Category: Other and blather

I don’t have anything cohesive to offer, so let’s have a handful of loosely-or-not-at-all-associated whatevers, just so I can feel as though I had some sort of product to show for some of my activity of late.

We’re just coming down from the longest stretch of really summery weather we’ve had this year. The summer baby we timed just a little bit late got to spend some bonus time outside in warm weather. So did our autumn-baby-that-was.

I like blog posts to have pictures in them. I won’t share any amusing photos of me charging back and forth along the narrow backyardgarden, in thick fleece pantstrousers and bulky sweaterjumper, playing soccerfootball with an almost-three-year-old who’s getting difficult to tackle without fouling. Actually, I hope you’ll agree that probably no such photos exist, because they wouldn’t be very flattering if they did. Here’s one that does exist.

There. (Spot the baby.)

I made a cake last night. It’s really chocolatey, really sweet, really moist, and really dense. This is because it has more chocolate than flour in it. And more butter than flour. And more than twice as much sugar as flour. And I had to stop baking it before the skewer came out clean because it was getting late and the baby was ready to sleep and this has become an important parameter in our operational decisions. This cake was so rich I started to feel sick before I could finish my small slice. And that’s saying something. F was able to finish his but he humoured my concern that he might overdose on sugar, butter, and/or chocolate if he had another.

At home this morning, I spoke to as many people as I likely would have spoken to if I’d gone out; to wit, the postman (briefly), the Avon lady (briefly), and a Jehovah’s Witness.

Today at lunchtime, I had the brilliant idea of using a dried-out piece of toast I’d left in the toaster at lunchtime yesterday as a source of croutons for my soup. Actually, it wasn’t that brillliant an idea.

Last thing for today: something beautiful, in case you missed it, like I did until a family member linked to it on Facebook (thanks, Doug!). Almost everyone reading this will have seen Doug’s link. Still.

 

 

In September 2011, I did a double-take:

I didn’t think I was ever going to see this again.

What is it? A healthy-looking horse chestnut tree.

A decade ago, when horse chestnut leaves started to turn in the autumn, it was a show of brilliant Rastafarian colours. Since then, most of the horse chestnut trees in the Cambridge area have been afflicted with something that turns the leaves brown in the summer and the show never happens. I’ve seen reference to fungus, bacteria, and leaf miner moths; I’m sure the leaf miners are active in this region, but I don’t know if it’s the main problem of all the trees.

Here’s a shot from September 2002:

Green and luscious. Not luscious for eating. I should find a better word, or stop thinking so literally…

Those fantastic spiny things contain the horse chestnuts, or conkers (these have cultural significance in the UK), for anyone reading who hasn’t seen this before.

One from October 2002:

Pow!

Here’s one from mid-June 2011:

Bleh. Looks like leaf miners. If every spot on those leaves represents one caterpillar, that’s a lot of caterpillars!

To make this post complete, I should really go and take a picture of an average-looking horse chestnut tree in September 2011. For now, just imagine all the leaves dry, shrivelled, and totally brown, next to other kinds of trees that haven’t really got going on changing their colours.

I guess it’s only a matter of time for this guy too, but I’m taking the 2011 show as a bonus…

Sometimes, if you’ve been reading a blog regularly, you’ll see an entry that you’ve read before, reposted for new readers to spot. This is kind of like that, in that I wrote it about a year ago. It’s kind of not like that, in that, I didn’t think it was interesting, funny, or informative enough to post the first time, let alone twice.

I’m putting it up now, because: (a) I found it interesting that the weather leading up to September 23, 2010 was evidently summerier* than most of this year’s actual summer, (b) my cares and occupations were very different this time last year, which is, I admit, only likely to be obvious or interesting to me; (c) there may be a ghost of a smidge of useful photographic information in there for someone; (d) I got tired of seeing this old draft languishing but not having the heart to toss it; (e) I wanted an excuse to post my unremarkable moon picture, because the moon is awesome, and (f) I’m too tired and busy to come up with anything new that’s any better than this.

Without further ado, here’s last years leftover reheated:

Yesterday was the first time in a long while that I’ve ridden home after dark. In the periodic illumination of the bike path, bare legs sniffing cool, then warm currents of air, I felt surrounded by campus-y-ness. There’s a golden, warm version of this, when all you hear on a warm lunch hour is the hum of nearby building plant and maybe a lawn mower, and there’s a chillier, more excited version attached to memories of September arrivals back when I wasn’t here (or wherever) the whole time. I think Cambridge has just changed its summer clothes for the term-time ones, ready for the undergrads to return.

The moon was glowing behind some hazy ripples, and I thought it looked cool and wished for a camera.

When I reached home, I bounced straight back outside with my tripod and camera, and aimed for the moon. The magic was gone but I practiced focusing on the moon, which was a bit more visible. My tripod (Slik Sprint Pro, old now but here‘s a contemporary review) is not quite up to the task of keeping a DSLR and 70-300mm (Sigma) lens from drooping but I can’t blame it as when it applied for the job my only camera was a Canon A700.

I’m putting up a shot just because I’ve never had a camera that could show this much detail on the moon even on a clear night. This is cropped, but also scaled down. There are much better D90/Sigma 70-300 moon pictures to be found on Flickr, but this one is mine, so it’s special. (To me.)

Next I swapped back to my kit lens (18-105mm Nikkor) to catch the roses, because they deserve some recognition. They took a beating when we had some real summer weather followed by a blast of windy rain. There were petals everywhere and we didn’t see a lot of blossoms again for a while.

As I played with the focus and the settings on my camera, the motion-sensor light kept going out on me.

Um. “The End.”

*Firefox doesn’t think there’s any problem with “summerier” as a word. Lemme try something else: campusiness. Nope. I don’t get away with that one.