A couple of weeks ago I attended an introductory cheesemaking course at Hartpury College, Gloucester. We were taught by Judy King, cheesemaker from nearby Wharf Farm Dairy. We made a cheddar method goats cheese which will mature in about two months. The photo shows the second cheddaring which is the process of re-cutting the curds, placing one block on top of another for more whey to drain out. See all my cheesemaking photos to understand the process.
Following our delayed Spring, I was happy to see bluebells come up in our tiny garden. They all grew tall and handsome and I made a photographic study of some using a diopter (magnifying) lens. This close, the little lilac-blue flowers seemed angelically alive and some of the photos captured their blue haze (something like an aura perhaps). They reminded me of the association of the colour blue with heaven and also dreams. Also the colour of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s cloak and all that that beholds, so it is believed.
This is a map of the countries I have visited, apparently 5% of the world’s countries.
Before dawn on 21 June a group of 11 people made their way to a meadow in Wiltshire. The journey was made to found and witness the Circle in the West, a new stone momument that will comprise seven ‘circles’ in homage to Stonehenge. The dawn was clearing as Sun was about to break the flat horizon and we were all quieted by the spectacle in front of us while archaeological surveyors plotted the various angles and positions of the sunrise in relation to the centre point of the Circle. The Ox-eye daisies (the day’s eyes) unfurled and stretched in recognition of it. (more…)
On Boundaries is a new blog created by my friends gesta and reivers, a medievalist and a mathematical scientist, approaching life, people and the universe from their divers perspectives. If they don’t mind me saying, this will blog will challenge all sorts of rubbish that is believed by lots of unthinking or otherwise ignorant people. They are compassionate intellectuals, highly defined by their own life experiences in learning, knowledge acquisition and wisdom sharing.
Yesterday, I bought an amazing bed of tangerine quartz. Today, I have been trying to find out what causes the fabulous tangerine-orange hue. The colouring is translucent and comes from the surfaces of the quartz, rather than from the inclusion of a foreign mineral within. Tom (my extremely excellent other half) asked about what causes the similar but man-made effects displayed by aqua, ruby and opal aura quartz and Dave Watts (a mineral dealer) and Ian Williams (a physicist) explained that the effects are created by a process called Thin-film Deposition, also referred to as the ‘plasma treatment’ where (explained simply by me) clear quartz is placed in a vacuous chamber in the presence of metallic particles such as gold, silver or platinum. Then, a low-voltage current is passed through the quartz and the metal particles adhere, electrostatically, to the quartz creating hues of irridescent blue, ruby red, and irridescent pearl or white respectively.