kaberett | vital functions

Reading. The Story of My Life, Helen Keller.

I've finished her actual autobiographical writing and am now on to a curated collection of her letters, 1887-1901. (I'm considering whether I actually want to read them, because the introductory framing is so earnest about treating her like a fascinating specimen that... well. That.)

Here are some feelings: oh but she is so young. Oh but her opinions on literary criticism and interpretation and Just Letting Poetry Move You and What's Even The Point Of Analysis are so undergraduate and so much positions and conversations I vividly remember having myself. She feels so real and vital and present and familiar that I want to sit her down and offer her tea and have A Good Old Natter. She has, to say, things like this:

But the examinations are the chief bugbear of my college life. Although I have faced them many times and cast them down and made them bite the dust, yet they rise again and menace me with pale looks, unti like Bob Acres I feel my courage oozing out at my finger ends. The days before these ordeals take place are spent in cramming your mind with mystic formula and indigestible dates--unpalatable diets, until you wish that books and science an you were buried in the depths of the sea.

At last the dreaded hour arrives, and you are a favoured being indeed if you feel prepared, and are able at the right time to call to your standard thoughts that will aid you in that supreme effort. It hapens too often that your trumpet call is unheeded. It is most perplexing and exasperating that just at the moment when you need your memory and a nice sense of discrimination, those faculties take to themselves wings and fly away. The facts you have garnered with such infinite trouble invariably fail you at a pinch.

"Give a brief account of Huss and his work." Huss? Who was he and what did he do? The name looks strangely familiar. You ransack your budget of historic facts much as you would hunt for a bit of silk in a rag-bag. You are sure it is somewhere in your mind near the top--you saw it there the other day when you were looking up the beginnings of the Reformation. But where is it now? You fish out all manner of odds and ends of knowledge--revolutions, schisms, massacres, systems of government; but Huss--where is he? You are amazed at all the things you know which are not on the examination paper. In desperation you seize the budget and dump everything out, and there in a corner is your man, serenely brooding on his own private thought, unconscious of the catastrophe which he has brought upon you.

Just then the proctor informs you that the time is up. With a feeling of intense disgust you kick the mass of rubbish into a corner and go home, your head full of revolutionary schemes to abolish the divine right of professors to ask questions without the consent of the questioned.

I just. It is so relatable. She talks about "the dignity of froghood"! I want to be her friend!

And I really want to provide her with the advocacy and support to read the RIOT ACT to anyone who even considers insisting she sit an exam written in an unfamiliar Braille dialect without even her usual interpreter because of the risk of the perception of cheating, But It's All Okay, They Weren't Deliberately Setting Out To Sabotage Her, And Anyway She Passed So It's Fine.

I keep remembering that I don't actually get to write to her, or teach her, or otherwise get to know her, and feeling quietly sad, and also a great longing.

Watching. Under Night Streets (1958), a charming wee BBC documentary about overnight maintenance on the Underground.

The She-Ra Season 5 trailer (!!!).

Planet Earth: jungles. Content notes: parasites, insects various.

Ants!!! Ants in a pitcher plant!!

"This is the jungle -- our planet's hothouse" um. I think that might be reversed cause and effect. HURRAH for giant biodiversity, with ~50% of species in ~3% of land mass, yay.

oh lol this time it's Adam shouting at David. ("on the floor the forest might seem lifeless--" "NO IT'S NOT LOOK AT ALL THE GREEN")

NEW GUINEA BIRDS OF PARADISE YESSSSSSSSSS BIRDS OF PARADISE RIFLE BIRD OF PARADISE EXCELLENT SIX-PLUMED BIRD OF PARADISE! MAGNIFICENT BIRD OF PARADISE WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH YOUR BACK MY FRIEND!!!

my goodness that's a green mouth, friend

IMPORTANT FAMOUS CLIP YES EXCELLENT I'M GLAD THE SOUND EFFECTS HUMAN IS ENJOYING THEMSELF

(oh of course they've got 12 hours of daylight every day & are pretty climatically stable)

It Important That A Tree Fall Over (because that means the sunlight reaching the floor increases from 2% to... a lot)
YESSS TIMELAPSE PHOTOGRAPHY OF NEWLY SUNNY FOREST FLOOR

Competing strategies: quick to germinate but slow-and-steady for hardwoods; climbers and vines put all their energy into rapid vertical growth instead of steady increase in growth
OH HEY TIMELAPSE PHOTOGRAPHY OF CLIMBERS EYYYYY
start out with Big Leaves: Macarangas, growing up to 8m a year
gap vanishes in <4 years, and... then we have the fight over THE CANOPY

lack of seasons: each tree flowers/fruits at different time of year, meaning that food is widely spaced. tamarins et al have to do A Whole Heckin Acrobatic Climb
but: THE FIG is ALWAYS uSEFUL I mean that tracks with how they behave even in the UK I guess
oh that's nice that is not a fig tree I recognise! who are we getting? spider monkeys, tamarins, squirrel monkeys (smol, also SWARM), Capuchin ("bully boys" -- chasing the squirrel monkeys out really quite aggressively...), howler monkeys (which normally eat leaves but will apparently make an exception for the ripe figs... and are too big for the Capuchins to chase off). Up to 40 kinds of bird and monkey working shift system on single fig tree.

How Do We Stake Claim To A Territory? YELLING. Siamang gibbons: starts as duet between dominant couple, eventually joined by rest of family. Gosh that's quite musical. Calls can carry over a mile. What Odd throat sacs!

Male orang utan yelling carries furthest through undergrowth? suggests David. Mornings super noisy because it's relatively cool; midday fairly quiet; over afternoon, we start with insects (some of which are Very PArticular e.g. the 6 o'clock cicada); night: FROGS. OH NO LOOK AT THEIR EYES. OH NO FROBS. WHAT good throat sacs. Frogs are apparently tuned to hear only their own species' calls. OH NO SUCH YELL.

GLIDING LEAF FROGS AREN'T YOU GOOD. Why??? Do they jump from the tree tops??? do they have to... climb back up... (hi sound effects human you are enjoying putting in the sparkles on the water droplets aren't you) -- Large webbed feet = parachutes. Spend most of life in high canopy, but come down to floor level when it is SEX O'CLOCK. (It's probably a sex thing.) oh no what ungainly yelling. "She's heading for the loudest call, because loud calls come from big frogs, and big is best." OR IS IT MERELY CLOSE BY. ... stacks. stacks of frogs. Oooh, these lay their eggs out of water -- v humid environment means they... RIGHT they lay them on LEAVES because they won't dry out and are Safer from Predators. Have I seen Frogs Defending Eggs??? I feel like I have.

The Amazon: lots of the water is actually produced BY THE TREES as a photosynthetic byproduct, and then released into the atmosphere rather than Reabsorbed By Tree, because, I mean, 2m of rain a year, they don't NEED to.

AHA. HIGH HUMIDITY = MUSHROOMS.
IMPORTANT TIMELAPSE FUNGUS.
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS why is it so PULSEY because it's slime moulds but this is GREAT
.... is this sound effect human or the dishwasher. Adam thinks sound effect human.
yesssssssssss round orange slime mould balls, Sprouty Mushrooms oh WHAT a beautiful double lacey cap you have my friend yesssssss
nutrients that reach soil are leached out by rain -- so they attach to dead trees or to tree roots rather than being able to particularly rely on leaf litter. recycling happens Faster Here Than Anywhere Else On The Planet.
oh WHAT good gradated stems
half a million varieties of fungi in rainforests, most of which we don't know about
vital to ecosystem
What Good Skirts And Ribbed Yellow Bottoms

... bugs!!!!! HELLO BEETLE LARVAE aren't you Good and Round and Grubby. oh NO the parent beetles steer the WRITHING MASS OF CRUBS to the mushroom
... okay oh dear it's ants o'clock
... oh dear parasitic fungal spores ants... this is WEIRD and GROSS congrats on being WEIRD and GROSS
Cordyceps fungi are Werid And Alarming, with thousands of types each specialised for different species, which we are now getting lots of Alarming pictures of, good grief, I am pretty sure I don't approve of this
buuuuuut these parasites do Ecological Balance, right: the more numerous a species the more likely it will be attacked by a targeted fungus, so, prevents OVerrun of Any One Thing

YESSSSSSSS FLYING FOPS??? Hello Borneo!!! Hello the colugo FLYING LEMUR don't you do a GLIDE aren't you NOT A LEMUR -- "In fact, nobody's quite sure who its closest relative is". Oh no it good. It wiggle it little bum
- eats Young Leaves so needs to move from tree to tree because it is A Picky Eater
- not v nutritious but ON THE UPSIDE TRAVEL DOESN'T TAKE MUCH ENERGY, David informs us

pitcher plants!!!! specialisations!!!
ARE WE GOING TO GET THE BAPS
ARE THESE THE BORNEO PITCHER PLANTS THAT A BAT
... not immediately
... oh no the insects fall in
... red crab spider... attaches itself to pitcher with threads of silk so it can get back out... and then steals the pitcher's dinner oh DEAR -- many of the pitcher's dinners would be Too Dangerous for the spider to fight ITSELF but it can perfectly well eat it (and then shit into the pitcher so the pitcher gets something out of this too)
... the spider MAKES ITSELF AN AIR BUBBLE so it can DIVE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE PITCHER
who else lives in here? OH NO A TINY PURPLE CRAB

Most Animals Are Small because in spite of biodiversity finding food is difficult
but okay, let's go over to Congo
... which contains...
... a lot of big wide paths... made by ELEMPHAMP YES SPLENDID HELLO ELEPHANT FAMILY
clearings!!! where elephants Gather!
Important Majestic Horn Music thank u sound effects human
... has it coated? itself? in red mud?
oh no fuzzy little tronk
jungle elemphamps live in smaller groups than savannah cousins; perhaps only see other groups once a month or so in clearings where... they have a bit of a fight... is it... a sex thing.

ooh hello we also have Forest Buffalos and Red River Hogs, and Bongos (oh no their flappy little ears)
important clearings: Essential Element of Diet lies Buried beneath The Mud: oh no the elephant tronk goes SPLORT to blow away silt, it is like A Straw in A Drink
-- OOOH, no, they aren't eating a WHO, they're eating!!! a specific type of clay!!! that contains minerals otherwise low in their diet, and helps with processing toxic leaves!!!

Groups Of Large Animals Actually Living Together Are Even Rarer: ~~GORILLA~~ PRIMATE TIME
oooh apparently chimpanzees are one of relatively few species that move cheerfully between floor & canopy
narm narm narm figs they say, shoving their Entire Mth full of figs, like, that's at LEAST four in one go
in Uganda: Fruit Actually Abundant; lots of food --> lots of chimps
-- this community is ~150, largest band yet identified
They're Goin On A Raid, oh no, we are so very very like our cousins

rainforest biodiversity means they're very finely balanced ecosystems -- so relatively lacking in resilience & relatively easy to disrupt.

DIARIES
- displaying birds of paradise: hadn't been seen before! (definitely hadn't been recorded)
- lOTS OF TIME IN HIDES
- Tari valley, highlands of New Guinea
- had to build the hides *quickly* to avoid causing disturbance
- local Huli people agreed to provide access and helped locate places
- need to get up before the bird so's to not scare it, so... up at 3:45 and then Sitting In The Hide for eight hours so that you're Up Before The Bird so you don't scare them off
- ... vehicles did not make it over the bridges, which were not up to this...
- "Good news, it's not scared of the hide! Bad news: we're in the wrong place."
- ... while the hide was being moved, everyone else worked up bulking up the bridge...
- TAKE a PIG for a WALK
- "but Paul needed him to display, and he wasn't going to do that unless a female showed up, so both bird and cameraman were now waiting for the girls..." [15 hours in the hide...]
- "While I was waiting for these birds of paradise I had... it was kind of a one-hit wonder from the eighties, My Bird of Paradise, I just sit here and wait"
- ... ten days. went by. without a hint of a female. weather? food?
- More Than 90 Hours In This Hide
- Huli dances resembling bird of paradise dances, with feathers used in headdresses...
- ... 112 hours...
- ... 118 hours...
- (8-9 hours a day for five weeks... with like 4 or 5 filming opportunities)
- got down to One Week to Film Everything
- 120 hours on A FEMALE SHOWED UP and there was DISPLAYING
- nearly 300 hours in hides to get everything

Listening. TMA! Just had episode 24 on our relisten. Implied spoilers up to 104. Lots of feelings about family dynamics and intergenerational trauma and unreliable narrators and patterns of relationships going wrong... and also Jon's I'm A Proper Grown-Up Honest voice, and Tim's weird hobby reading up on travelling circuses in the early twentieth century.

Cooking. So much food.

Let's see:

carrot and sweet potato soup, this time with the vegetables roasted with celery, onion, garlic, fennel seed, caraway, and cumin, and using up most of the stock I'd just boiled up.
salted caramel sauce, to go into banana bread; my mistake here was to use a Ruby Violet recipe (and substitute buttermilk for the recipe's soured cream), giving me something that's designed to be pleasantly gooey at -20°C rather than squishy and satisfying at +20°C, so I've got a tub of salted caramel sauce in the fridge and am going to have to Try This One Again for banana bread purposes. (The cake was tasty! It was just less texturally varied than I'd hoped for.)
a round of rosemary-and-raisin soda bread, using Shipton Mill's soda bread flour mix. The thing that went wrong here is we wanted it on a weekday morning, so I weighed out the dry ingredients the night before, by which I mean I looked at the quantities and went "well it's a 1kg sack of flour, and the recipe calls for 400g, I'll just scale it up to 500g so I can have two neat loaves"... which of course my bleary morning self completely forgot, leaving me deeply confused about why the dough was too dry to do anything with given the Quantity Of Buttermilk Called For By The Recipe. Such is life; I'll try again with the second half of the bag once I've cultured up some more buttermilk.
(I'm culturing buttermilk again! It's difficult to get hold of -- Ocado doesn't carry it and they're who we're getting delivery slots with at the moment -- and I'm hoping that this time I'll do a better job than my previous attempt, which sort of worked but eventually crashed and burned.)
bread-and-butter pudding, as a collaboration with A, having made enough sourdough that we'd have some. There is some disagreement in the household over whether it should be All Soggy versus Crunchy Bits, but we came to a reasonable compromise.
rice pudding (for me) and rhubarb meringue pie (for A) (to use up the last batch of rhubarb I brought home from the allotment) (though I will grudgingly admit to eating some of it very suspiciously).
scones with A, who did Most Of The Work. These are definitely a thing I want someone to Show Me How To Do in physical space at some point because they are still not quite behaving the way I want them to.

Growing. Moving the tomatoes to the greenhouse has been doing an excellent job of getting me out to the allotment at least every other day.

In terms of infrastructure: the fruit cage is very nearly there and I'm planning to spend some of tomorrow morning on, hopefully, finalising it. I've rearranged the inside of the greenhouse, emptied out a lot of the innards of the compost bin, and planted two of the beefsteak tomatoes into the bed that is in the process of forming. A & I moved a frankly terrifying quantity of topsoil arranged by

halojedha -- I am very grateful to all involved, and have started the process of filling in raised beds.

I have, of course, been weeding.

The cherries have set fruit and are tentatively swelling up. The stockings for them have arrived; next weekend I will drag A out and encourage him to fit the things to a reasonable proportion of the branches. (The issue being that the birds think the cherries are Just Right about 18 hours before humans do, so last year he didn't get any and was sad; I have an aversion to them so would not bother for myself, but given that it will make him happy...)

The Ribes similarly are setting fruit. I am very greatly enjoying watching it swell up and become recognisable in the knowledge that this year I'll get to eat any of it, also unlike last year.

I've tentatively planted out some summer squash under a cloche, surrounded by a conical frame for beans. The peas have found their supports and are starting to attach to them, slightly to my astonishment, without having yet (yet!) been eaten by slugs. The broad beans are doing their best but the ants are farming aphids on them; I'm not really sure what to do about this and am slightly Not Thinking About It (ditto the parsley on the patio). The shallots and garlic continue allium.

I've sown French marigolds around the shallots; I've put some onion sets (courtesy of my mother) in one of the raised beds, to be intercropped with some of the egregious number of tomatoes (I have somewhere in the vicinity of 20 plants and it's all a bit alarming). (I now have allium in three beds. This is Inefficient but such is life; it's not like I'm going to get everything I'd been planning on sown this year, but hey, at least I'm making some progress towards getting some things in the ground for harvest next year, even if my elderly leek seeds appear to have proven themselves past it.)

I'm unconvinced by how well the celeriac is surviving, in its modules, but the purple sprouting broccoli is starting to put out true leaves. Those probably go in around the peas and beans once they're big enough. I'm not sure where to put the dozen part-chitted Charlotte potatoes my mother sent me (nestled into two egg boxes, along with the onion sets) and need to work that out sharpish.

Playing. It's been a good week in PoGo! Two big (95%, high-level) wild-caught Machop; a(nother) shiny Magikarp; a 95% Lillipup; a 98% Chansey (field research, I think?); a shiny Mawile from a Rocket encounter, that'll be 91% once purified. Dubious about this weird Charizard-hat-wearing Pikachu; very pleased they've expanded the interaction range for Pokéstops, which now means I can reach the one over the road from my sofa without relying on GPS glitches.

I note for my own interest that I've been struggling to make time for horn more than usual this week, with a higher proportion of Yeah One Token Note It Is Then days, but also I've got the legato exercises reliably down to half an hour including however much repetition I want to do, and I had another go at Using A Metronome (which I'm doing only intermittently) and established that actually playing in strict time I am unequivocally managing to go lots faster (and more accurately!) than I was last time I tried this particular exercise.

I keep toying with the idea of getting myself some more Portal achievements for the dopamine. I think I might see if I can leverage that into Making Some Plots.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

ewt

Ants and aphids: consider diatomaceous earth. Ladybirds will help if there are no ants, but ants kill them.

People also swear by soapy water or garlicky water, but I've never had any luck with that for aphids (works well temporarily as a slug deterrent though).

Disadvantages: it washes off in the rain, and when dry it will harm any small arthropod that touches it, so it isn't a good thing to use if you've just released a bunch of beneficial insect frens. Also try not to breathe it in (but if you can manage not to do this with, say, flour or icing sugar you're probably okay). Advantages: the method of action is mechanical rather than chemical, so it doesn't poison anything or fuck up the food chain. It washes off in the rain, or with a watering can if you decide you don't want it there. A little goes a long way (we bought a kilo in 2012 or 2013, and last summer started running low so I bought... another kilo). And it can be used on whatever small arthropod pest turns up next: I've used it on rosemary beetles, on the southern shield bugs that were going to suck all the juice out of my beans last summer, on vine weevils... I don't recall whether it did much to the scale insects my first lemon tree got, but those were pretty advanced.

fyreharper

I had decent luck with washing the aphids off of some artichoke plants with soapy water and having them not reinfest... not sure how that would go with floppier plants, though, or with Ant Help

kaberett

I have utterly failed to actually pick up diatomaceous earth (none of the places I'm trying to buy other greenhouse-bits from sell it, whyyy) but I had some existing Bug Clear For Fruit & Veg for Treating the Lemon, and making up another batch of that and spraying with it seems to have done the trick, thankfully. (Which is less good than mechanical-rather-than-chemical but was what I had available, so.)

I will keep attempting to get my act together to actually order some, though -- I expect I'll want it in the greenhouse before long...

Bay of E?

It's doing me a decision paralysis but I will get there eventually (I hope!). <3

rydra_wong

and Tim's weird hobby reading up on travelling circuses in the early twentieth century.

There's SO MUCH of this stuff that hits you on the re-listen; it's glorious. THE CRAFT OF IT.

Semi-related -- thought you might enjoy Alex Newall's description of cameo-ing on "The Bifrost Incident":

https://twitter.com/AlexanderNewall/status/1255178247492505600