Two circuits

Morning, via Middle Lane and the Screwfix underpass. Afternoon, via Court Recreation Ground.

The East Street hollyhock, noticed from time to time, is still pushing ahead. It will be interesting to see how it does this year, after a good year last year. See, for example, reference 1.

The Screwfix whitebeam. Buds starting to swell, but it takes zoom on the original to make them visible.

Curious weathering of a front garden post. I feel sure I have posted a picture of this post before, but will I be able to find it? My first, not very serious effort, failed.

The best patch of dandelions that I passed on this occasion. In Court Recreation Ground.

While this stuff seemed to be all over the place.

Google Images says comfrey, aka Symphytum officinale. While the pictures offered at reference 2 look a bit different. I think I have had trouble sorting out the various members of the borage family before: perhaps they are into interbreeding and hybrids.

Copilot gets quite excited about the stuff, giving me, quite unprompted, a couple of screen fulls. Explaining, inter alia, that it featured in many herbal remedies for external use, but also contained enough toxins for its sale for oral use to be banned in some countries. I think I used to grow it on my allotment for conversion into fertilizer for peas and such like - although reference 3 suggests my memory may have simplified things a bit.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/08/trolleys-930-and-931.html.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphytum_officinale.

Reference 3: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=comfrey.

Group search key: 20230323.

An occasional

Something of a rarity these days. A trolley captured on the way into town, on my second circuit yesterday, just by the start of the hoarding around the dormant & empty building site at the bottom of Station Approach. A hoarding which I had thought was green, but this part clearly is not green.

A nearly new M&S trolley, a Light 100 from Wanzl made in January of this year. Captured and returned on my way to buying a white bloomer from their bread counter. OK fresh, but not as good as the white bread I used to buy from the baker in Cheam. At least it was not sour dough, which dominates the bread offering in so many bakeries now.

Some of it taken with some Bastides saucisson from Waitrose, nearly next door.

For an early mention of the baker at Cheam, now long gone, see reference 1.

References

Reference 1: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2007/11/water-water-everywhere.html.

Group search key: 20260330.

Circles

While posting reference 1, it occurred to me that circular intrusions like that of the Wells Estate into Epsom Common were unusual. After a while, I remembered about something of the sort in one of the eastern states of the USA, but failed to find it on gmaps, his marking of state boundaries not being very conspicuous.

Bing did not get the idea at all, but Gemini was on the right track straight away, pointing me to the northern border of the state of Delaware - the political home of past president Biden, tax haven and registration home for many US corporations - and reference 2. Not quite a circle in the way of the Wells Estate, but certainly part of a circle, originally drawn on a map with a compass.

I had forgotten that it was mixed up with the Mason-Dixon line, an early example of a straight line drawn during the European expansion into more sparsely populated parts of the globe than their own. With such straight lines being a lot more common than circles. Squares and rectangles yes, circles not so much. It is, of course, much easier to tile a rectangle with allotments than a circle, and this, I imagine, has much to do with the rarity of circles. From where I associate to the tiling of the floor of a multi-storey office block. Circular or curved office blocks are, or at least were until recently, the exception rather than the rule.

But Gemini does turn up Sun City in Arizona, an attempt to tile a community bounded by north-south and east-west straight line segments with circles. But these important circles only rate a mention at reference 6.

He also turned up various circular forts, towns and villages, with the best example being the circular palace precinct of (eight century, Christian era) Baghdad, with the snap above lifted from reference 4 below. From which I have learned of the surrounding network of canals: very Amsterdam.

Then there was the collection of circular villages in central Germany, circular for defensive reasons in unsettled times. More or less visible in the snap above, centred on Rundlingsdorf Lübeln.

At this point I remembered about the intrusion of Newmarket into Cambridgeshire - with OS showing county boundaries about as clearly as gmaps show state boundaries.

But clear enough in the snap above, if not very circular - with Newmarket on its stalk left. Presumably the same sort of local peculiarity which gives us the Chessington finger sticking out from London into Surrey. Gemini knows all about this one too, although it did not appear in his original use and needed to be prompted.

So, for the moment, Delaware is the nearest I get to our Wells estate for geometrically imposed circularity on geography..

PS 1: I have learned from reference 4 that the word 'Baghdad' is of Persian origin, which presumably does not please the Iraqis of today.

PS 2: in the margins of this post, I came across the discipline of Mathematical Anthropology. Perhaps I could have made something of it during my time at university - at a place, as it happens, where both mathematics and anthropology were readily available. Perhaps I missed my vocation.

I have not yet got to the figure snapped above. But my understanding so far is that this is an edifice built on the knowledge that first Australian men favoured marriage with women who were ten or more years younger than they were. An inquiry which arises from reference 6.

A discipline which Bing suggests is alive, if not exactly thriving, turning up, inter alia, the online learning resource snapped above - which appears to confess to be being AI generated. The content seems fair enough - if a little banal - and not all the references still exist.

Copilot offers the snap above and more, suggesting to me that 'capstone' is something of a buzz-word in the training business. While Bing turns up lots of companies which have the word as part of their name - none of which look to be the fount of this kind of capstoning.

PS 3: Microsoft has just reminded me that this day last year I downloaded a copy of Holman Hunt painting 'Our English Coasts', featuring some strayed sheep. A reproduction of which hangs in our dining room and a picture which gets mentioned surprisingly often in these pages. See references 7 and 8. I think the original has been sent down to the Tate basement since then, that is to say since 2014.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/03/wellingtonia-136.html.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve-Mile_Circle.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mason%E2%80%93Dixon_line.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round_City_of_Baghdad.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_City,_Arizona.

Reference 6: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/03/clans-and-marriages.html.

Reference 7: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/03/boundaries.html.

Reference 8: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2014/04/an-older-trace.html.

Wilderness

Ten days or so ago, back to the wilderness at Hampton Court to see the spring flowers there. Something we used to manage most years, but which we do not appear to have managed - at least on the search key 'wilderness hampton' since 2020. See reference 1.

Some of this visit has already been noticed under the search key 'hca', a search key convention I made quite a lot of use in the past, but that apart the most recent visit appears to have been last May, as noticed at reference 2. I was surprised that it was so long ago. Wisley and Kew between them seemed to have scooped that pool.

Back to the present visit, action at the prime building site between the railway station and the river seemed to have stalled, despite having finally got planing permission, for which see reference 3.

The rather tatty collection of boats tied up on the downstream side of the bridge had been cleared away. Maybe something to do with the layer of fine sand covering the landing. I thought the brickwork looked reasonably new, well under a hundred years old - making the ironwork a bit fancier than I would have expected. Wouldn't get it now.

BH had been reading about how the scaffolding needed for renovation work was going to be dressed up to look something like the original gate house, a good deal higher than what we have now. Sadly, work in progress.

The tulip festival was not slated to start for some weeks, but there was quite a lot of tulip action already, in mid-March. Six petals, in two whorls of three, and six stamens? While the ladies department inside can only muster three segment?

With some in the rose garden, where we sat for a bit in the sun. After some years, I have got used to - and now like - the new planting.

Interesting yellows flowers, which Google Images tells me is a Cootamundra wattle, aka Acacia baileyana, from Australia. Does OK in mild situations in the UK, as on this south facing wall. While reference 4 confirms my rater vague thought that maybe it was a mimosa. On the other hand, there are a lot of different mimosas, with one - Leucaena leucocephala - having cropped up as a minor digresion at reference 5.

While regarding the new-to-us but handsome yellow flowers lower left, Google Images says that it is one of the Persian lilies, aka Fritillaria persica. Nothing like the snakes head fritillaries in our garden.

With tiresome wicker art left. Hopefully it will eventually rot and not be replaced. Why do otherwise attractive gardens have to do this sort of thing?

White cedar looking well right, with a fine magnolia to its left. Metasequoias above and left.

From the other side, where we took another sit.

In between, no rock cake, but I did take a bacon bap with my tea, which involved a great deal of bacon and not such much bap. But all least there was no cheese, lettuce, mayo or anything else of that sort.

The chaps on the counter explained that they were now Compass rather than Company of Cooks, the former having taken the latter over. Which is confirmed at reference 6. While at Wisley, I think they have retained the 'Company of Cooks' branding. They also said that they thought 'Maids of Honour' tarts were back on the menu - but not on theirs.

Pleased to see that, among all the (handsome) tulips in the vegetable garden, there were still some plots of broad beans. Surprised to see that first they were netting some of them, which I never bothered with, and second that they were in flower. Which seems terribly early.

Some of the tulips.

Daffodils at the entrance to the wilderness.

Some regular fritillaries, much more like the ones in our garden. And doing much better: ours persist but they are not like these ones.

Some more daffodils. Some of them, seen up close with the sun behind them, looked really special.

Plus a pair of snoggers on what I would have thought would have been rather damp grass. Obviously too young to care about that.

Lots of school parties, but the place was big enough that they did not intrude.

Some of the more formal beds on the east terrace looked pretty good too.

Hard to be sure about the petal count, even under zoom. I think I need to take one to pieces. Maybe I can pinch one of BH's for the purpose, from our own garden.

The privy garden was looking pretty good too, bearing in mind that the fish-eye lens of my telephone is rather misleading on these longer shots.

And beyond that, lots of the distinctive Tudor chimneys. I wonder how original they are.

The water hawthorn was doing well, in flower, in one of the sunken gardens. Ours, such as it is, was buried in duckweed for most of last year and is buried by dead leaves now. First seen in a large pond at Two Bridges on Dartmoor.

Just some of the fancy scaffolding going up around the place.

Out and onto our usual cafe in Bridge Road for a snack. In my case, the rabbit pasta on a board outside being absent, a baguette with more than enough filling for two or more baguettes. I should have asked them for an empty baguette, just to make the point. Baguettes not that great either, while I am at it: adequate rather than good. BH was better pleased with her sandwich, but I forget now what it was: tuna?

Interesting to see how many people were put off by the coffee machine being out of action. But then I have never drunk coffee much, and not at all at present. Not after the wobble at Kew, previously noticed.

And so home. To be impressed by the amount of physical security about what used to be the Marquis of Granby on the Isles of Scilly roundabout. I think a drive-in McDonald's would be the answer, an answer which might be able to make a go of the site, but I expect that the heritage people would see that one off. They don't have to make these places work.

A day when aeroplanes had been taking off to the east, rather than to the usual west. 

A day when we managed a good number of pleasant sits in the sun. A place with a good supply of benches.

Back home, I managed to correct the clock in the car without too much bother; a clock which seems to lose a minute or so a month, so presumably not connected. The salesman had assured us at the time of purchase that this fine nearly new car would take care of summertime - which turned out yesterday not to be the case. Probably easier to poke around in settings again, rather than going over to Volkswagen at Drift Bridge, a bit of a hike from where we are.

After which I took some freshly made lemonade in out last remaining tumbler called Sheila. I was quite impressed with myself for remembering its name, confirmed by eBay selling lots of them. Too dear to think of restocking, handsome tumblers though they were.

PS: 20260331: no doubt about the number of petals on this tulip, snapped on a front verge on my circuit. I associate now to a vague memory of Gemini - or perhaps one of his friends - telling me that there was no connection between the number of petals of an orange flower and the number of segments of an orange, often, as I recall, ten; perhaps double the usual number of petals of the flower. Reference 7 (and an onward reference from there) gets me quite close. Once again, all much more complicated than my vague memory had suggested.

This being a day which, as it happened, saw another round of Sheila, there being an open lemon to hand. Am I getting a taste for the stuff?

References

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/03/spring-flowers-etc.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/05/hampton-court.html.

Reference 3:https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/02/the-palace.html.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acacia_baileyana.

Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/11/gemini-pigs-and-acorns.html.

Reference 6: https://www.compass-group.co.uk/media/news/chco-joins-compass-group-uk-ireland-in-landmark-acquisition/. From April 2024.

Reference 7: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/10/tomatoes-and-other-matters.html. From October 2025.

Group search keys: 20260319, hca.

Wellingtonia 136

After something of a pause, two Wellingtonia in as many days. This one in the margins of a digression to check up on the current status of the Wells Community Centre - which, incidentally, after various vicissitudes and plans, seems to be up and running again. Perhaps with volunteers doing the grunt work, and with the council retaining the site.

The Wellingtonia was in the grounds of what looked as if it had once been a large, red brick house, perhaps late 19th or early 20th century. Some kind of a school, which I have now been reminded is the Skylarks school of reference 5.

What is now the Wells estate, was a circular patch of land, with the original Epsom Well, from Epsom's days as a 17th century spa-town (larger evidence of which being the Assembly Rooms in town centre, now Wetherspoon's), at its centre. Presumably the ownership of this circular patch of land, seemingly carved out of what is now common land - Epsom Common and Ashtead Common, has a complicated history.

What look like allotments, some of them complete with cottages, outside the magic circle, bottom right.

By 1912, the farm - which according to reference 2 had struggled for a while - has gone and Wells House has arrived. Just the sort of place you would expect to find a Wellingtonia and the rectangular block adjacent to the Epsom-Ashtead road has been housed over.

By the 1940s what is now the Wells estate is well underway, although the big house and its park survive in the middle. Newton Wood to the left is still there today and is in private hands, not part of the common. Mostly fairly young trees as I recall, but it is a while since I have been there - having been put off years ago by the running of cows on Epsom Common and the depredations of the Chain Saw Volunteers. Not content to more or less leave well alone. A selection of my comments thereon is to be found at reference 7.

Don't know when this one was surveyed, but it looks as if the present estate was all there by the 1960s, with the mental hospitals, now housing estates, to the north.

The start of the Copilot effort, unchecked, but consistent with the maps above.

Most of the Gemini effort. So the first owner of the house was one James Stuart Strange, last Lord of the Manor. A notable Jacobite family in its time, fighting on the wrong side at Culloden, although his father was a perfectly respectable admiral on the right side.

Some corroboration in the snap which follows, a record which predates the arrival of AI.

All that remains to be done is to check the children's home side of things. 'Karibu' does not sound like a likely name from the 1950s.

Snap turned up by Bing.

Gemini's summary of his story about Wells House after Strange. A story which included the comment:

'...By the early 2000s, the original Victorian structure of Wells House was increasingly seen as "not fit for purpose" for modern residential care. It was a large, high-maintenance building that didn't provide the the domestic, "family-style" environment modern standards required....'.

Given the location of the Wellingtonia, more or less on the back lawn of Wells House, my guess is that it was planted at the beginning of Gemini's first cycle, when the gardens for the then new house would have been laid out, and so would be getting on for 140 years old now.

All in all, a reasonable amount of corroboration of the AI on this occasion. Although one wonders how many children - and others - with special needs get 'the domestic, family-style environment [that] modern standards require'. I associate today to the Shirley Oaks of reference 8.

PS: more corroboration to be found at references 9 and 10. The Stranges did quite well for themselves, considering that their ancestor was a rebellious arty type from the very far north. Bing turns up the sample above, wrongly attributed to the martyrdom of St Agnes, when actually it is the suicide of Dido of Carthage, after being dumped by Aeneas. Here seen lying on her own funeral pyre in modern dress. See references 11 and 12.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/03/wellingtonia-135.html.

Reference 2: https://historyofpublicspace.uk/2018/07/08/work-in-progress-wells-estate-epsom-surrey/. Someone else who is into maps.

Reference 3: https://eehe.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/EpsomCommonCottages1896.pdf. A different version of the snaps above.

Reference 4: https://bernardgordon.co.uk/properties/let-former-childrens-home-now-sen-school-epsom-kt18. Wells House to let.

Reference 5: https://www.ashleyparkschool.co.uk/contact/. The current occupant of what was Wells House. Skylarks: a school for older autistics.

Reference 6: https://www.optionsautism.co.uk/about-us/our-family/. The parent organisation.

Reference 7: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=chain+volunteers.

Reference 8: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2026/01/shirley-oaks.html.

Reference 9: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Strange_(engraver).

Reference 10: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography,_1885-1900/Strange,_Robert.

Reference 11: https://www.grosvenorprints.com/stock.php?engraver=Strange.

Reference 12: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnes_of_Rome.

Group search key: 20260328, wgc.

Wellingtonia 135

Wellingtonia 135 was captured in the margins of a visit to Nonsuch Park.

Spotted from the A232 in what turned out to be the (inaccessible) grounds of Cheam Cricket Club. Things seemed clear enough from a distance, but as close I as could get, I worried about the brown sheen to the lower branches, not previously - or not recently - noticed. But back home, a visit to reference 2 convinced me that all was well: the brown sheen was the male pollen cones.

In the road behind, we had this very thin conifer, a bit lost in the snap above in visual clutter.

But this did not stop Google Images this morning which, on a cropped version, says Serbian spruce. Which I had thought of but discounted on the grounds that it seemed too different from the one he had previously identified in our road. Previously noticed several times at reference 3, but not, for some reason, including a full-length snap like that above. A job for today.

But did he add his remarks about turned up branches after he had made the identification, or were they part of that identification? Clear enough in the snap above, but not a feature I remember from the specimen in our road. Not that there is anything wrong with a mixture of top-down and bottom-up thinking: all a question of balance.

Or, thinking here with my fingers, perhaps the answer is more prosaic. Google Images looks for features, scores them in some way, and then matches the combined score - possibly a real valued, non-negative, one dimensional vector - with his database of trees, with the answer being the best match. Which might or might not involve turned up branches.

PS 1: location according to Ordnance Survey (OS). Orange spot marks the tree spot.

And, for present purposes with rather better labelling, according to gmaps. Neither map seems to include the nearby foodie house, one of the Grumpy Mole collection, previously regular public houses for the sale of beer, wine and spirits.

I was also irritated, not for the first time, by a publicly funded school - Nonsuch High School for Girls - sporting an advertisement for a branch of the David Lloyd chain. As a lefty, nostalgic for the days when schools could concentrate on schooling rather than on revenue.

PS 2: Monday: I have now inspected our Serbian pine and it does indeed exhibit the turned up tips to its branches, said to be a feature of the species.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/10/wellingtonia-134.html.

Reference 2: https://www.treeguideuk.co.uk/giant-sequoia/.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/search?q=serbian+spruce.

Group search keys: 20260327, wgc (a relic of from before the days of the search key suffix).