Month: March 2025

Photos before the frost


Deciduous magnolia. Click here for high-resolution version.

Deciduous magnolia blooms are very susceptible to frostbite. In many years, frost gets my deciduous magnolia trees before they reach full bloom. There may be frost tonight. But at least the magnolias were able to fully bloom.

As far as I know, even the summer-blooming and evergreen magnolia grandiflora, also called Southern magnolia, grows well farther north, including in the United Kingdom. To my lights, every landscape (or garden, if you’re in the U.K.) needs magnolias. The deciduous magnolias have very little scent. Whereas Southern magnolias can be smelled a mile away (I’m exaggerating) on a hot summer night.

The apple trees are not yet blooming.


⬆︎ Deciduous magnolia. Click here for high-resolution version.


⬆︎ Plum. Click here for high-resolution version.


⬆︎ Peach. Click here for high-resolution version.


⬆︎ Bluets. Click here for high-resolution version.

2017 Fiat 500: A 7-year re-review ★★★★★


Click here for high-resolution version.

I well remember how guilty and splurgy I felt when I bought this car seven years ago. Yet it turned out to be one of the best financial decisions I ever made, because it has kept my cost of transportation very low.

The base price was $14,995. The total sticker price plus a destination charge and $250 extra for the ivory seats came to $16,240. But I didn’t pay that much. The dealer gave me a too-good-to-turn-down discount because Americans won’t buy Fiats, and this one had been on the lot for a while. In fact, Fiat stopped selling the Fiat 500 in North America after the 2019 model year.

Americans prove over and over again that they clueless and foolish in pretty much every way. Most people want enormous SUVs. The average price for vehicles sold at present in the U.S. is just under $50,000. The average amount that Americans spend on gasoline each year is more than $2,700. In some states, such as Wyoming, the average is considerably higher — $3,300 a year. Many households have two cars, and 22 percent of American households have three or more cars. Americans don’t like to ask themselves how much they can afford to pay for transportation. Consequently they don’t have much money left over for buying eggs.

I can’t tell you how many times someone sees the Fiat and says, “Fix it again, Tony.” Probably once upon a time Fiats deserved their reputation for not being reliable. But automobile manufacturing is much, much better these days, largely thanks to robotics and much better machining. Most Americans don’t know that the Italians are superb automotive engineers. The Italians also have a flair for style — and fun — in automobile design that seems to have vanished in many places.

In seven years, my Fiat 500 has had to go in for repairs twice. In year four, a speed sensor failed in the front left wheel. Fiat fixed that under warranty. Last year, the service engine light came on with a complaint about the electronic throttle. That turned out to be a known software issue for which Fiat had issued a service bulletin. The dealership reflashed the PCM, which cost me $100. I don’t mind that, because I assume it means that my Fiat now has the latest version of the Fiat software. Other than that, at 42,000 miles, I’ve never had any trouble.

The engine and transmission are silky smooth. In fact the Fiat 500 handles like a sports car. People ask me if I feel safe in such a small car. I feel as safe in the Fiat as I do in any car. I also believe, because I’m a good and careful driver, and because the Fiat is far more maneuverable that heavy vehicles, that I can evade accidents that heavy vehicles would not be able to evade. I have done many quick stops for squirrels, including a few quick stops in which I had to both brake and swerve. The Fiat goes where I point it, stops quickly, and doesn’t threaten to roll over — though a swerving quick stop is always, in any vehicle, a dangerous maneuver.

My average is about 48 miles per gallon. The photo below shows pretty much the maximum mileage the Fiat can achieve. The 70.5 mpg figure is from a 12-mile trip on a flat highway, mostly in fifth gear, at about 50 mph. The mileage rating on its window sticker was 31 city and 38 highway. One would have to be a terrible, terrible driver to get gas mileage that low.

Before the Fiat, I had Mercedes Smart Cars. Trump types were incredibly rude to such a small car. Once, in rural Tennessee, a pickup truck ran me off the road in the Smart Car. Trump types are not as aggressive toward the Fiat as they were to the Smart Car. But when I have a heavy truck or SUV right on my bumper when I’m driving exactly on the speed limit, I pull over as soon as possible and let the idiots pass.

My car looks like a mouse. That does not embarrass me.

Three generations of white deer?


A neighbor shot this photo of the youngest white deer, now two years old. She is muscular and remarkably healthy.

It was more than ten years ago that I first saw a white deer in the woods here. Sometimes I was able to get a photo, and comparison of the photos from year to year led to a strong suspicion that there were two white deer, almost certainly of two generations. Then, in the spring of 2023, a baby white deer appeared. That would make three, all part of the local deer herd, whose range includes my woods, the opposite ridge to the south, a lot of creek bottom, and a field or two along the ridge north of the creek.

Fortunately their range is not crossed by a paved road, and as far as I know the local herd has not had any car fatalities. The deer are often in my yard. They’re hard on my day lilies, but they’re welcome to the clover. After I stopped keeping chickens, I opened the gates to the orchard. The deer now do a fine job of keeping the undergrowth (mostly honeysuckle) out of the orchard.

My nearest neighbor keeps a close watch on the local deer herd. He puts out corn for them as well as mineral salt. He is a longtime hunter, but as far as I know he has never shot a deer from our local herd. Rather, he sees his job as keeping poachers out and letting it be known that anyone who shoots a white deer — or for that matter any deer from the local herd — just might get shot, if caught. There are plenty of hunters who would like to have a white deer as a trophy.

I asked my neighbor, in a text message, if the youngest white deer has a white mother. He replied:

“Not sure which doe it was. There are genes in this area to produce the white deer. I’ve heard that there are several between here and the river.”

There is a lot of wild bottom land between here and the Dan River, which is less than two miles away. Bears are seen in that area pretty often. There is a pack of coyotes, though I rarely hear them. They must have a pretty large range.

There are places in North Carolina with white squirrels. The commonly heard explanation, probably false, is that they escaped from a P.T. Barnum circus truck after a truck wreck. If Brevard is still having its white squirrel festivals, I wonder if there are any for sale on the black market. Woods with white deer ought to have some white squirrels.

Ken is in the New York Times today


In September 2018, Ken and I hiked across the eight-mile width of the island of Ulva to get to the island of Gometra. This photo of Ken was shot on the Mull side of Ulva. Click here for high-resolution version.

Ken’s article in the New York Times today is “What a Small Island Off the Coast of Scotland Could Teach America.” He writes:

“As an American who lived for years in North Carolina, I saw firsthand the decline of rural communities. The boarded-up shops, political disengagement and ‘No Trespassing’ signs of rural America may be less picturesque, but in important ways they’re not so different from the stone ruins and abandoned fields of Scotland’s Highlands and islands. Could community ownership let people reclaim control over their land and their futures in rural America?

“Some think it might. In the United States, federal and state governments can claim land using eminent domain, but we rarely see communities take control to provide affordable housing, let alone empower local residents to make it happen themselves. ‘It is impressive,’ said John Lovett, a law professor at Louisiana State University, who studies Scotland’s land reform laws. Scotland is ‘trying to achieve something that we just don’t even think about in the U.S. It’s creating a way for the government to enable or facilitate the disassembly or the decentralization of landownership. We’ve never tried that in the U.S.'”


Ken picking blackberries on Ulva, September 2018.

The iPhone’s portrait mode


Shot with iPhone 16 in portrait mode, 2x zoom. Click here for high-resolution version.

I think of the iPhone camera as a snapshot camera. But really it has much more potential than that. I take the phone’s camera for granted because most of the time I can just point and shoot and get a decent photo. But getting the shot of the daffodils that I wanted today actually sent me to Google with some questions.

Shooting in “Photo” mode, the background was entirely in focus, even in the interior light. If I were shooting with my Nikon D2X, I would just set a wide aperture, and that would blur the background. The question I asked Google (silly me!) was, how do I set the iPhone f-stop? Google said: You can’t set the f-stop on the iPhone. Use “Portrait” mode instead, and that will blur the background. So that’s what Portrait mode is for!

This blurring of the background is very important in photography. It’s called “bokeh,” and one of the ways lenses are rated is on the quality of their bokeh. With portraits, of course, though the background may be very important, one wants only the face in focus. And that’s true not just with portraits but with any photo in which the photographer wants only the subject of the photo to be in focus, with everything else blurred just to the right degree.

As an experiment, I tried to shoot the daffodil photo above with my Nikon D2X. I found that it could not be done without a better lens than the light-hungry 28-85mm lens that I normally use, plus some extra lighting, and/or a tripod. The interior light was just too dim for the lens, though the aperture was wide open.

It seems I shoot daffodil portraits pretty much every year. Here are a couple of others.


Shot with an iPhone 12, March 3, 2024. Not in portrait mode, 1x zoom. Click here for high-resolution version.


Shot with Mamyia RB67, 250mm lens, with tripod, Kodak film, March 10, 2018. That clearly was a better daffodil year than this year, after a cold winter.

Jura


Jura Scotch, aged 10 years in American oak barrels that were used for Spanish sherry. More on the little shot glass below.

When I was in Scotland last fall, there was a pub downstairs in the little hotel I stayed in in East Linton. With advice from the bartenders and the people sitting at the bar, I sampled a good many Scotches. By far, my favorite was from the Isle of Jura. It’s impossibly smooth and incredibly complicated, with just the right amount of smoke. At about $50 a bottle in the U.S. for the Scotch in the photo, it’s not even on the high side of what good Scotches cost.

“Single malt” just means that the Scotch comes from one distillery. That’s as opposed to blended Scotches, which buy (I assume) less distinguished Scotches from multiple distilleries and blend them into something as pleasing as possible. But Scotch is to Scotland as wine is to France (or California). It’s all about what part of Scotland the Scotch came from and the choices and skills of the distilleries’ operators. I don’t have enough experience with Scotches to judge how the aging matters. Some Scotches are aged (in barrels) for more than 20 years. I stick with 10- or 12-year old Scotches to avoid bankruptcy.

I hope I remain healthy enough to visit many more islands on future trips to Scotland. I’ll probably make another trip this fall. I have been to Lewis & Harris, Skye, Ulva, Gometra, and Mull. I have not been to Jura, but Jura and Islay probably are next on my list. There’s a woolen mill still in operation on Islay that I’d like to visit. I have a jacket made from Islay tweed.

I bought the little shot glass on eBay. It’s made from uranium glass. It’s not very radioactive. My Geiger counter measures the glass’s radioactivity as around double the background radiation here, a perfectly safe level. Uranium glass is a distinctive green color that glows under ultraviolet light. The glass is tiny. It holds only an ounce if filled to the brim.

Winter vegetables


Rutabaga pie

For some reason — is it because of the political disaster? — the winter of 2024-2025 has felt incredibly long. Where I live, we’ve had two miserable intrusions of the polar vortex. I had planned a February visit to Washington, but I had to cancel it because of ugly weather. Maybe I’m being more liberal with the heating system, but I had the highest electric bill in January that I’ve ever had. In February, the wind blew down a tree, and the tree fell on the power line that feeds the road I’m on. That broke a power pole and left about 400 feet of wire on the ground. It took 24 hours for the power company to put in a new pole and haul the fallen wires back up. Fortunately I have a generator and can keep lights, the computer, and the refrigerator running.

Americans don’t eat a lot of rutabagas, though grocery stores where I am usually have them. I suspect that’s because the rutabagas we get here have a very long shelf life. They’re dipped in paraffin wax and keep forever at the grocery store or in the fridge. They’re as hard a ball of marble. Peeling them is downright dangerous. They’ll want a good 40 minutes in the pot to cook up tender. When the battle between a knife and a ball of marble is over, they’re a comfort food. Mashed, with butter, is the default way of fixing them.

I made a very nice rutabaga pie, though. I wasn’t sure whether to call it a pie or a quiche, because the method of making it is something of a cross between pie-making and quiche-making. Think eggs, cheese, milk, and some browned onions to add umami. Don’t forget to add a little nutmeg.

Wikipedia has a nice article on rutabagas. In some northern countries, they’re probably as important as potatoes. In Scotland, where they are called neeps, I’ve cooked neeps on a camp stove in a yurt. Neeps are so plentiful in some places that they’re used as a food for livestock. It amuses me to think that the sheep that provided the wool for my collection of Harris tweed jackets probably ate neeps. Neeps in the wool!

Winter vegetables are a big help in making winters more bearable. I don’t think there is a single winter vegetable that can’t be made into a comfort food.

First, let’s talk about a sonnet


⬆︎ The newly discovered version of Sonnet 116. I asked Open AI’s 4o engine to modify it for modern spellings. I have typed the text with an IBM Wheelwriter typewriter. Click here for high-resolution version.

The most thrilling news I came across today is that a somewhat different version of Shakepeare’s Sonnet 116 has been discovered in Oxford’s Bodleian Library. The New York Times wrote about it here, and an academic paper about the discovery is here.

This is one of Shakespeare’s best-known sonnets. As the New York Times points out, the new version has an almost scolding tone aimed at those who deceive. The words “heretic” and “mountebank” are used, words that do not appear in the version with which we are familiar.

Sonnets were meant to be read aloud. Note that the word “fixèd” is two syllables.

Contempt for lying mountebanks! Now there’s a thought for the day.


⬆︎ The newly discovered version of Sonnet 116, with the text from the copy in the Bodleian Library.


⬆︎ Sonnet 116 as we have long known it. This page was scanned from the A.L. Rowse edition of the sonnets published in 1964.


⬆︎ I made a trip to Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s this morning. I wasn’t in the market for eggs, because a neighbor has given me some nice big double-yolk eggs. At Whole Foods the egg shelves were pretty much empty.


⬆︎ Even Whole Foods’ most expensive eggs — $13.99 a dozen — were sold out.


⬆︎ I’m guessing that this truck probably cost at least $60,000. It’s also very likely that parts of it were made in Canada and Mexico. When these fools get what they deserve there will be a great feast of gourmet Schadenfreude. But what’s sad is that things will be much worse for people who don’t drive around rolling coal in $60,000 trucks.