Thread 20 - TalkLair: "It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not weakness; that is life"

[Kucinghitam]

(Previous Thread 19)

Britain swelters in yet another heatwave.

In the TalkLair, all the curtains are closed against the blazing sun as the denizens lurk like creatures of the night... or maybe we are creatures of the night. But rest assured, despite our scary fangs, the denizens of the lair are a welcoming bunch, always eager for general chit-chat on all manner of topics. We just won’t mention the gnawed bones of our prey over there in the corner of the cave…

I've had success with drowning fruit flies in a saucer of cider vinegar with a drop of washing up liquid in it (to break the surface tension). Satisfyingly and disgustingly, you can then sieve the resultant carnage and use the trap again.

Butterworts are lovely aren’t they? I’ve only come across them in the last month when I went to Wisley to an orchid care session and they took us round the glasshouses. They use them there to control little flies. Then I saw them in our local garden centre and now mentioned here.

I want some butterworts now :) but may have to make do with getting some cider vinegar in!

I have loads. Once established they multiply really easily. I don't think posting them in the current heat would be successful, but if you'd like one drop me a DM when the weather cools down.

If you're in hard water area you'll need rainwater or distilled water for them, but otherwise they're quite undemanding.

Loads, in this case, means about 42 (hard to count the more crowed ones that need repotting). I originally bought 3, and MaBint gave me 1 more. So I can definitely spare a few.

Are butterworts fussy about winter temperatures? We've had a few fly catching plants but they didn't do well as our place can get pretty cold in winter.

They shrink a bit in winter but our house is rarely above 17 or 18°C, probably less on the windowsill, and they're not bothered. They don't need to go properly dormant like a Venus flytrap.

Looking at this page, we ought to be able to keep one going here.

Cold hardy butterworts require 3-4 months of winter dormancy triggered by cold temperatures (below 50°F or 10°C) and shorter daylight hours. As your plants enter dormancy, they will drop their leaves and stop growing altogether. While dormant, your plants can withstand overnight frosts down to 20°F (-7°C). As long as temperatures rise above freezing during the day, you don't need to protect them. However, even while dormant, plants will still need to sit in a small amount of standing water to prevent its soil from drying out.

https://www.growcarnivorousplants.com/cold-hardy-butterwort-care/

The insect splats on the windscreen always makes me think of Joan Fontcuberta’s Constellations series. At first glance they are night sky pictures but they’re actually his windscreen after driving home. If I recall correctly, they’re photograms rather than photographs but I may be misremembering.

It always reminds me of Round the Bend, the novel by the Australian writer Nevil Chute. My Mum was a big fan, and I used to get his books for her from the library down the road when I was little. And later on, as a teenager, I read most of them. They were all decent, but Round The Bend was quite different to the others. It had more the vibe of later popular books like Jonathan Livingston Seagull. In the book, as yer man progresses spiritually, gradually he sees few and few dead flies on his windscreen (he's a pilot), until eventually, there are none. All this is my vague memory from 60 years ago. I'm be interested to re-visit it. Anyone else read it, by any chance?

I read most of Nevil Shute as a youngish, bookish teenager, at my grandparents' during the summer holidays (there's only so much B&W Robin Hood and White Horses a girl can take). The one that sticks in my mind is An Old Captivity where a pilot becomes a. addicted to sleeping pills and b. convinced that he is a slave captured by the Viking Leif Ericsson and brought to North America.

I read a lot of Neville Shute’s books years ago but haven’t come across that one. “A Town Like Alice” and “On the Beach” stick in my mind.

I also read whatever Nevile Shute books my parents had. I particularly enjoyed A Town Like Alice, and read it a number of times - there weren’t many books at our house.

For some reason I didn’t go to the library when I was in my teens, so read whatever there was in the house, including mum’s Encyclopaedia of Childhood Illnesses. She’d been a children’s nurse, so it was a medical textbook. I found the page showing the difference between a mongol and a cretin particularly fascinating in a gruesome way.

(Per Wikipedia Cretinism, now clinically referred to as congenital hypothyroidism, is a serious medical condition present at birth characterized by severe physical stunting and intellectual disability. It is caused by an insufficient production of thyroid hormones due to dietary iodine deficiency during pregnancy, a missing or poorly developed thyroid gland, or genetic defects. Mongol is what we now call Down’s Syndrome)

I’d love a butterwort, too.

I could really do with an entire plantation of butterworts right now!

DH has decided to experiment with leaving the food waste caddy completely empty so the fruit flies have nowhere to hide, and rushing straight out to the compost bin with every bit of peel or teabag.. Problem is, we do have a bowl of fruit on the counter. So now instead of mostly being tucked away in the bin drawer, the little sods are constantly buzzing all around the kitchen, orbiting the fruit bowl.

I have in the past resorted to old-fashioned fly papers, the ones covered in glue. They look sordid, but do slow the little buggers down.

This year I'm trying a combo of straight-to-the-bin (or closed compostable bin bag) with bits, and storing fruit in the fridge. Mixed success. And I have to remember to get the fruit out in time to warm it to eatable temperature.

Surprised at the Nevil Shute love! I thought he's be a forgotten figure by now. I guess On The Beach is the most well-known. There was a a film, with Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner.

I'm scanning through ebay and wondering about getting another bike. One bike's description concludes with

Buy it now includes delivery on uk mainland paid for before it leaves my lockup.
I'm retired from bikes now due to health & moaning wife. 😃

Are you tempted, moto?

In general, yes, There was a lovely one just down the road in Preston I saw this morning, similar to one I once owned, but it was sold on Saturday apaz. It's a sellers' market in the summer, Jan/Feb is the best to buy bikes, really.

Hopefully you can hold off until winter and find a better deal. It can't be easy seeing those enticing adverts, though.

Go for it, moto (but maybe resist temptation until winter, if it means a better deal).

Sooner rather than later would be better, really, for a few reasons. I suspect having a 'gap' in my insurance cover may be a factor, for example.

Have you got somewhere secure to keep it? If so, treat yourself and enjoy the rest of the summer.

Well, I shall be making it more secure, have already taken steps!

Go for it, @moto748e ... if you can find what you want, it would be better to be able to enjoy it asap.

I should like to report, entirely without shame, that since the beginning of June I've watched all 20+ episodes of the original Inspector Lynley series on the iPlayer. This was 100% displacement activity, aka avoiding doing MrG's tax return. <Long rant about Canadian banks deleted here.>

Anyway, having run out of Lynleys I finally completed the spreadsheet from hell, got the job done and then paid a very large amount of tax up-front rather than in two instalments, because I frankly can't be arsed thinking about it again.

And breathe! Sorry about that, but I badly needed to vent. And I did enjoy Lynley.