the first episode where we get a statement given directly onto tape, and I just could not suspend my disbelief about the delivery. When it's just Jon Sims reading out a written statement, I can accept the clear precise diction and the slow speech and the lack of hesitation; when it's someone apparently speaking ex tempore, about something deeply distressing, and it sounds that rehearsed and that lacking in hesitation or deviation... does not work for me. Particularly in contrast to the more natural speaking style at the beginning and the end, in conversation -- and yet the witness wasn't prompted to speak slowly and clearly at all; they just... did. I... have a hobby horse about THAT'S NOT HOW PEOPLE TALK, okay.
Episode 15 (Lost John's Cave really highlighted the ways in which I'm not a good target audience for a horror podcast, in that (1) I was shouting "NO WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT YOU WOULD NEVER REASONABLY CHOOSE TO CAVE DIVE LIKE THAT" but, much more significantly, (2) I'd have found it much more upsetting if the rescuers had found a body.
16 (Arachnophobia), in a similar vein, I mostly just found adorable. Like. Oh sweetheart. Oh SWEETHEART and your VENDETTA AGAINST SPIDERS and I just... isn't it a good spider. Good Spider. Well Done.
By which you can tell that I'm mostly still at the stage where most of my engagement is neutral-to-quibbles rather than enthusiasm, but I am observing the Encroaching Plot and I'm finding the auditory processing manageable, and we're heading back upcountry again soon, so I will keep going! And probably get invested eventually, but I'm not sure how good we're going to be at sitting down to listen to it at points when we're not Doing A Long Drive, so it is as yet unclear how long it will take...
Cooking. Scones! I do not entirely understand what I am doing differently, but I am unambiguously levelling up at scones! So far as I've articulated it (having now had tentative success on two occasions in close succession), some amount of what's happening is that I'm being braver about kneading the dough at all (as opposed to just bringing it together as best I can with a knife, which isn't very) and some is that I'm not pressing it out so far. They are a more convincing shape! I'm very happy!
I have also got slightly more the hang (again, will this process ever end) of how soon after feeding the sourdough wants using, so I've been managing slightly taller bread.
Additionally: the just-over-two-kilos of tiny olives really did only seem to want two weeks of curing in brine, so they're now in jam jars (as many of them as I had convenient jam jars for) in brine, with rosemary and garlic, topped off with a little olive oil; and then we've got three additional tubs in the fridge, which we're going to need to eat forthwith, Oh No.
Upcoming: I'm keeping half an eye on Seville oranges in the supermarkets, because at some point there'll be a batch of them reduced and then it will be MARMALADE O'CLOCK. I'm sufficiently a fan of the bergamot marmalade that if at all possible I want to do it again, but I'm going to have to see if I can shake Waitrose hard enough to actually get it to disgorge discount bergamot in good time (as I managed year before last).
Exploring. An excellent view of Stonehenge! Lovely weather for it. I have said hello also to the retired rescue chopper, and to various of the beaches.
Creating. Vieussieuxia fugax started! Here's an original plate. So far: part of one leaf (with which I am reasonably contented). I have not brought it with me down to Cornwall on the grounds that I don't have any sensible way to transport my brushes (yet) ("a knife roll" and "a small brush roll" are both very much on my Consumerism Wishlist), so while on the one hand I shan't be making any progress, on the other this might give me a space in which to go digging for More Information About Mixing Watercolour Pencil Pigments usefully. (-- ha! Apparently greens are known to be hard!)
Growing. Hatching at home: another two pepper seeds (we're up to five, now), I think another of the chilli seeds, three passion fruit, and a bonus broad bean (for a total of four, so far).
Rather than have them sit around feeling sad and unloved and unwatered while I was in the Celtic fringes, I got A to stop off at the allotment on our way out of London yesterday and I got the broad beans into the ground; I sort of suspect I'll return to find they've been eaten by slugs, but such is life. The Warm Plant Box, meanwhile, travelled down in the cab of the van, and is on a windowsill in the cottage gently steaming away to itself.
Lemon tree: still distressingly Sad. I've reached the point of picking scale insects off it by hand, which is... indicative... of how concerned I am about it. It's had a third round of (plant-based) pesticide and I'm continuing to give it regular feeds. I've got my act together to also be able to mist it with water on the regular in case higher humidity helps. We will see. (I am Extremely Sad that it remained cheerful and enthusiastic and happy right up until the end of December -- it made a ridiculous number of flowers -- and has subsequently declined rapidly. I want to Fix It. I am doing my best by the poor thing.)
A valiant bonus: a tiny oak tree decided it wanted to Happen in the lemon pot, I'm not entirely sure how, my best guesses are "it was in the manure???" or "a squirrel???" Anyway, it was growing up remarkably rapidly and Could Not Usefully Stay There, so I somewhat indelicately uprooted it on Friday night and subsequently -- largely via the assistance of
halojedha -- got it potted up into something that will almost let it spread all its roots out and definitely has better long-term prospects should it survive the shock of being moved. But, hey, it hadn't started wilting by the time we left on Saturday, so fingers crossed for it. (Adam thinks it is the bravest little thing ever to adventure, and cannot bear the thought of just consigning it to death, so we are now investigating bonsai, on the grounds that it's that or sneak into the local park with a trowel and wish it luck. Cross your fingers for us/it.)Next intended steps: get myself a suitable container to plant up the tulip bulbs I acquired cheap from the National Trust at the end of last season (they've been in the garage ever since and are starting to produce some intrepid sprouts); encourage A to get started with the mushroom kit I found in a charity shop; start thinking about tomatoes (with the minor issue that my Warm Plant Box is currently quite full so I'm going to have to get them going in the bathroom or something).
Observing. AN OWL, on the drive down to Cornwall, I'm pretty sure. (Something large and fluffy and white on its underneath.)
There is a profusion of snowdrops. The daffodil fields are being harvested, and the cauliflower are standing and waiting to be shipped off.
Playing. More Portal 2 co-op! And horn playing. But nothing particularly especial to report, I think.