I’ve been sleeping badly the last couple of nights because it’s been hot and humid, so I’ve been getting up early and getting out with the dogs on our morning walk. I do love this time of the day, just as the sun is rising.
Odd Moth
I saw an unusual moth yesterday and have been trying to identify it this morning. The closest I can get to it, is a Tiger Moth – possibly a Garden Tiger Moth, as others that look most like it are not native to the UK and would be well outside their range.
I doubt I’ve spotted a rarity, but will keep my eyes open and see if I can spot it again, and perhaps get a photograph.
Quick Links 12th September 2016
Each week I’ll try and post quick links to things that I’ve seen, read, inspired me or just sparked my interest in the previous week, with a little background and my thoughts and other things that I’ve been up to in the previous week. Mostly gardening, cooking and environmental stuff but not always.
I walk in my local park every day, because I own dogs. I don’t take every dog walk there, but I normally walk through it or past it with the dogs. I’ve noticed changes over the last few years, with the rubbish bins being emptied less frequently, and on occasion overflowing, with the frequency of the grass cutting, and hedge trimming. I know it’s because times are tough for the local authority and they’ve had to make savings, and they’ve done this by reducing services. When the last Council tax bill went out it was the first increase in a number of years. The reason given for the increase was to maintain services, those services that have already been reduced significantly since 2010. I can’t help thinking that the logic of my local Council is flawed over how it spends and saves money on what it delivers, and that many of these decisions are driven by political motivations. This article paints an even more depressing picture of our park lands. To be honest none of it surprises me and in a local context I can see there be changes ahead. Whilst it’s not been explicitly stated what the intention is, there was a big consultation last year on “improvements”. Many seemed sensible, although not fully thought through, and there is a history of bad decision making in terms of long leases for parts of the grounds.
One thing for sure however, this is a local amenity that I feel strongly about and take a keen interest in.
There’s been a lot of movies remade (or rebooted, as I think is the industry parlance) – I’m not sure about this one though:
Autumn Arriving
The mornings are starting to feel a little chillier now, there’s a regular morning breeze that’s been absent for a while, and the days are shortening. It’s now dark in the mornings when I get up, and the sun is down again by nine o’clock in the evening. I’m wearing long trousers again and my shorts are only coming out if the mercury rises high enough.
Last week I was watching swallows and house martins, diving and wheeling across the playing fields near my house, flying incredibly low, trying to catch insects. It won’t be much longer before they head South and I’m assuming that this is their last chance to stock up before they leave.
I actually like autumn and welcome it’s arrival, although it signals a change, it’s full of vibrant colours and there is still a little warmth left from the summer months around to convince me that the sun is quite done yet.
Quick Links 5th September 2016
Each week I’ll try and post quick links to things that I’ve seen, read, inspired me or just sparked my interest in the previous week, with a little background and my thoughts and other things that I’ve been up to in the previous week. Mostly gardening, cooking and environmental stuff but not always.
Currently Reading:
Run to the Mountain by Thomas Merton [GoodReads]
Seveneves by Neal Stephenson [GoodReads]
I’ve been working my way through both of these books for the last few weeks. I normally read much faster than I have been but I’ve had a few other things going on, so reading time has been a little more constrained than it might otherwise be. Secondly these are both fairly big books, but they are both worth the time. I’m a little further forward with Seveneves than the Thomas Merton, and I’ve also been coming across it in other places. It’s on Barack Obama’s summer reading list, and in addition it is a book that Bill Gates has recently done a review for on his blog (and a very interesting 360° video), you can find these at this link – I can’t embed the video here, as it seems locked to his site, but I have included a video from the authors book tour for Seveneves, that I came across on YouTube.
I’d recommend both of these books even though I haven’t finished either one of them yet.
The Week In Wildlife – In Pictures
Dog Friendly
A couple of weekends ago we visited Bosham, as we frequently do we took the dogs with us. We didn’t stay long however as wherever we went there were “No Dog” signs. On the one hand this annoys me, as it bars me from certain places, but I respect landowners wishes. What also annoys me is how this situation has been reached and the fact that it’s probably due to thoughtless dog owners not respecting those around them, not clearing up after their dogs and the landowner then feeling that they have no choice but to stop all dogs. A great shame.
Quick Links 29th August 2016
Each week I’ll try and post quick links to things that I’ve seen, read, inspired me or just sparked my interest in the previous week, with a little background and my thoughts and other things that I’ve been up to in the previous week. Mostly gardening, cooking and environmental stuff but not always.
If you’ve read this blog for a while, you’ll know I love my trees. It saddens me each time I read something about a new disease that is affecting a particular species. The weekend before last we were in the car stopped at some traffic lights, and could see a horse chestnut (conker) tree in the grounds of a business park. It was a sad sight, it’s leaves all brown and wilted. As I was driving and the lights changed I didn’t really have a chance to take a proper look, but having read this article, it makes sense that it’s suffering from a leaf miner infection. It looks like a pretty bad case too.
Sadly the tree probably won’t get any attention, as the business park it’s standing in has long been vacant, and in reality the treatment is actually relatively simple.
It’s rare that I can even see the stars at night, there’s just simply too much light pollution where I live. I did manage to see some of the Perseid meteor shower earlier in the month and some of the more common constellations are visible, but I suspect that I’m missing out on a lot. This article made me wonder just how much.
The Week In Wildlife – In Pictures
Making A Quick Potato Salad
Here’s a quick video for making potato salad. Details below.
Makes enough for four people.
You’ll Need:
- 6 to 8 small / medium sized potatoes
- Fresh Chives or mint
- 2 small / medium red onions
- Mayonnaise
- Salt & Pepper
- Lemon juice (2 to 3 tablespoons)
To Make:
- Prepare the potatoes, peel if needed (if you’re using young new potatoes, they’ll probably just need a scrub and the skins can stay on). Chop them into bite size pieces.
- Boil them until they are just soft, be careful not to over-boil, particularly if you are using a fluffy type potato.
- When they’re done, drain and put them back into cool water, and allow them to cool down, until they cold enough to handle comfortably with bare hands.
- Prepare the onions and chives by chopping into as finer pieces as you can manage, put these into a large mixing bowl.
- Add the potatoes into the mixing bowl, with the onions and chives.
- Add some mayonaisse (about 3 or 4 tablespoons), be careful not to add too much, you can always add a little more if needed.
- Add a good grind of pepper and salt and the lemon juice.
- Mix all together in the bowl, either with clean hands or a couple of large spoons, be careful not to mash the potatoes!
- This is ready to serve or can be refrigerated in a covered container for a couple of days.
Export Highlights From Your Kindle
I highlight a lot on my kindle, particularly when I’m researching a particular topic or just to highlight particularly inspiring passages for future reference.
Now there’s a great “new” feature on Kindle which now allows you to directly export your highlights via email, and receive them as both .pdf and csv files. There have been ways to do this via http://kindle.amazon.com for a while now, and your highlights are still stored there, but this is a more direct service.
Firstly you need to make sure you’re running the most recent version of the kindle OS on your device (I’ve got a Kindle Paperwhite, and it’s now running ver. 5.8.2).
In a book that you have highlights, tap at the top of the screen to bring up the Menus, then tap “Go To”:
On the next screen tap “Notes”:
Then tap “Export Notes”:
And then finally tap “Send”:
As you’ll see from the image above this sends the notes to your Amazon email address, and you should end up getting an email that looks something like this:
The pdf is a nice little document in it’s own right and the CSV file, allows for easy transfer from a spreadsheet to other places e.g. the research folder in Scrivener.
This is a great feature, and one that I feel I will be using a lot, particularly for background research.
Electronic Scrapbook 