Bamboomed

Herein Beginneth The Botany Lesson

Your Humble Scribe isn't sure how long this Intro will be, or, more honestly, how long he can pad it out for, because at heart it's a simple tale of security lighting and bamboo shoots.  

     In our first tangent, I would like to give you a progress update on "Wild Swans", the autobiography of Jung Chang.  I have reached the end of the Sixties in the text, which was, to put it mildly, an incredibly turbulent time in China.  Art!

     Mao was busily establishing a cult of personality that meant he was a species of God-Emperor, and he didn't care how many millions died in the process.  Chang had been sent out into the countryside to mix with the peasantry, in order to learn 'reforms' without specifying what these reforms were, nor how they would benefit China.  Art!

     This is Ningnan county, where she was sent.  No electricity, no running water, no plumbing, no vehicles, no roads, nothing in fact of the 20th century except goats, goat excrement and bamboo.

     Now we come to the variety of bamboo known as 'Golden bamboo', which is know as a type of 'running bamboo', where the plant establishes underground roots called 'Rhizomes' (surely a Greek origin there*?) and can spread rapidly.  Art!

     Stick a pin in that, we'll come back to it.

     Okay, so the real meat of the matter about this Intro is a house-owner in a South Canadian estate, whom had a large plot of land as his backyard, and was a member of a Home Owners Association.  Whom, unusually, are not the villains of the piece here.

     The villain was the neighbour to the rear of House Owner's (hereafter HO) property, who decided to install a security light over his back door, which shone with actinic brilliance directly into the rear of HO's home.

     HO tried to resolve this diplomatically at first, by paying a visit with a crate of beer and a request that the light be directed elsewhere.  Art!

     Feckless neighbour took the beer and left the light as it was.  HO experienced chagrin.  He looked up the HOA rules and found that his 8-foot backyard fence was as high as it was permitted to get.  No light relief there.

     What to do, what to do?  Resort to bamboo!  HO trawled through the HOA regulations and found nothing there that forbade the planting of bamboo.  He checked up on running bamboo, and Golden Bamboo, and went about planting them up against his backyard fence, backed up by a stout layer of 'Root Barrier', which I wondered about until I Googled for it.  Art!

     What you see here is 'Root Barrier for bamboo', being a sheet of High-Density Poly-Ethylene, or perhaps Heavy Duty.  Either way, it's intent is to prevent the bamboo rhizomes from spreading, in this case into HO's very large back yard.  He'd done his research and neither the HOA, city or state had any legal recourse if he planted bamboo, and the only resort his undiplomatic neighbour had was to cut down anything that grew on his side of the fence.

     Game on.

     Did I mention that Golden Bamboo grows especially well in Texas, where this story is set?  It can reach a height of 20 feet.  It was only 15 feet from the fence to Bright Light's back porch, whereas HO's patio was 150 feet away, so clearly one of these two had less to lose.

     SIX MONTHS LATER: the security light was completely obscured by a florid jungle of Golden Bamboo.

     ONE YEAR LATER: Bright Light began to send letters complaining that the bamboo was appearing in his yard.  HO threw these into the bin after reading the first one.  When BL paid a visit HO ignored the door-knocking.

     TWO YEARS LATER: HO sold his house and moved away, due to changing jobs.  Art!

     The last time he checked on Google Earth, BL's garden was completely over-run with bamboo.

     It gets worse.  You see, what else lives in Texas and loves loves loves stands of bamboo?  Art!

     The Copperhead snake.  Which may be the reason matey didn't feel like digging up 225 square feet of bamboo stems and rhizomes.

Back To William Tecumseh And The Sherman Tank

When last we left this topic, Conrad had just dealt with 'Protection'.  The next part of the holy quadrology of armour design is 'Firepower'.  This is generally where the Wehraboos clutch themselves with excitement and go on about how the Panther and Tiger totally outclassed the Sherman.  Art!

     Once again for the hard-of-thinking, it was NOT the Sherman's job to tackle heavy Teuton tanks.  It was intended for infantry support, firing HE shells to suppress or destroy dug-in infantry, anti-tank guns and support weapons, which it was very effective at.  David Render, in "Tank Action", describes how a troop of Shermans could saturate a Teuton tank, hitting it with 8 or 9 shells to every one it fired back.  Later on an up-gunned 76 mm gun arrived for South Canadian Shermans, and the British also up-gunned theirs with the 17 pounder - evidence of how 'Upgradeable' the Sherman was.  This allowed them to take on Teuton heavy tanks, but the HE round for these new guns was markedly inferior to the old 75 mm round, meaning the old variants still soldiered on.  Art!

Disable The Cable

This is not about whoever sabotaged those Ruffian power lines under the Baltic, but rather a matter of even more significance.  Art!

     This is the interface between the Estonian and Ruffian electricity grids, which have now been permanently cut.  What you can't see here are the cables further inside Estonia being chopped up.

     This has been many years in the making, going back to the Ruffian's invasion of Crimea in 2014.  Now wait for the wailing and whining to start from the other side of the border as they have another pity-party for themselves.  Art!

     Those are gleeful Estonian energy workers marking the moment, before going off to collect bits of chopped cable.

Camera, Meet Camera

Having gotten thoroughly fed-up with the camera in my phone, which evinces all the loyalty and consistency of that treacherous appendage Mister Hand, I purchased a new digital one from Amazon, which came this afternoon.  Art!

     It comes with a pretty useless manual that doesn't explain half the visible icons, but I have managed to get a few snaps with it for practice.  Art!

     Tomorrow's breakfast makings, for your information.  Neat that it also included the date and time of the photo, which might need editing out in future via Snip if it gets too obtrusive.

     The last gasp of the phone camera can now be revealed.  Art!

     This is the Orange And Almond Cake I baked earlier in the week.  Given the amount of sugar in it, one piece per day is the acceptable limit.  Art!

     Another recipe from the "Diabetic Cookbook", this one being 'Spicy Mushrooms', where you end up pouring what's left of the sauce over the slices of toast.  They went a bit soggy so, once again, conventional sliced bread is probably not the way to go here.  Very tasty, though.

Finally -

As you should surely know by now, Conrad always but always has a Book Mountain to get through, and a rather smaller DVD Mountain, too.  Well, having access to Amazon Prime, I now have a Streaming Hillock to get through.  Once I've watched all the 'Invincible' episodes there's another one called 'Callout' (sp?) which looks interesting.  Art!

     O.K.C.Ya.

*  From "Rhiza" meaning "Root"