Monday, March 15, 2010

Wonders of the Garden...and Solar System

Have now seen goldfinches and bullfinches in the back garden. Also yesterday did some more gardening - we re-potted the blueberry bush, and I chopped down the bush in the front garden, ready for digging it out. Planted some heather and a thyme plant in the front garden, and am going to plant flowers and herbs in the rest of the front garden. I've been given the task of looking after the front garden by Kate (my wife) and although mostly doing flowers (because that makes more sense for the front garden), like the idea of doing herbs too. I like growing useful things, things you can eat, or at a stretch herbs that are useful in other ways like medicinal herbs.

Will also be helping sort out the back, may get onto that at the weekend.

Watched first episode of 'Wonders of the Solar System' yesterday with Professor Brian Cox, the rockstar physicist (he was the keyboard player for D:Ream in the early 90s...Things Can Only Get Better etc.). Very good, the footage of sunrise/sunset on other planets was amazing. I think if a programme like that gives you one good, interesting piece of information for you to remember then it has done its job. In this episode it was the fact that there are 142 moons in the solar system in total, but only one of the moons can produce a total solar eclipse and that is our moon. On no other planet can you see a total solar eclipse. This is because the diameter of the moon is 400 times smaller than that of the sun, but it is 400 times further away than the moon is from the Earth. It really gets you thinking, and makes me at any rate wonder about whether there is an intelligent design behind creation... Have got a book by physicist Paul Davies which I think is about this which I should read soon.

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