November leaves

November has been so mild that many of the trees still have their leaves.

apple tree

maple

That's not to say there aren't many leaves on the ground, and in the water.

leaves in the rill

leaves surrounded

It's not all leaves.

this tiny mushroom in the path has caught a thread

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the old and the new

I’m just back from a 2 day residential Theo Murphy scientific workshop held in the Royal Society’s Kavli Centre at Chicheley Hall.  It’s my first visit there, and I can certainly recommend it as a marvellous venue for a workshop: great facilities, marvelous food, and friendly, efficient staff.  The science was great fun: I learned lots of new things, discovered links between seemingly diverse areas, and had interesting discussions over food and coffee.  I’m buzzing with ideas, which is the whole point!

I did the usual “photograph from my bedroom window” thing, which had a somewhat different from usual view:

first day of the workshop, view due east, into the rising sun

Oh, and then I took a photo from the other window in my bedroom:

first day of the workshop, view due south

Blissful.  I found an amusing view from the window half way down the main stairs:

A lovely formal garden, with lawns, paths, clipped bushes and trees, and, just visible at the vanishing point of the path … a wind farm!  The old and the new collide.

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snail central

We have a few piles of old tiles in the garden, waiting to be repurposed.  These snails clearly think that the gap between two piles is a home from home.

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90 minutes later

If you don't like the weather, wait 15 minutes.

Ah, that's better!  Lovely sunshine, warm breezes.  So, we now have a couple of bags full of apples, ready to take to work and inflict on our colleagues on Monday.

The sunshine is making the berries look gorgeous.

Cotoneaster berries shining in the sunlight

a contrast in colours: yellow berries of the berberis against purple heuchera leaves

Notice the mushrooms nestling in the bottom left of that picture?  Well, the whole crop has been growing well in the damp:

I just wish I knew if they were safe to eat.  I am very firmly assuming not.

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apple picking time

Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future. — Niels Bohr (attrib.)

Our apple glut is reaching fruition, so it’s time to start harvesting.  Shall we pick them today, or tomorrow?  Let’s have a look at the BBC weather forecast.  It says today will be dry up until this evening, then rain continuing for most of tomorrow.  Great, let’s harvest today, then.

Off out into the garden, picking apples.  We’d been out, ooh, must have been all of five minutes, when … you’ve guessed it, it started to rain!

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mushrooms gonna mushroom

We've had mushrooms in the garden before, but going out today, the sight was just surreal.

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mellow fruitfulness

Our apple tree, in the early morning sunlight.

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autumn colour

We've had a few days of glorious sunshine, and the garden is displaying gorgeous autumnal colours, even before the leaves start to turn.

Unidentified fungus.  Not as spectacular as the one in Taormina, but still lovely.

Sedum in sunlight and in shadow

Jasmine and vine scrambling together up the garage wall

elderberries

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a week in Taormina

I’ve had a glorious week in Taormina, Sicily, at the European Conference on Artificial Life (ECAL).  Great weather (apart from a rain storm on Monday), superb food, and a marvelously stimulating, thought-provoking set of keynotes and presentations.  My head is buzzing with all the stuff I’ve been hearing about.

a complex fungus, spotted
halfway down one staircase

The town, the gardens, and the scenery were excellent, too.  The town is built on the side of a mountain, which makes for an interesting geography.  On the Monday morning, the hotel provided a map to help us find our way to the conference venue. Unfortunately the map had a tenuous relationship with reality. The geography mostly comprises a parallel bunch of roads running along contours, linked by an amazing array of staircases, of all widths and types.  The hotel map didn’t distinguish these, and everything from a main street to a three foot wide staircase had the same representation.  I got a better map, and navigation became rather easier.

Tuesday evening: a view down to the middle road from part way up one of the many staircases...

... and the view up the rest of the staircase.
There was another flight like this to get to the top road, then a shorter flight up to the hotel, then more stairs once inside up to my 4th floor room: I took the lift by this stage.

Evenings were spent in a variety of great restaurants, squeezed into little gap, some even laid out on the staircases.  Eating marvellous Italian food outdoors on a warm summer evening, having stimulating conversations with colleagues, is a great way to end each conference day. There were also wandering bands of musicians, who would play a few tunes, then send a collection jug round.  I’m not sure what the message was supposed to be the evening they played the jug around to the theme from The Godfather...

The walk down from the hotel to the conference each day was through the splendid public gardens.

Wednesday morning : the pagoda

Magnificent displays, from bougainvillea hedges...

... to cacti collections

Although the weather was warm and sunny, the skies were rather hazy at the start.  They cleared enough later in the week to see Etna, the summit obscured not by clouds, but by a faint trickle of smoke:

Thursday: the view at breakfast

Thursday: Taormina by night

A great conference, at a great venue.  Now it’s time to go home to cooler, cloudier England. Next year’s ALife conference is in New York, which will have a somewhat different vibe, I suspect.

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suddenly, apples! thousands of them!

The earlier predicted apple glut is well on its way, having been helped by sunshine and rain:

the young apple tree: crunchy Coxes

the old apple tree: tasty cookers

Soon...

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butterflies

Our buddleia has sprouted an excellent crop of butterflies.

two Peacock butterflies

more than two Peacock butterflies

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waspish caterpillar

I read recently, in the "Last Word" section of New Scientist, a piece asking for help to identify an Italian butterfly-like creature.  The questioner couldn't identify it because "it doesn't seem like any butterfly I've seen, nor is it in any of my insect books".  What caught my eye was the implication of ownership of at least three insect books.  We have only the one insect book.  And two butterfly books.  Oh, and a dragonfly book.

Yet none of our books could help us to identify this splendid caterpillar we found in the garden today.

at least it's on a weed

The reason I know that none could have helped is that I looked it up in them, after I had identified it using the web.  To identify it in the first place, I googled "caterpillar black yellow stripes", and got

it seems there are rather a lot of caterpillars using a yellow and black colour palette

Looking through the results identified several promising candidates.  The respective source pages all identified it as the caterpillar of the Cinnibar moth.  The wikipedia page has more details, confirming the identification.  But our insect book doesn't have it.  Neither do our butterfly books (well, it is a moth, I suppose).

Back in the garden, the spiders (which will obviously not be in our insect book) have been busy wrapping up the plants in a dense web.

And the patio roses we bought back in early May are now blooming their hearts out.

The labels must have lied about the colours.  I think we are going to have to separate these!

The weeds are growing apace, but it's way too hot at the moment (28°C) to garden.  So I'm blogging about the garden instead.

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sunshine and snails

Today is a surprisingly sunny May bank holiday.  Out in the garden we discovered several beautiful "weeds" hiding behind some trees.  They are "weeds" in the sense that we didn't plant them there, or anywhere else in the garden.  We actually have no idea what they are.  But we're leaving them in place, so I suppose that means they are weeds no longer.

pink and blue erratics

and a third colour

A tulip suffered an unfortunate incident during some rather energetic weeding.  On investigation, it was found harbouring a passenger.

can't a snail get some privacy around here?

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trees and flowers

The garden continues to burst into life. Both apple trees are in full bloom.  Given the density of blossom, and the lateness of the season reducing the risk of frost, we're anticipating a bumper crop, or, as we call it, a glut.  There will be many gifts of apples, come autumn.

the old apple tree: tasty cookers

the young apple tree: crunchy Coxes

The acer is looking its healthiest and loveliest since it was planted nearly a decade ago.  It had a few rocky years when we feared we might lose it, but two freezing winters have given it a new lease of life, and it's never looked back.

sunlight through the leaves

It's not just trees springing into life.

more bluebells than any previous year

Worth the long wait!

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pond life

Our pond "water feature" has stopped working. That probably means the filters are clogged. Getting to the pump to unclog it is a bit of a palaver, however.

(left) that's one small step for a man; (centre) wading out to the deeps; (right) you're not taking photos for your blog, are you?

And yes, the filters are very clogged.

(top) cleaned filter shining bright; (bottom) clogged stone and foam filters, still to be cleaned

After a second wading expedition to replace the pump, all is now right with the water feature.

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