Category: This and that
“Spring Gardeners Digging And Planting A Formal Garden” oil on Canvas. Pieter The Younger Brueghel from: http://www.wikigallery.org/wiki/painting_364368/Pieter-The-Younger-Brueghel/page-1
To conclude my photo board of my sunny trip to Canterbury here is a selection of shots of architecural detailing and other views looking up in various spots around the city….
Old School Gardener
Viburnum tinus is among stars of the Mediterranean spring. Its dark green leaves contrast fragrant pentamerous flowers in white or pale pink, evolving into dark blue fruit resembling small pearls. Yet this obvious picture from maquis has its invisible side .It is called domatium, after Latin word domus, for home. Domatia are microscopically small chambers at the under sides of the evergreen leaves. Plant grows domatia to host mites. In this way Viburnum tinus can be seen as a botanical skyscraper with many tiny apartments for arthropod neighbors. Imagine a little mite calling her friends to come over for a party at her condo! I am kidding, it only fascinates me to recognize there is another life underlying the botanical beauty of the plant we can see with our eyes. It is like a parallel world. Only the question remains, are the mites, or are we , at the right…
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A few weeks ago, Keeling House in Bethnal Green featured in BBC2’s Great Interior Design Challenge. Its presenter Tom Dyckhoff paid due homage to the building’s architecture – a Denys Lasdun brutalist masterpiece – and to its history. But let’s pay a little more attention to the latter here. Now privately owned, Keeling House was once a vision of high quality housing for the people.
Before the Second World War, Bethnal Green was the heart of the traditional working-class East End – with social conditions to match. At the height of the Great Depression, it was stated that 23 per cent of the borough’s men were unemployed and some 43 per cent of its population living in overcrowded conditions. (1)
Both the London County Council and Bethnal Green Metropolitan Borough Council built extensively to rehouse local people. The Claredale Estate was a local council scheme, begun in 1932. Claredale…
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As part of my traineeship, I have been asked to organise our Mother’s Day event on the 30th March. The event will have a floral theme which will include a botanical art exhibition, children craft activities based around flowers and a florist who will be making small posies with the children but also promoting the flower arranging short course for adults taking place at Gressenhall in the spring.
As part of my research I have been looking into the Victorian “language of flowers” and what different flowers mean. In the Victorian times specific floral arrangements were used to send coded messages to the recipient, allowing the sender to express feelings which could not be spoken out loud in Victorian society. Though often portrayed to relay positive messages of interest, affection, and love, flowers could also send a negative message and at times, the same flower could have opposite meanings depending…
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My first ‘Over My Head’ post was of architectural detailing in Canterbury High Street. The second features pictures in and around Canterbury Cathedral also taken last week, as before looking up.
Some of the newly – cleaned outside of the cathedral was looking rich and creamy gold, probably how it must have looked a thousand years ago. And the interior was as awe inspiring as you might expect for this most important of Anglican religious centres.
I find it interesting that so much trouble and effort (as well as skill) was put into making buildings and objects look great in places you wouldn’t normally expect to look, well at least casually that is. Maybe in days gone by people had their heads in the clouds more…..
Old School Gardener
Solutions to the world’s food insecurity and environmental problems are numerous. Some suggest it is the not the lack of a solution that hampers progress in addressing hunger, climate change and natural resource scarcity but rather the difficulty in choosing the most
appropriate
solution.
The International Food Policy Research Institute recently launched the results of a new research project (Food Security in a World of Growing Natural Resource Scarcity: The Role of Agricultral Technologies), which assesses the likely impacts of agricultural technologies on global crop productivity, hunger and economic development. Showcasing the project, is an infographic, produced by IFPRI, which outlines:
The eleven agricultural innovations investigated
- No-till farming
- Water harvesting
- Organic agriculture
- Precision agriculture
- Drought tolerance
- Heat tolerance
- Integrated soil fertility management
- Drip irrigation
- Sprinkler irrigation
- Nitrogen use efficiency
- Crop protection
The data used
Global crop land was divided into cells, and data on physical characteristics such…
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We had a weekend in Kent and Essex last week. Sunday was the sunniest day so far in this gloomy UK winter, and we spent the day in Canterbury and Whitstable. I loved Canterbury with its eclectic mix of old buildings including the famous Cathedral, of course. I was particularly struck by the interesting architectural detailing above and so this is the first of three photo sets capturing some of the world ‘over my head’ in this lovely city. First a few images from the High Street…
Old School Garden 
