#59 June 2022 Garden Stuff - © Sandy Lang - slang@xtra.co.nz
SCALESJune/July: Early/mid-winter. Do the tidying jobs you should have done last month. Prune trees, shrubs, vines but only in dry weather (fungal disease).
What we’ve missed: We all enjoy the wonders of nature – the physical world of sky and sea, lake and mountain, the biological world of bird and butterfly, flower and tree. But we’ve seen only a tiny fraction of all the natural wonders because most are too slow, or too fast, or too big, or too small for us to appreciate… By looking at different size scales and different time scales, we get to see whole new worlds of beauty. We live in an age when we can see stuff quite impossible for our ancestors. Till very recently, this freedom to explore the natural world was available only to those with expensive instruments. They saw stuff never-before seen by humankind.
Too slow: On TV we now see videos of plants moving – speeded up by time-lapse imaging - we see flowers opening, turning to follow the sun, tendrils groping for a support, touching, sensing, grabbing, pulling – real time movements, far too slow for our eyes to appreciate.
Too fast: Or a raindrop landing in a puddle – slowed down by high-speed imaging – elaborate, symmetrical, rings, crown-shapes of rising-falling mini droplets – real time movements, far too fast for our eyes to appreciate.
Too big: With Google Earth on our phones, we see satellite images of planet Earth taken from 700 km up. We see whole continents, whole weather systems. And we can zoom in to fly low over a mountain, a forest, a lake, a city - anywhere in the world - a village, a house, a hut. Only possible since 2001.
Too small: But there’s a whole world of beauty we’ve missed because it’s too small. A simple x5 hand lens ($20) will show us some of this – a tiny flower in the lawn we’ve seen many times but never-before appreciated - its form, symmetry, delicate structure, myriad hues.
Recent advances in high-quality aspheric plastic lenses now bring us a simple x100 microscope ($40) with built-in LED lighting. Fiddly but they work. With these we can explore our world in even more detail. we get to see and appreciate beauty we’ve never seen before. The trick with light microscopy is sample preparation. No space here to tell you about this but go to LIGHT MICROSCOPY for some tips. ___________________________________
SCALESJune/July: Early/mid-winter. Do the tidying jobs you should have done last month. Prune trees, shrubs, vines but only in dry weather (fungal disease).
What we’ve missed: We all enjoy the wonders of nature – the physical world of sky and sea, lake and mountain, the biological world of bird and butterfly, flower and tree. But we’ve seen only a tiny fraction of all the natural wonders because most are too slow, or too fast, or too big, or too small for us to appreciate… By looking at different size scales and different time scales, we get to see whole new worlds of beauty. We live in an age when we can see stuff quite impossible for our ancestors. Till very recently, this freedom to explore the natural world was available only to those with expensive instruments. They saw stuff never-before seen by humankind.
Too slow: On TV we now see videos of plants moving – speeded up by time-lapse imaging - we see flowers opening, turning to follow the sun, tendrils groping for a support, touching, sensing, grabbing, pulling – real time movements, far too slow for our eyes to appreciate.
Too fast: Or a raindrop landing in a puddle – slowed down by high-speed imaging – elaborate, symmetrical, rings, crown-shapes of rising-falling mini droplets – real time movements, far too fast for our eyes to appreciate.
Too big: With Google Earth on our phones, we see satellite images of planet Earth taken from 700 km up. We see whole continents, whole weather systems. And we can zoom in to fly low over a mountain, a forest, a lake, a city - anywhere in the world - a village, a house, a hut. Only possible since 2001.
Too small: But there’s a whole world of beauty we’ve missed because it’s too small. A simple x5 hand lens ($20) will show us some of this – a tiny flower in the lawn we’ve seen many times but never-before appreciated - its form, symmetry, delicate structure, myriad hues.
Recent advances in high-quality aspheric plastic lenses now bring us a simple x100 microscope ($40) with built-in LED lighting. Fiddly but they work. With these we can explore our world in even more detail. we get to see and appreciate beauty we’ve never seen before. The trick with light microscopy is sample preparation. No space here to tell you about this but go to LIGHT MICROSCOPY for some tips. ___________________________________