I owe the squirrels an apology

Deer. Owl trees. AI

The owl tree in happier times. Spot the owl.

In the garden, the winter brassicas, the perennial kale and the kalettes and the broccoli are eaten down to nubs and I curse the squirrels. Squirrels love broccoli. Someone told me it’s wrong to spray Tabasco sauce on the brocolli in case it gets in the squirrels eye and hurts it but I strongly feel the squirrels should stop putting their eyes so close to my food. Still, it’s cold and you can’t blame them, and as reward for not seasoning the vegetables they have started to enjoy the nine star broccoli, which they have historically ignored. Also, I have noticed they’ve taken a much more top down approach to destroying the vegetable garden this year, though I suppose that means the broccoli might grow back since it hasn’t been eaten away at the base. That way whoever is eating it can enjoy it next year.

In different and entirely related news, baby deer, who you might remember is no longer a baby and is fully able to step over the rabbit fence that protects the garden, has got a girlfriend. She’s come to live in the garden and she likes broccoli, apparently. I like the deer and I have no intention of scaring them off, so I suppose I will have to settle for tomatoes. Unless the deer learn how to open the greenhouse door? I root through various packets of seeds feeling horribly behind on the whole gardening business. How did it get to be mid-march already? Seems a bit unfair. At least the weather and my viral load seems to have turned the corner, and I am feeling a lot better than I was at the beginning of the week. I consider planting some tree cabbage. Tree cabbage lasts 4 years, so it’s useful to the lazy gardener. I wonder if deer like it.

RIP owl tree

Even when I was unwell I usually managed the short journey to the lapwing field to watch their display flights, which is a known cure for post viral fatigue. I’m glad the Lapwings are nesting, but there will be no owls in the owl tree this year, or any others, as the owl tree, which was in fairness a barkless stump the whole time I’ve called it the owl tree, has split clean in half.

It was so riddled with woodworm and fungus that the solid parts were essentially sponge, so this was not a surprise. It still looks normal from one angle, but it’s like when the optoelectronics research centre burnt down in Southampton; I drove past with my friend who worked there and I said consolingly ‘it doesn’t look too bad’ just before we turned the corner that it was no longer a building, but a wall. The front looked fine, it was just everything else that didn’t exist any more. The important bits. Like his entire lab, and all his work. So RIP owl tree, I hope the little owls find a new nesting place and I thank you for all the happy times I spent staking you out in pursuit of owlets. I did find a piece of eggshell to remember happier times by.

Cool cross section though

Still, it does show how massively important to the ecosystem old tree stumps are, and how long they continue to serve the community after the tree has died. Human tendency towards neatness makes us want to clear the whole thing away and replant some new trees, but it will be many decades before new saplings can support an owl nest; I am grateful that it was never cleared away, because it was a glorious thing, and I would never have know of its existence if someone had cleared it up before I lived here.

See through sticker titling joy.

On a loosely related note, I bought some see through sticker paper for my thermal printer and it’s a journaling game changer. And you thought I could be anymore pleased with my stupid new toy! Best £5 I spent this week. Unless you count the iron supplements which are assisting my return to full health. But so is my thermal printer, because I am obsessed with it.

Workings

I decided to carve out a new brain this week. I don’t think this one works either so I made a reassuring OK stamp as well. No idea why I made these really only I forgot to list the weird medieval guys so I have nothing to show for myself but the first five tail feathers of a descending sparrowhawk. Obviously I could rescue this whole section by just listing the medieval print but I have absolutely no intention of doing so. I hate listing things and that’s why I was so careful to forget in the first place.

Findings

This week I heard someone say that instead of creating extra leisure time, labour saving devices like vacuum cleaners are simply raising standards of cleanliness, in which case I am doing a sterling job of bucking that trend because I hate housework. It’s a similar idea to when people say they imagined a future where AI did the tedious menial work which left the humans free to engage in creative pursuits like painting and writing and yet here we are still slaving away while to computers generate paintings of seven fingered people whose legs seem to be on backwards. Presumably once the computers understand human anatomy, everything will be a little bit worse.

I’m thinking about this because there’s a note here telling me to write that the amount of AI images on Pinterest is disappointing*. It is true, but I don’t see why that should be your problem (as my readers, enjoying your Sunday morning by reading my faintly bizarre rantings. I don’t understand it but I’m glad you’re here, after you survived the great houseplant murder revelation of last week). I think I’d found a nice journal page and clicked in to read a bit only to find it was gibberish. The words ‘moon phases’ were legible, as were the ‘spolls’ technically. No idea what a spoll is to be honest. Nothing we see online is trustworthy anymore it seems. People said AI would not affect real artists because computers cannot produce real art, but scammers do not care about that; the sewing forums are full of poor people that have bought AI patterns which do NOT work out if you try and sew them, and the plant forums are full of people wanting to know what this wonderful plant which can only survive in a world that does not exist is. AI images are everywhere, and it is horrible. I once again am forced to spend time contemplating that with such intelligent and creativity we decided to, instead of creating a utopia, we created… this. I mean, really. This. Anyway, be careful buying things on the internet, the pictures are made up these days. Especially in my shop, those pictures are made up by an absolute lunatic.

*apparently I planned this newsletter out last week, and though I have no recollection of that it was quite useful but it would’ve been more useful if I’d written even a tiny bit of it.