Category: Nature

General observations, generally during dog walks

The plant experiment

I took two cuttings from the same branch, put them in identical soil and pots, each with a copper antenna. The only difference was that one antenna was wound clockwise, and one counterclockwise.

Several days later, nothing but the stalk remains of one. No signs of the leaves, snail trails — nothing.

Why would something eat one cutting but not the other?

Nor touch the three cuttings from the same bush right next to it?

I will definitely have to repeat this experiment.

Cayó.

Small house among pine trees, Atlántida, Uruguay

April 2023

November 2024

2:30 Friday afternoon, no particular wind, no cars, no pedestrians, and boom–down goes a leaning pine tree. Obviously, this could have been serious.

And here’s the crazy part. Ten meters up the trunk, the rings indicate this part of the tree is less than thirty years old. Some of the earlier rings are one inch wide.

I’ve gone by this tree almost every day for fifteen years, and only noticed it in the last few because of its tilt. Strange to think that in our early days here, it would have been less than half its present diameter.