(no subject)

[gothwalk]

Trains were completely bolloxed this morning; a forty-minute delay. But that was on top of the weird cirumstance where today's straight-line no messing walk to the train took forty-two minutes, and yesterday's meandering, stopping to collect chestnuts, talking to a duck-hunting cat, and generally admiring the scenery took thirty. There's some kind of timewarp in Donnybrook, evidently.

It's still nice and cold out, and looks set to remain that way for a while, regardless of other changes. Here's a flash map, displaying latest data from various weather stations and buoys around the British Isles. My weather obsession is picking up again, and I'm amused by TheWeatherOutlook's Christmas forecast coming out in September.

I now desire a Stevenson screen with all the widgets, which I can put in the back garden, and annoy the cat by visiting it each morning without necessarily letting her out.

Comments

Chesnuts!

[bheansidhe.livejournal.com]

shadesong and yendi have a chesnut tree in their front yard that's dropping nuts -- which is completely amazing. American chesnut trees were mostly wiped out fifty years ago when an imported chesnut blight swept the eastern U.S. To this day, Am.c. trees can be planted, but barely live twenty years before the blight catches them. Theirs looks healthy, though. I wonder how old it is.

(Looked it up. Possibly it is a Chinese chesnut or a Chinese-American hybrid.)

I've been plotting to go over there and gather chesnuts. How do you cook yours?

Re: Chesnuts!

[gothwalk.livejournal.com]

Ah, these aren't edible (which we call Spanish) chestnuts, they're horse chestnuts. They're not actaully much good for anything, really - the nuts are inedible unless you're an ungulate of some kind, and the wood isn't that great, although I've seen some nice chairs in recent years from mature chestnut.

But the nuts themselves are gorgeous, you see - a rich, deep brown colour, with contours of different shades and a smooth, almost polished feeling texture. Magpie-like, I can't resist them.

(See this image and you'll see what I mean)

We do have some Spanish chestnut trees in this country too, but they rarely produce anything worth eating - we just don't get enough sun for them to grow very big. That said, we had a lot of sun this year; it might be worthwhile checking out a few locations I know of for them.

Re: Chesnuts!

[mr-wombat.livejournal.com]

Horse chestnuts are kind of toxic if you eat them. Another one of those learning experiences my Mum should have knocked on the head once she found out what I was doing.

Re: Chesnuts!

[bheansidhe.livejournal.com]

Horse chestnuts are called buckeyes here. And they do rather look like a deer's eye, iris and pupil brown and black.