Month: April 2007

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Culture Nature

Parakeet feather on Moleskine



Parakeet feather on Moleskine

I bought a new notebook yesterday for my upcoming trip to Crete. This is the previous one, with a feather I found near the birdfeeders, presumably from a parakeet. I do like Moleskine notebooks. I’ve used masses of different notebooks of various kinds over the years both for birdwatching and poetry, but these are the only ones I really enjoy as objects in their own right.

They’re a fine example of why you can’t judge a product just on its functionality. Any old notebook which contains a supply of paper and is small enough to be portable would fulfil my requirements; I hardly ever use them for sketching or anything, just noted jotted in biro. The elastic to keep the notebook shut, the ribbon bookmark and the built-in pocket are nice touches but not really necessary.

It’s just a likeable object. It looks good: simple, old-fashioned, functional, ungimmicky. Even more important is that it’s very tactile; the oilcloth cover, good quality paper and twangy elastic all make it a nice thing to hold. I think it’s worth paying three times as much to get a notebook that gives me pleasure as well as doing its job. I just wish I got as much enjoyment out of using, say, my mobile phone.

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Daily Links

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Napowrimo

napowrimo 12: Poetry Thursday exercise

In ancient art, birds always seem to carry
a hint of the unworldly;
their fragile bodies just the physical expression
of some god
intruding on our world.

Flight and song; the essence of occult.
We praise them in bowls of water
left as mirrors
for them to bathe in,
and with propitiatory offerings of seed.

~~~~

At Poetry Thursday this week they invited people to post a line from one of their own poems, and then use a line posted by someone else in their own poem. If that’s clear. Anyway, the line ‘we praise them in bowls of water’ is from a poem by Poet With A Day Job.

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Daily Links

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Napowrimo

napowrimo 11: Making Pizza

some pizza I made

Start with Tipo 00 flour.
So fine and white, it makes your usual flour
seem hard and vulgar,
and makes a dough as silky and elastic as
(supply your own lascivious image here).

For two, use half a pound of flour
with a quarter-pint of water.
Add olive oil, salt and yeast,
knead until smooth and springy
and leave an hour or two;
split into portions, knead again.
Oil the rounds of dough,
drape clingfilm on them lightly,
and leave to swell again.

Only the fussiest stickler would insist
that the tomatoes must be grown
in the volcanic soils of Napoli.
It is enough they are Italian plum tomatoes
—tinned, not fresh—
broken up slightly in the saucepan.
A potato masher is ideal for this.
Then simmer slowly,
for an hour or so,
to thicken, darken and enrich.
Some salt is vital;
they must be savoury as well as sweet.

It is acceptable to add a little something;
a dribble of West Indian pepper sauce
or half a chopped chipotle.
Or crush a clove of garlic,
add it to hot olive oil,
and immediately mix the simmering oil
with your tomato.

Cow’s milk mozzarella is fine, if bland,
but does not have the farmyard sourness
of buffalo.
A variation is a different cheese;
perhaps a little feta or a chèvre.
Roquefort, and other affectations,
should be avoided.

Toppings must be sparing.
Gild the lily lightly.
Perhaps some finely sliced shallot,
a little Jámon Iberico or saucisson,
some kalamata olives.
And don’t forget a pinch of oregano;
get the good stuff at your local Turkish grocer.

Your enemy is moisture.
You must be quick, like a boy scout;
be prepared.
A newly-rolled pizza base, left to sit,
will sweat and stick
like a hot thigh on a leather chair.

Cooking must be hot and quick;
as hot as possible.
Bake the bases for two minutes
with nothing on them.
Then quickly add the toppings
and bake until the crust is golden
and the mozzarella has a hint of colour.

Categories
Nature

Wildlife round-up

I was pruning back a rosemary bush to get rid of what I vaguely thought were frost damaged leaves left over from winter, so I’d have some less manky rosemary to cook with, and found these:

rosemary leaf beetles shagging

Which I immediately recognised from a photo in the London Wildlife Trust newsletter, though I couldn’t remember what they were called. It turns out they’re Chrysolina americana, the Rosemary Leaf Beetle.

Pretty, aren’t they? Something I’d be much more enthusiastic about if the little bastards weren’t eating the rosemary that I want to eat. Apparently they’re native to southern Europe and can’t fly, but have become an established pest in England, especially London, over the past ten years. No doubt they got here on rosemary and lavender plants (which they also eat) and I guess they must crawl from plant to plant, guided perhaps by their sense of smell. The suggestion is that they’ve only become established over the past decade because global warming has brought milder winters, so they’re a harbinger of doom as well as a pest. Here’s one of the grubs, and a rare shot of part of my hand:

rosemary leaf beetle grub

You can also see some of the damage, though it was a lot worse than that on other parts of the plant.

More evidence of spring, apart from the randy beetles: I’m up to four butterfly species for the year (Small White, Brimstone, Peacock and Comma). On the bird front, I saw my first summer visitors of the year last week; Chiffchaffs singing in the woods. Although according to that page, a few hundred of them now overwinter each year in southern England—probably another sign of global warming—so perhaps the ones I saw haven’t come from Africa after all.

There are ducklings and cootlings in the park, and a pair of Little Grebes—a contender for the cutest bird in Europe— haphazardly dragging around bits of weed as though they were about to build a nest. Which is exciting because it’s the first time I’ve seen them there. My sense is that they are becoming more common in London; certainly in my copy of the Atlas of Breeding Birds of the London Area from 1977, the Little Grebe map doesn’t have many orange blobs on it. That, at least, probably isn’t anything to do with climate change. More likely the grebes are adapting to city life.