daytime

Sunday, 2 May 2021

2^nd May 2021

Dear All,

Another tough week for plants with freezing nights and dry days. The season is beginning to look to be a late one. Nevertheless, sowing has carried on with squash, courgettes, marrows, pumpkins, sweet corn and sprouting broccoli all sown in the greenhouse but only calabrese planted outdoors. I have also dismantled the propagation cabinet and erected canes ready for runner beans. My novelty crop chick peas have germinated quite well while other crops are queueing up to be planted.

Chick Peas

The Queue

The night cam has not been quite so productive this week but still getting regular badger, deer and fox appearances as well as an annoying number of cats!

Badger

Muntjac Deer

We tuned into the U3A lecture on “Dyslexia, Rhythm, Language and the developing Brain” on Tuesday given by Prof. Usha Goswani head of the Centre for Neuroscience in Education Dept of Psychology. She used to be a primary school teacher and was inspired to go into this field to try and understand why some pupils found reading much more difficult than others. I can’t claim to understand all she said but it is nothing to do with intelligence, it occurs in all languages and has much to do with the brain not detecting rhythms. Detection of rhythms begins in the womb and nursery rhymes often have the pattern of sounds which reinforce it. Learning a musical instrument can help develop the target areas in the brain. It should be regarded as a Disadvantage not a Disability.

Derreck Medlock and Joyce were back in town this week and came for a drink on the lawn and Kate Foster called in to collect tomatoes for her father-in-law who is now resident with them – for better or worse!

Our Thursday walk was a few miles hence beginning at Halls green near Stevenage. It was a very colourful walk with OSR, bluebells and dandelions in full bloom and as usual in Hertfordshire involved a few ups and downs and although chilly it was good conditions for walking followed by a good pub meal – outside of course.

Bluebells in Warren’s Green Wood

100 acre OSR field

Walkern Octagonal Dovehouse

Walkern Church

I gave a short talk about out time in Ecuador to the Biographies group on Friday which brought back a few memories of horse riding and walking in the Andes and mixing concrete at 10,000ft on the Equator.