Satisfyingly crunchy

Random observation for today. There's something deeply satisfying about the crunch of car tyres on gravel. There's a modest and fairly unattractive strip of gravel on our drive, alternating with equally unattractive slabs of poured concrete, but I love the sound it makes when I roll the car onto it. It's a cut-price version of shingle being clawed back to sea by a retreating wave, in much the same way that that the not-so-distant rumble of traffic on the M1 sounds a bit like the roar of distant surf in my Newport-Pagnell-on-Sea fantasy. Pop open a cold beer in the sun-drenched garden (now boasting a garden shed re-painted to look like a beach hut, in blue, with jaunty strawberry ice-cream pink stripes) and disbelief is is temporarily suspended.

Thank crunchie it's Friday.

Frozen veg

First, he good news. We finally have some tiny florets of fractal broccoli - and I've got the pictures to prove it. The bad news - like the rest of the country, we've been getting severe frosts. I don't know how hardy Romanesco broccoli is, but I think we're about to find out.

This vegetable universe

Imagination is the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow.

William Blake

There are some broccoli plants growing in the garden. They're looking a bit tired and pigeon-pecked, so I'm not sure whether they'll actually produce any florets. If they do, though, they'll be something special, because they're not ordinary broccoli but Romanesco broccoli, like the one above. With its spiral florets made up of self-similar spiral patterns on a smaller scale, this striking vegetable looks like a 3D fractal pattern generated by computer.

Step forward Aleksandar Rodić, with a 3D computer rendition of Romanesco broccoli .

For more striking examples of natural forms with fractal or Fibonacci sequence patterns check this article out. I particularly liked the Mandelbulb-like sea urchin.

Grapeshot

The grapes in our garden are making a valiant attempt to ripen before the cold weather comes.

Eye candy

After a short camping holiday we're back in the garden, checking out the soft fruit harvest. The raspberries are ripening nicely and the dessert gooseberries (variety "Careless") are almost ripe, but the most striking crop must be the redcurrants which have been cropping since before we went away. They may be tiny and a little on the tart side, but they look as fresh and perfect as dew drops, with a deep, translucent ruby glow. It's a joy to see them appearing - they must be one of the most beautiful fruits in creation.

It just goes to show that you don't have to go far to see something extraordinary, although a couple of things from our holiday were just as striking. I've got a picture of one of those things here:



It's the sun, surrounded by a rainbow-tinted halo (the rainbow colours were there, although they don't come out very well in the photo). These are produced by the sun shining through ice crystals in high cirrus clouds. I photographed this one about a week ago, whilst sitting on a Cornish beach.

That same beach was dotted with scores beached jellyfish which would have been an impressive sight, if they had still been floating, rather than laying around as sand-covered blobs. I didn't take any pictures, as they weren't at their most photogenic. If they had still been at sea, they'd have made for some interesting pictures. Most of them were harmless Moon jellyfish (Aurelia aurita), quite transparent apart from four violet crescents. These, I later found out, are the animal's gonads. The remaining jellyfish were also transparent, but thickly streaked with a radial pattern of deep indigo, like dark blue ink. I'm not 100% sure what these were, but they looked like this photograph of a Blue Jellyfish, (Cyanea lamarckii). Whatever they were, that indigo colour was as almost lovely as a redcurrant or a rainbow circle round the sun.

Not the Chelsea Flower Show

Just what was blooming in our back garden today.

Gardening tip of the day

The Mandelbulb (narcissus mandelsonii) will grow almost anywhere and flourishes in dark shade as well as in the full sunlight of publicity. The flower emerges in many different shapes and colours that can bloom vigorously in many soil types. The scientific name of the Mandelbulb derives from the Greek legend of Narcissus, who looked into a pool, saw his reflection and fell in love with himself.

The Mandelbulb does best in rich soil and is most at home on the yachts of tycoons and oligarchs, although with a judicious application of interest-free loans, it will also do well in Europe or Westminster.

Being easy to grow, once established, the Mandelbulb will return year after year. Some regard the plant as an annoying weed, which is very difficult to control. The Mandelbulb’s foliage is highly invasive, smothering surrounding vegetation by casting a dark shadow.

Like all Narcissus varieties, the Mandelbulb is highly toxic, containing high levels of the alkaloid poison lycorine. The Mandelbulb can easily be confused with an onion, thereby leading to incidents of accidental poisoning.

Only kidding. In fact, the Mandelbulb is a 3D version of the Mandelbrot Set. To be precise it's not the true 3D version of the Mandelbrot set (something which was hitherto thought impossible), although it does suggest that a true 3D version is possible. Until then, click here for the images which are nonetheless pretty impressive. Originally found on Slashdot Science.

It came from the veg patch

After last year's venture into Chard, this year's slightly unusual vegetable is kohlrabi. It's not a big crop, but here's the first one we've harvested. I wasn't sure what to do with the alien-looking tentacled purple blob , so mashed it up roughly with carrots. It wasn't a taste revelation, but it was quite pleasant, which is more than we can said for last year's chard, which grew vigorously, but was a bit of a penance to eat. Somebody on line claimed that chard stalks were a bit like asparagus, although I can tell you from personal experience that you'd be about as likely to confuse chard stalks with asparagus as you would be to mistake the Eiffel Tower for a fun-sized Snickers bar.

Ignoring the budget

I've not been following the "serious" coverage of Darling's latest bodge-it. I'm frightened that closer examination would just reveal that he's still way out of his depth. I don't imagine he's any more clueless than Her Majesty's opposition, or most of the other people who entirely failed to see this coming, but I'm getting the distinct impression that he's not ahead of the curve.

There seems to be a general consensus that Vince Cable is the man with a plan, or at least some grasp of what's gone so wrong and what to do about it - but, of course, he's light years away from the levers of power. I've just looked at an interesting review of Cable's book about the crisis, The Storm, (along with Philip Augar's Chasing Alpha, another post-mortem of financial doomsday), which ends with these (now) chilling words:

In a speech at Mansion House in 2004, Gordon Brown bellowed to an audience of bankers: “What you have achieved for the financial services sector, we as a country now aspire to achieve for the whole of the British economy.” The British will be living with that achievement for years.

You can read the whole review here. I'm almost tempted to read Cables's book itself, but who am I kidding? I can't even defeat the slugs or ants or whatever the beasties are that have eaten half the veg we've planted this year (despite having conscientiously thrown old coffee grounds and crushed eggshells on the ground around the tender young plants - supposedly a sure-fire slug deterrent). When I understand garden pests, maybe I'll move on to trying to understand the meltdown of the global financial system and how we all got to be a zillion pound in debt...