@Winston indeed the pix! @pedant is a brilliant photographer & if I’m miserable about not going further afield -beyond my fence, in other words -I look at the photographs. It’s real mastery of the craft.

Thane & Puro

@janetteB @mudlark @winston

Did someone mention “vinca”  ??

Part of my gardening work (motive: helps with pain relief; as the garden sits VERY close to the footpath & we have a large tuckeroo,  judiciously taken care of, – but presenting a tendency to naughtiness: it doesn’t like to share the water) was to double dig & work on my soils For t…[Read more]

@pedant

Scrub my tentative identification above; it’s evident that my visual memory is becoming less reliable. Yesterday, working in the garden, I came across some Greater Periwinkle lurking at the back of the shrubbery – it rarely flowers, which is why I tend to overlook it. With that as a more immediate basis for comparison I can confidently…[Read more]

Happy Earth Day to everyone! I hope you all got a chance to get outside and enjoy the little piece of earth that is yours. My little corner is filled with song birds and ducks and turtles and even a local beaver (we call him Justin) living in our creek. The earth is truly a marvelous place to be. We showed her our love by picking up a big bag of…[Read more]

@pedant

Periwinkle certainly, but without a measure of scale it’s difficult to be certain whether greater (vinca major) or lesser (vinca minor).  Judging by the shape of the leaves alone I suspect that it is probably vinca major. The leaves of vinca minor are narrower and more lanceolate and the plant as a whole, needless to say, is smaller. One…[Read more]

@pedant

The way I’ve been feeling lately, Madlark wouldn’t be entirely inappropriate.

It’s definitely not Dog Violet, although that was my first thought until I took a closer look.  Ground Ivy was the next thing that came to mind, evoking memories of my rural childhood, but considering how long it is since I last saw the latter I did check in…[Read more]

@pedant

Judging by the photo I’m pretty certain that it’s Ground Ivy (glechoma hederacea) which is fairly common in woodland and shady places and flowers April-June (no relation of hedera helix, obviously)

@pedant  Those pics are great and I will google the place later to learn more. Thanks for posting them.

As for the ospreys, it looks like spring has sprung. As for the tee shirts, I wore one in the 70s and my brother had a poster. Sooooo tacky it makes me blush.

As @pedant suggests, this thread has gone over its maximum 20 pages so it’s now closed I’ve started a new one here:

General Music thread 4

All sounds incredibly positive and exciting @pedant @bluesqueakpip

@thane16 Thanks for asking, and I hope you and yours are all ok. Savon Manor is looking rather unkempt. This is partly because we haven’t looked after it in the cold weather, and partly because we barely look after it anyway.
What is more, the groundsman (aka Mr Savon) has an…[Read more]

@thane16 and @pedant

Wot pedant says. 🙂

Diabetes Type 1 is complicated in that it appears to be a combination of both genetics and environment, and the honest answer is that we don’t currently know why people get Type 1. Genetic risk factors can be identified: they don’t mean you’re going to get Type 1.

Similarly with Type 2. But again,…[Read more]

@pedant @bluesqueakpip Late to the party of sugar.

Wondering if Diabetes is hereditary? Is remission something that lasts for a few years only anyway? I know with Cancer or Crohns (both with unknown etiology) that a few years only can be widely interpreted. Are sounds being made to indicate that the study mentioned would rid the body of Diabetes…[Read more]

@pedant

Funnily enough, I think they mentioned something about a) and b) when I did my BSc. 😈

b) would explain the differences between NHS Scotland and NHS England – the Glasgow study was done with Scottish NHS GPs and nurses, so they’re confident that they can go forward into a wider roll-out. Presumably, gathering longitudinal data as…[Read more]

@pedant

That’s the one. The impression I got is that it’s the big topic at this year’s conferences for diabetes professionals, because the Newcastle-Glasgow follow up showed the results could be replicated in general practice. Plus, the whatever-scan-it-is seems to have confirmed the hypothesis of the pilot study – so it’s all terribly…[Read more]

@pedant

By which you mean that is how you prefer them.

Yes,  that is exactly what I meant.

On the subject of maple syrup, I agree that it is delicious. I acquired the taste for it very early in life during the time of post-war food rationing, when relatives in Canada used to send us food parcels which included boxes of maple sugar candy. Since I…[Read more]

@pedant

Talking matters diabetic, have you seen the latest results of the DIRECT study? Apparently the preliminary results are so exciting (about a third of patients go into remission) that NHS England is going ahead with a pilot study and NHS Scotland is already rolling out programmes.

In matters pancake, I’m currently trying to make almond…[Read more]

@thane16  @mudlark @pedant and @janetteb   Yup! You are all correct, my pancakes are a thicker version of crepes (I do love crepes) but they are not sweet by themselves just by what you put on them. They are usually eaten for breakfast and yes often put in a pile till they are limp and tepid depending on the size of your griddle and the speed of…[Read more]

@winston  @thane16

Pancakes mmmm 😊

American style pancakes (which in the UK are more like what we would call drop scones or scotch pancakes) are very good with butter and/or maple syrup, if a little sweet for my taste, but pancakes on this side of the pond (crepes in American English)*  are as illustrated in the Olney pancake race (thanks @pedant…[Read more]

@pedant @winston

that’s great history & I didn’t know an inch of it -or a pinch of it (salt) nor a cup of it (flour & sugar presumably).

Aussies put a pinch of salt in their pancakes, whether savoury or not. The worst crepes I had was in Lausanne. Twice. For some reason between ’93 & 2009 I believed they’d improve. They were SO sweet I wanted to…[Read more]

@pedant

I used to have a rather battered 18th century copy, possibly a first edition, of John Newton’s autobiographical An Authentic Narrative … but several years ago I gave it to someone I thought would appreciate and value it. My brothers and I found it, along with a couple of school atlases c. 1810, in the loft of a house we lived in during th…[Read more]