Burra Maluca

I put mine in a 5 litre lidded caddy then when it's full I take it outside and tuck it under the mulch in the vegetable garden.

Quoth, absolutely belongs there!

We have his brother here.

In fact, I had a terrible job not naming this fella Quoth as Austin is such a Discworld fan.

He shares his brother's love of eyeballs too. He says these ones look a bit bloodshot, just the way he likes them...



He ate the lot of them. Though he did say they weren't like proper eyeballs. They had hard bits in the middle and weren't full of salty water like they should be.



I wonder if a painting through a raven's eyes could work?

I always felt that if I had an aura, it would be purple.

And if that aura could be represented by a stone, it would be amethyst.

A year or so after I lost my husband I was in a very strange place mentally - broken, but healing. Sort of. And very dependent on my new partner to hold me together.

I treated myself to a pack of rough amethysts, purchased online, in the hope that one of them might symbolise how I felt. And this one fit the bill perfectly!



Uncut, unpolished, falling apart at the seams somewhat. But held together by some copper stripped out of an offcut of electrical cable by my new partner, which might at first glance might look like a cage but actually keeps me from falling apart completely and allows me to face the world and shine as best I can.

It somehow captures my essence completely. Plus as it was a pack of five, he also made one up for his sister and one for his niece and there are still two smaller bits around somewhere, just in case we find a good way to use them.

Mind. Blown.

According to this article in the Smithsonian magazine, Iberian harvester ant queens produce offspring of their own species and of the builder harvester ant, seemingly by cloning males

I'm gonna have to try reading the article again in the morning when I'm a bit fresher...

Scientists recently discovered that Iberian harvester ant queens (Messor ibericus) mate with males of another species, the builder harvester ant (Messor structor). When they do, the M. ibericus queens store the M. structor male’s sperm, then use it to fertilize some of the eggs they lay. Researchers think the M. ibericus queens remove their own genetic material from the eggs’ nuclei, so that when those eggs hatch, they effectively turn out to be M. structor male clones.

"Mum, is there somewhere on permies.com I can post about all my experiments with light and space and colour and stuff?"

Iggy is one of my plushy dragons. Which, as some of you know, represent aspects of my psyche. I seem to have rather a lot of them. A multiplicity you might say. And Iggy is the young dragon who represents my more experimental, technical sort of side. The side that likes to figure out how the universe works, what the Meaning of Life is, all that sort of stuff. The dragons help me to concentrate on just one aspect of myself at a time a little more deeply. And then when I'm working on Something Big and I have the mental capacity, I let them all work together a bit more and I either go into total mental overload or, just occasionally, manage to solve a mystery, or write a story, or something like that.



"Well what exactly did you have in mind, Iggy?"

"Well there's the thread about The Dragons Play Towers of Hanoi and discover colour theory, pinkness and powers of 10 which people seemed to like. And then we had the Smaugust 2025 art challenge which lots of people joined in on. And the two posts in there about the Doppler effect and about red shift and blue shift got me thinking about things. And I'd like to explore them a bit more. And thought it might be good to share what I learn, just in case anyone else finds it interesting. Or inspiring. Or something..."

I thought for a while. It wasn't sure it was a very good fit for permies. Especially as dragons don't always interpret things the same way as most people do. But that's not necessarily a bad thing in itself. And at the very least it might be fun.

"I think we could probably fit it in somewhere. Where do you think it should go?"

We looked at the current list of all forums to see if we could find a fit.

"There's one about science and research." Iggy noticed triumphantly.

I had a look to see what the forum was supposed to be for.

This forum is a place for those interested in using and learning about science as a tool to better understand and test permaculture techniques. It is not a place for discussing the relative merits of science vs other ways of viewing the world and will be moderated hard to keep discussion on topic so that it will become a useful resource for anyone wishing to learn more and participate in research.

"I don't think your experiments are going to fit there, Iggy. They aren't directly related to permaculture. In fact I'm not even sure how I'd describe your experiments. Is it science if dragons do experiments? Is it physics if it's do with light and space?"

Iggy thought for a while.

"It's a bit like science. But it's more thought experiments than actual physics. Sort of a philosophical science."

"Maybe a bit like physics was long ago in Isaac Newton's time, when it was known as Natural Philosophy?"



"I like that name - maybe we can call the thread The Natural Philosophy of Dragons so that people know it's our ideas, not necessarily mainstream science," suggested Iggy. "I'm still not sure where it fits though..."

But I think I knew just the place for it.

"There's a forum called ethics and philosophy in the cider press. It sounds just the place for it to me!" I told him.

"Is there?" Iggy sounded surprised, but very pleased. "I think that would be just perfect! Do you think Paul will mind?"

"I shouldn't think so." I assured him. "Just make sure to write nicely and try to be as honest and helpful as you can. And find ways to do as much good as possible with what you find out."

"That sounds fair!" agreed Iggy. "Can you make the post for me?"

"Ok, I'll start the thread with an introductory post as soon as we've had lunch. And then you can think of what you experiments you want to do and how we could go about them."

It seems that scientists are finally turning their attentions to trying to understand how knitting works and wondering what a deeper understanding of the physics behind it could lead to in terms of high-tech fabrics.

Too much sun isn't good for plants and can also dry the soil out excessively. Which is why the grass is usually longer and greener under your trampoline.

I had the same effect behind my solar panels and used the space for sowing seed and growing young plants. The ducks would also use it as a safe place to hang out with their babies where they could keep an eye on them all.

This video explores some of the ways to utilise that shade to improve yields of crops like corn, tomatoes and grapes.

Black nightshade grows freely as a weed here in Portugal too.

Unfortunately I can't get over the fear factor of being raised to never go near little black nightshade berries - it's too deeply engrained in me and I just can't push through it.

I use a little stainless steel brush for any that are being stubborn. It doesn't clog up like most other things I've tried and seems pretty resilient. And effective!

The bags must be absolutely dry when you put them into the freezer.

Also the freezer must be set so that the temperature is never allowed to rise above freezing point, ever, anywhere inside.

For the most part stuff will stay frozen even if the freezer is switched off for 24 hours, but if the temperature creeps up anywhere inside the freezer, some thawing will take place and water will gather in places you'd rather it didn't and then re-freeze and stick everything together.

My freezer managed to get turned off for a couple of days a few months ago and I had frozen blocks of fruit pulp that I had to rescue which had thawed enough that they had squashed down to become flattened slabs instead of blocks. They are still good to eat, but any changes like that or like excess sticking of bags to the sides of the freezer or to each other is a sign that the temperature regulation might not be as good as it should be.

Edit to add that if stuff is warm when you put it into the freezer, it's going to melt any ice around which will then re-freeze and stick things together. Make sure stuff is as cold as possible when you put it in.