The Dog is fast

I have wanted to do this for quite a while--to find out just how fast my turf bullet is. Preliminary testing has been carried out by means of ground marks, cell phone video, and a makeshift yardstick. The distance was 40,90 m , which is almost exactly The Dog's height (~40 cm) times many.¹

The dog in question. The Dog.

Frame-by-frame analysis confirms that The Dog's body had passed the finish line in the 8th last frame of 00:04, i.e. his time was 00:03,77 plus a bit more due to camera error on my part. More videos will be taken to confirm the data.

It seems that The Dog indeed is fast: 10,85 m/s = 39,06 km/h.²

The Dog could, hypothetically, beat Usain Bolt by 0,41 seconds in a 100 m sprint.

The Dog runs like the wind.  The fresh breeze, to be exact.

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1. distance: 44.73 yards — dog height: 15 ¾^↩
2. 35.60 yd/s = 24.27 mil/h^↩

Introducing: the ugliest mallsai

Today, I have done the unthinkable. I have bought a Ficus microcarpa mallsai. The ugliest mallsai which, even at its very best, features shapeless, bulging rootstock and grafted little twigs in a chaotic bush unless it's a taperless thick spiral with sorry little grafted tufts for branches. Yet, I found an exceptionally ugly specimen.

Did you think I'd just splat it onto your poor unprepared retinas?

Two roots forking apart like they hate each other, distorting the totally dry pot; one barely-surviving graft with humble girth and quite a drastic bit of over-bend damage, next to no foliage elsewhere, a smattering of timid tiny buds...

Ugly, and mislabeled! Miniature F. benjamina this ain't.

So, here we have an informed impulse buy—both to see whether I couldn't make it a bit less ugly, and to get familiar with the species before I sooner or later procure a pricier specimen. I've been eyeing F. microcarpa mallsais for a good while, since my conditions should suit one.

This cost me a few coins, not bad for a learning project. It was a general store, but I was able to talk the already slashed price a deal lower since the plant was not only mostly dry and lifeless, but the best branch was, as mentioned, bent to hell.

Just wow.

For now I can do little more than try and promote good health and we'll see where we can get from there.

Short term: resuscitate and establish decent health. Attempt to save the over-bent branch. Keep scissors down.

Medium term: repot with proper medium, investigate possibilities of new grafts.

Long term: investigate possibility of creating a separate item from the thinner root by air-layering.

Serendipity

Hello world! This is Saby. Today I'd like to tell you about something special that I saw on Friday, 1st of April.

It was a lovely, bright spring morning with a blue sky, and early spring bird song: blue tit, chaffinch, and those blackbirds who risked to stay overwinter. I was on my way to my duties, and chance had it that I get off the bus one stop later than normally. Luckily it wasn't much farther than the earlier stop.

As I stepped into the bright pale sunlight I head something peculiar: a light rain was falling. The asphalt was dry, though, and the sky cloudless. I turned to look to my left: the tiny batch of young birches was bleeding diamonds.

It was too bright to get a proper photo and I'm afraid I don't know how to post the short video I filmed at a high enough quality.

Here's an artsy-fartsy photo instead.¹

Even though I've seen birches all my life, I haven't seen anything like this before. I tried to figure out what was causing these maybe two to three dozen trees to rain while others didn't--I looked up and every little shoot seemed to have a glistening drop at its tip, especially in the younger parts of the tree. Maybe some sort of rare insect attack of unusual notoriety?

If you have guesses (educated or not), please feel free to comment below.

Have a lovely April, and welcome to my blog.

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1. Also a pretty accurate depiction of how it feels to step from a dim bus to bright spring sunlight.^↩