Weeknotes 2022.16: Life treads upon life

A pot with an active cyclamen tuber resting on the top of the soil, with other stalks from bulbs emerging next to it.

An early Bulb Watch for this week: against all my expectations, the tulips have flowered (along with a few alliums, enough for us to fill a vase for a dinner party.) Rather entertainingly, though, they’ve actually ejected the cyclamen that I’d put in the pot so it wasn’t bare over winter. The tuber is now resting on top of the soil as the flowers above wither. I guess I should move it out of the way into another pot to go dormant. I might do that this week. The bay tree(s) are also starting to produce new leaves.

Cycling around my area of London in the evening is nice now the weather has warmed up and more people are out and about. Since it’s Ramadan, there are always people walking between houses (presumably after iftar.) Living in London has its problems, but it always feels alive.

I had to replace the rear light on my Dutch bike, because the switch on the Spaninga ELIPS I had stopped working reliably and there’s no way to get inside the unit to service it (I think water ingress did it in in the end.) I swapped it for a LINEO, which does the job just as well and arrived quickly from Germany. It also has a very distinctive shape—some would say it looks like evil red eyes. My thinking was more Batman Beyond, or a set of locked Forerunner door controls in Halo. In any case, it’s an arresting sight. Exactly what you want for a tail light.

The rear rack of a big red bicycle with its tail light on, showing two curved downward arcs that look like a set of evil eyes.