Author Archives: essiep

Vulpes Vitreol

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18°C, grey, rain overdue

Incredible: Having trouble believing this story: BBC. A fox attacks two sleeping children in London. The response is as difficult to believe as the original story. Apparently they trapped a fox in the garden later in the day and shot it. Is this supposed to be some kind of justice, or are they taking revenge out on a whole species?
Imagine- someone burgles your house, so the police will stop the next bloke passing your front door and imprison him awaiting the firing squad in the morning. Doesn’t matter that there is no known connection between the perpetrator and the suspect, why bother finding evidence beyond the location, let’s just kill something. That’ll appease the locals, they’ll be baying for blood. Perhaps it’s a Tory ward, they’ve always liked killing foxes, no matter how cruelly.

Escape

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15°C, thunder & lightning

Tales from the compost heap: dug a new compost heap space yesterday. "Dug" because there was another slab 6" below the surface. Anyway, doing that I disturbed a mouse who dived under a block which needed to be moved. Carefully, I lifted it and the mouse sprang upwards a foot in the air and scampered away. He was quite fast, apart from doing another Zebedee like leap on the way.
Conventional wisdom has it that it’s part of their escape tactic, to distract & confuse predators. It’s the word ‘confuse’ that needs a re-think; what they really do is render the predator helpless with laughter. There must be other examples of natural behaviour that needs a re-think.

It’s early, and we’ve started the day with a 5am thunderstorm.

The Nun on the rock

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24°C, hot, getting close & clouds building.

Today: I climbed a 2,000ft mountain in the Aran range, at at the top was a nun sitting on a rock. There she was, dressed in walking boots and a full habit – all pale blue and eating her packed lunch; making tea with a camper’s stove. I invited myself a seat next to her and ate my lunch too. We swapped life stories, she told me about her old dog and made a fuss of mine. There was a pond near by and the nun encouraged us to wade in and cool off my dog (who was obviously very hot in her thick coat). Out of her rucksack, she pulled a fold-open aluminium wind-break to shelter her meths burner; that would ensure a decent hot cup of tea. After a paddle in the pond, we chatted some more and then parted in opposite directions. It didn’t take long to get the the summit where I looked back to see her steadily walking away back to her life.

Cold week

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12°C, rain (at last)

Manflu: on the tail end, it’s been a whole week.
Runner beans are amusing: I feel like a little kid with this, but I planted runner beans and they shot up after 2 days. The bean drives a spear like root downwards lifting itself out of the ground. Next it splits and the first leaves grow out of the gap. Remember growing cress seeds on blotting paper when you wre at junoir school? It feels like that. Simple pleasures!

Presumably, I wait ’till the bean part has used its food up and withered before I plant it out.
Please advise.
Film: A Beautiful Mind- I’ve got mixed feelings about this one, but basically, a mathematical genius (John Forbes Nash) suffering with schizophrenic delusions struggles with his meds, brutal 1950s mental health treatment and a marriage. He lives with the imagined characters to the end, but his wife (real) also does not age with her model-like looks. According to Wiki, there is some considerable deviation from the guy’s real life.
There are plenty of other references to J Nash on the web, co-incidentally, on the BBC‘s site today in
"Creative minds ‘mimic schizophrenia’"

You must realise what a feat of concentration this page has been with the sound of my dog’s gurgling belly in here.

compost

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23°C, cloudless & stillSun

Getting better, had the energy to load up the compost with the neighbour’s compost binful. Grass cuttings are amazing, they come out all warm.
The Arborist is coming soon to cut that Eucalyptus tree down. that means some swift fence building at just the right time. I hope it rains, the fence posts will be so much easier to drive in. I may have the energy to replace the gutters & arrange the feed to the butt in a day or two.
Hildur Guðnadóttir:

 Doesn’t that look like Clevedon Pier? It does, doesn’t it?

Return to the slow country

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26°C, hot & sunny

It’s not ironic that I have a cold on the hottest weekend of the summer so far. It’s merely a coincidence. there are always advantages to this kind of thing- maybe my Achilles tendon can recover fully with a few days off the bike. Dosed up with cold remedy I have been able to dig out another slab, plant some wild-flowers (don’t worry, I bought them, they’re legit). Comfrey and a few others.
I thought I had got all of those slabs, but there are a few left. I will route them all out in the end.
Those recycled compost bags are so cheap that it’s no problem to use them until my own compost heap is ready.

This is the Pyracanthus, the slabs were to stop Rosie digging, but she’s not interested in digging any more.So they’re gone.


Here is my newest Artemesian.

Big But

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15°C, it’s warming up. Light frost to begin.

Bought a water butt; haven’t exactly figured how I’m going to plumb it in but at least I got the new guttering to feed it.
Perhaps a photo when I am not so bone tired.

That really is a fabulous Angelica plant, don’t you think?

Tendinitis

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13°C, showers soon

Mild Achilles-tendinitis has been niggling for the past few weeks. It’s very mild but stubbornly persistent, no treatment yet, but I may use ibuprofen before I ride today.

Rode: only did 35 miles and feel rather tired. Something’s not right. The rain didn’t come, had to hose the garden instead.

A Janus outlook

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11°C, clear.

Looking into the future and the past. The Future, holds a day resting, I shall paint window ledges and bake a rhubarb crumble. This one will have apples and I quite fancy some grated ginger.
The past contains a week of tiring workload, late nights and an unforgettable concert in Manchester. My tutor group did their last day at school yesterday. I made them a leaving card with a portrait on the front. They went down well enough , I suspect that they were better drawings than last time.
The recent past is recorded in some quite nice photos in the woods: May at its best.:

That crappy little Fuji camera can redeem itself under favourable conditions.

...now for a catnap

Groovy!

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3-12°C, cold but bright.

Deaf Institute concert: The Books in a very groovy venue. Maybe tell you later if you are good, I now have some serious drawing to do.

We had travelled back in time to the 1970s. That decade looked better then I remembered; all earthy colours, apart from the purple nylon-flock wallpaper. Most of the blokes wore beards; the girls were under thinner layers of make-up than most of the impasto-caricatures that walk these streets. The Deaf Institute had a cafe on the first floor with the dance-hall upstairs. The only problem was the impressive looking domed roof with skylights- that meant the band couldn’t start until 21.45 when the light had faded enough for us to see their light-show.
I enjoyed the show thoroughly, despite the sound which was poorer than at Warwick a few years ago- it sounded a bit muffled and some speech was hard to follow. We struggled to think of a venue as stylish as this in the Midlands- maybe the Glee Club. I don’t know.