![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
vital functions
Reading. Most of the way through the letters in the Helen Keller volume now. I'm being completionist about wanting to at least start the section on her education; I'm getting on with the correspondence much better now I'm up to 1895 and Keller being about 15 and having decidedly more personality and less Being An Obediently Charming Child.Watching. She-Ra, obviously. Spoilers. Catra... Catra got a butch haircut. Help. HLEP.
... um.
Alright so.
I spent most of the last two episodes crying. I think it was when Glimmer and Bow exchanged I-love-yous that I got somewhat grumpy about how we clearly weren't going to get anything of the kind for Catra and She-Ra... and then I remembered there were already multiple canonical queer relationships and started going "oh SHIT but we??? we ARE??? I get to HAVE THIS???" AND THEN I DID AND I KEPT CRYING.
I waaaaaaaaant to rewatch it all agaaaaaaaaaain. I even kind of want to write the fix-it fic where people are less crap at each others' emotions and also react more plausibly to trauma and redemption. The final scene left me abruptly 100% here for The Quad.
It's so hopeful. It's so bright and colourful. I love it so much, aaaaah.
Planet Earth: seasonal forests.
Listening. TMA. Spoilers for 168. Oh no Jon is so delighted by Martin's ridiculous petty jealousy I am CHARMED.
Cooking. smitten kitchen's sweet potato and chickpea salad, minus coriander and plus some buttermilk in the dressing. Was good. Will make again.
Sourdough loaf feat. bottom of the proving basket filled with poppy seeds. This worked and I Am Going To Do It Again.
Eating. A made a flapjack variant using treacle! Which was... interesting, but we came to the conclusion that fundamentally neither of us is actually particularly keen on Interesting Depth Of Flavour in our flapjack, thanks, so that probably won't be repeated.
Exploring. Another Reckless trip to Trent Park; we saw CATERPILLARS and also visited the Water Garden, which I'd been keen to. Azaleas and rhododendrons excellent. Flag irises also pretty great.
Creating. A massively self-indulgent aerial view of the allotment!
I'm gearing up to start attempting to put something together with plotly.
Making & mending. Soddit, allotment infrastructure projects go here now, It Has Been Decreed.
ERGO: I have, I think, completed the fruit cage. As of Thursday I'd moved the door (involving digging up two large lumps of masonry, ugh) and got mesh into place around all the newly-reorganised sides, and applied a few more netting clips to some gaps in the ceiling.
This is particularly pleasing because I was able to finish it up using parts I had kicking around spare when the initial fruitcage plan Didn't Work, such that I didn't actually have to buy anything and then wait for postage in order to finish it. Fruit cage.
Growing. At home: another batch of Greek Gigantes germinating, along with the Double Red sweetcorn sowed in small newspaper pots. One more go at purple holy basil going in the propagator; the tulsi that's potted up is big enough that I pulled a ceremonial leaf off for inclusion in dinner tonight, which is a nice milestone.
On the patio, things have suffered a little in the wind: we lost one proto-fig and I've had to dry one lovage leaf (and stake another). Strawberries and the blueberry are setting fruit, though, and the thyme and chives are recovering well; the bay is putting forth abundant new growth; I've babied the celeriac insufficiently and lost most of it but the purple sprouting broccoli is rapidly approaching ready to be planted out. The comedy onions have shot up since being given a weak fertiliser.
At the plot, the lemon leaves grow ever more vigorously. I'm up to six tomatoes in the ground in the greenhouse bed (with spring onions coming up around them), and most of the rest have visible flowers on; I've left the greenhouse door fully open tonight as a gesture toward hardening them off (having had it open during a lot of the day and propped a little open overnight for about a week now) and I need to get serious about working out where to plant them. The chillis are all of them producing flowers, which are much prettier than I was expecting. Peppers continue putting forth leaves but no flowers as yet; eleven of the cucumbers are industriously growing true leaves and good grief I need to work out where to put them and also probably pot them up; one loofa has sprouted!
Outdoors I am getting thoroughly impatient for the Ribes various to ripen up (and I think Adam is similarly impatient for the cherries). The early raspberries are setting fruit. The first of the artichokes are making themselves known (and probably I ought have another go at working out when to harvest them such that they're actually edible). There are BROAD BEANS on the BROAD BEAN PLANTS; the peas are definitely increasing in volume but I've not yet seen any evidence that they're considering flowering; the courgette has survived being planted out into a bed and I've got some more beans in around it; rather to my astonishment, the Greek Gigantes I sowed directly are doing vastly better than the ones I started indoors, early, and then planted out, so with luck I should be getting plenty of those after all.
I'm making steady progress with weeding: I'm keeping on top of it in most of the beds under cultivation, I'm mulching the Ribes one pizza box & bucket of woodchip at a time, and I'm ever-so-slowly clearing out some of the beds that aren't in cultivation with a view to planting some of the ridiculous number of seedlings out in them. On the list, but not yet at the top of it, is weeding enough of the bank along the edge of the plot to sow handfuls of poppy seed.
... I may slightly have also written a ridiculous wishlist for seeds to get (or at least consider getting) next year.
Observing. I've been greatly enjoying the ridiculous thirty-foot-high wisteria-and-clematis tower just down the road, and ditto the various other wisteria. Intermittent cowslips in the lawn. LAWN FOX has made more appearances. Haven't seen the bat in a while, but I'm reminding myself that I didn't spot it at all until June, last year.
Playing. Horn: I continue vaguely actually reading the book while doing exercises around it. The retune of the horn appears in most respects to be an improvement, but for various reasons I'm having to work a bit harder to get the top of my range and I'm trying not to sulk too much about having gone in one fell swoop from an actually almost pleasant tone on my top C to one that is... less so.
PoGo: I got in from the allotment on Wednesday evening shortly after the clock struck 6, and speculatively opened up the app, and speculatively tapped on the nearby gym I thought might people might be raiding at... and got into a Terrakion raid with a remote pass and about 2 seconds to spare. The previous round I utterly failed to get one, so imagine please my delight at having a shiny.
Elsewise notable: 100% Oshawott. Shadow Larvitar that'll be 93% if purified. Two shiny Seedot during rather desultory community day play.
... um.
Alright so.
I spent most of the last two episodes crying. I think it was when Glimmer and Bow exchanged I-love-yous that I got somewhat grumpy about how we clearly weren't going to get anything of the kind for Catra and She-Ra... and then I remembered there were already multiple canonical queer relationships and started going "oh SHIT but we??? we ARE??? I get to HAVE THIS???" AND THEN I DID AND I KEPT CRYING.
I waaaaaaaaant to rewatch it all agaaaaaaaaaain. I even kind of want to write the fix-it fic where people are less crap at each others' emotions and also react more plausibly to trauma and redemption. The final scene left me abruptly 100% here for The Quad.
It's so hopeful. It's so bright and colourful. I love it so much, aaaaah.
Planet Earth: seasonal forests.
oh EXCELLENT there were timelapse!!!! bulbs!!!! :D
TREES. SURELY among the most magnificent of all living things. thank u David. Aaaaaaaaaah human for scale on the red sequoia
... but now we're going up to the Arctic, 1000 miles from North Pole and heading south, to the PLANETARY TREE LINE :D :D :D :D hello the taiga! "There are as many trees here as in all the world's rainforets combined." 1/3 of all trees on Earth!
Northern extent: one month a year is growing season; 50 years to get significantly bigger than a seedling even for fast-growing conifers.
"It's a silent world where little stirs." I DON'T BELIEVE YOU DAVID
hello arctic fox and hare prints! tracks of polar bear and two cubs! HELLO CAT. LYNX CAT.
oh no megafauna
oh EXCELLENT close-up on crossbills prising apart pinecone scales for Eats A Seeds. they have a TONG. suchTONG very tong.
BUT ONE ANIMAL! IS SO EXPERT AT SURVIVAL IN THIS FROZEN FOREST! THAT IT STAYS HERE AND IS ACTIVE ALLL YEAR LONG! hiiiiiiiii the wolverine. "in folklore it's [romantic and mysterious and spiritual]... in reality, it's a HUGE WEASEL." oh no its eating is very undignified.
... in spring we get the CHICKEN SEX. (capercaillie) they CLACK at each other VERY INTENTLY for IMPORTANT SEX REASONS. -- but oh no they do also do more fight and get injured, alas :(
alrighty it is it is PNPW o'clock ("1000 miles south!!!") and Formally Redwoods, excellent.
- People Climbing The Important Tall Trees
- conifers so animals still scarce & relatively little biomass; needles full of Resin that is Not Tasty
- which can! absorb water from the fog!
- pine marten Hunting Bird Eggs ("seasonal snack") ... oh no the pine marten got Full and does a splee
- okay apparently they mostly eat the squirrels, oops, obviously I did actually know that
- "The squirrels! Are busy mating. :D" "Good news for the hunter! A distracted squirrel is a vulnerable squirrel." we are straight-up being shown squirrel porn, great.
- BIRB. ... WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLL WOL WOL WOL GREAT GREY OWL CHICKS WOL WOL WOL
- only get baby wol when there's enough "seasonal vole crop"!
- oh NO They're FLEDGING they're doing a SHIT HOP between SPROINGY BRANCHES
- ... oh NO sound effect human
- Important Basoons
- ... nop, say the upside-down birb sadly, falling *very gradually* out of the tree
- oh no it's now squawking around on the ground indignantly
- ... and then climbing back up the tree. with its feets. to fall over again.
- giant sequoia exist
- ... hmmmmmmmmm bristlecone pines "the oldest organisms on the planet" -- oh, right, fine, 5000yo individuals, f i n e
South America o'clock!
- araucaria are Logical Pine Trees
- slender-billed parakeets eat their seeds
- alerce trees are "redwoods of the south" in longer growing seasons
- "very few animals" "but VOLCANOES" "bizarre world of Miniature Creatures"
- ... WORLD'S SMALLEST DEER EATS GUNNERA (pudú, 30cm high at shoulder)
- "the male must stay alert" to look after the TINY BABS
- ... the kodkod cat. oh no it's the tiniest predatory cat.
- ... AND ARE EATING THE LAST OF THE SUMMER'S HATCHING MOTHS
- "noone knows why the creatures here are so small"
wait where have we gone
was that "the deciduous forests of home"
we're definitely seeing bluebells hecking everywhere and it sounds like local birds
-- okay we rewound, it's excellent timelapse of snowmelt->snowdrops->daffodils->bluebells, but yes, he did in fact say "home" so I assume this is l'Angleterre???
did u no: deciduous trees have broader leaves and so there's less light on the forest floor "but they're also thin, soft and edible"
- CATEMPILLARS
- TIMELAPSE OF CATEMPILLARS
- ANGER SHouTYBIRB
- FOPS
- "It's spring in the great broad-leaved forests of Europe and Asiatic Russia"
- .... mandarin duck sex...
- hello female mandarin duck NESTING IN A TREE HOLE
- ... OH NO HER DUCKLINGS HOP OUT FROM A GREAT HEIGHT
- THEY FLOAT
- okay they don't mostly they like attempt to clide with their shit little 24h old wings and then go inelegantly PLOMP
- they BOUNCE
- DrAmAtIc MuSiC
- "the forest pool is almost a mile away!!!"
- ... I swear I know this flute music
- DUCKLING ballET
Hello the east coast of NAm.
- Tonight Is Special (June)
- is it a sex thing
- ... after seventeen years underground CREATURES are STIRRING oh dear cicada
- ... they emerge from underground and then find a tree and Climb Up It
- "at first there are merely thousands, but soon more than a billion swarm all over the forest"
- ... they climb out of their external skeletons to be Adult Winged Form as soon as they hit the upper branches. they start out white and soft while their wings inflate... AND THEN OH BOY AND THEN.
- they do the forest A Heckin Eat
- ... and they're also super clumsy, but also turtles do a great big heckin eat and so do the birbs etc etc etc hello tiny mammals
- most of them see this only once in a lifetime!
- ... hi raccoon
- ... but the predators get Too Full
- ... so then there's a Great Fuckening
- and then eggs are laid and the adults die and there are no more cicadas for 17 years, wtf
- "the nutrients in a generation of cicadas are returned to the soil all at once, and the trees enjoy a marked spurt in growth. this may be the single largest dose of fertiliser in the natural world."
- "a primeval sound heralds the onset of autumn" in Eastern Europe as the days get shorter ... yep It's A Sex Thing. Hello deer. You have antlers.
- "(DEER BELLOWING)" say the captions evocatively.
In The Broadleaf Forests Of Russia Winter Is Particularly Severe.
- But There Will Always Be Some Who Benefit From Hardship.
- black vultures hello friends
- ... hello we're seeing the Amur leopard again: no leaves for cover & no young prey animals + cubs, ergo Lots Of Pressure.
- "but the cub doesn't share its mothers snse of urgency" i.e. it's hunting her tail because it's a Responsible Adult
- oh boy, only 40 left in the wild.
only somehow we're now at "but it's nearly the end of winter again!!!" and getting more timelapse of snowdrops because Spring In Deciduous Woodland
- "the spring blooms of deciduous woodland have no equivalent in either the conifer forests or the great tropical jungles" because you actually get sunlight directly on the forest floor for a few weeks, huh
- yssssss timelapse of an oak coming into full leaf and... then colour change is this ACTUALLY timelapse or is it just ... like... how did they shoot this
- NAm does the autumnal thing, It Can Be Seen From Space
- meanwhile in the tropics the dry season is so severe that the leaves get shed IN SUMMER because it gets so hot the trees can't afford the water loss, huh
- hello!!!! India's teak forests are Good Aminals!!!
- Salvation Is At Hand, the Mahua Tree Is About To Bloom... with flowers that are full of liquid, huh
- the langur monkeys and birds drop enough of the flowers that deer follow along underneath eating the fallen flowers; the deer Spot The Predators
YESSSSS MADAGASCAR HELLO TREES
- tropics, wet season
- baobab leaves regrow leaves & collect water for Storage in Trunks
- "the baobab's real magic ... happens at night, and high in the tree tops"
- ... "flush with water, the baobab prepares itself for an unforgettable display" they say, showing us DICK FLOWERS
- ..............
- ..........................................
- "once started, the foot-long flowers can open fully in less than a minute"
- hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
- th a n k u sound effects human (strings + harp)
- now people come to pollinise them via Eat a Nectar okay
- mouse lemurs hibernate throughout dry season and... world's smallest primate lives in house-shares of like a dozen in a wee hole in a tree
- the baobab are literally visibly dripping nectar
- DINNER TIME Says everyone
- I will grudgingly concede that those are very good curled-up exterior bud wossnames
- But The Nectar! Is Not Intended! For Lemurs!
- These giant hawk moths are the drinkers the tree needs to attract!
- because while the lemurs lick nectar up from the ends of petals, the hawk moths get ALL UP in the FLOWERY BUSINESS... and occasionally get eaten by a lemur
- "the lemurs might seem to be a best for the baobab... steal the nectar, eat the pollinators..." but they're only wee so as they're fighting the hawk moths They Do become Covered in Pollen
In summary: wet vs dry seasons in tropical forests, summer & winter in the temperate zones
- Trees Survive Annual Change, it their Special Trick
DIARIES
"How do we bring a static tree to life on screen?" "The solution is usually to move the camera... but how did they do it?"
... with hot air balloons ("cinebule" -- "first flying machine specifically designed for filming" says the VERY FRENCH inventor)
Madagascan trip Most Memorable
- "it's basically a deck chair with a baloon on top" "I'm a little nervous" "I can see where my head's gonna be, it's going to be incredibly closer to that burner" "I do have a fear of heights, I mostly have a fear of falling through them to the ground, but there's a little seatbelt and BBC Health & Safety's very good, I'm sure this will be... fine."
- What the Fuck are these white people doing, think the children
- "as long as the wind stays good and they don't land in Mozambique, we should be absolutely fine"
- "they'll need to communicate really closely, which will be interesting, because you can barely hear over the fan and Dany's English isn't very good"
- "They're either gonna get on really well or it'll be a disaster"
- "I go down! Sorry!" THEY FLEW into the TREE
- "we're just deciding which tree to try to crash land into, preferably the hardest, spikiest one nearby"
... okay this is my favourite of all the diaries so far
- the propeller's damaged
- and now the exhaust is A Problem
oh n o
oh. no.
TRAGIC ACCORDIAN MUSIC about the cinebule needing a MAJOR OVERHAUL
wtf are these white people EVEN say the locals.
... okay definitely my favourite, oh No.
Listening. TMA. Spoilers for 168. Oh no Jon is so delighted by Martin's ridiculous petty jealousy I am CHARMED.
Cooking. smitten kitchen's sweet potato and chickpea salad, minus coriander and plus some buttermilk in the dressing. Was good. Will make again.
Sourdough loaf feat. bottom of the proving basket filled with poppy seeds. This worked and I Am Going To Do It Again.
Eating. A made a flapjack variant using treacle! Which was... interesting, but we came to the conclusion that fundamentally neither of us is actually particularly keen on Interesting Depth Of Flavour in our flapjack, thanks, so that probably won't be repeated.
Exploring. Another Reckless trip to Trent Park; we saw CATERPILLARS and also visited the Water Garden, which I'd been keen to. Azaleas and rhododendrons excellent. Flag irises also pretty great.
Creating. A massively self-indulgent aerial view of the allotment!
I'm gearing up to start attempting to put something together with plotly.
Making & mending. Soddit, allotment infrastructure projects go here now, It Has Been Decreed.
ERGO: I have, I think, completed the fruit cage. As of Thursday I'd moved the door (involving digging up two large lumps of masonry, ugh) and got mesh into place around all the newly-reorganised sides, and applied a few more netting clips to some gaps in the ceiling.
This is particularly pleasing because I was able to finish it up using parts I had kicking around spare when the initial fruitcage plan Didn't Work, such that I didn't actually have to buy anything and then wait for postage in order to finish it. Fruit cage.
Growing. At home: another batch of Greek Gigantes germinating, along with the Double Red sweetcorn sowed in small newspaper pots. One more go at purple holy basil going in the propagator; the tulsi that's potted up is big enough that I pulled a ceremonial leaf off for inclusion in dinner tonight, which is a nice milestone.
On the patio, things have suffered a little in the wind: we lost one proto-fig and I've had to dry one lovage leaf (and stake another). Strawberries and the blueberry are setting fruit, though, and the thyme and chives are recovering well; the bay is putting forth abundant new growth; I've babied the celeriac insufficiently and lost most of it but the purple sprouting broccoli is rapidly approaching ready to be planted out. The comedy onions have shot up since being given a weak fertiliser.
At the plot, the lemon leaves grow ever more vigorously. I'm up to six tomatoes in the ground in the greenhouse bed (with spring onions coming up around them), and most of the rest have visible flowers on; I've left the greenhouse door fully open tonight as a gesture toward hardening them off (having had it open during a lot of the day and propped a little open overnight for about a week now) and I need to get serious about working out where to plant them. The chillis are all of them producing flowers, which are much prettier than I was expecting. Peppers continue putting forth leaves but no flowers as yet; eleven of the cucumbers are industriously growing true leaves and good grief I need to work out where to put them and also probably pot them up; one loofa has sprouted!
Outdoors I am getting thoroughly impatient for the Ribes various to ripen up (and I think Adam is similarly impatient for the cherries). The early raspberries are setting fruit. The first of the artichokes are making themselves known (and probably I ought have another go at working out when to harvest them such that they're actually edible). There are BROAD BEANS on the BROAD BEAN PLANTS; the peas are definitely increasing in volume but I've not yet seen any evidence that they're considering flowering; the courgette has survived being planted out into a bed and I've got some more beans in around it; rather to my astonishment, the Greek Gigantes I sowed directly are doing vastly better than the ones I started indoors, early, and then planted out, so with luck I should be getting plenty of those after all.
I'm making steady progress with weeding: I'm keeping on top of it in most of the beds under cultivation, I'm mulching the Ribes one pizza box & bucket of woodchip at a time, and I'm ever-so-slowly clearing out some of the beds that aren't in cultivation with a view to planting some of the ridiculous number of seedlings out in them. On the list, but not yet at the top of it, is weeding enough of the bank along the edge of the plot to sow handfuls of poppy seed.
... I may slightly have also written a ridiculous wishlist for seeds to get (or at least consider getting) next year.
Observing. I've been greatly enjoying the ridiculous thirty-foot-high wisteria-and-clematis tower just down the road, and ditto the various other wisteria. Intermittent cowslips in the lawn. LAWN FOX has made more appearances. Haven't seen the bat in a while, but I'm reminding myself that I didn't spot it at all until June, last year.
Playing. Horn: I continue vaguely actually reading the book while doing exercises around it. The retune of the horn appears in most respects to be an improvement, but for various reasons I'm having to work a bit harder to get the top of my range and I'm trying not to sulk too much about having gone in one fell swoop from an actually almost pleasant tone on my top C to one that is... less so.
PoGo: I got in from the allotment on Wednesday evening shortly after the clock struck 6, and speculatively opened up the app, and speculatively tapped on the nearby gym I thought might people might be raiding at... and got into a Terrakion raid with a remote pass and about 2 seconds to spare. The previous round I utterly failed to get one, so imagine please my delight at having a shiny.
Elsewise notable: 100% Oshawott. Shadow Larvitar that'll be 93% if purified. Two shiny Seedot during rather desultory community day play.
no subject
no subject