Summer holidays

So what do teachers do on the first proper day of the summer holidays? They spring (err, summer) clean their houses from top to bottom.

Very satisfying. 😊

Now I can enjoy my holiday! 😴

Sweet peas

We started some sweet pea seeds indoors and planted them out to the allotment in late April. Despite fleece to protect them from the cold nights, they still never really seemed to get going. At times I was ready to give up as the spindly stems seemed to be dying back. However, side shoots appeared and they have become the bushiest and most extensive sweet pea plants I have ever seen! They are now in flower and producing a bunch like this every two days!

More from the allotment

After two weekends of T's birthday parties and two weeks of almost non-stop rain, today it was finally dry enough to go over to the allotment and see how things were progressing. 

All in all, they were progressing rather well. Our new potatoes (charlottes) are in flower and we lifted the first two of sixteen. T was thrilled to be picking them out of the soil. Despite picking all the sugarsnap peas that were ready last Monday (in the rain), he picked a further half kilo, as well as many strawberries, a few raspberries and (finally) some sweet peas (which at one point this year I was giving up as a total failure). My pinks are a bit of a disppointment - the label on the plants said "to 45 cm" but they stubbornly refuse to gain any height or extend their stem length. They making a pleasing mini-bunch, though.

Of course, the weeds have also been doing well, so despite a couple of hours spent weeding today, I think I'll be heading back tomorrow if the weather holds. 

I'm also working my way through James Hanson's "Chemistry in the Kitchen Garden" which is also prompting me to look back at Bowsher, Steer and Tobin's "Plant Biochemistry". I think improving my knowledge of plant metabolism might be a project for the summer holidays.

Strawberry aroma

A little bit of searching suggests that strawberry aroma is quite complicated. The methyl and ethyl esters of butanoic and hexanoic acids are certainly heavily involved, but 4-hydroxy-2,5-dimethyl-3(2H)-furanone (HDMF) and the 4-methoxy variant are considered to be the key components.

Here is HDMF (again produced using Avogadro and ScreenToGif - it's going to be a long time before I get bored of playing with this!



Whilst I've been looking into this, M has been busy turning the left-overs from yesterday into sorbet. I'm hoping the torrential rain from today (which closed part of Kingston) will eventually stop and we'll get summer back to enjoy eating sorbet!

Today was T's fifth birthday family party so he and I headed off to Garsons Farm PYO to pick strawberries. Some of the ones we picked are shown opposite!

They had them in an enormous polytunnel and the aroma of fresh strawberries was striking as we walked in. I'm now wondering what compound or compounds are responsible for that aroma!

Open source GIF creation for molecules

I've recently discovered Avogadro (avogadro.cc), which sells itself as

... an advanced molecule editor and visualizer designed for cross-platform use in computational chemistry, molecular modeling, bioinformatics, materials science, and related areas. It offers flexible high quality rendering and a powerful plugin architecture.

Combining its DNA builder, with "Screen to Gif" (www.screentogif.com) I have been able to create this very quickly.



Which is a very pleasing animation and obviously useful for visualising molecules in lessons.

Birthday trains

Today we had T's 5th birthday party for his school friends at the Malden and District Society of Model Engineers' railway in Thames Ditton. A good time had by all with lots of train rides, cake and ice cream.

Last year I didn't apply my knowledge of colligative properties and failed to keep ice lollies from melting by just having them in an ice box with ice. This year I added a good quantity of table salt and a little water to the ice and then packed the ice lolly boxes in plastic bags within the salty ice/water mix. The initial packing was a bit tricky as the water on the surface of the ice rapidly froze as the temperature dropped, and welded the cubes together. When first set up (about 12 noon) my thermometer showed below -10 degC (the lowest point on its scale). By 5pm the lollies were just beginning to get soft, which I think is pretty good on a day where the air temperature was about 25 degC.

M and I between us also came up with a good method for labelling water bottles in a communal ice-water tub: plastic plant labels (the sort you tie through itself) tucked through the outer label and a lumocolor permanent marker. 

First crop of the season

First crop of the season from the allotment today - nine sugar snap peas, with the promise of many more from the masses of flowers. A perfect accompaniment to our evening meal.

 It never ceases to amaze me how quickly things can grow.

Ferns at Wisley

Today I took advantage of the last day of half term to visit RHS Wisley with T.

Lots of ferns to see, with the stands of Osmunda regalis being a particular highlight.

Osmunda regalis

Onoclea sensibilis is planted in many areas and clearly thrives in those locations.

And both Matteuccia struthiopteris  and Apslenium scolopendium are profuse.

Also nice to see ferns establishing in nooks and crannies, not just where they've been planted!

Sadly no time to see the tree ferns in the glass house today. By the time we'd gone round the children's trail (happily, for once, I'd remembered a clipboard for T), stopped in the cafe (well, we were just going past ...) and been to see the vegetable garden in pursuit of completing Eye-Spy Wisley it was time to come away. 

Looking forward to seeing the new visitor centre open and all the car park works being finished, too!

Books I read in 2018

(Most of) the books I read in 2018

I started 2018 with the aim to read 65 books and made it over the line in the last few days (final total 66). Most are in the picture above, although a few were borrowed and some are currently lent to others.

My favourite from the year was undoubtedly Press and Siever's Earth - an introductory text in Geology. I've also enjoyed beginning to read through Le Carre's spy novels as well as continuing to work my way through the Ngaio Marsh novels and Simenon's Maigret series.

As always, I hope to post more to this blog this year. I've said that before, but I have resolved (not so much as a new year's resolution - I had this in mind before) to get back to bryophytes and pteridophytes, so perhaps I'll post some pictures of slightly obscure green things here over the coming weeks.