Grass, tools and evolution

I planted the lawn today.

  George now has no back garden for at least a week, maybe a fortnight.  I used aerator shoes to drive the seed in deep, like two inches deep.  Some's only an inch deep, having been raked in.  Some's at the surface, squashed in with my boots.  With any luck, a storm coming out of nowhere won't be as devastating a thing this year as it was last year.  We may end up with a half-decent lawn this Summer!  

  As thanks for putting the lawn in, I got given a lovely new edger.  I've never owned an edger before.  This one's a thing of beauty: dark hardwood handle, sturdy, quality lathework, and with a bright stainless steel blade.  I think I'm in love.  Can't wait to put in a proper border with it.  

Lastly then, the strawberries I planted last year are greening up and back on the grow.  More specifically: half of them are.  The other half are either dead or dormant.  Thankfully the surviving half are from all four cultivars planted.  This is a good thing because the weird second Winter we just had is not great for plants.  The limey London soil is definitely not great for fruiting plants (my strawbs are in compost, but there's soil beneath and the alkali is capable of creeping up).  

Those which survived are hardier to frost and more tolerant of the edaphic conditions than those which died.  

This is the basis of evolution.  Evolution depends upon life in the midst of death.  Those which survive go on to pass on those very genes which helped them survive.  This adapts the species to the prevailing conditions.  The surviving strawberries will propagate new plants - both vegetatively and sexually - until the Strawbrary is full.  Those new plants will be adapted to fit the prevailing conditions of my garden.  After a few more generations they'll have thoroughly evolved to fit the niche of "strawberry plant in Joey's Strawbrary", after which they'll need to evolve again before they'll be able to thrive half as well in any garden but mine.

Life plods on, as ever it has.

Flies, bats, other stuff

The composter is attracting flies, even as we are fast approaching the Winter.  This must mean the composter is generating a certain amount of warmth, which is nice.  Getting rid of the flies is something of a must, however.  I don't mind flies, they do their jobs in the ecosystem and the world keeps turning; but they encourage spiders, which I personally quite like but which my sisters get freaked out over.  It's bad to put house spiders out in Winter as they won't last the night, so I resist doing that, but I don't want to swell their numbers by letting a fly explosion run unchecked.  The solution is to assert a biological control over the flies. More spiders are out of the question.  Frogs are crap.  Wasps scare the living shit out of me.  Birds can be great, but there's quite a spread with birds and you don't know when putting in a bird box whether you'll attract the sort of bird that likes flies or the sort of bird that likes your crops.

I've decided on bats.  London has many species of bat, and Strawberry Hill comes alive at dusk with the tiny, leathery sound of pipistrelles in flight.  I'm picking up a pair of bat boxes tomorrow which I'll fit high up in the big Maple just as soon as I can get ten minutes use of an extension ladder.  Eventually I'll set up BatCam as part of the BirdCam project, but for now the priority is pest control.  It's also nice to be able to offer shelter to an endangered species.

I'll need to stain the bat boxes so as to protect the wood from the elements.  Should I stain them a blending colour like green or brown?  Red like the fences?  Something like purple or blue to be bold yet stylish?  Something that really sticks out like a neon pink?  Or should I stain them black and then paint a little batman symbol on the front?  Decisions decisions...

Mike's doing well.  The beans are doing well.  The strawbs are doing well.  The lawn has a hole in it.  Those Thymus are doing well, though I still never figured out that 'lilac' business.  The brambles seem to be doing alright, to the point that two of them have shown overt growth while a third is budding.

I'm getting a budget from the household in January to make improvements to the garden, which should be sufficient to finance a shed, the beds, and a greenhouse tent.  This is awesome!  I mentioned before that the ramp out front is bridging the DPC and needs to be replaced, well so too does the patio out back.  This'll put the shed, beds and greenhouse on hold until it's done, but it should be done fairly quickly.  I think I'll stain the shed blue an paint the trim (corners, door frame, window frame) white.  I think that'd be bold, but look nice.

In other news: there was some kind of magpie turf war going on in the Buddleia earlier today.  It was quite intense, more so when a shitload of parakeets and a raven got involved.  Bill stayed indoors for that one, and of his own volition too, which I guess means he's smart enough to value his eyeballs.

I need more tea.  Down the bar last night...  Okay, it's a bit of a long story.  Jesse disappears for donkeys' at a time because of work.  When we see him again; he, Liam and myself have a thing of sitting about the bar in our boxers and drinking.  I don't normally have more than two pints on a night out, three at most, so now my head feels like it's been carpeted.

On the other hand, it isn't every day that one's arse gets a round of applause.

Bye xx

So why Biology?

Be warned: there's no gardening in this one.

  Before I start, I just want to give a shout out to London's navvies.  Tonight the rain is amazingly heavy and the wind is frankly extraordinary.  I saw it at Clapham blow the rain thirty-odd feet off plumb in the space of a ten foot drop.  It was in the eyes, knackering my visibility.  It was in the boots, numbing my feet.  It was under the boots, denying me a comfortably sturdy footing.  Ridiculous conditions.  Then as the train went through St. Margarets I saw the Men In Orange preparing to walk the tracks.  Such a brave and dangerous thing to do, but if they don't do it then one night my train might not deliver me home to Strawberry Hill in one piece.  I take my hat off.

No great shocker that I'm presently nursing a hot chocolate with a decent glug of Bailey's in it.

  So I've decided that I'm no longer going to try and get a head start on my fees.  £27k is either ten years' saving or a bank job.  If I want that slip of the paper which says I can probably try grownup science then I'm just going to have to swallow the debt.  Fucking Tories!  I want to do Natural Sciences, and having been unable to choose between Biology and Geology I'm looking at the possibility of taking a major/minor split with Biology being the major.

  I've just finished college this year, a fact that my circle seem to be quite proud of.  I get asked what I'm going to do next and it's always "so are you going to do Medicine?"  Up until a year ago I would've said yes, but something has changed.

  When I was sixteen I enlisted.  I applied at first to join the REME, to become a mechanic or a spark.  Joining up is quite an involved process, and there's all manner of screening to go through.  When I completed my psychological profile I was taken to one side by a recruiter who said that being an electrician would suit me, but that being a medic might suit me more, and with a BARB score of 80 (the intelligence test, the average score is around 50) I might enjoy the mental challenges of medicine.  So I ended up joining the RAMC and training as a medic.  One conversation really can put your life on a different path.

  I was earmarked for the 16th before my legs got busted and I was honourably discharged.  I landed on my feet in civvy street and found work as a nurse in acute stroke care.  I spent a good few years in stroke and loved every minute of it.  When I was 20 a patient had what was from my perspective the worst possible outcome.  Not just a death - I'd had my first at 17 and a good number since - but a death in which a choice I'd made had affected things.  Let me be clear: the patient was not going to be walking out the front door whichever way you slice it.  Still, when you're young and you find yourself in that scenario, how things are explained and handled in the first few hours can make or break you.  It broke me.  It messed me up, tore my mind apart so badly that I spent a week under observation, and I'm not the same person since.

  That is not the problem.  Far from it.  It hurt, and it should hurt.  It should hurt so that you don't make the same mistake twice.  It should hurt so that you don't assume, you don't gamble, you question everything (most of all yourself) and you kick your own arse into doing the very best you can do; because you never want to feel that again.  Then a year ago I found that I had accepted it, that after more than half a decade I'd made peace with myself.  This was unnerving, because I don't want to ever become hardened to such things.  I've already lost a part of myself, and I don't want to know how much more of myself I'd have to lose in order to wear so thick a shell as that.

So no Medicine.

  Medicine was always a second choice.  I'd never really aimed to have a career in healthcare.  I was a geeky kid who liked circuits and snails, minerals and fossils.  I was always interested in the natural world and how it worked.  Medicine appeals to the right person for the right reason, but is also just a popular way for a scientist to get a paying job.  What I really want to do is give the Universe a poke to see what it does, and I always have.

  I started college two years ago at 25.  A late bloomer, but what the hell.  That could've been shit, but it wasn't.  When you're a hyperactive genderqueer autist with a fucked up knee and a half-palsied hand you find you can have quite a spread with teachers and with authority figures in general.  Maybe you'll be pitied, or ignored, or seen as a curiosity, an interesting case study or test subject, or someone to tick a load of boxes for their diversity cred.  I lucked out in that my lecturers did none of that shit.  The experience gave me a renewed confidence, not only in my aptitude for science but also in my ability to carve out a place for myself as a scientist.

  Going out and studying the natural world no longer feels like an impractical pipe dream.  It's real and attainable and if I could spend the rest of my life doing that then I would be a very happy person indeed.

Now, if I am going to give the Universe a poke then I'm gonna need a bloody long stick...

The Rubus Experiments, pt 1

Note to secondary and FE biology teachers: feel free to use this as an example of a simple and practical botanical experiment.  The link presently comes up second on the first page of Google when searching for "The Rubus Experiments".  The Rubus tab across the top of the page will link to the site where I'm posting the experiments progress.  

  The ramp out front needs replacing as it is presently bridging the damp course.  Everyone finally admits it, so that'll likely happen a few months from now.  The ramp covers more than half the surface area of the front garden, so it'll mean something of a slash-and-burn of plantlife out there.  That Buddleia will go (TFFT!) but so will my brambles.  Those brambles have been there for over ten years and they're a brilliantly heavy cropper.  Every year in late Summer/early Autumn we have more blackberries than we know what to do with.  I didn't plant the bramble myself and nobody knows how many generations of Rubus have grown here.

  More important than sentiment is genetics.  Genes are like stories: they shift in the retelling.  The verses which suit the culture tend to be retained, to grow and to flourish, whilst those which don't will fade into obscurity.  That plant has a genetic heritage which enables it to hold its' own in that place, that soil, those conditions, in spite of competition from other plants.  That plant belongs to that garden, and a similar bramble bought from the garden centre might not suit the space in the same way.

  What to do, then?  Well, I intend to keep the bramble one way or another, but if the bulk of it must be chopped down then I might as well try some stuff out.  I'm not saying this'll work, so you shouldn't take this as a guide to action.  Still, here's what I'm getting up to:

The tools I'll need.  

I've filled the pots with soil from my garden, the same soil the parent plant is growing in.  Most would say to use potting compost, and I'd tend to agree.  My soil is crumbly, silty loam which successive gardeners since the 1930s have dug endless peaty compost into.  If I wanted a better medium for growing I'd have to invent it.

I took the soil from the beds.  Specifically from a point furthest from where my V. faba are growing.  No sense in depriving the beans at this time of year.  Once filled, I took cuttings from shooting tips of the Rubus. They're easily spotted by the claw-like, mitroid tips.  These are where new growth is happening most vigorously, so they should be most likely to take root.  The greenest shoots are best.  Prior to cutting the blades of the scissors were suspended in a pan of water as it boiled.

The growing end of a vine.  

The shoot cutting, size 7 hand for scale.  

I took only healthy shoots, avoiding any that had a problem with greenfly.  Heh, "problem", kinda makes it sound like "if you're not talking to your plants about greenfly..."  Aaanyways; once a shoot cutting was taken, it had to be rinsed under the tap.  A good soaking helps prepare the cuttings.  A hole was made in the centre of my potted soil using a skewer and the cut end put into the soil.  I then used my thumbs to press the soil down gently, just enough to close the hole without compressing the soil.  

I've made five of these - each of roughly the same length - and put them in the Nursery.  Mike has been relocated to my bedroom windowsill for the duration.  Mike seems to be recovering well from his infection.  Once there they each got a solution of 4:2:6 up to the yellow line on the saucer.  Now for the experiments.  I say experiment, but these are more akin to case studies than true lab experiments, albeit with certain controls in place.  

1. I've taken four cuttings of thin, green shoots.  One of a thicker, purpling shoot.  Which will fare better?
2. Two of my shoots curve.  I've pointed the tips of these away from the Sun, where normally plants bend toward the Sun.  Will the phototropic action of auxins cause the whole shoot to straighten up as it brings itself sunward or will the tip kink towards the Sun instead?  

Basic exercises in botanical study, but interesting for all that.  I'll observe the cuttings over the coming months and report on their progress.  Here's the five as they stand today:

On digital cameras

  Tonight I saw a beautiful thing.  The moon over Strawberry Hill was full and uncommonly luminous; ringed by a striking, vivid, perfectly circular double rainbow.  It was breathtaking.  My inner scientist smiled in wonder while my inner writer clamoured - and still clamours - for the words to do such a sight justice.  Failing that, I took the camera out and snapped off half a dozen photos, bracing hard to  lamp post to keep my arm steady.  Alas, this was the best of them:

Fucking cameras!

  This would lead me to despair at the shitness of there being such a thing as an incapturable moment, but for the fact that it drew my attention to something just as amazing: my eye.  We like to say that the human eye is woefully inefficient, that it is an evolutionary hodge-podge that isn't half the instrument it could be.  Fair enough, but when we set out to build a camera with precision-engineered lenses and fuckillion-megapixel resolutions and more extra features than you can shake a stick from the guardhouse toilets on Hadrian's wall at we still can't get it to see something that my squishy, evolutionary hodge-podge of an eyeball can.  

Biology 1, technology nil.  

Fat cakes

So I got a great tip from Julia at Stages of Succession, and ran with it.  Fat cakes are a way of keeping birds in your garden over the Winter, which raises the overall bird-friendliness of the garden.  I want birds and other creatures in my garden, because a greater biodiversity means fewer little sods eating my crops.  Encouraging birds and other predators in is cheap and organic, while using pesticides costs money and is arguably poisonous.

Into the blender I've put:

• A couple slices of bread too stale for toast,
• The fat leftover from yesterday's roast potatoes,
• A small pinch of salt,
• A leftover carrot,
• Some nuts,
• Some lentils,
• An apple that had rolled away unnoticed yesterday whilst I was making cider, from apples...

The resultant paste I put into the ice cube tray and froze overnight to drive out excess fluid and make it firmer.  It also keeps those I'm not using right away fresh.   

I've put three cubes in a shallow tray on the roof of the strawbrary.  I chose that spot because the overlapping wire panels of its roof make it impossible to sneak silently across.  Birds and squirrels sit unmolested there now because the local cats have learned there's no profit in stalking up there.  That was the best I could engineer at the time, though when I've got a few bob spare I plan on attaching jingle bells to the underside of the wire near the joints.  

In other news, the cider's ticking over nicely.  At the bottom of yesterday's page is a short clip of the airlock, taken an hour after the vessel was sealed, bubbling at a rate of roughly 2.5 per ten seconds.  The clip below on this page is from this morning.  Now bubble rate is an interesting proxy for fermentation rate.  Obviously you can't measure alcohol content in real time, and nor can you sit and watch the yeasts eat, but the bubble rate suggests how much sugar they're eating.  From this clip, I'd suggest they're having a twenty course Roman orgy in there!

Time off in Looe

A break was needed, so me and the lads spent a few days in a caravan in Looe.  Good times were had, mead and scrumpy were drank, scones were eaten, the usual Cornwall kinda stuff.  I know my audience, however, so when I went wandering I was sure to take in plenty of fauna and interesting stones.  In many of the photos I've included my inhaler for scale.  It's about 4 inches in length by an inch and a half in diameter (metric to follow, when I can find my ruler).

This is Polperro harbour, where the first lot of snaps were taken.  The local beer and cider were well worth the trip.  If you're ever in that part of Cornwall, try the Rattler.

Caloplaca marina, an orange lichen.

Patella depressa - the Black-Footed Limpet.

The next set of snaps are from a natural bay, roughly two miles west of Looe Harbour.  Here's the bay, with some oddly balanced stones, such that I can't quite tell if they were stacked by natural forces or drunken students.

The rocks here were clearly stratified, as though they'd been a loose sediment of mud once, but the strata are stuck together tightly, so that they don't come off in sheets like slate does.  Many of them were streaked with veins of what appeared to be quartz.  In most, the veins of quartz ran parallel to the main stone strata.  Some defied this trend, and were more interesting for it.

And these two were gnarled up by forces I have not the wit to begin measuring, but they look cool.

We also found an awesome waterfall.

This unidentified arthropod had missing feet and claws, it's shell had turned entirely to firm jelly whilst (presumably) retaining most of it's shape and colour, and the thing had a stone stuck fast enough to it's bum that I didn't dare prise it off for fear of tearing the entire corpse in half.  

Dorsal view:

Ventral view:

Lastly, I realise that I've been off the topic of gardening these past couple posts, so here's Mike.  I've given Mike a taller pot - taller, but not wider - to encourage downward root growth, pruned him and given him a bamboo stake to grow against.  

I've also finally given the arbour a much needed functional upgrade - discreetly placed, of course - which should make it equal to the needs of a working garden...

Until next time :)