Sandy Beach Almanac
I'm pleased to announce a sister blog to the Blogmanac. The Sandy Beach Almanac (http://sandybeachalmanac.blogspot.com/) is where I am logging daily observations of Nature and life from my cabin on Sandy Beach, on the South Pacific coast of Australia. Here are two snippets:
1) Yellow Mondays, blazing blue Sunday
... The cicadas make themselves known on these hot days, as well, and they're quite loud from the casuarina trees immediately behind the sand. Australia has about 220 of the 2,000-plus species of the world's large Cicadidae family.
Over generations, Australian children have bestowed names on some of the species. The most common and thus best known is the Green Grocer (Cyclochila australasiae). The Floury Baker (Abricta curvicosta) and the Black Prince (Psaltoda plaga) are less common – the latter especially so and their scarcity might help explain the dubious folklore of children that you can sell them to pharmacists for a tidy sum, and their wings will be ground up and used in important medicines. It might be that during the Gold Rush days of the 1850s, Chinese herbalists really did grind up Black Prince wings for their elixirs ...
2) One thousand, two hundred and eighty-five
... one of my paces is almost precisely four of my hand spans. As Nature would have it, my hand span is near as dammit to 25 centimetres, providing a handy metric rule. So my step is one metre and Sandy Beach I reckon to be 1.285 kilometres in length, at least around the arc of the delicious waterline that lapped around my ankles ...
Of course, I might have lost count and messed up the calculation. There were at least four moments along my surveying route that interrupted my concentration.
First of these was a remarkably proportioned, young, bikini-clad woman leading two small black dogs on a leash at some distance from me. I won't pretend it was the dogs that distracted me, although I don't like to see dogs on the beach, and it is against council regulations. I did find her easier to forgive than some others I've seen. I might have lost count then and as I pondered the grim reality that if she were 19, as I guessed, she was closer in age to my granddaughter than my daughter, and that God is quite uncaring in the apportionment of libido and age ...
I'm pleased to announce a sister blog to the Blogmanac. The Sandy Beach Almanac (http://sandybeachalmanac.blogspot.com/) is where I am logging daily observations of Nature and life from my cabin on Sandy Beach, on the South Pacific coast of Australia. Here are two snippets:
1) Yellow Mondays, blazing blue Sunday
... The cicadas make themselves known on these hot days, as well, and they're quite loud from the casuarina trees immediately behind the sand. Australia has about 220 of the 2,000-plus species of the world's large Cicadidae family.
Over generations, Australian children have bestowed names on some of the species. The most common and thus best known is the Green Grocer (Cyclochila australasiae). The Floury Baker (Abricta curvicosta) and the Black Prince (Psaltoda plaga) are less common – the latter especially so and their scarcity might help explain the dubious folklore of children that you can sell them to pharmacists for a tidy sum, and their wings will be ground up and used in important medicines. It might be that during the Gold Rush days of the 1850s, Chinese herbalists really did grind up Black Prince wings for their elixirs ...
2) One thousand, two hundred and eighty-five
... one of my paces is almost precisely four of my hand spans. As Nature would have it, my hand span is near as dammit to 25 centimetres, providing a handy metric rule. So my step is one metre and Sandy Beach I reckon to be 1.285 kilometres in length, at least around the arc of the delicious waterline that lapped around my ankles ...
Of course, I might have lost count and messed up the calculation. There were at least four moments along my surveying route that interrupted my concentration.
First of these was a remarkably proportioned, young, bikini-clad woman leading two small black dogs on a leash at some distance from me. I won't pretend it was the dogs that distracted me, although I don't like to see dogs on the beach, and it is against council regulations. I did find her easier to forgive than some others I've seen. I might have lost count then and as I pondered the grim reality that if she were 19, as I guessed, she was closer in age to my granddaughter than my daughter, and that God is quite uncaring in the apportionment of libido and age ...
As with the Blogmanac, there is a subscription box at Sandy Beach Almanac so interested readers can follow the cycles of the seasons with me as they turn. I look forward to seeing you there.
Pip Wilson posted item above at 2:43 PM | Permalink
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