Month: July 2010

Natural History Museum

Natural History Museum

This is the Natural History Museum in London. Quite a typical view – looking over the central hall from the giant sequoia tree, over the top of the big dinosaur skeleton, to the statue of Darwin on the main staircase.

Usually people are so busy looking at the dinosaur that it simply doesn’t occur to them to look up.

Natural History Museum

This is the ceiling of that same central gallery, and it’s absolutely covered with the most beautiful botanical illustrations. They’re scientifically accurate, apparently, and decorated with gold that catches the light streaming in from the windows below.

Natural History Museum

This is one of the single illustrations, close to the end of the gallery with the sequoia tree. Epilobium Angustifolium is known as Fireweed in the US, or Rosebay Willowherb in the UK. The café (the one with the panda) also has these single illustrations above it.

Natural History Museum

This olive tree is right above the famous dinosaur skeleton, and is one of many images – mostly of larger trees – which spread across six panels like this.

I found out about the ceiling while I was watching the Museum of Life programme, which made me want to know much more about the Museum’s collections than they have on display. I’d been hoping to go on a Spirit Collection Tour, but apparently it’s not safe to run them when the weather’s too hot, so I’ll have to do that another time.

My favourite part about the Natural History Museum is that it’s completely free. This allows you to really take your time when you visit, knowing that you can go back any time and it won’t cost you a fortune. Well worth the train fare to London, and I really must remember to go more often!

Common Concertina, Third Class.

Wheatstone English Concertina

Did I mention that I was buying an antique concertina on Ebay?

Well, I did, and I’ve been learning to play it for about three weeks.

It’s a Wheatstone 48-Key English System concertina with hexagonal wooden case. Its serial number is 18270. According to the Wheatstone ledgers the concertina was one of four sold to a person named Wilkie on the 31st of July 1867. It’s described as “Common (3rd) Class”.

It’s a tutor model, which is why the names of the notes are stamped into the ends of the keys. The black and white keys correspond to the piano (which I don’t play, so that’s no help!) and the red ones are all C. I’d guess that the fact that four identical tutor concertinas were sold together means that they were destined for a school.

It’s much less fancy than the one I’ve been borrowing, and has smaller bellows. This makes it much lighter to hold, which is great, but there’s less resistance from the bellows which makes it a bit harder to play. (You need to push harder to make a decent sound.) I think there’s also a small leak in the bellows, at the right hand end, which will need fixing eventually. But it’s more than playable for now, as long as I don’t push it too hard.

I was a bit worried when I opened the box, because it absolutely reeked of cigarette smoke. Lots of old concertinas were played in pubs, and the smoke gets into the bellows so it’s pretty much impossible to get rid of the horrible musty pub smell. Thankfully the smell was confined to the box and the bubble wrap, and the concertina just smells old. Which it should do, having been made in 1867!

The box is lined with purple velvet, and was tied with a brown ribbon. Inside, the concertina was wrapped in a silk scarf, so I could lift it out without pulling on the bellows. It’s a very snug fit, so I’ll probably buy a modern carrying case.

The steel reeds make a pleasant sound – not too loud and brassy – and I’m really enjoying learning to play on such a lovely instrument.

Portwrinkle

Portwrinkle

While we were in Devon, we thought it would be rude to go home without paying a little visit to a beach. We were told that Portwrinkle was the closest beach that didn’t require climbing down a million steps, so that’s where we went.

As you can see, Portwrinkle beach is made from stones and shells, not sand.

I came home with quite a lot of it in my shoes.

Portwrinkle

I was using my walking stick that weekend, so I couldn’t follow Paul as he clambered about to look in the rock pools. Instead, I took a picture of him doing a pretty good impression of a rock. Only his luminous white knees and elbows give him away!

Portwrinkle

This is the last picture I was able to take before the battery in my camera gave up. You can’t really tell the enormous scale of these rocks, but I was fascinated by the layers and all the beautiful colours in the slate.

We were only at the beach for about an hour, but as soon as I’m mobile enough to scramble about, I definitely want to go somewhere with lots of rock pools.

Exeter Cathedral

Exeter Cathedral

It’s a month now since we went to Devon, and we stopped at Exeter on the way down. We arrived at Exeter Cathedral at about four o’clock on a gloriously sunny afternoon, and it turned out to be the perfect time to take photographs of the stonework and stained glass.

Exeter Cathedral

Exeter Cathedral

Exeter Cathedral

The higher up the outside of the cathedral you look, the sillier the faces become.

Exeter Cathedral

Some of the work in the cathedral is relatively modern. This window depicts the bombing of the Cathedral on May 4th 1942.

(Would it be wrong to confess that I almost expected to see a TARDIS somewhere in the stained glass?)

Exeter Cathedral

There was also some absolutely modern artwork on display in the Cathedral. This piece is by textile artist Jacqui Frost. It’s described as “a love letter from the Father”, and is made up of many hand-stitched panels relating the names of Jesus to contemporary vocations.

Exeter Cathedral

I made a donation to the Guild of Needlewomen who’d produced hundreds of these beautiful kneelers. All of them depicting the natural world, there were illustrations of birds, trees and flowers, all with the names worked around the sides.

I took plenty more photos, and was only disappointed that we couldn’t stay longer.

It’s alive!

Sweetcorn

I’ve been a teensy bit busy lately, and that’s meant I haven’t had much time for blogging. Plenty to blog about, but no time to sit down and write about it! I haven’t had much time to pay attention to the garden this week, and I’ve mostly been watering it in the dark, so somehow I hadn’t noticed quite how many things are just about starting to grow!

Above, you can see what will eventually become sweetcorn. I’ve got four plants and two of them look like this, so that seems quite hopeful.

Teeny Tomatoes

Teeny tiny tomatoes. These are Sungold, and there are a couple of fruits on the Moneymaker plants as well. My other six tomato plants are considerably smaller, and really need separating into six separate pots. That means a trip to the garden centre, so they might have to manage being a bit crowded until the weekend.

Almost Aubergine

Look! The World’s Smallest Aubergine! It’s currently about the size of a blueberry, so I’m hoping it’ll survive and grow a little bigger. I’ve only managed to grow one solitary aubergine in the past. I had to harvest it when it was about the size of a tennis ball, before it was eaten by insects. And I still ended up sharing it with a woodlouse.

Proto-pumpkin

Hopefully this will grow up to be a pumpkin. I have four pumpkin plants, two of which are absolutely bursting with flowers. I’m kind of hoping that most of them are male flowers, otherwise I could end up with a lot of pumpkins!

Almost courgettes

This is quite exciting – there are about half a dozen budding courgettes on this plant. I’ve grown courgette plants before, but never managed to harvest an actual courgette, so I’m really pleased to see these.

Courgette!

And then I spotted this! A whole, real, actual courgette! So exciting! It needs to be a teensy bit bigger before I harvest it, but look!

Ahem.

Sorry about all the exclamation marks. It’s just that I’ve put a lot of time and effort into this, and I’m really excited that I might actually get some food out of it!