bloggy contentment

Last week, when I was Deeply Fed Up, I went looking for blogs to cheer myself up. Molly Chicken (away with the fairies - it's quieter there.) did it for me. I want to live next door to this woman, not least for our similar take on the important things in life, although I would not lend her my Dyson. If I had one.

This afternoon, having been restored to my normal (and I use the term loosely) insufferably cheerful self, (the power of a good whinge and the good sense of good friends), I surrendered to the pleasures of someone else's garden, on the Costa de la Luz, which is about as far south of here as you can get without falling into the sea. Starting at the beginning, I'm up to December 2006, and everything in the garden is pretty damn gorgeous, including the cat(s) and the mosaic(s). I could go for this.

And *now I'm going for an audition for a women's four-part harmony choir that I've been yearning to join for a year. If I get in I shall be a very happy bunny. If I don't get in, I shall be less happy, but I've got a reserve yearn. What I want to do is sing. With friends. Fingers and toes crossed.

*Harrumph! P.S.Erratum.Addendum.Bumbum.Oops.Buggerrit. How come the last Tuesday in September is in It's-October-now-so-get-yer-ass-back-to-work Week? Faec Fic Foc! (Who says Latin is a dead language?). OK. Next week!

More bugs - not a post for people who don't like creepy-crawlies

My first job, in the shade on a warm Monday afternoon, was to pick the Cabbage White eggs and caterpillars off the cauliflower seedlings. Having once seen my beautiful nasturtiums (Did you know nasturtiums were brassicas? Neither did I!) devastated by these gourmands, I had no qualms.

All I had to do was deposit them in this plastic container, and shake it from time to time, because otherwise the little blighters would climb up and out!

I don't know what mine host did with them afterwards, probably made a nourishing broth.....

OK. Ants. Definitely common or garden, but look at the size of what they're carrying! They didn't mind me if I didn't mind - or sit on - them. I'm always impressed by the efficiency and determination of ants.
This is not a very good photo, but it's the best I can do: the husk, or skeleton, of a cricket, which I found on my second morning (That would be under the peppers.). I didn't know that crickets have to moult as they grow - I assumed that they emerged fully grown like butterflies. Nope. More info here.

Gorgeous photo of an orthopteran nymph (if you're into this kind of thing) here (Click on the photo to see the rest of this particular gallery.) at the absolutely amazing nature photograghy site of Bob Moul.

But here's a live one. This fella landed on my trainer on Thursday afternoon. There's nothing like a ground assault with hoe to eventually alert insects to the limits of the "If I don't move, I'm safe." approach. Even something as big as this is invisible until you catch movement out of the corner of your eye, and then watch for more movement rather than trying to distinguish the mover - just look at the coloration, or lack of it, against that late summer soil. Of course, when it actually stops for a breather on your toe.......

This is a wasps' nest (near the fruit trees).

You might be able to make out the wasp on the rim, at about 11 o'clock, but I wasn't getting close enough for a clear shot. I've always thought of wasps as just one of those bad-tempered beasties sent to try us, but

"If ground-nesting bees and wasps can be ignored and their tunnels tolerated, do
so since they are valuable in agricultural production and helpful by controlling
pests in nature. If nests are in locations undesirable and stinging is a great
possibility, control is justified."

So says a rather elegant Ohio State University Fact Sheet, and even the pest control companies seem to agree!

Here's the BBC again, with colour pics, but here's a real fan, with an essay in the garden of Paghat the Ratgirl. If you are stuck indoors when you really want to be out; looking at brick and stone when you really want to be looking at tree and blossom; listening to your own interior monologue on what you have to get done before the weekend/end of the month/next audit when you'd really really like to sidestep into a parallel world of aconites, Cedar of Lebanon and lines from Emily Dickinson, you could do worse than spend five minutes in Paghat's Garden.

You may even find an essay on the secret charms of the aphid,

but right now, I'm with the wasp.

And while I'm in insect PR mode, I think we're all familiar with the - commitment issues - of the praying mantis, so I was glad to be a) female, b) 47,000 times bigger, and c) holding a hoe, when this deadly beauty crossed my path on Friday (under the asparagus). It may even have been our own Apteromantis aptera, a mantis endemic to the Iberian Peninsula, but looking at this phenomenal photo on Flickr, I think this was a bit more common or garden.

They're officially a Good Thing because they prey on garden pests, but here's the full Wiki :

"Many gardeners consider mantises to be desirable insects, as they prey upon
many harmful insect species. Organic gardeners who avoid pesticides may
encourage mantises as a form of biological pestcontrol. Tens of thousands of mantis egg cases are sold each year in some garden stores for this purpose.
However, mantises prey on neutral and beneficial insects as well, basically eating anything they can successfully capture and devour. Although their diet primarily consists of small invertebrates, large mantises have been observed eating small vertebrates such as lizards, mice, snakes, and small birds such as hummingbirds."

Ulp. I don't suppose a novice WWOOFer would give them much trouble, either.

These snails weren't on the smallholding, but soaking up the fumes on the verge of the M-305 coming into Aranjuez. Wasting away, evidently.

When is a beetle not a beetle?

When it's a chinche roja, a Gendarme Bug, a Gemeine Feuerwanze, a Pyrrhocoris apterus, a Fire Bug.

Oh, and a Milkweed Bug isn't a beetle either, because like the Firebug, it's a Hemiptera/Heteroptera, or True Bug, ok?!

While hemi - ptera actually means half - wings, the important characteristic of this group is in the formation of the mouth. (If you'd like to know more, follow the link, but it makes me queasy: I like the shiny carapaces, not the business ends.) The sub-group Heteroptera means Different Wings. Now we're really getting somewhere!

For more examples of What I Saw on My Holiday/Found in the Woodshed/Got Bitten by on the Beach/Had for Breakfast in the Desert/Found in my Sleeping Bag in the Woods, check out the fascinating website What's that Bug?, where you will find this holiday snap from Kazakhstan!

(in True Bugs:Heteroptera page 5: find it in the excellent sidebar index.)

Coleoptera!

Not a type of aircraft, although the 'ptera' bit does mean wing (and, for the record, 'coleo' means shield). It was Aristotle who gave this name to THE BEETLE.

....and that is just one of the things I've learnt in the course of a fascinating, irritating, entertaining, frustrating and at times almost nauseating morning spent trying to identify a type of beetle I found on a day out to Aranjuez in June, and which M photographed in the grounds of Charlottenburg Schloss, in Berlin, yesterday morning.

My pic's not very good, though the beastie is intriguing, and I always intended to look it up one day. But M's photos are astonishing (Go on, then, see for yourself!). I had to find out more about this extraordinary creature that is found in two such different climates. (Having said that, that's either a lime or a poplar in M's pic, and you find both in may parts of Spain.)

First off, an image search for 'beetle red' gave me this:

and this Bean Leaf Beetle...

and this stylish American;
and this Red Milkweed Beetle (which gets my ugly bug vote for this blog)
and this Redf Lily Beetle, which is currently considering a role in the next George Lucas movie;

aaaaaannnnnnddddddd......... (I have not made this up) this!

And plenty more, too, but no sign of that distinctive combination of black shawl and dice dots. There's 14 million of the little beggars on one tree in Germany, and there was some serious orgifying going on in that flowerbed in Aranjuez - surely someone else must have seen one or two?

I drew a blank, largely because there is an astonishing number of Coleoptera species (about 35,00 according to good ol' Wikipedia, constituting 40% of insect species, or 25% of all known lifeforms......). There are also a number of thorough enthusiasts' sites, and excellent picture sites, like the German Koleopterologie and David Element's Wildlife Web Pages (Scroll down to the index at the bottom of the Home Page), but I couldn't find a basic guide to main types, and clicking on labels to get an idea of the characteristics of the main groups of featured in Koleopterologie took me to some fabulous iridescent, sculptural forms - but also to a succession of hairy, horny (er... perhaps not quite what I mean.... though now that I think about it......), glistening, bulbous, slimy monsters bristling with claws, snags and pincers. Aaaaaargh! No! Lemme out!

So I quit. Dang!

And after all that, I thought I'd just try one more image search, and lo! By the power of Google and Sod's Law, there was Alison Ashwell's blog, and a pic of a Gendarme bug, Pyrrhocoris apterus. This is the sort of thing that drags me back to Google every time!

Take me to your dealer

"Every few weeks I get in my car, cash in pocket, and drive to a pre-determined location. This is where I meet my dealer. I turn over a wad of greenbacks and she hands off a huge bag of the good stuff. Most of the time I don't really know exactly what I'm paying for. I scurry back to my car, drop the booty in the trunk, peel back the plastic and peer inside. If I'm lucky a neighborhood streetlight will be nearby to illuminate the contents of the bag. This time of year I might see the eyes of impossibly petite potatoes peering back at me, they could be nestled alongside a kaleidoscope of vibrantly colored carrots, or shouldered up against a of pile of parsnips. It's a mystery box, and $25 gets me something like twenty pounds of meticulously grown delights direct from Mariquita Farm in Watsonville, Ca (just down the coast from us city folk). Today's rustic cabbage soup recipe was inspired by the contents of their latest delivery. I sliced a moon-shaped cabbage into thin ribbons and cooked it down in a simple pot of sauteed potatoes, onions, garlic and flavorful broth. Each bowl was finished with a generous drizzle of great olive oil and a dusting of shredded cheese."

Not me, guys, Heidi Swanson!

Mimi Kirchner

The Dollmaker's Journey newsletter popped into my letterbox today. There's a link to Cloth Doll Connection. (So rag dolls are out, then? Victims of political correctness and gentrification?)

Aaaaand a link to Cloth Doll Blogs. (Still here? Good. It'll be worth it, I promise.)

And.

Mimi Kirchner's site. I haven't seen a fraction of it. And then there are all the other blogs listed above. But then again, I have got to get offline and go to sleep sometime soon. So take a look, and when you see a link to her Flickr photos.................... do yourself a favour and follow it. How else will you see her babies, ladies, and tattooed men?

Good morning Andalucia

Since the new term started, with most of my classes in the afternoons and evenings, mornings tend to be spent in bed. Jealous? Ha! In bed with my laptop and assorted coursebooks and folders! Partly it's because there's a lot of preparation to do, particularly at this time of year, when we have new levels to teach, and new materials to work with - and of course, I'm coming back to English language teaching (ELT) after years of teaching drama. I'd rather do my prep here than at the office because.... well.... it's nice to get home occasionally!

However, in our bijou micro-piso, we need to make the best use of space, so that we don't keep bumping into each other, tripping over Stuff, and losing things under other things. So, Habibi has his office at the built-in table, and I have mine directly over his head, on the platform bed. I've got the laptop plugged in up here, with the lead running behind the books on the built-in shelf/bedhead, and the network cable running under the mattress and down the pillar/bed leg to Habibi's desk and the modem. I have got to take some photos of this place!

One of the nice things about the officebed setup is that as I get organised, I get to do things like catching up with friends, reading blogs, and really self-indulgent stuff like reading the daily Calvin & Hobbes, or playing in the JigZone. All while still in my pyjamas. This I like!

Today I've been to see what Cave Renovator's been doing since I last looked - in August! I love his blog. And I've added a new link to Mrs CR's Tapas Recipe site: yummy stuff from local (in a supermarket near us) ingredients - I may even cook, as opposed to pointing out fab recipes to Habibi!

We're still city dwellers - and loving it - but we're in Spain - and loving it - yay! (BTW, Don't tell anyone, but we don't use the Present Continuous for stative verbs.......... O....M....G........)

I feel some prep coming on!

Temptation

As I was logging into Blogger this morning, Baa Baa Blacksheep came up on the 'just updated' roll. There were others on astrophysics for beginners, promoting world peace, etc. etc. but this was the one I went for. Bad decision. Baad decision.

Not because Bea (sole proprietor of said blog, est. Nov. 2nd. 2006) is a knitter. That's what I was hoping for. (Looks good, too.)

But because she's got a link to Interweave Press. Oh no...... And I am NOT taking out any subscriptions or buying any more books this year, because we are leaving here in approximately seven months, twenty-one days, and hours-minutes-and-seconds-subject-to-confirmation.

So frivolous spending on More Stuff is bad.
Baad.
But.
Buuuut.
Baaaaat....!!

Check out the goodies in their Knits Holiday Gifts Issue!












(Model Not Included)



































I can resist anything but....

The Quintessential Yellow Duck

I didn't realise that your Blogger profile carries through however many blogs you may set up in a cluster. I put in a new pic for Decoy Duck, and was rather alarmed to find it on here when the problem - whatever it was - passed. Unable to find my original pic, I went looking for a new one in Google Image Search - I do like looking at the pictures - and found all sorts of informative, tacky, entertaining, bland, gross and funny sites and pics.

When I came across this image, I thought about building a narrative of Duckie's adventures before her triumphant return.
















But I'm just not feeling pretentious tonight; sorry.

Instead, here are the pics that I particularly liked, and the source sites. I leave it to you to match image to site. (I know. How hard can it be?)






Well I mean........

I'll take one of each.










That guy on the far left of the back row looks a lot like a friend of ours!








John Darwell says of his work,
"Due to the nature of the projects I undertake I am often described/categorised as an ‘independent photographer’ (though perhaps ‘dependent photographer’ would be nearer the mark!). I work with museums, galleries and arts agencies on projects, either commissioned or self initiated, that reflect my interest in social and industrial change, concern for the environment, and more recently issues around the depiction of mental health."

Not what I expected when I set out on my 'yellow duck' search. I flicked through his current projects without proper attention, but found some of the images from his books compelling. I might even ask some of my senior students to look through his Garden of Earthly Delights and Melancholy Objects as potential starting points for, or visual commentary on, a piece of drama. I don't think they'd relate to the images from Britain's industrial past, though the entertainingly titled Jimmy Jock, Albert and the Six Sided Clock might pique their interest!

Marcia Talley won an Anthony Award for "Too Many Cooks," Best Short Story 2002 at the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention. And she writes a blog.

Roberts Hot Tubs has a retail gift section with character plastic ducks. Yes it's silly! But Groucho Marx, Charlie Chaplin and The Blues Brothers really do work!

It keeps me amused.

Oh, and my new Little Yellow Duck comes from a whopping great Wikipedia entry on Rubber Ducks.

11.41. (TS please note.) Beddy-byes. After the day's excitement, I'm completely quackered.

Doomed, I tell you, doooooooomed!

In the course of an insanely late night catching up on my favourite blogs, I have just got to Cosmos Daily News, which has one of those funny-as-long-as-it's-not me stories:

"Without pens, we had nothing with which to fill out the immigrations and customs forms required for international flights arriving at their first port of entry to the United States. We ended up -- all 172 of us -- sharing the chief flight attendant's pen, passing it from row to row."

The headline was UK airports declare war on ink, but I can't tell you which paper it's from cos the site's deemed inconsistent with.... well, you know.

Also blocked is the link to World will end on 9 September 2006, but I thought you might like to know anyway, just in case you're making sure you have cash in the bank for your loan repayment/mortgage/credit card payment due on September 10th. You might wish to reconsider this fiscally responsible attitude and blow the lot on deluxe ice cream and some cute shoes to eat it in. On the other hand, it appears that the world was also supposed to end on August 22nd. Did I miss something? Or, as Mme Tucats asks,

So, what are you going to do with your "last" 12 days, this time?

Sceptics everywhere.

Believers may go to the bizarre Signs of Witness site set up by horror/sc-fi writer John Shirley. I don't read either genre, but there's an Amazon link if you want to check his titles. Better order Super-Expedite........

Little Red Boat

Owoo! I've been writing reports for a couple of hours, and wanted chill-time before bedtime, so went for a little pootle round the Net (no life... I know...) and there was Little Red Boat bobbing in the blue (Habibi had said she was really good and he was right!) and this babe-in-arms of 29 (Happy Birthday, What's a PayPal button? Eh? Can't quite hear you.) is a woman after my own heart. So just as I'm trying to get my links list to a sensible length, I have to add this one. If only to learn the Fifth Commandment of Stuff.

Have I taken my medication tonight? Huh? Have I taken my medication tonight? Huh? Have -

Time for bed.

I've never met an Iranian I didn't like.

I mean it. Every Iranian I have ever met since I came here in 1993 has been cultured, generous and full of humour. They value their families and their faith, and they also enjoy music, art and long, long conversations. By the time I'd met a few I had to wonder how such people could come from the land of the ayatollahs? And how the ayatollahs have managed to establish and maintain their repressive and cheerless regime when Iranians seem so irrepressible and cheerful?

Those were my questions. Nowadays I know more now about modern Iranian history, the Pahlavis, etc. and also the limits of and on the international media. But I know almost nothing about how people live in Iran today, and what they think about themselves, their country, and the rest of the world. When my lovely neighbour and I get together for a chat, we talk about ourselves and our families. I don't turn up with a questionnaire on Iranian politics!

Today I wandered into Manal and Alaa's bit bucket, and saw the entry, Flame Wars: A Brief History of Blogging in Iran, in which Alaa reviews Nasrin Ahlavi's book about blogging in Iran, We Are Iran. I hadn't even thought about Iranian bloggers!

When I searched, I found the motherlode, Iranian Canadian Hossein Derakhshan's Blogs by Iranians site. So now I have no excuse for my ignorance. I'm going to need longer weekends.

One more thing. Alaa Abd El-Fatah is an Egyptian blogger currently in jail in Cairo, awaiting some kind of action after a protest in support of two judges who were themselves arrested for demanding an independent judiciary. Find out more on fellow Egyptian Sabbah's Blog.

Comfort Zone

I am out of sorts this evening, hardly volatile, but, shall we say, moody? I've been edgy all day, in that unfocused, non-attributable way that greasily murmurs 'hormones' . I am after all, une femmme d'un certain âge, and we're not talking l'âge d'or. Mais san fairy Anne. Ça y est!

I came here to exorcise the ghoul with my favourite poem.

A smart move would have been to go to the gym, get on a treadmill and work it off: release the endorphin within. I recognised this at around 8 o'clock, some two hours ago, but couldn't muster that degree of discipline.

Instead I wandered around some blogs by way of displacement activity. This was fairly effective until I wandered into the thoughts of a woman going through a very tough time; and then there was a foolish boy capering in the body of an adult, gleefully shrieking naughty words at the world without Mummy knowing. Going down. But Chevy Girl's got Alannis Morissette. Upturn!

Definitely hormones.

POEM! It's A Fanfare for the Makers, by Louis MacNeice, and I first discovered it in 1974, as I know from the fly-leaf of Helen Gardner's New Oxford Book of English Verse. After thirty-two years, my New Book has begun to develop that old book smell which either soothes the spirit or brings on acute claustrophobia.

My maternal grandmother's house smelt of books, rugs, strong French coffee heated in a saucepan, and gentle, soft-bodied, soft-skinned, untidily chignoned old lady. We lived too far apart for me to really know Grandmère as a person - and I calculate that she was 62 when I was born (though Mother may correct me if she ever gets as far as this blog - Can you 'ear me, Mother?!) but (so?!) I found her enchanting.

At a time when my parents were elbow-deep in the responsibilities of raising seven children, I suppose that my other-worldly grandmother suggested a romantic happy-ever-after to someone who rather prided herself on her commonsense but almost lived in books!

Grandmère gave me a beautiful black doll in hand-knitted clothes to go in the wooden cot with powder blue corduroy covers from my parents. She gave me the blue hardback Grimms' Fairy Tales that someone later stole from its temporary hiding place under the big creosoted shed outside 3C's classroom; and The Arabian Nights, carefully sleeved in magical wrapping paper with wizards in robes of cobalt blue, buttercup yellow and magenta on a black night background; The Children of the New Forest, with my name on the flyleaf in her beautiful copperplate handwriting, now faded from black to brown; and a nightdress case of thick thick white linen with a Goodnight message and a border of hearts cross-stitched in red silk.

Grandmère was indeed from a different age and culture, but part of who my mother is, and who I am, comes from her: certainly our appreciation of colour, texture and detail, whether in the garden, in embroidery and textiles, or even in the ironing!

My scholar grandfather, who I never knew, imparted a love of books and study, and the appreciation of a good mind, something I also see in my father, who has always enjoyed books, but also playing with words, teasing out incongruities, and making shamelessly bad puns. Ach!

Anyway, enough of my shameless wallow. Here's the poem, A Fanfare for the Makers, by Louis MacNeice. This is what it's all about.

A cloud of witnesses. To whom? To what?
To the small fire that never leaves the sky.
To the great fire that boils the daily pot.

To all the things we are not remembered by,
Which we remember and bless. To all the things
That will not even notice when we die,

Yet lend the passing moment words and wings.

So Fanfare for the Makers: who compose
A book of words or deeds, who runs may write
As many do who run, as a family grows

At times like sunflowers turning towards the light,
As sometimes in the blackout and the raids
One joke composed an island in the night,

As sometimes one man's kindliness pervades
A room or house or village, as sometimes
Merely to tighten screws, or sharpen blades

Can catch a meaning, as to hear the chimes
At midnight means to share them, as one man
In old age plants an avenue of limes

And before they bloom can smell them, before they span
The road can walk beneath the perfected arch,
The merest greenprint when their lives began

Of those who walk there with him, as in default
Of coffee men grind acorns, as in despite
Of all assaults conscripts counterassault,

As mothers sit up late night after night
Moulding a life as miners day by day
Descend blind shafts, as a boy may flaunt his kite

In an empty nonchalant sky, as anglers play
Their fish, as workers work and can take pride
In spending sweat before they draw their pay,

As horsemen fashion horses while they ride.
As climbers climb a peak because it is there,
As life can be confirmed even in suicide:

To make is such. Let us make. And set the weather fair.

Can you hear me, Mother?

I'm very excited!

A couple of nights ago I was on the phone with Mother, 4,000 or so miles away. Mother has been deaf to every suggestion that she should get a PC. She's done enough typing in her time, thank you very much. So I am the envy of the staffroom, because my pigeon hole has fat, hand-written letters, all year round.

(I of course, have guilt, because while I phone fairly frequently, do I write? Do I @#%%#&*!
I could blame the pain-in-the-ass distribution and efficiency of post offices, heat, dust - oh yeah and they lost the presents I posted last Christmas and they lost my special Mother's Day je-ne-sais-quoi - et jamais bloody well will now by the look of things - from far-far-away Habibibaba. Aargh! *^$#$%^&!@#$&^%%$!!!!!!!!!! But no, I'm just lazy.)

No. Mother's not interested in a PC. Now I know where my technophobe streak comes from...

Yes, but Mother, you could get Internet access, and a Hotmail account, and send emails, and it's immediate. And get emails from Mama Duck, Big Brother, Dutch Uncle, French Leave, Darling Sister, Little Brother, Habibibaba and Omani Traveller, whenever something interesting comes up, and it's immediate. (Just made all those up! Did you get everyone? :) )And Mama Duck's got a blog now. And Dutch Auntie's webpage is full of gorgeous photos of gorgeous small Diamond, and you don't have to wait for the post.

See!

At last, proof that a Diamond is the way to a woman's heart. Didn't I tell you he was gorgeous? Takes after both parents!

Yes, Mother said that she's going to visit the Internet Suite at Central Library, and seek out a librarian to help her get online. I approve of this kind of service. How civilised.

And I said, come visit my blog, and check out grannyp and La Petite Anglaise for starters. (Yes I know I've tagged them before, but this is for a cause.)

OK Mother, click on their names and you can go straight to their blogs. Enjoy. If you get stuck or end up with a blank screen, don't worry: it's impossible to delete or change anything, and the library staff have helped plenty of nervous novices before you. And let me know you were here. Pleasepleaseplease click comments at the end and say hi. If I can do it, you definitely can! (Be brave!)

xxxxxxxxx tu patito amarillo