bugs in bloom

Photos from the garden.

Some tiny bugs in tiny flowers: 

A red damselfly perched on a bamboo cane:

A blue damselfly perched on the same bamboo cane:

sequestering carbon, several books at a time CLVI

The latest batch, before the Christmas batch arrives.

ALife 2025 day 3

The day started with some parallel sessions of contributed papers: I went to some interesting ones on evolution.  Then was the day's keynote, by Chris Kempes.  He covered a variety of physical constraints on living organisms: physical laws limit what life can be.  Scaling laws, metabolic rates and growth rates, the way proteins are more dilute in larger cells, the physics of the small: these are all consequences of physics, and so may be universal laws.

On to lunch, and then the excursion!  On registration, we were given a choice of several excursions to a variety of local temples.  I had little to guide my choice, except I saw the words "bamboo forest" on one, so chose that.  On the bus on the way there, the guide taught us to count to ten in Japanese (knowing what little I know of Japanese, I expect the reality is much more complicated than these ten little words!)

We walked from the bus park along a road of very touristy shops, to the temple complex.  We went in the main temple, after removing our shoes.  There was a magnificent painting of a dragon on the ceiling, with a gaze that followed you around the room, but sadly, there was also a no photography rule.  After that, shoes back on, we walked through the complex, admiring the outside of buildings, the raked gravel, and the carefully tended trees.

If you look carefully, you can see three guys up in this tree, pruning it. (Click to embiggen.)

We carried on around the garden, to a lovely lake, also carefully curated.  It's just a little too early in the year for the full spectacular autumn colours.

If you look carefully, you can see a big carp in the bottom right corner.

We carried on up around the garden, to a vista point.

Temples below, mountains in the distance, framed by trees. The tree on the right has amazing spikey leaves

spikey

On to the bamboo forest.  I wouldn't want to make my way through that; fortunately there was a nice wide path.

impenetrable

Bamboo is a kind of grass.  A special kind of grass.

a colleague providing a hand for scale

After exiting the forest, we descended back down the valley, and made our way back to the bus via an ice cream shop in the touristy road.  

The bus then took us directly to the conference dinner, held in a huuuuuge and very modern convention building.  We had a delicious buffet, and wonderful conversation.  There was a bus to take us back to the starting point, but the little group I was with decided to walk back down instead.  It made a very pleasant 30 minute stroll on a warm evening to finish off a great day.

harvest 3

We are getting a sensible progression of these.

We expect one more crop this year.

If only the brassicas were similarly productive!  Well, they are; it's just that other things eat them first!

sunflower sizes

We have sunflowers scattered around the garden.  Same seeds, different results.

all of 3 inches "high"

about 5 foot, but rather "weedy"

close on 7 foot, with a Little Shop of Horrors vibe

micro veg

The onion harvest is ... disappointing.

(acorns for scale!)

The carrot harvest is no better.  I'm told these are supposed to be small carrots, but I don't think they are supposed to be that small?  And that few?

harvest 2

More potatoes!  These are coming in at the right speed to eat them, so we don't (yet?) have a glut.

I don't think we are going to get a good harvest of sunflower seeds, however.

this sad specimen is all of 18" tall

as good as new

The spare part for our broken garden shredder arrived today, thanks to the speed of online ordering.

This is somewhat less worn than the old broken component.

It has now been fixed, and we are shredding-capable again.

So, we've saved ourselves from having to buy a new shredder, for now.  And props to Bosch for designing repairable kit and selling spare parts!

make do and mend

 We've had our garden shredder since 2008 (when it cost £269), and it's worked hard since.

In particular, it recently reduced a huge pile of bamboo from the garden to little pieces that have become a new path.

We got it repaired when it was 10 years old, in 2018, when it needed some electrical work.  Since that cost £100 (parts, labour, and shipping) we did wonder whether it would be better to get a new one.  But we got it mended, and it lasted fine.

Until today, when a large chunk of aluminium fell out of it.

That doesn't look good!  Surely we will have to replace it now?

My other half took the shredder apart to find the problem.

That's the internal guts that does the shredding.  It does look like it would be expensive to replace.

But wait!  A quick web search shows that you don't need to replace the whole thing, just that broken piece in the front.

And that costs only £26.  So we'll try that before shelling out more than ten times as much for a new shredder.

first harvest

We've had a few home-grown strawberries so far, but this is the first potato harvest of the season.  (A second crop is due later.)

Ickworth National Trust

We went with some friends to the National Trust centre at Ickworth today.  Another magnificent house in magnificent grounds.

We walked around the gardens.  There is a hidden stumpery: well-hidden, as it took us a while to find it, but it was definitely worthwhile.  Lots of very jagged, alien-looking tree stumps arranged around a winding path.

There are more formal gardens, with occasional great views of the house.

This is just the central rotunda.  There are a couple of lovely wings, too.

And there are big trees, and strange statues.

Nobody expects the large wooden giraffe.

Several of the trees have amazing amounts of mistletoe adorning them.

There is a nice restaurant in the hotel that occupies one wing of the house.  We had only a light lunch, as it was very hot out.  On exiting, we got to see the front of the house, up close.

We then went for a longer walk, around the park lands.  Lovely views, but very hot in the open.  So, back to the entrance, where they sell ice creams... then home.

blooming spring

The elder is looking simply superb this year.

looking down from an upstairs window gives the best view

king of the castle

We had a tree cut down recently. One of the neighbourhood cats clearly likes this new perch.

not in a pear tree

 View from our kitchen window:

snapped on my phone through the kitchen window, so a little bit of reflection on some pics

This red-legged partridge was pecking around under the birdfeeder, on which was a great tit flinging seed around.

By the time we got a proper camera with a bigger lens, this bird had flown.

sequestering carbon, several books at a time CXLVII

The latest batch before the Christmas presents drop (which means I'm up-to-date on databasing, for a day or so at least!):

silver and gold

We've recently removed a lot of bamboo from the garden, as it was getting rather large and overgrown.  We had a silver birch sapling growing on the edge of the thicket, but hadn't noticed quite how tall it had grown, desperate to find light next to the tall bamboo until the latter had been cleared away.  

Today, despite that early pink sky, the weather has been glorious, and has highlighted the tree in glorious low winter sunshine against a brilliant blue sky.  Beautiful, if in a slightly etiolated way. 

harvest failure

 The carrots have not been a success.

more harvest

The cooker and Cox apple trees are bearing fruit.

I predict apple crumbles to come...

Audley End

We went to a garden show at Audley End.  The show was okay, but we would have liked more "show gardens".  The street food vans were better: I had a very meaty tasty duck wrap.  We didn't go in the house, but we did walk round the gardens.  There was a large kitchen garden with vegetables, and more espalier apple trees than you could shake a stick at.  But for me, the best bit was the woodland walk, with some great trees.

harvest

 My other half planted a few potatoes this year.  We have produce!

Not quite enough for full self-sufficiency, I suspect...