We took our first cherries of the year yesterday, from Greece out of Sainsbury's. I had spotted some cherroes previously, not least in Borough market, but I had been put off by a combination of price and doubts about the quality of what I supposed were foreign cherries.
But yesterday, BH noticed that they were half price with her nectar card, so went for a packet. As it turned out, they were rather good, with just the odd dud. Checking this morning, the Sainsbury's website offers a generic country of origin - 'Grown in Argentina, Canada, Chile, Greece, South Africa, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States' - presumably reflecting the vagaries of the wholesale cherry scene.
Checking the archive this (Thursday) morning, it looks as if we are a few days ahead of last year, with the first of last year being a little later in the month, from M&S - for which see reference 1. Country of origin not supplied.
While a couple of days ago, I thought to have another go at identifying our Serbian spruce, for which see references 2 and 3. The prompt being the appearance of two sorts of cone - large female and small male - which ought to give Google Images something good to bite on, in the absence of the shape of the tree generally.
I try helping him along a bit, albeit getting it slight wrong. Get him to focus on for and against the Serbian Spruce, rather than dissipating his effort across a wider field. He sticks with his previous identification - but is he really adding any value?
The business of the stripes on the needles is a plus point, although it is far from clear in my snap that the stripes are on the underside. Need to take another look for the shape of the needles.
I try again, this time prompting him to say something about the cones - having been disappointed that he had not managed this unprompted.
I find the information about cones convincing, although I don't see anything purple about the larger, female cones - although they do look to be hanging down. And I don't see that he has got enough to go on to talk about upturned branches. And I certainly have yet to see a shimmer, although with the two-toned leaves I can see that there might well be one.
In sum, the identification has not been disturbed, but Google Images has work to do on presenting his results. I would like better differentiation between what he has deduced from the image supplied, from the clue supplied and what the identification supplies from his own database.
Noting that, in this case, he did correct my clue 'Serbian pine' to 'Serbian spruce' first time around. He does not always believe what I tell him - which has been a problem with Gemini in the past.
I think it unlikely that he has referred back to my previous inquiries about this same tree, although that may be coming in due course.
Hopefully, I will remember to check that the male cones do indeed fall off sometime soon. This seems quite likely, as I do not remember noticing them before.
PS 1: there will be problems with him using previous inquiries. It is easy enough for Google Images to know when I have asked him about Serbian spruces, but how does he know that I am asking about this particular one and to tie in the right previous images to the current query?
Prompted by a neighbour, I have in the last few days turned on timelines in gmaps and I have been a little surprised how inaccurate the resultant maps are (on my telephone). The sample above was turned up by Bing from someone else's telephone.
Perhaps, Google is only bothering to record my position from time to time and it only joining up the dots with straight lines, rather than trying to make intelligent use of his maps. On the other hand, he does seems to get the time I leave home for my walks and when I get home again right, and he does know that I am walking. But I will know more when I have built up a bit more data. And maybe there are settings that I can fiddle with.
Then sometimes, I feed Google Images raw images from my telephone camera, and the filename includes a date stamp. In fact, in this case, is a date stamp: '20260608_165420'. So he could, in principle, bind together my images of this particular tree by using location data. Provided that is, that there are not several such trees visible from the one location.
In any case, this all falls apart when, as I often do, I help him along by using the Snipping Tool to home in on the object in question. Then the date stamp of the file I pass to Google Images will tell him that I am at home, which does not help him very much. Unless the metadata gathered up by the Snipping Tool carries forward the name of the original file.
Clearly time for breakfast.
[Kallas, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and US Vice President JD Vance during the AI Action Summit in Paris, 11 February 2025. Lifted from Wikipedia at reference 6]
PS 2: interested to read at reference 5 this morning of an external relations power struggle within the European Union. And from reference 6, I learn that Kallas, one of the protagonists, as an Estonian, has a complicated relationship with Russia. Plenty of history there. I associate to the very public power struggles within the Labour Party, at a time when there is plenty of proper work to be done.
PS 3: and the piece at reference 7. Maybe the Russians cutting themselves off from their regular diet of Internet will achieve more than other kinds of sanctions?
References
Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/06/trolley-880.html.
Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/search?q=serbian.
Reference 3: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/search?q=serbian.
Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picea_omorika. The story according to Wikipedia.
Reference 5: EU countries weigh ‘tearing apart’ bloc’s diplomatic service: Chief diplomat Kaja Kallas and her EEAS are in capitals’ crosshairs over leadership and co-ordination issues - Henry Foy, Financial Times - 2026.
Group search key: aisk.
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