We had free plums each autumn for a decade or so after we moved in (strictly it was in the neighbour’s garden, but hard against our wall). It seems they’re quite short-lived though and this one disappeared almost as quickly as it had sprung up. There was indeed a four or five tree long trail of them stretching back into the gardens round the corner.
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I can see, from my sitting room window a giant redwood in the grounds of Castle Leod.
It is 171 years old and when last measured 53 metres tall, it is claimed also to be the biggest by bulk in the UK, I have stood next to trees in the avenue of giants in California, and big as the Castle Leod tree is, it is dwarfed by those guys.
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Blessed relief, the bitter pill of Belgian chip supremacy (According to the chip thread) was a bit much, claiming conkers would have been wounding.
Conkers are the St George of trees.
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At least they graced us with their presence unlike our, frankly ridiculous, patron saint…
I need to do that trip before they all get cut or burned down.
Bonny spot to behold matters arboreal!
I note that the term ‘giant redwood’ gets used interchangably by a lot of the gutter press - true giant redwoods are the more massive, but coastal redwoods grow taller (and are hugely impressive ‘in-person’ too). Highly fire-resistant, too, thanks to their very spongy bark. Wonderful things.
Running from Wellington Collage to Finshampsted is a rather impressive show of Giant Sequoia (Previously known as Wellintonia in the 1860’s when they were planted) There was a nudist camp and a hippie site just off here, both of which proved most entertaining as a kid.
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New word for me - fissiparous
As in
“The reality is that Sunak still faces an insuperable struggle to control his fissiparous party.”
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It’s a cool word but ‘this bunch of cunts’ would’ve sufficed.
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Haven’t heard of these before:
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Interesting little chaps - the UK species are fairly small, cryptic and live mostly below the intertidal. They can be mistaken for sea slaters, too, a quite different group of animals.
They’re also unusual for molluscs in being truly and always bilaterally symmetrical - cephalopods and scaphopods have evolved a superficial bilaterality, but only polyplacophora are the real deal.
Their fossil record remains pretty obscure - they undoubtedly evolved in the Precambrian as soft-bodied organism (like much else), but for some reason don’t acquire shells until the absolute end of the Cambrian, or even Ordovician, millions of years after a lot of other organisms were driven to it by the rise of larger and more active predators.
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I haven’t, and at that price won’t be.
I’ve got them all except Coda as originals though, I think.
I’ve have the first x4 as 200g Quiex classic jobs, The later LP’s don’t float my boat. I can say the pressings are nice
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I’d prefer the BBC sessions to SRS, but it’s one of few box sets I’d consider - price very much excepted!
It’s an investment piece really and although it’s 45rpm single sided disks it’s really not for frequent playing - When they came out you could pick them up for what appears cheap by today’s standards this one went on eBay for $3K
So yes you’d have quadrupled your money in 9 years. The risk is what would it do in another 9 when the boomers re buying their childhood start going deaf?
…Cold hard factoids
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Newly discovered Australian beetle almost mistaken for bird poo Newly discovered Australian beetle almost mistaken for bird poo - BBC News
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