Just got back from taking my mum to the movies. The new Wallace and Gromit film! It’s wonderful. It hit several of my buttons: As you know (perhaps) our heroes are inventors and have wonderful homemade gadgets, and solve their problems by thinking, and often employing a little exaggerated physics when in a tight spot. The physical humour is just wonderful in all of the short film’s they’ve done, and there’s more of that in this feature-length film. Also there’s a special bonus for me this time: Gromit, my favourite (right, with rabbits), is -of course- a keen gardener! And it’s all about the humane trapping of garden pests, which fits nicely with part of the comment thread of my last post!

Went to see it at my favourite movie theatre, the Arclight, which I’ve told you about before (here and here), and it was in the fantastic Cinerama Dome. Another great thing about the Arclight is that they have interesting film-related displays in the lobby contributed by the film-makers. Guess what they have on display now? Two of the model sets from the film!

They are just great. I carefully took some snaps through the glass cases for you. (My secret for success: no flash, hold your breath, squeeze-don’t-press.)

Here’s Wallace and Gromit in the basement. I won’t tell you what’s going on in case you have not seen the film yet (above right has another shot from that same set):

Here’s Gromit, examining his prized vegetables in the greenhouse:

These are particularly bitter-sweet to see up close, since the recent news of the terrible fire which destroyed most of the sets and props from all the previous work of the Aardman Animation studios.

Anyway, tonight was a lovely evening before a terribly busy work week. Setting alarm clock for 5:45am. Sigh….

-cvj

Working at home in the morning today, trying to find a pool of calm to think about physics after the organisational storm of the last couple of days, culminating in the excellent Energy colloquium about which I’ll post shortly.

Sitting outside on the patio, working through the world’s supply of coffee and tea (one has to do one’s part) while scribbling is always very nice. There are distractions, of course, and some of them are pleasant. Two recent ones:

(1) This giant beetle (larger than the size of the top joint of your thumb!) which is a beautiful iridescent green (not revealed in the picture - it left before I could get a good angle to photograph its underbelly). In flight it is huge and loud, like the helicopters that fly over a lot in this city’s busy skies. I had to get up and run to shut the windows it was busily trying to enter. It is so (at first) terrifying in flight close up that my first thought was that if it found its way into the house, I would just give it the keys and leave. But once it alighted on a surface and I could look at it and see how beautiful it was, I was hooked. Does anyone know what this wonderful/scary/beautiful creature is called? ((S)he did not stop to chat.) Specifically, I mean - what type of beetle is it?

(Another iridescent green visitor I’d like to capture on “film” is a marvellous tiny hummingbird (of some sort) that keeps coming to visit the stralitsias, the buddleias, and the salvia leucantha (Mexican sage) that are all blooming in the front garden now. But this beauty moves way too fast, and is rather shy.)

(2) The sounds of my mum (visiting for a while from the UK) chuckling away as she reads J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” with evident enjoyment (she has not even noticed me snapping this picture). She’s recently discovered Potter, and so I expect she’ll have several days of fun to come, reading these books. (I’ll have to borrow or buy the later ones for her since I’ve never read further than the first one, which someone bought for me several years ago. - Yes, I know it should be “…Philosopher’s Stone”: don’t get me started on that topic!)

-cvj

Well, it was a quiet weekend here. I was working hard on writing a paper, and so did not go to any wild parties, or parties of any sort, for that matter.

I learned from Pharyngula that it was World Naked Gardening Day on Saturday, so I thought I’d give you an update on the garden, as I did do some pottering about out there…..and I know what you want to ask! The good news is that some of the peas are ready! But they’re going to come ready in separated stages, so it looks like I’ll have about four peas a week, annoyingly. Also, I got one early pepper, of quite an unexpected colour, that was ready the day after I did the last garden post, but I neglected to tell you then since I thought you’d heard enough. No more have come, as the pepper plants seem to have decided to focus on growing to twice their size first. They do look healthy.

It’s an all out war between me and the skunk(s) again. And it might go nuclear again. I’d declared a truce for a while, but a few nights ago two of my zucchini plants were dug out at the roots just at the height of their flowering, so I’m mad. Will be re-arming with all the previous weaponry: sticks, stones (for throwing), cayenne pepper, and the nuclear option …ammonia!

Also on the gardening front, after a day’s calculating and writing yesterday, in the evening I decided to go to my favourite movie theatre, the Arclight, (in Hollywood, not too far from home, on Sunset Blvd, near Vine - best sound, seats and screens in town; check it out) and see The Constant Gardener. It was an excellent relatively low-key film, with a powerful and sad message. I do recommend it if you’re looking for ideas about what to see. Excellent performances (Ralph Fiennes, Rachel Weisz, among others), and directed by Fernando Meirelles, that excellent director who also directed a wonderful film that I love called City of God. Also, the film served as a reminder to me that unexpectedly crappy things can happen in your life while you’re worrying about the garden…

Today was spent mostly at home sat at the computer, writing. A sure sign that I’m getting old and distracted is the fact that it is much harder to get fully immersed in a writing project. When I was younger, much younger than today, I’d have been constantly working on the research with no other distractions (you know, committee meetings, teaching, etc), so that when I came to write the paper I’d have the whole paper essentially assembled in my head. Then I’d just sit and write it, sometimes all in one sitting, working through the night if neccessary. Not so now. Too many other things to worry about (not counting the blog here at all, by the way), so ideas come out all slow, not fully formed, and in the wrong order, which is not what I’m used to. Also -very importantly- I’m still trying to determine my favourite places to sit and work around the city when I’m in writing mode. Friday afternoon saw me at an excellent cafe I like called The Alcove (it’s in Los Feliz) for a few hours, writing and thinking. I spent yesterday working at home, mostly, but I did go for a pint or two at the Cat and Fiddle (a British pub (!), also in Hollywood, on Sunset Blvd; everybody checks everyone else out a little bit because someone spread a rumour that you’re supposed to spot celebrities there….tiresome, but a good spot) after the movie and do a bit of writing (on a folded-up bit of paper so as not to scare the patrons) on a bench there until about 11:00pm. I like changing venues a lot, getting on with life (seeing it and living it) and calculating and writing as I go. It’s one of my favourite modes of operation.

Today (Sunday) was mostly home, sitting outside from 8:00am writing and thinking, listening to the quiet morning sounds, broken only later by the guys building a deck over at the house across the street, and the sounds of the new neighbour (some minor celebrity, apparently) and his buddies moving into the other house opposite. Then in the late afternoon I decided on the spur of the moment to head to a new venue and scribble there: the beach. So I drove over to Santa Monica, parked the car, got out the bike and cycled into town, walked down the 3rd Street Promenade (checking that the buskers are still absolutely awful - they were (I have a theory about why)) and then cycled on to Santa Monica beach, then Venice beach, and then back to Santa Monica Beach because for some annoying reason there don’t seem to be any public tables at Venice beach.

It was another gorgeous sunset, and after it got too cold to continue writing I did do a bit of cycling around to see what I could see along the promenade. I’m rather pleased with how much I got done in terms of quality thinking, computing and writing, although I do sometimes long for those days when I could get totally immersed, could stay up late both physically (and logistically) and just rattle off a paper like that, all in one go. On the plus side, I’m probably able to achieve way more across a variety of duties, and be useful to a lot more people, now as compared to then. So you win some, you lose some.

Don’t ask me what the point of this ramble was. I don’t know either, so there you have it. Anyway, now I’ve got to go write the lecture for tomorrow’s 9:00am class. And it’s almost midnight. Sigh…

-cvj

So I know that my last post promised a story, with some physics. It’s coming, but I must admit to having been distracted this morning by a bit of long-overdue tending of the garden. For those of you out there who might be wondering how the garden’s doing, especially after my description of my irrigation solutions in a previous post, here’s a look at today’s harvest:

Contents: tomatoes (3 varieties), cucumbers (2), courgettes (3), mint (2), basil (2), lemons, and limes.

I’m very excited, relieved, and pleased! So being on the road for so long was not too bad for the garden (although I lost several tomatoes and cucumbers due to over-ripening).

-cvj

Sunday - Los Angeles! Back at last! But only for 20 hours. I flew in from Durham and touched down at 2:00pm Pacific time, having left there at 5:30 am local time. I’ve got to get a taxi, get home, put everything into the washing machine, grab the hiking boots and other gear, and repack. Got to go to my office and deal with some paperwork. But most urgently, I have to go and check on the garden (hence the misleading title of this post).

One of the drawbacks of summer travel as an academic is that it ruins ones garden. I left at the beginning of July with a nice arrangement of tender young vegetable plants about a foot tall. Tomatoes (six varieties), peppers (two varieties), cucumbers (two varieties, eight plants), zucchini (=corgettes; two varieties, four plants), runner beans (four plants), and string beans (four plants). Those are the main ones anyway.

In anticipation of being away for four weeks in Durham and another three away at another workshop (see next post), I spent several days designing and building a drip irrigation system that runs under the surface of the ground and drip drip drip drips away for a little while each evening. I spent several hours crawling under the house (rather like in the recent scary movie “The Descent”, but without the creatures and the rockfall…go see it) running wires to set up a centralised electronic controller of the values that connect the entire system to the water main.

This was to stop everything being fried by the heat in my absence, while not placing undue burdens of duty on my busy wife, who’ll be going to her own conferences, Continue reading ‘Home, and The Landscape’