The Growing Season

Greetings from Glasgow. Should you see animals headed east in pairs or groups of seven, please move to the right and let them pass without hassle. They are, in fact, merely heading for the Ark, as someone surely has built one here by now…

We took the train to Helensburgh this weekend, with the intent of seeing the Glenarn Gardens, and their lovely rhododendrons. Apparently garden touring is all the rage here this time of year, and we were told we had to get out and see all the gorgeous before it got too warm and the blossoms faded. (We seem to have PLENTY of time on that score, but whatever.) Yes, touring gardens is pretty much like driving upstate to “see color” like many people do, but Helensburg is on the coast, and we were hoping for another day of enjoying the water as we did at Culzean. Well, we got to enjoy the water… from above.

A fresh sea breeze eventually turned on us and brought in a fast-moving front from the West. We were two miles from Helensburg, having walked along the seafront to the next village of Rhu. In the midst of suburbia with nothing but a few trees between us and being utterly soaked, we crouched at a bus stop, waiting in vain for a bus, and finally, soaked through, gave up and ran across to the marina to find the number for a cab. We have rhododendrons in Glasgow, in the park across the crescent, and we can look at them whilst perfectly dry. We arrived home damp and freezing and glad to ride out the weather at home.

And speaking of home: please, congratulate us: there are no appliances in dysfunction in this house at this time! Well, that’s not entirely accurate — we still have to jump-start the boiler every other day or so, but we have had no workmen in for a full five days now. We’re beginning to feel like those construction worksites with signs: FIVE DAYS WITH NO ACCIDENTS! Let’s Keep It Going! Here’s hoping that our workmen-free record will continue!

In January, one of D’s PhD supervisors left to complete a project in Malawi, Africa. He and D. have kept in contact to discuss students and to update each other on their work, and occasionally he will send a personal sentence or two. T. was deeply amused by the understatement of the following:

Bird life is varied and interesting. We make regular forays to Zomba plateau which is beautiful. This weekend we are off to a tea plantation. On the other side of the coin, there have been student riots here – burning barricades, tear gas and truncheons – which is a bit worrying as we live on the edge of campus.

Sooo, except for the screams, and the continual smell of smoke, the shrieking sirens and the actinic searchlights, which are “a bit worrying,” we’re all having a lovely time.

Good grief.

Just in time for Cinco de Mayo, we finally made it down to Lupe Pintos, the Mexican deli turned specialty food outlet that we’ve heard so much about. We perused the American pancake mix, marveled at their collection of movie candy (READ: what you normally buy at Costco before you go) and opted to buy masa harina, and looked forward to making our own tortillas again! Sadly, we didn’t find much time for salsa, as the fifth of May was also the day of D’s orals. The external examiner came from Wales, and sat dispassionately through fifteen minutes of presentation, then questions. All signs are good, as D. was congratulated from all sides for being clear and informed and enthused. He will know details, in a few days, but he’s feeling pretty good now. As of the first week in June it’ll be Year one: down.

Well, mostly down. D. still has Master’s supervision, and was dismayed to check in with a student and find that he was struggling to find sources. “You should be struggling with too many,” was D’s worried response. “How are you researching?” “Well,” his worried student replies, “I go to Google, and…”

Here’s a small note from the Universe: if you’re in graduate school, and the only way you know to research is to type something into Google, there’s a good chance you need to walk back on campus and allow yourself to become acquainted with the library… Fortunately, the paper isn’t due until the end of the summer, and a good deal of learning can take place between now and then.

It is indeed The Growing Season, and we once again entertain hopes that all the blooming trees will produce soft fruit and there might be berries to be had this year! Already, the days are long and light. The sun rises at twenty past five, and sets about five after nine already, which for Californians is about as much sun as one gets in the height of summer (the difference being that in California, it’s actual SUN, instead of just light obscured by rainclouds). Despite the fact that it has been raining for days upon days, the temperature is almost to the sixties during the day, and everything — from moss to leaves and grasses and flowers — and waxing green and leaving us sneezing. Also growing at an incredible rate is… hair.

Now, we explored this briefly last year at this time, but since we were gone much of the month of June, we were unsure of the reality of this phenomenon. Last Spring we noticed that as the light increased, so did our hair. Our friend Alex, who is quite hairy anyway, has a heavy five o’clock shadow around… noon. T. cut eleven inches off of D’s hair only three weeks ago, and this past weekend had to cut two more inches, because it was already well on its way past his collar. With a horrified fascination, T. has taken note of thickening eyelashes, and marks on the calendar other…er, depilatory wonders we won’t detail for you here. Suffice it to say, we fully expect to look like Cousin Itt by midsummer.

Interested parties (all two of you) who wanted to hear our concert: D. has finally fiddled with the streaming feed from our pre-concert rehearsal and has broken it down into somewhat reasonable chunks, although it’s still tricky for some systems to understand what to do with it. You may end up having to take the entire URL and drop it into your media player. The choir’s rehearsal is here, and the soloists rehearse here. (You can tell to which rehearsal you’re listening by the number of screams directed to either the orchestra or the choir. You, too, can now enjoy the exquisite torture of slightly out of tune violins! Thrill as we utterly miss cues and cut-offs! Watch Marjorie begin to foam slightly at the mouth! Rehearsal: it’s riveting stuff.). We’ll certainly miss Dr. R. and her genial browbeating next year.

Other interested parties can note that T’s review on Kirkus is reprinted in full on Barnes and Noble.com, if you scroll to the bottom. Seems to defeat the purpose of making it unavailable to people who aren’t Kirkus subscribers, but whatever!

Cheers!

– D & T

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.