Sunday, October 07, 2007
Livestock
Large cock pheasant strutted his - in that rather odd pheasant strut - way across the school field as I arrived this morning. And a couple of deer were quietly dozing in the sun on the far side. (It was rather warm considering that the dew looked quite close to a frost when I got up this morning). Something had dug an interesting hole where I had been clearing yesterday and there were what looked like cat footprints in the Bulgarian wheat. This is now looking a bit less fragile than when I last reported on it and has mostly survived. But have lost the outer half row (there being maybe half a dozen short rows, maybe two feet each in length).
New fashion for digging this year. Clearing the tops of the weeds off the ground using a Chillington hoe, leaving the ground clear for first digging a bit later on in the year. The idea is that cutting the weeks down now will make that first digging a whole lot easier with less large clumps to break up. On the other hand, one loses a few weeks growth towards the compost. So maybe the change from the spade is what it is all about really: giving one lot of muscles a break at the expense of another lot.
Picked the last few eating apples today, leaving just half a dozen of the large Blenheim Oranges. Not sure what is going to happen if we ever start having real crops. My parents used to store maybe 30 or 40 tray of apples in the garage in the Autumn but we do not have space for anything like that. Maybe the roof would be a satisfactory alternative? A bit awkward to get at but cool without being frozen which ought to be OK.
Happening to be leafing through the E and Z volumes of Chambers came across a couple of factoids. Firstly, I had thought that the solar system was pretty much a disc. But it seems that the orbits of some components - particularly the smaller ones - the asteroids and such - can be at a considerable angle to the ecliptic - maybe as much as 40 degrees. Secondly, it seems that a year is not a year. That is to say that the twelve signs of the zodiac are rotating through the year with a period of 25,000 years or something. Now Ramadan does the same trick (alhtough with a much shorter period) but this is presumably because its position in the year is defined by the moon and the lunar year is not in a sufficiently simple relation to the terran year. In the case of the zodiac, we seem to be saying that the sun points to a slightly differant place in the sky each successive year. There was some talk of the axis of rotation of the earth wobbling a bit in relation to the ecliptic but I don't see what that could have to do with it. So is the sky moving? Is the sun moving in a large circle with respect to the sky? Does the earth not quite move in a complete circle each year because the sun moves a few miles in the course of the year? And if it does not, what exactly do we mean by a year?
Back down at the home compost heap, the one that is enclosed, pleased to report the reappearance of a couple of clusters of green slugs. Not particularly large - maybe two inches long or so - but definately green rather than the usual reddish brown through to black. We did have some of them earlier in the year so maybe they are spring and autumn things.
New fashion for digging this year. Clearing the tops of the weeds off the ground using a Chillington hoe, leaving the ground clear for first digging a bit later on in the year. The idea is that cutting the weeks down now will make that first digging a whole lot easier with less large clumps to break up. On the other hand, one loses a few weeks growth towards the compost. So maybe the change from the spade is what it is all about really: giving one lot of muscles a break at the expense of another lot.
Picked the last few eating apples today, leaving just half a dozen of the large Blenheim Oranges. Not sure what is going to happen if we ever start having real crops. My parents used to store maybe 30 or 40 tray of apples in the garage in the Autumn but we do not have space for anything like that. Maybe the roof would be a satisfactory alternative? A bit awkward to get at but cool without being frozen which ought to be OK.
Happening to be leafing through the E and Z volumes of Chambers came across a couple of factoids. Firstly, I had thought that the solar system was pretty much a disc. But it seems that the orbits of some components - particularly the smaller ones - the asteroids and such - can be at a considerable angle to the ecliptic - maybe as much as 40 degrees. Secondly, it seems that a year is not a year. That is to say that the twelve signs of the zodiac are rotating through the year with a period of 25,000 years or something. Now Ramadan does the same trick (alhtough with a much shorter period) but this is presumably because its position in the year is defined by the moon and the lunar year is not in a sufficiently simple relation to the terran year. In the case of the zodiac, we seem to be saying that the sun points to a slightly differant place in the sky each successive year. There was some talk of the axis of rotation of the earth wobbling a bit in relation to the ecliptic but I don't see what that could have to do with it. So is the sky moving? Is the sun moving in a large circle with respect to the sky? Does the earth not quite move in a complete circle each year because the sun moves a few miles in the course of the year? And if it does not, what exactly do we mean by a year?
Back down at the home compost heap, the one that is enclosed, pleased to report the reappearance of a couple of clusters of green slugs. Not particularly large - maybe two inches long or so - but definately green rather than the usual reddish brown through to black. We did have some of them earlier in the year so maybe they are spring and autumn things.
# posted by Jim @ 8:18 AM 
