Leftovers, Part 3

Just a bit more to report on. On Friday between lunch and my tutorial, I rushed down to Christ Church for a quick survey of the cathedral and the best-known college in Oxford. Unfortunately, the dining hall which appears in the Harry Potter movies was closed (for lunch, presumably), but I did get a few pictures of the Tom Tower and quad, the cathedral, and the ceiling (note the bowler-hatted porters, called Custodians at CC).

 

 

 

I was searching for the chestnut tree which housed the Cheshire Cat, or at least the dean's cat that inspired Lewis Carroll. A friendly custodian advised me to ask the cathedral staff to open the door to the garden for me, and they did! A door marked Private was unlatched, and I was asked to remain on the stone terrace while I took my pictures. I enjoyed my view of the chestnut tree and the green door (specially noted by the guide, but I am embarrassed to admit is lost on me, I clearly need to re-read Alice).

 

 

In the museum the day before, I had already seen the Oxford dodo which inspired Carroll.

 

Our final classes took us into the 21st century with a short but lively discussion of Steven Pinker's "The Blank Slate," a provocative but in parts silly discussion of nature versus nurture, among many other things. Several people were fiercely opposed to Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene," not so much for his thesis as for the bleak view of the world that they think it offers. We must agree to disagree.

On Friday afternoon several of us joined forces with Karim's "Is There A God?" group for a philosophical walk up to Wolfson College, preceded by tea at Brown's, an Oxford institution. Here are Emma, Jerry, Astrid and I at Brown's.

 

 

Wolfson is a graduate college built in the 60s with modern buildings and a traditional lawn down to the Cherwell. Its first president was Isaiah Berlin, bringing me back to the beginning and my quoting his fox and hedgehog image in my preliminary essay.

Friday night brought a lovely dinner

 

and then the Entertainment. What a talented group! We started off with some angry political poetry recited in a mild voice by the man with the golden braids, then went on to include English folk songs, piano music by Chopin, Rachmaninoff, and Beethoven (the last was "Variations on God Save the Queen" performed by the Beethoven tutor with great panache), and two sketches, one a retelling of the opera "Orpheus" and the other a retelling of "The Brothers Karamazov" with three sisters instead of three brothers. Very satisfying to the performers, with the father played by the school friend of the scholar, wearing dramatic robes and a Russian hat.

The next morning was our final breakfast, and then Emma kindly gave me a ride to my hotel in Ealing, since she lives nearby.

Good-bye, Rewley House and OUSSA! I would love to return one day. Maybe next year...

 

Leftovers, Part 2

Our visit to the Natural History Museum was a highlight of the week. Here is the site of the famous debate (much-debated itself) on evolution, in the Radcliffe Library, which is now closed to the public.

 

But Emma arranged, by much phoning and pleading, to get us inside. Our guide, Rowan, had a rich Scottish accent and much enthusiasm. The library has since been divided into two floors, and much of the entomological collection is now housed there.

 

 

Rowan showed us a case of specimens collected by Darwin himself, with his own handwriting (notoriously terrible but he obviously tried harder here).

 

I can't tell you how exciting it was to see creatures Darwin himself had collected.

Here is Kumi with a copy of The Origin, which just happened to be lying around.

 

The Natural History Museum is a Victorian gem which has been called a secular cathedral. Its style is all iron and glass like a railway station, thanks to designer John Ruskin. Here is Emma telling us about it before we entered.
Because of my funky camera work, you get a glimpse of her flipflops at the end.

Leftovers, Part 1

In an earlier post, I promised to report on the Russia Today sampler session by the scholar, the garden tour, the amazing visit to the Natural History Museum, the view of the Cheshire Cat's tree, the final classes, and the talent show. If only for my own interest, here's the old news.

The scholar, aka Karen Hewitt, is a most impressive person. She started visiting Russia about twenty years ago and has returned fifty times, leading small groups of OUSSA and other interested people. Her home base is Perm (of the Permian layer), a city on the eastern edge of Russia before it turns into Siberia.

It's of great interest to geologists. She answered our questions thoughtfully and politely, even my lame question about the environment when I invoked the Aral Sea and Chernobyl, neither of which is actually IN Russia.

The garden tour was to visit three college gardens, which ones to be revealed only on the day. Our guide was, as Jerry said, "dry as a stick," and was more knowledgeable about the history than the gardens. Nevertheless, we saw two good gardens before peeling off for the Natural History Museum.

St. John's College is notable for its rockery, but like all of them also features amazing green lawns striped by the mower as in every Angela Thirkell novel. Of COURSE you would never set foot on the grass.

 

The weeping beeches are beautiful, although there was a time when people hid under them to do illegal things. Apparently they have routed them out for now.

 

The rockery was mildly interesting although it's not really my cup of tea. We did see a glorious blue gentian, whose true color almost comes through in this picture.

 

The second garden was at Wadham College, where the heavens opened up, though briefly.

 

The dahlias against this ancient wall were particularly nice.

 

Wadham is notable because of Dorothy, founder of the college (with her late husband's money) who arranged for the library to be located above the kitchen, which would keep the books dry. She arrived at Wadham with her coffin, in case of sudden death. Tucked in a corner around the library/kitchen wing is this oddly charming statue of Maurice Bowra, a long-time warden here.

 

Kew footnote

Emma obviously liked the student veg plots, too. Here's another photo, this showing the lettuce gone to seed and looking very architectural.

 

A day at Kew

My last day in England was breezy, a mixture of sun and clouds but, most of all, DRY. It was a perfect day to visit Kew Gardens. I went first to the Xstrata treetop walkway, with some trepidation. Walking along the treetops is a very appealing concept, but a bit scary in reality. The 118 steps up were fine, but looking down was definitely a bad idea.

 

 

I did manage to take some pictures, then walked carefully down, gripping the handrail the entire time. I'm sorry to tell you that, two stairways from the ground, a small child ran down behind me and shrieked randomly, causing me to blurt, "Jesus Christ!" We both stared at each other, then continued on our separate ways.

The rest of the day was much calmer. Took a garden tour with one of the docents, who led us to the Palm House and through several other conservatories dedicated to Alpine plants and to a variety of climates that showed off desert plants, ferns, and rock garden plants. She also told us about the catastrophic hurricane that struck England in 1987 and destroyed 15 million trees, including hundreds at Kew. The good news is that one of their oldest trees, first planted in 1798, which had been looking "sulky" according to the guide, perked right up after its root ball was lifted up by the storm. Apparently the aeration was just what it needed, and they've been aerating their mature trees ever since.

 

 

After lunch, I wandered through the order beds, which are very much a work in progress, then to the first-year vegetable gardens. It seems that it's quite competitive to enter the three-year garden school at Kew - only 15 are accepted - and part of their first year's progress is measured by the vegetable gardens they create. I was impressed by all of them.

 

 

Next up were the Duke's gardens, perennial borders in the good old style. After that, on to Kew Palace, the somewhat forlorn home of the late lamented George III, he of the American revolution and the madness (actually caused by porphyria). The Queen's garden was quite formal, the kitchen garden a delight.

 

A restorative cup of tea and cake (what will happen to me??), then a walk to the Sackler Crossing over the lake, filled with water fowl including a swan and her teenage children.

 

A peek into Evolution House (tracing the evolution of plants from algae to stromatolites, to ferns and so forth), then a stroll through the Temperate House (world's largest indoor plant), and a wander back toward the entrance. Read for a bit under a catalpa tree to gather my strength, then left around 5:00 for the slow tube home.

Shorter and shorter

As the week draws to a close, I seem to have less time to post. I promise to catch up when I return - for now, here's a look at my visit to Down House, Darwin's home in Kent, yesterday afternoon. Sheer heaven for a Darwinite after a week of total immersion in his life and work. Many are grateful they did not have to join me and spend three hours there...

I noticed this shop from the window of the bus on the way to Downe (the village has the extra E) and wondered if it had anything to do with Darwin.