Lessons in Chemistry

It was surprisingly easy to find Lessons in Chemistry as an earbook on Borrowbox. It was named book of the year 2022 and adapted as a TV mini-series the next year: so I didn't expect it to be persistently available on Borrowbox. Eventually I downloaded and heard it through. Spoiler: it is not a chemistry textbook. In fact the overt chemistry in the book is kinda terrible - a mere dusting of needlessly obscure science-adjacent long words where any normal scientist would use plain English sodium chloride? salt! Trimethylxanthine? coffee!

But that's plenty okay because 'chemistry' does a lot of heavy lifting in the book at different levels of abstraction / metaphor. Cooking is Chemistry. Love is Chemistry. Rowing is Chemistry. Cynophilia is Chemistry. It's also okay because the author Bonnie Garmus was Arts Block at college and worked all her life in the media and doesn't apologize for not taking a degree in Chemistry in order to write a novel. Instead she bought a 1959 General Chemistry text on eBay and scraped that for $5 words. The novel also features a talking dog, so try to suspend belief in order to take on board the universals.

As reg'lar readers know I've written A Lot about women in science. The underlying theme in many of those short biogs is how so many of their careers are a daunting and depressing slog up Mount Impossible through the Vale of Misogyny. Perhaps the 1950/60s, when the novel is set, was the worst time to try launching a career in science as a woman. Before that, only the most ambitious, lucky, privileged and well-connected even tried. Afterwards, it got steadily easier as the dinosaurs died off and society became more willing to accept equality in the workplace. And believe me, I know we're not there yet 60 years later.

Lessons in Chemistry is heart-warming and funny and introduces a handful of not-all-men who support and encourage the Heroine Chemist in her quest for truth and recognition. Do not read the Spoiler synopsis in Wikipedia but rather snag the book on Borrowbox - I returned it a week ago. Okay this clip won't ruin everything.

Garden update

If someone said it was Ireland's driest Spring since records began, I wouldn't immediately call Rubbish! Lack of rain hits our food-growing capacity harder than some, because almost all the productivity is inside a 9m x 17m polytunnel. At the end of May, we had a delegation of Hickeys come by from the US for lunch. As best as we can tell, their family owned our farm up until ~1873. Many years ago, the whole family returned home to their Patrimony and I rendered them some trifling service. I was happy to do that because you couldn't meet a taller, sunnier, kinder bunch of people. I was adopted by the recently widowed matriarch and included in her Xmas round-robin Annual Report. Over the subsequent years various septs of the clan came by for tea and scones, most recently on St James's Day 2021. When my foster-mother died over Christmas 2014, I had a Mass said for her in our Parish church and was able to double the audience at early mass on my way to work in The Institute.

Mais revenons nous à 2025! #1 Son and #5 Son and their spouses came for lunch. Na mBan Hickey had a tour of the garden afterwards and were delighted to be presented with the first two fat pea-pods for dessert. As well as peas [free from the Library last fall], we've also planted some saved haricot beans [which are taller than me already, but have few blossoms]. Also tomatoes of several different (named but unknown to me) varieties: so that will be a pot-luck bonanza. Actually half these tomatoes are growing up against the sunny front of the house, in the biggest pots we own: where they will get free watering [rain and kitchen rinse water] and a thermal boost from the in🌞ated wall behind them. No pressure to produce, Toms!

I have described the 1 tonne IBCs which act as rainwater reservoirs in and around the polytunnel. I wrung every drop out of these back-up reserves during the Spring 2025 Drought and had to keep things going with water pumped from 35m below grade through our domestic plumbing system. I'm really reluctant to do this because our bore-hole water is really acidic . . . and also because it's really cold. Whatevs, I rinsed out the external IBC and moved it away from the ash-dieback dead ash Fraxinus excelsior to a new, shadier position as ◎ L. It is also 0.5 m higher than before, which should make irrigation run faster. I was ready when we had a drought-breaking storm which delivered steady rain for about 6 hours. It took that much time to ¾ fill the IBC by pumping from the water-butt which takes all the water from the gutter running along the S edge of the polytunnel. 10 days later, it was brimful from drizzle and showers. 

In contrast to [solar] electricity, you can store water against an [un] rainy day! 

blindsight

El Blobbo has mentioned VS Ramachandran several times already. Borrowbox, Irish Libraries portal to ear-books and e-books is not limited to media which has at some point been issued on paper. One example is The Reith Lectures - 10 of the Best [2022, BBC]. The Beeb went to some trouble to pick 10 different Reith Lecturers [from a stable of ~75] and then fillet out One of the lectures from that pundit's series. It's going to be random and eclectic; but I guess they will have left the right doozies on the cutting room floor. "The BBC found that some of the audio archive of the Reith Lectures was missing from its library and appealed to the public for copies of the missing lectures"!!

They chose to include  Ramachandran talking about blindsight - the curious phenomenon where people who are stone blind because of damage to the striate cortex can nevertheless reliably point to an apple that is presented in front of their face. This may be through activation of, and processing by, the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) - a part of the brain which normally activates to assess speed and direction of moving objects. I guess the evidence for blindsight pans out . . . but the jury is still out on the mechanism?  Just when the audience [me] is putting on their skeptic hat and thinking up alternative explanations, Ramachandran pauses to say "But we all have blindsight when we drive".

I worked for 8 years at The Institute. During that time I clocked up about 100,000 km going back and forth on my 40km commute. I drove through the familiar landscape without hitting the curb (mostly not) or sheep (never) while listening to whatever audio I had on the go. Or giving orders to myself about marking lab-books or delivering lectures.

Distraction while driving a lethal instrument is much increased if someone else is in the car and we are nattering. Early one morning, I clocked up a fine and 3 penalty points in Enniscorthy when I was taking my sister to the ferry from Rosslare. It was a fair cop but I was completely oblivious to 30 cu.m. of camera-van outside the Community College until I got the penalty point notice in the post 5 days later. My retina got the image and sent it up the chain of command but there was nobody home in the visual cortex.

There's A Lot of data cluttering up other parts of my brain, though. The Beloved bumped into an acquaintance in Waterford City the other day whose first name, luckily, she knew. She knew the husband's name as well. But neither of us could remember their surname. That sort of thing annoys me so I tend to work at a solution. Several times that evening I could feel their name coming to the surface. But each time I gave the wisp full attention and tried to fish it out, it squidged out of my grasp and was gone. The following morning that name came to me as I was on my second cup of tea. 

• Where was it hiding?
• Why would we have a storage system that was so hard of access?
• What is the longest river in Spain?
• When is the next pub quiz?

PS. Another I R Old failure (of hearing this time) the other day. We're getting contractors in who need payment. I'm doing this on-line because I'm not that Old. One payment was in "processing" for a long time so I called the Bank's support line. That put me through to a gatekeeper, to whom I explained my problem. After a while she said brightly "I'll just put you on to rapine and steam" I repeated this back in my best incredulous tone and she repeated at dealing with imbecile pace "I'll just put you on to Our . Payment . System"

yellow brick road

A New England. ♩ was 21 years when The Boy was bor♬ . . . ♪'m 70 now but I won't be for lo♫ g. In 2004, I'd just turned 50 and retired [retire early and retire often has been my lifetime strategy] and announced that I was ready for a long walk in Spain. The Boy did me a solid by saying he'd komm mit. We pulled into Santiago on The Day:

Looking [too] closely, it is apparent that the older man is still portering 10kg of lard. That had all gone by the time I arrived, 800km later, at St Jean Pied de Porte in September. 

This evening we're meeting in Bayonne 64 with the intention of walking North a piece out of St Jean along the GR65. That is one of the many sentier de Grande Randonnée which criss-cross Western Europe in a largely car-free network of walking routes. GR65 is the French section Chemin de Saint-Jacques aka Via Podiensis and starts / finishes in Geneva / Santiago. In 2019, I was getting ready to retire [retire early and retire often has been my lifetime strategy] in the Summer of 2020. I fantasized about walking from St Jean to Cherbourg as the third and final stage of my 25 year walk from the furthest tip of Portugal to Home. Coronarama put the kibosh on that but my plan was taken aboard by The Boy who said he intended to komm mit agane. 

Ho Ho, he is now the age I was in the photo above and much fitter so def'n'y able for a 150km yomp along a waymarked sentier. Me, maybe not so much: I've been moaning that it's 5 years too late for me. But, as I mentioned a tuthree weeks ago, I've been in training for a month, and can now "sprint" 2km up a 10% slope in less than 25 mins. That's only vaguely related to being able to keep going at that pace for 30km. We have dinner booked on Saturday that far away from St Jean - so my knees had better be good enough.  Ultreïa!? ♬ ♪ ♫ ♩

Blob posts will be patchy to absent! 

De-ivy de Ash

Cripes, we're on our (...counts...) eighth ninth tenth forester. I feel sure there's another one or two in the 30 year back-story but can recall neither name nor face. Only one of these men [all men despite our best efforts to find another type] was an Ass: a bullying tree-hating power-tripper. There have been an equal number of tree-workers employed by the contractors we have paid. I guess therefore that we're paid-up supporters of a niche sector of the Irish economy. 

I've always thought that they were underpaid: asking dozens rather than thousands of €€€s a day. Plumbers get wet; chippies bugger their knees; but tree-surgeons (even the most careful and competent) die. I was, therefore, kinda glad when two of my favorite tree-monkeys refused to help with my tree-anxieties after Storm Darragh and Storm Éowyn this last Winter. Both chaps had hung up their harness, lapsed their insurance, and got work on the ground. There are two ways to get to "there are no old tree-climbing foresters": one option being distinctly preferable.

I've been losing sleep over a Scot's pine Pinus sylvestris , right opposite our front gate, which looked like it had had its foundations shook by Storm Darragh and might fall on the adjacent shed at the first gust of the next Westerly storm. Forester#10, let's call him Conor, finally called back last Wednesday evening, saying he'd come by to have a look on his way home in . . . an hour. He came on time, drove a big Toyota pickup and had the widest Husqvarna-branded suspenders I ever did see. A wide smile and a crushing hand-shake boosted my confidence. 

Conor was not particularly concerned about the looming Scots. His take was that oak Quercus robur, Scots Pinus sylvestris and ash Fraxinus excelsior had deep tap roots and were most unlikely to be ripped from the ground by any storm. They could shed top-hamper for sure, especially if there was ivy Hedera helix to provide extra windage. As we've experienced Monterey cypress = Mackie Cupressus macrocarpa; sceagh = hawthorn Crataegus monogyna; and rowan = mountain ash Sorbus aucuparia are classic for being untimely ripped from the earth-mother's womb by any stiff breeze. My anx alleviated, we've agreed to give that Scots another year: monitoring to check the progress of needle browning.

otoh, there are four (4) stonking gurt ash trees on the ditch between our micro-forest and the access road. They have been differently affected  by ash die-back Hymenoscyphus fraxineus and the last one is perilous close to angry neighbour's sheds. I've been dithering about cutting a ring around the ivy until I got an opinion on whether climbing arborists thought it made the trunk easier or harder to climb. At least living ivy is firmly attached to the tree. Conor advised ivy-cutting at 6:30 pm. At 6:30 am next morning I was on that task and by 08:00 it was mission accomplished - handtools [loppers, saw, hatchet] only!

We've also identified a drop-zone in the nearest corner of the forest where they can rain down lumps of tree when the time comes.

The list of sleep disturbing tree issues is now a little shorter. It's not like we haven't been living in the midst of trees for 30 years.  Which have been unsteadily falling over or shedding branches all that time. We've never had to buy firewood. But we lost more trees in the last Winter, than we've lost over the previous 25. When chaps are young, they know they're going to live forever so they don't worry about mortality [including doing bat-shit crazy things in/with cars, trampolines, quad-bikes, power-tools]. On some level, don't worry is extended to meteorological assaults resulting in property damage. I guess my tree-anx is increasing as the tide of old-man hormones turns. And hints of feistier weather as a result of climate change might be a factor also.

You can't herd one sheep

We have a farm[let], so we're farrrrmers? That's true, I s'pose, for some definitions of farmer.  The current regime at Caisleán Fáinne-chloch is that we have a minimum number [N=15] of sheep to a) stop ecological succession turning our trad hay meadows into old growth oak forest b) attract a modest subsidy from Bruxelles. Although, we are growing a micro oak+ forest next door. The Dept.Ag. requires that we vacate the 4½ ha. of meadow of sheep (and scythe) from mid-Apr to end-Jun; which is peak growth, flowering and seed-set season. The sheep have ~1 ha. of reg'lar fields on which to vacation during the vacate.

I was tidying up the boundary of that field at the end of March: cutting back the bushes makes it easier to count the sheep - no place to hide. Years ago, before our time, when that boundary separated two active farmsteads, that ditch was cleaned up and topped off with iron stakes, a run of sheep-wire and a single strand of robust barbed wire. There followed ~50 years of neglect: brambles, bushes, and full-on trees have filled out the defenses. Several years ago, a small sceagh Crataegus monogyna gave up under the local weight of wire and sagged over to our side of the boundary. The fence, at a 45° angle, was leaning out over a bit of a drop and the combo seemed to be sheep-proof.

But last Tuesday, I heard an unusual hullabaloo loud enough to penetrate by sofa-sacked 'mind'. Such noises often presage sheep-head-in-wire or similar events: 'tis almost as if it's a cry for help. I put on my boots, seized my shepherd's pliers, and strode purposefully across the lane. Most of the noise came from a lamb on the neighbour's side of the ditch; but the beast gambolled away at my approach and all the adult sheep were grazing unsnagged in the middle of the field. From force of habit I counted them and found 15 . . . +1. We had an extra black-faced ewe who had cleared the fence to see if the grass really was greener on the other side but her lamb at foot had baulked at the jump. I called up m'neighbour to say I had one of his. But we agreed that as the lamb was big enough to eat a bit of grass between milky bars, there was no urgency about repatriating the ewe.

I heaved a big put-upon sigh <harrrrumph> and went back home to assemble the rest of my fence-repair kit: 3 stakes, a handful of staples, chainsaw,  hatchet, iron bar, sledge-hammer. I'd cleared the site and was ready to re-erect the fence when I paused to reflect. It would be the divil-and-all to separate one ewe from her new pals and drive her out the gate, down the lane, along the county road and up the neighbour's drive to home. It might be easier for the two of us (and a good dog, hopefully) to catch the sheep and bundle her all willing over the saggy fence. 

A few hours later, evening-time, I went to look the field the final time and counted 15! Herself had gotten bored with the company and fecked off home under her own steam. At first light, I went back alone to fix the fence:

. . . for some definitions of fixed. That fence had been leaning to our side for many years and disappeared into an unkempt jungle in parts so it required some effort to get the sheep-wire more-or-less upright and supported by the new stakes. The rusty barbed wire wasn't coming vertical to match. But <thinks> if I stand on neighbour's side of the ditch I .might. be able to .lever. the wire over the top of the middle post to tighten the whole MacGyver up. I was an inch from achieving this goal when the wire broke and I pitched back off the ditch onto my arse in the neighbour's field. No amount of PPE can protect from that sort of seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time accident. No, I'm fine, thanks for asking.