kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)

Four daffodil flowers, with yellow petals and a white crown.

From Sunday: I did not quite believe what I was seeing initially? Or perhaps better I did not quite understand what I was seeing. Brain was entirely made of "daffodil??? backwards?????"

As a consequence of attempting to hunt down the variety (which I had failed to make a note of while actually in its presence) I realised I could ask the RHS to show me a list of all the daffodil cultivars they know about. Apparently this is actually a subgenre with several members! But the thing that has thus far made me squawk WHAT most loudly is, without contest, Narcissus viridiflorus.

kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)

Yesterday I noticed that the cherry tree at the allotment had burst into flower:

a small cluster of white cherry blossom, dramatically sunlit

It definitely didn't have any open the previous time I'd checked (which I think was Saturday); I'm enjoying it immensely.

kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
  1. This evening's astonishing sunset, the whole sky afire, with clouds catching the light as they frayed into rain. (I did not photograph the tiny arc of rainbow.)
  2. A variety of excellently structural & sculptural dahlias.
  3. The Mystery Of The Missing Hair Stick.
  4. A Slug.
  5. I Finally Learned Where The Manual Focus Button On My Phone Is!!!
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)

The thing that worked to coax me out of the house this afternoon was a pharmacy trip. Have some flowers.

tiny yellow flowers with red sepals, and their pink-purple-green leaves

dark purple hyacinths draped over the edges of their trough planter

kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)

Tonight there was a wonderful barest sliver of a crescent moon. I didn't get a picture of it, but here's the morning light from a few days ago:

a frosty garage roof, some green hedges, and some bare branches gilded in morning light

kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)

Reading. Heston Blumenthal, Aliette de Bodard, Lois Oliver, Ursula Vernon )

Oh! And some academic writing by a sibling, for feedback.

Eating. Winterval fruit cake courtesy of my mother! Who also made us an extremely tasty butternut squash wellington, which I found far more convincing than the cauliflower variant I made lo these several years ago and will at least contemplate recreating. Many other good food also in that context.

Exploring. Had a lovely time poking around St Peter's Church in Coton -- excellent mediaeval architecture, smells properly of church, etc. ALAS we did not get to go up the TINY spiral staircase. Elsewise poking around in Coton and environs: found a medlar tree! And was very good and did not grab a carrier bag and help myself (largely because we wanted to get home sooner than would have been compatible with same...)

And! Glow Wild at Wakehurst Place! With GASTROPODS. It's an annual lantern trail, which has just concluded its tenth year; in contrast to previous visits we got a much stronger sense of narrative and theme this time. (Watch this space; I'm about to edit in a bunch of photos...)

Read more... )

Growing. Faffed about with repotting various things I'm overwintering.

Observing and celebrating: happy Gregorian new year. <3

kaberett: a watercolour painting of an oak leaf floating on calm water (leaf-on-water)

Yesterday evening we were collectively Having a Moment, as a household, and so I dragged us outside to Move Our Bodies For Our Stupid Mental Health, and the first five or ten minutes were still quite wretched and Anxiety Everywhere, BUT THEN we saw some squirrels bouncing around in a tree and paused to watch and one of them disappeared.

A did not, I think, actually observe it disappearing -- he was looking at the other one, possibly? -- so I sort of squeaked and flapped incoherently and attempted to point at the relevant bit of tree and --

a squirrel poking its face suspiciously out of the hollow stump of a tree branch

-- A NOSE APPEARED. Followed, a little while later, by the rest of its face (I was too busy being absolutely enthralled by the game of peek-a-boo a tree rat was playing with me to get photos any earlier in proceedings), and we were Watched Suspiciously until we carried on.

I have great big feelings about how full of wonder the world is.

kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)

a photo of the sea and a small stretch of coastline bathed in sunlight, with the top half of the frame blank white fog

[A landscape photograph. The top half of the image is blank white fog. The bottom of the fog bank is well-defined and abrupt. Beneath the layer of fog a garden, some cliffs, the sea, and the bottom half of an island can be seen. The top half of the island is also obscured by the fog. A short section of the coastline is brilliantly illuminated by light from the invisible sun.]

kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)

This afternoon I ran a lot of errands and appreciated a lot of front gardens.

+7 )

kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
We got a couple of ripen-at-home avocadoes a week or so ago, which we were planning to use in a specific meal (Meera Sodha's sweet potato and tenderstem bibimbap; link only includes ingredients), because the grocer also let us place an order for purple sweet potatoes, about which concept A was very enthusiastic. Alas we were informed first that the purple sweet potatoes would be replaced by normal orange ones, and second that there wouldn't be any sweet potatoes of any colour at all, actually. AND SO this morning I cut up one of the avocadoes to put on our toast, and rather to my astonishment it was perfect. I am not used to ever having ripen-at-home avocadoes come out perfect! This was very welcome. (On my other slice of toast I had some more of the blood-orange-and-cardamom marmalade. It transpires that it was actually perfectly fine to add the cardamom at the point in cooking that I did -- it just needed a few weeks to actually infuse.)

For lunch: we finished this week's soup (leek, celeriac, parsnip, and one token potato) yesterday, but as previously mentioned I had earlier in the week acquired Reduced Fresh Basil, in a larger quantity than was required by the recipe it was purchased for (I cannot keep sweet basil alive and I don't understand why). The fridge contained a Fancy Mozzarella courtesy, I think, of my mother. The fridge also contained cherry tomatoes. So instead of the Soup we have been defaulting to for most of the past few months (though we did also have Welsh rabbit at the beginning of this week, thereby using up some more leeks...), we consumed some things that needed using, and very pleasant they were too.

And then this afternoon I went to collect the overlocker, despite our inability to lay our hands on A's collection of bungee straps. (I took the ratchet strap for the Tramper, and Papa's valise strap that is mostly used as a physiotherapy tool, and lots of carrier bags, and a big Bag For Life.) The person giving it away had a progress pride door mat (not actually this design, but something very like it); despite the misgivings of A & co, it did actually fit (more or less) in my pannier, so I cycled homeward very slowly along most of the flat bits, with occasional get-off-and-push, and walked up the hill at the end. There were suddenly crocuses everywhere; I bimbled along an unnecessary but very pleasant stretch of the canal, and was rewarded by seeing Canada geese dabbling (Köpfchen in das Wasser, Schwanzchen in die Höh!), and ducks dozing, and moorhens industriously contemplating architectural projects, and a swan stood at the end of the path stretching out its wings and only grudgingly condescending to let me pass. (And then I sproinged one of the bits of the overlocker on a fencepost on the very narrow footbridge, because I had a sudden panic about Needing To Hurry because there was somebody trying to come the other way. A has subsequently unsproinged it, because he is excellent, and I have elsewhere been reassured that those bits always wind up getting sproinged and It's Fine.)

Have a photo:
A photo of grass framed by trees and copiously scattered with pale purple crocuses
kaberett: Reflections of a bare tree in river ice in Stockholm somehow end up clad in light. (tree-of-light)
Have another recent-ish photo.

a path, the sea, and the sky -- with rainbow

[The land slopes down from right to left, with the sea visible behind it. A path leads forward and disappears around to the right, and a rainbow seems to rise from where it ends.]
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)


Two baby capybara plus Several Adults at Shepreth Wildlife Park. One of the babies sneezed in its sleep. A Truly Excellent Adventure.
kaberett: Photo of a pile of old leather-bound books. (books)


The screenshot above is from a Duolingo "Complete the chat" exercise, with a prompt sentence and two possible responses to choose between. It goes as follows:

Prompt:C'était d'habitude une petite rue très sûre, très calme.It was usually a very safe, very quiet little road.
Option 1:Oui, il y avait souvent des accidents mystérieux.Yes, there were often mysterious accidents.
Option 2 (selected): Oui, on ne se sentait jamais en danger.Yes, one never felt oneself to be in danger.
kaberett: A stick figure wearing safety goggles taps their fingers together, standing over a pressure cooker on a stove. (xkcd-science)
A thing that keeps tripping me up with pad thai, right, is that it (a) contains a lot of different vegetables in the fashion that I make it, and (b) is best eaten immediately rather than cooked in bulk and reheated.

My usual instinct, when cooking, is to use A Reasonable Quantity of each vegetable in isolation. That is not an approach that works with this dish (in that the wok winds up overflowing and also there is more food than we can possibly eat in one sitting), so I'm currently working on talking myself down to preparing only a Ludicrously Small quantity of each individual vegetable with the end goal of not overcatering.

(This would work better if I didn't keep sabotaging myself compensating by adding More Types Of Vegetable, but I digress.)

So. Today's quandary: I had chopped up a very small quantity of broccoli, and wanted to steam it for a couple of minutes before actually chucking it in to stir-fry, but also I have a horror of generating Surplus Washing Up.

Ergo. )
kaberett: A very small snail crawls along the edge of a blue bucket, in three-quarters profile with one eyestalk elegantly extended. (tiny adventure snail)


[a bat swoops back and forth against the trees silhouetted against the sunset; the audio track features the output of a bat detector, held by My Glamorous Assistant just to the right of the shot. video taken 2021-04-19; first sighting of bats this year 2021-04-18]

Below the cut: THE SNAIL.

Read more... )

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