vital functions have resumed
Mar. 12th, 2022 01:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberettAlright. So. Last week! Last week.
Reading. I picked The Silmarillion back up! It is much easier to follow the Ainulindalë this time around! And then I ground to a halt because while I understand the meaning this sentence (emphasised) is attempting to convey, I still haven't managed to wrap my head around the grammatical construction:
Playing. One round of Scrabble, in which I was delighted to manage to turn what felt like a rack that ought-to-go-but-wouldn't into DELUDINg.
Cooking. So much food. The last-but-two of the blood oranges got turned into blood orange meringue pie, which I felt would have benefited from more acidity than it actually had. Elsewise little of note, except that I seem finally to have got the hang of cooking rice, at least, on the induction hob at the mouldering ancestral pile.
Eating. Pasties! From The Gear Farm Pasty Co. (Facebook link, I'm afraid), and also a bunch of purple sprouting broccoli from the associated vegetable stand, which I could not resist. (The honesty box system involved putting change in a tin, OR going to the pasty shop and paying contactlessly, OR doing a bank transfer after the fact. I was charmed.)
Also I got a tiny tub of Roskilly's Raspberry Iced Yoghurt from the Eden Project, to eat in the rain, and I am very glad that I did. Also also we (... Adam) bought a slightly alarming amount of alcohol at said Eden Project. So far I can report that the Wild Wingletang Gin (gorse-flavoured!) is extremely tasty, and the Cornish Honey Cider (made with honey from Eden Project hives, claimed the blarney in the shop) was extremely pleasant but not sufficiently so that we'll go out of our way to buy it again. Adam has been enjoying a range of beers, and I am looking forward to trying the blackberry mead (not least because I have Very Definite Ideas about what Cornish hedgerow blackberries taste like and will be interested to discover if that's what they're actually using).
Exploring. On Tuesday we visited the Eden Project (
), where I particularly enjoyed the roul roul partridges, the industrial plant, and learning that cardamom is a member of the ginger family. (Ths is indeed the most "indoors" I have done in a very long time. It was mid-week and rainy and fairly quiet, and we masked inside the biomes, which have good air circulation, and we appear to have got away with it.)
On Friday, we went back to the Seal Sanctuary, because the tickets from our previous trip are good for a year. This time the hospital contained some seal pups, including one from the actual beach just below the house, which washed up after Storm Eunice. The nursery pools also contain many more residents, which always put me delightedly in mind of Chantenay carrots because they are so SMALL and ROUND and CONICAL.
... and there was also a Large Seal who was Extremely Sexy. I was initially confused about the smooth ruddy protuberance emerging from the approximate region its stomach, as was the seagull who was pretty sure it was probably food (Seal was Outraged when the seagull Actually Pecked, but didn't actually, you know, put it away), but slapping "its own body with a pectoral flipper" helped disambiguate...
(We once again failed to make it as far as the beavers.)
On Saturday we went to Glendurgan, where I spent less time than I really wanted to exploring the maze, but met a delightful array of ridiculous daffodils, some stunningly architectural double white camellias, and also a black-and-green iris.
The final adventure of the week was on the way back out of Cornwall, where we stopped at the Screech Owl Sanctuary (named not for the species of owl but instead for the founder's surname). We wandered around and looked at the various owls-in-cages, which did a lovely job of being variously trapezoidal and triangular (esp. the one sat on a nest), and Adam had a Thirty Minute Owl Experience in which he held four (4) real owls and one (1) fake owl. Iggy, the Indian Scops owl, really liked being scritched behind their ears. I had no idea that tawny frogmouth tongues were Like That! Very soft excellent lieswouldwill visit again.
Growing. The P. edulis survived being taken down to Cornwall and back!
Observing. SO MANY CRITTERS. For lots of them, see under Exploring.
Additionally: I saw the local choughs (!) twice (once where I didn't quite trust my ID but in retrospect, yep, that was them), and in the garden we were blessed with a plenitude of robins (I can but assume we have a breeding pair), blue tits, coal tits, and goldcrests! Pied wagtails also featured at Eden. And, of course, there were seagulls.
Reading. I picked The Silmarillion back up! It is much easier to follow the Ainulindalë this time around! And then I ground to a halt because while I understand the meaning this sentence (emphasised) is attempting to convey, I still haven't managed to wrap my head around the grammatical construction:
... this habitation might seem a little thing to those who consider only the majesty of the Ainur, and not their terrible sharpness; as who should take the whole field of Arda for the foundation of a pillar and so raise it until the cone of its summit were more bitter than a needle; or who consider only the immeasurable vastness of the World, which still the Ainur are shaping, and not the minute precision to which they shape all things therein.I think the thing I keep tripping up on is my expectation that "who" should refer to the same people (i.e. the ones observing and judging the Arda) in all three instances, but I can't work out how to make that make grammatical sense in the context of the italicised phrase. Explanations eagerly solicited.
Playing. One round of Scrabble, in which I was delighted to manage to turn what felt like a rack that ought-to-go-but-wouldn't into DELUDINg.
Cooking. So much food. The last-but-two of the blood oranges got turned into blood orange meringue pie, which I felt would have benefited from more acidity than it actually had. Elsewise little of note, except that I seem finally to have got the hang of cooking rice, at least, on the induction hob at the mouldering ancestral pile.
Eating. Pasties! From The Gear Farm Pasty Co. (Facebook link, I'm afraid), and also a bunch of purple sprouting broccoli from the associated vegetable stand, which I could not resist. (The honesty box system involved putting change in a tin, OR going to the pasty shop and paying contactlessly, OR doing a bank transfer after the fact. I was charmed.)
Also I got a tiny tub of Roskilly's Raspberry Iced Yoghurt from the Eden Project, to eat in the rain, and I am very glad that I did. Also also we (... Adam) bought a slightly alarming amount of alcohol at said Eden Project. So far I can report that the Wild Wingletang Gin (gorse-flavoured!) is extremely tasty, and the Cornish Honey Cider (made with honey from Eden Project hives, claimed the blarney in the shop) was extremely pleasant but not sufficiently so that we'll go out of our way to buy it again. Adam has been enjoying a range of beers, and I am looking forward to trying the blackberry mead (not least because I have Very Definite Ideas about what Cornish hedgerow blackberries taste like and will be interested to discover if that's what they're actually using).
Exploring. On Tuesday we visited the Eden Project (
), where I particularly enjoyed the roul roul partridges, the industrial plant, and learning that cardamom is a member of the ginger family. (Ths is indeed the most "indoors" I have done in a very long time. It was mid-week and rainy and fairly quiet, and we masked inside the biomes, which have good air circulation, and we appear to have got away with it.)On Friday, we went back to the Seal Sanctuary, because the tickets from our previous trip are good for a year. This time the hospital contained some seal pups, including one from the actual beach just below the house, which washed up after Storm Eunice. The nursery pools also contain many more residents, which always put me delightedly in mind of Chantenay carrots because they are so SMALL and ROUND and CONICAL.
... and there was also a Large Seal who was Extremely Sexy. I was initially confused about the smooth ruddy protuberance emerging from the approximate region its stomach, as was the seagull who was pretty sure it was probably food (Seal was Outraged when the seagull Actually Pecked, but didn't actually, you know, put it away), but slapping "its own body with a pectoral flipper" helped disambiguate...
(We once again failed to make it as far as the beavers.)
On Saturday we went to Glendurgan, where I spent less time than I really wanted to exploring the maze, but met a delightful array of ridiculous daffodils, some stunningly architectural double white camellias, and also a black-and-green iris.
The final adventure of the week was on the way back out of Cornwall, where we stopped at the Screech Owl Sanctuary (named not for the species of owl but instead for the founder's surname). We wandered around and looked at the various owls-in-cages, which did a lovely job of being variously trapezoidal and triangular (esp. the one sat on a nest), and Adam had a Thirty Minute Owl Experience in which he held four (4) real owls and one (1) fake owl. Iggy, the Indian Scops owl, really liked being scritched behind their ears. I had no idea that tawny frogmouth tongues were Like That! Very soft excellent lies
Growing. The P. edulis survived being taken down to Cornwall and back!
Observing. SO MANY CRITTERS. For lots of them, see under Exploring.
Additionally: I saw the local choughs (!) twice (once where I didn't quite trust my ID but in retrospect, yep, that was them), and in the garden we were blessed with a plenitude of robins (I can but assume we have a breeding pair), blue tits, coal tits, and goldcrests! Pied wagtails also featured at Eden. And, of course, there were seagulls.