Tangled Up In Blue

The latest controversy to strike the office at my place of work is the vexed issue of tea scum. One half of the office insists it's caused by leaving the teabag in too long; the other half have an unshakeable belief that scum will occur if you put the milk in last.

 I once had the formation of tea scum explained to me by a scientist friend, so when the debate got heated for the second time and my opinion was canvassed, I couldn't stop myself from pointing out that although I couldn't remember the scientific explanation, I knew that neither camp was right and that the scum could be reduced by introducing acidity to the tea in the form of a drop or two of lemon juice.

This was met with a stony silence and then my colleagues resumed the debate. But my curiosity was piqued again and so I had to Google it. Turns out that tea scum was unexplained by science until the 1990s when research was conducted into the question that concluded that the calcium carbonate found in hard water is what allows scum to form in tea through oxidation at the tea's surface, and that scum can be eliminated either by using soft water or by introducing acid to the mix, for example with a drop or two of lemon juice.

Who knew?

The thing I like most about this charming and very very orange flower, is it's scrunched up curly-wurly petal. The thing I like least is my photography skills. WHY GOD WHY did I have to cut half the petals out of the shot? It looks very ungainly. Originally this was not going on the blog for that precise reason, but I'm so low on picture stocks right now that I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel. Or possibly bouquet.

Oh well. Into each life some rain must fall.

So I've been racking my brains to think of something interesting to discuss in this post but unfortunately I have realised that I'm not very good at it. I have lots of interesting thoughts whilst wandering around the place, but few when sat at the computer. What I need is a dictaphone. Then I can be one of those people who strides around the place grasping a small black box to my face and shouting "NOTE TO SELF: TURN OVEN OFF" and "MUST BUY BINBAGS".

Ooh, binbags!

"What a dull topic!", I hear you cry. "There is nothing exciting about binbags!"

That is where you are wrong. Did you know that the binbag was invented by Herbert A. Resplendency-Potts of Wiltshire in 1894, after a careless servant dropped a lead dustbin on his foot? Of course you don't, because it's a huge lie. In fact, they were invented in the 1950s by three Canadians, who to the best of my knowledge had suffered no garbage-related trauma. But it's not such a good story.

Also exciting are the novelty Christmas pudding binbags which I recently came across in John lewis. I was extremely excited ...until I realised that I don't take out the rubbish. But one day, when I have my own house, my rubbish will out-Christmas everyone else's. Plus, even when it's not Christmas you can get these novelty goldfish binbags. Your neighbours probably won't judge you at all.

Flower... or flour?

Pictures of flowers, pictures of flowers, pictures of flowers, picture of a leaf... It's enough to make you want to scream. Like this fine gentleman, a sculpture at Buckfast Abbey (in fact, I like to imagine the sculpture represents the facial expression which is induced by trying Buckfast tonic wine. It's like alcoholic Calpol).

Being mildly obsessive, I have been monitoring my blog stats and it turns out that by far my most popular post was one in which I talked at length about the strange fact that whales are dinosaurs are always compared to buses. Unsurprisingly, these musings were unrelated to the picture of the day, which was of a flower. I'm sure that all the people wanting to find out how many buses equals a humpback whale were wildly disappointed when they discovered my blog is almost solely comprised of photographs of flowers, but at least this knowledge has somewhat strengthened my resolve to continue writing about random bits and bobs. Because it's interesting to find what people find interesting.

And so. I have been racking my brains. After my recent post about pandas, I was trying to think of something else to discuss. And then it hit me. Flower. Flour. What's going on there?

Flower vs. Flour

As it turns out, there are multiple companies whose names were inspired by these homophones. Predictably, they are bakers (I nearly said "cakists". But obviously that's not actually a word. Although possibly it should be, to distinguish between those who waste their time making bread, and those who concentrate on delicious, delicious cake).

Those who have trouble spelling will no doubt be delighted to learn that originally, the words "flour" and "flower" were spelled the same way. They both apparently derive from the Old French word fleur, which meant both "flower" in its modern sense, and also had a sense of "the finest", as in the finest part of the meal. The meal as in the ground-up grains, not the meal as in lunch dinner breakfast. Etymology is baffling. Apparently Samuel Johnson's 1755 dictionary did not recognise a difference in spelling between the two words, but by the 1830s there had, presumably, been a few incidents of unwary cooks feeding their families cakes made out of the shrubbery, and the whole mess was gradually straightened out.

I've not seen anything to support/prove this in any of the etymologies I've found, but based on my research (coughgooglingcough) I wondered whether the eventual clarification of the two words had something to do with the city of Rochester, New York; in the 1820s the town developed a famous and booming flour mill industry and then in the 1830s it also gained a renowned and thriving seed-selling business. Perhaps the residents of Rochester found it especially important to differentiate between flour and flowers; certainly the town's nickname is given initially as the Flour City and, later, the Flower City. Given how neatly the dates line up, I'm surprised I haven't been able to find anything linking the town to wider acceptance of the two spellings. Rochester, you're missing a trick.

High Drama

A rather lovely and highly melodramatic rose, still covered in raindrops after a brief shower. I always find it tricky to get nice pictures of roses, and this took an awful lot of attempts, but I'm fairly pleased with how it came out! Worthy of a tragic romance...

Zoom

And it's back to plants. With another flower that I cannot identify but thought was rather cool. Not much else to say, really!

Some Sunny Day

Ah, summer. Please come back.

Still Lily

Just found a lily, sitting in a bit of wood. And took a photo, because obviously that's the right and proper reaction to such a situation.

Purple Zebra

A zebra-striped iris. Apparently irises get their name from the Greek word for 'rainbow', because they come in so many different colours. Without much hope of success, I typed the words "purple iris" into Google to attempt to identify this fine specimen, and sure enough I completely failed at my task. But I'm pretty sure it's an iris of some description! What more do you need?

A Brief History of Thyme

In Ancient Egypt, thyme was used in the embalming process; in ancient Greece, it was used as incense and believed to be a source of courage; the Romans spread the herb across Europe through their use of it to purify their rooms and flavour certain foods; in the Middle Ages it was used to ward off nightmares and promote a good night's sleep.

Okay, I'm done now. Thanks again, Wikipedia!

Obviously the above photograph is not of a thyme plant, it's some kind of very pretty iris, one of my favourite kinds of flower.

Give Me Your Answer, Do

Taken on a cliff-top walk in Cornwall. It was a really lovely walk, although unfortunately like an idiot I managed to get a fairly horrific sunburn on the back of my legs and spent the next few days slathering them in
olive oil and E45 moisturiser. Also, because we were camping, every time I had to crawl into the tent, the backs of my knees registered serious complaints with my brain. It was painful! So don't do that.

Interestingly, I was reading recently that the song "Daisy Daisy" (you know the one… about a bicycle made for two), was apparently first written about Daisy Greville, Countess of Warwick and mistress of Edward VII. Apparently she was known as the "Babbling Brooke" for her inability to keep things discreet and was thought to be partially responsible for the leaking of the Royal Baccarat Scandal in 1890, which resulted in Edward being called to testify in court and the whole affair turned into a bit of a society spectacle. It's strangely comforting to know that even a hundred years ago, tabloid gossip was still tabloid gossip.

I also like how the Wikipedia article on the scandal states that Prince Edward restrained his gambling afterwards, by taking up whist instead of baccarat. An altogether more respectable card game. And, incidentally, one which I learned how to play whilst on holiday in Cornwall. So the cycle of facts turns full circle.

Petals

This is one of my absolute favourite photos. And one of my less original post titles, oops. The disadvantage of the way I post pictures on this blog is that they're all teeny so you don't get to appreciate the clarity of the photo at full resolution. I originally intended to put them all up on flickr and then cross post them here, but a) it seemed like effort and b) I managed to lock myself out of my flickr account (genius, I know).

I am considering adding some of the photos to posts at full size under a cut, if I can work out how to do it, and this is a prime candidate! No clue what kind of flower it is, though. A pink one?

I did consider using it as my desktop background, but it would mean ousting two very charming narwhals, to whom I am very attached. Did you know that the narwhal's tusk is actually a tooth which grows right through the top lip of the male narwhals? Some of them even have two.

National Geographic's website does the classic "size of whale compared to a bus" analogy on all its whale pages (a humpback is the size of one large bus; a blue whale about three buses; a narwhal less than one bus). Why is it that whales are always compared to buses? It seems strange that "a bus" has become an informal unit of measurement for sea mammals.(And dinosaurs). How did this begin? Why the relentless association with buses? Why not a train? or a tank? or a herb garden? Has anyone found the first instance in which a whale was compared in size to a bus? And how does it work across national boundaries? A London double-decker bus seems to be the standard measurement in the UK, but judging by the pictures on Nat Geo's website, they're using an American yellow school bus. These buses are different sizes. Is this accounted for in the comparison? Will we ever know?

On The Cusp

I love orange! As, presumably, does this marmalade fly, episyrphus balteatus. They're super common and live all over the place. Strangely I've never been a big fan of marmalade, despite my passion for all things orangey - it's much too bitter. Apparently the whole reason it's so bitter is that English marmalade uses Seville oranges for their high pectin content, which enables the preserve to set well - California marmalade uses sweet oranges (and is therefore probably much nicer).

Wikipedia tells us that in 1524, Henry VIII received a box of marmalade from a Mr Hull of Exeter, allthough quite why is unclear. Apparently it was originally made from quinces and imported into Britain in wooden boxes rather than jars, and it wasn't until the 1700s that it started to be eaten as an accompaniment rather than just as a sweetmeat in its own right.

I remember as a child I had high expectations regarding the deliciousness of marmalade, thanks to the charming Paddington Bear, who had such a serious addiction to the stuff that, were he human, questions would have been asked regarding his suitability as a role model for small children. As far as I was concerned at the time, however, if a cartoon bear liked it, then it must be pretty delicious. You can imagine my disappointment when I actually tried it.

End of the Lavender

Another bumblebee picture - again I think it's a red-tailed bumblebee, bombus lapidarius (see the photograph in this previous post) although as it has a golden ruff and is rather smaller, I think it's a male, whereas the other bee was female.

It was really tricky getting this photograph to work, my poor camera was completely baffled as to what it was supposed to be focusing on. I have a few pictures of other bumblebees and honeybees which I took on the same day (the lavender was a real magnet for them) which I might put up at some point - this isn't actually the best of them in terms of focus, but I particularly like the colours and the last few bedraggled looking flowers.

There's a lavender farm quite close to where I grew up, and it's absolutely beautiful at the height of summer, particularly if, like me, you fanatically love anything purple-coloured. Plus, it smells fantastic.

The Classic

Aaaand it's a brief return to form with one of my favourite orange flower pictures.

This was taken at Buckfast Abbey. It's the home of a group of practising Benedictine monks, who are very devout and incidentally brew a highly caffeinated tonic wine famed as the scourge of Scotland and mentioned in over 5,000 crime reports in Strathclyde between 2006-9.

We only saw one monk while we were there, though, and as he was sitting on a wall with his head in his hands looking incredibly depressed I decided not to accost him and ask him about it. We did buy some wine, though, and took it home to try later. It tasted like alcoholic cough medicine.

On the plus side, as well as encouraging alcoholism in the distant north, the monks have some nice grounds including an interesting herb garden with plants segregated by use; medicinal, household, kitchen, and poison (amusingly, the poisonous plants were kept away from wayward hands by means of a small moat).

Dappled Light

A return to my traditional "yay! flowers" approach to photography - although as I recently proved, I am trying to break the cycle of addiction. This is some kind of rose, which was boldly protruding from a stranger's garden fence. If this were the olden days, perhaps I would have picked it and stolen it away with me, leaving them with a sadly denuded floral display. Fortunately, however, the power of the digital camera means I didn't have to.

We also discovered some very cool African Geese. Sadly all the photos I took of them were rubbish, but when I tried to find a better one on Google, it seems that all the other photos out there are even worse. Consequently I may, somewhat shamefacedly, put up the rubbish pictures, just because I want to convey how awesome these geese are. They have strange knobbly heads and one of them (I'm guessing the male) had a huge dewlap which wobbled disconcertingly as he walked around.

Sunshine After the Rain 2: Sunshine Harder

I am proud to announce that I have worked out what this flower is! Exciting because these were some of my favourite flowers to see this summer, even though I found them really tricky to get a good picture of. It is a crocosmia, although I have no clue what kind. The damp kind?

Anyway, this website proved helpful in narrowing it down! Even though all I really had to go on was "it's orange" and "it's probably not a tree", we got there.

Brightness

After all those drab rainy pictures, it's back to chirpy flowers! Although for how much longer, I can't say. I'm afraid my large backlog of photos is already starting to run low after only a month or two of blogging... eek. Hopefully this will provide the impetus required to go out and take lots more lovely pictures and not the impetus require to go "ah well, nevermind" and completely abandon this blog. That would be sad. But it's definitely trickier to enjoy photography in the winter. For one thing, the light's not as good; the flowers have all disappeared and (horror of horrors) sometimes it's pretty damp and chilly to be standing around taking forty pictures of the same tree to get it just right. And I refuse to post pictures which I don't actually like!

So I guess I better take advantage of whatever sunshine sees fit to grace our shores this September, and get snapping...

Incidentally in Ghana I noticed that they use the word "snap" in the same way we use the word "photo"; a photo is a snap, while to take a photo is to snap. I thought it was a cute usage of the word (although briefly confusing when people ask if you want to snap them...)

Balancing Act

I believe this is a european honeybee, aka apis mellifera, although I'm not entirely sure. I hope it is, because honeybees are nice. For one thing, they make honey, and honey with butter on toast is one of my favourite breakfasts (second only to toasted cinammon fruit bread. And ice cream, except obviously I don't actually allow myself to have that for breakfast because I don't want to turn entirely spherical). For another, they pollinate things in a useful and civic-minded manner. What's not to like?

And of course the poor honeybees are suffering from colony collapse disorder, which seems to me a rather ridiculous name, but there you go. No-one knows why the bees are disappearing, and it probably doesn't help that, bizarrely, there is genuinely a booming black market for bees, with thefts happening all over the place. On the one hand, it shows that British criminals are displaying an impressive level of knowledge and expertise in the field of beekeeping, which can only be admired.
On the other hand, they're stealing all the bees.

Sunshine After The Rain

I went on a trip to the local Botanical Gardens with my mother one day and we had the most peculiar weather. All in all it rained - heavily - on four separate occassions, but always at a relatively convenient moment; on our first trip to the tea rooms for lunch (delicious soup... tomato and chorizo, I believe, which I loved), then when we were standing right by the large greenhouses, then twice when we were back at the tea rooms, enjoying another couple of well-earned cups of tea. These gorgeous flowers (my mum told me their name and I promptly forgot. She would be very disappointed in me) grew all around the greenhouses, and when the sun suddenly emerged from behind the clouds, like an increasingly confident streaker at a public sports match, they looked fantastic, all damp and fresh from the rain.

Yellow Tutu

Just coming to the end of its summertime life.