A family member needed a home for a small rose plant years ago. We planted it in a spot tucked away. Last year I pruned it heavily. I just happened to look its way yesterday and went running to get a scissors to bring these massive, pink, sweet-scented flowers indoors to enjoy.
It’s time to get back to maintaining this site. During this long hiatus, I have been deep into programming a commercial WordPress site. I won’t bore you with the details, but “less is more” is the key to making a responsive, nimble, easy-to-use site.
Among programmers, a maxim attributed to Robert C. Martin is, “The fastest code is the code that never runs.” As I was whittling away at the plugins and code used on this commercial site, I hit an “ah-ha” moment when I discovered that an often-used plugin to speed up websites was actually making each page load 100 milliseconds longer. I’d optimized the site so much that the plugin to speed things up no longer made sense.
Another moment of clarity came when I looked at the substantial SEO (search engine optimization) plugin the site used. It promises to do a lot, and it makes it sound like search engines will ignore your site if you don’t use it. But when I discovered that all search engines look for are a few bits of descriptive information in your output, and that it takes just a few lines of code to insert those into all your pages, I chucked the massive SEO plugin and instantly sped up every page.
Now I have the wherewithal to devote time to this site again—to share the beauty of nature that surrounds me. It’s so easy to take it for granted. Out my window, all I see is nature. I can step out of the house and be in the woods, where I and our two dogs are the only visitors on the paths that meander through the trees.
There is too much beauty and wonder not to share.
So, it is back to posting and applying what I’ve learned to this site.
It is mid-May. Spring is in full force. Buttercup, thimble berry, herb robert bloom. This is a cloudy, drizzly week, with intermittent sunshine. Perfect for working the garden. Potatoes and onions grow vigorously. I’m clearing a patch for American Giant sunflowers and corn. However, the packet of American Giant sunflower seeds warms me that they can reach 16 feet. “A perfect living wall,” the packet says.
“Cut the fresh flowers in the morning, just after they open,” the packet instructs. But if the flowers are up there, 16 feet high in the sky, that will be a feat to perform. But that will be a mid-August problem, not a mid-May one.
Herb Robert – a rather poetic name for a plant. Geranium robertianum, a species of wild geranium with small pink flowers and a strong, somewhat unpleasant odor. My name for it is stink weed.
Some say the name comes from Robert of Molesme (1028-1111), a French abbot and founder of the Cistercian order. He had extensive herbal knowledge and healing, and many thought the plant had medicinal properties, particularly for wounds and infections.
Some say it is from the Latin ruber which means red.
I’ll go with the Robert of Molesme version.
Here is the Molesme Abbey in Molesme, France. Founded in 1075 by Saint Robert of Molesme. When I looked up the name of the little purple flowers I call stink weed, the last thing I expected to be looking up is an abbey in a small town in eastern France.
I do love thimble berries. The bushes can take over, but the white flowers are worth it. The pink, fragile berries divine, a July delight to look forward on this day in mid-May.
The swans have returned to the valley. It’s always comforting to see them back for the winter and to watch them fly by when I’m out running errands.
It’s unusual now not to see them fly overhead in twos, threes, and more. Though never in the vast quantities like the snow geese.
Fresh snow covered the top of Lyman Hill yesterday. First snow on the foothils and first frost here are later than usual this year. It’s already mid November and we have yet to have a frost. We usually have frosty mornings in late October.
We may not have had frost yet here in the lowlands, but the peak of Mt. Baker is already in the midst of Winter.
I’m back to posting pictures of what is happening in this lovely corner of the earth. For now, drop by from time to time. Eventually I will have the mailings working too.
Leave something on the ground and nature will turn it into a work of art. While cleaning out the hoop house to plant tomatoes, I discovered delicate lace spheres. This is what happens if a tomatillo falls to the ground and lays on the ground all winter in a place out of the rain. The fruit dries up. Microbes eat them. The husk dries, microbes eat the soft bits, and all that remains is the delicate, lacy frame.
Aren’t they just lovely? I brought a few into the house to use as decoration. How many hours would it take me to weave such delicate mini orbs? How would I go about recreating them? I left most behind without thinking to save them.
But if I plant more tomatillos and at the end of fall let hundreds of little tomatillos fall to the ground, next spring I can gather many of them, string them together, and use them to decorate a Christmas Tree.
Quite the works of art, don’t you think?
While I cleaned out the hoop house, Taku enjoyed lying in a thick bed of mint. Nearby the Japanese iris are in full bloom. The Japanese name for this variety of iris is Ayame, pronounced Ah – ya – meh.
Happy Ending to Roomba Saga
I need to report that my saga with the bumbling, misbehaving iRobot Roomba i4 is over. Someone read my rant about the Roomba and recommended that I get a Roborock robot vacuum. “The Roborock is smart,” they said. So I ordered one, the midlevel Roborock Q7 Max.
It arrived Wednesday and I put it through its paces. Wow! Yes, this robot vacuum is smart. Equipped with lidar, the Roborock quickly mapped out our floor plan and created a 3d map of all the rooms. It knows how to get around without getting lost. It knows how to vacuum and mop in straight lines. Can go to any room of the house with ease, sliding gracefully between the door jambs to enter any room. You can program the vacuum strength and the amount of water to use for any room. And if you move it for any reason, it spins around, quickly figures out where it is, and proceeds on its merry way. The app for it shows where it is when it is out vacuuming and mopping. So you can see where it has cleaned and where it needs to clean.
You can look at the maps in 2d or 3d.
A big improvement over the Roomba i4 is that as it fills its dustbin, it compacts the dust so the dustbin can carry much more dust and debris than the Roomba i4 which I had to empty frequently as it cleaned. Never once has the Roborock stopped while vacuuming to make me empty the dustbin.
Roomba i4 Goes Merrily Home
More out of kindness than anything, I returned the Roomba i4. There was no need to keep it around and let it suffer the indignity of getting lost so often. No need to watch it whirl down a hallway and try to enter a room a foot too soon and bang into the wall. I felt sorry for it. It tried so hard. Often with confidence it approached a doorway, only to veer into the wall a foot too soon. And devastation clouded its face when it hit the wall instead of gliding through the doorway.
I suggest that you hire a robot therapist if you get a Roomba. It can talk to it after a cleaning job, ask it, “How did it go? … How did that make you feel when you missed the door? … It’s not you, it’s the coders who programmed you … You know, there’s always tomorrow,” and other things to soothe its hurt feelings.
Maybe if I was sadistic, I’d have kept it around and sent it out every so often just to torment it. But that’s not me. It looked relieved when I cleaned it all up, put it back in its box, and sent it on home. Perhaps it was just a delusion, but I thought it said with joy, “I’m going home? Yeah!”
I’m sure it’s very happy it made it back to iRobot in one piece. Other owners may have sent it back in pieces or riddled with bullet holes.
Maybe the next owner of the Roomba i4 will have a simple, one room, square apartment with no furniture that it can clean without much effort. I can only hope it finds a simple home where it can experience success.
Comcast Troubles
And speaking of success and failures, I had to remove readers with @comcast.net email addresses. Someone with a @comcast.net email marked one of my new post emails as spam and now Comcast is blocking everyone with a @comcast.net email from receiving any of my new post emails. If you have a @comcast.net email and want to keep receiving these posts, subscribe again without using a @comcast.net email.
A dusting of snow pleasantly surprised me this morning. On closer inspection, it was more a dusting of tiny hail pellets than snow.
But the sun shines so bright today, the dusting of snow won’t last long. It would be a perfect day for celebrating Lupercalia, the ancient Roman festival on February 15. Over time, Lupercalia became Valentine’s Day.
Visiting ancient Rome on Lupercalia would have been exciting. It was a festival of sacrificing animals and performing rituals to ensure health and fertility. I asked ChatGPT what these rituals were. It told me:
The exact details of the festival varied over time. But it typically involved several rituals, including:
Animal sacrifice: During Lupercalia Romans sacrificed one or more animals. Usually goats and dogs. They believed these animals represented fertility and purification.
Feasting: After the animal sacrifice, Romans held a feast to honor the gods and promote social bonding among the community.
Ritual cleansing: Participants in Lupercalia engaged in ritual cleansing. This typically involved the use of water or milk to purify the body and promote fertility.
Bloodletting: Some accounts suggest that Lupercalia also involved bloodletting. Men cut their foreheads and offered drops of blood to the gods.
Fertility rituals: The most famous fertility ritual associated with Lupercalia involved the running of the Luperci. A group of young men dressed in goat skins ran through the streets of Rome. As they ran, the Luperci struck women with strips of goat hide. They believed this promoted fertility and eased childbirth.
Imagine the crowds of tourists flocking to Rome today if Romans still celebrated Lupercalia.
On a cold morning, hot embers in the wood stove make it easy to get a fire going.
And Houseflies?
With all that animal sacrifice and bloodletting, houseflies in Rome surely feasted too. But until a few days ago, I had no idea houseflies can miraculously turn pig manure into compost in just seven days.
I saw an article on Japanese news about a researcher in southern Japan, Kushima Mitsutaka. For twenty years he has been working on using houseflies to quickly turn pig manure into compost.
The big obstacle to overcome is that houseflies are very sensitive creatures. Who knew? They can’t stand overcrowding. But to turn tons of pig manure into compost, you need millions of housefly larvae.
So Mr. Kushima kept breeding houseflies over and over, picking less sensitive houseflies with each generation. 1,500 generations later he has houseflies that don’t mind overcrowding. And he is now building a facility to quickly convert pig manure by the ton into compost.
The process involves spreading housefly eggs over a layer of pig manure. The eggs hatch. The larvae munch through the pig manure. Within a week they turn it into soft compost which smells like earth. And the next part is amazing. Fly larvae like to climb to the highest point possible to pupate and turn into houseflies. So the trays used to hold the pig manure are titled. The larvae crawl to the sides of the trays and fall off into containers. The containers fill with millions of larvae. The pig manure turned into compost is free of fly larvae and bagged. The larvae are processed to become fish and chick feed.
What is coincidental, is that the idea of using houseflies to turn pig manure into compost originated back in the early days of the Soviet space program. They worked with houseflies to use their larvae to process human waste in space. Mr. Kushima imported these flies to start his breeding program.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine gave Mr. Kushima’s business a boost. Because of the invasion, fertilizer prices are sky high. So turning pig manure quickly into compost can provide lots of fertilizer.
