vastbranch.com

There are a few people who read this website but aren’t on Facebook, so if you’re one of those people, I have set up a donations page for Water Aid, so sponsor me for the Bristol Half Marathon!

Go Donate!

The Swedish chef says now that the website is back I can put up our pics from Uppsala and Stockholm! Here they are…

There are some great pictures of Clem in here, so be warned, you will encounter extraordinary cuteness right from the start!

A few months ago my website up and died. I don’t know what the problem was, but any entry that had HTML tags in it (most of them) wouldn’t display.

So I’ve arduously upgraded WordPress and the requisite database and I think we’re flying again now.

Hopefully I can ditch all the spam now, too, with WP’s new and improved version.

New photos and posts coming soon!

From my father…

“Beware Toyota. We bought a new Venza from them, drove it 600 miles and the first time it rained the engine sucked water in through the air intake and blew up. Toyota would not stand behind their product and our insurance is paying for a replacement block.

“So instead of a new factory built vehicle we now have one with a shop built replacement motor. I asked to trade it back to them for a new car which is what I contracted for and they’ll give me a generous $18K for a $34K vehicle with 600 miles on it. That won’t even come close to paying the $25K note.

“And to think, I traded a perfectly good Mustang GT with 73K miles on this shit. Shame on me, I’ve heard all the stuff in the media about Toyota’s QC problems and went ahead with this plan. Boy did I get burned.”

Awaiting your thoughts…

We returned from Becky’s conference in Sweden yesterday where she was delivering a paper. It was a beautiful country and Stockholm is an incredible city. I’ve got lots of pictures and will put them up when I get them sorted. But what an expensive place. Highlights include two sandwiches, four bananas, a bag of potato chips, two small bars of chocolate, a soda and a small yogurt… £23

We had some deliciously warm weather in early to mid April, but the cold snapped back and since then it’s been pretty chilly most of the time. An unexpected and happy result of lingering cold weather — as long as it’s not too cold — is that all the common plants around here seem to thrive on it. They also seem to thrive on a cold winter.

I haven’t done any research on this issue but it seems highly likely that very cold winters and mildly cold and sunny springs knock down the parasites that attack plants, giving them almost ideal conditions. I’m sure plants from warmer climes aren’t digging it too much, but the natives and species from similar latitudes seem to be loving this year’s weather. In fact I would venture to say I haven’t seen the countryside so pretty in the last five years or more.

Another suspect is the rainfall patterns. We’ve had pretty normal rainfall this spring, but it has come in bursts with lots of sunshine and dry weather between. I think plants like this, too, probably because it allows them to draw up and store moisture while starving parasitic fungi, microorganisms and insects that would otherwise affect their health.

If present trends continue, it’s going to be a gorgeous summer. Here’s betting they won’t!