The felling

The New York aster in our front garden, behind the front wall and not very visible from the sidewalk, last noticed at reference 1, has come on well in the last few days. Considering that it only has two small stems, in the shadow of a much bigger aster, off snap to the right, it is doing pretty well. Maybe BH will let it grow.

The diseased tree, noticed at reference 2, was well on the way to coming down as I came over West Hill.

Once again, no messing about with karabiners and rope work; they just worked off a small cherry picker. Finding the previous such occasion is left as an exercise for the reader. Clue: cherries.

A stray leaf. Now I know, one can easily see why it is called a pin oak. Presumably a minor deterrent against animals grazing off saplings and low branches.

Zoomed.

Gemini says not and not. Neither named for nor deterred.

In response to a supplementary, he goes on to explain that his evidence is negative: he deduces the lack of deterrence from the morphology of the bristles and from the absence of any reports of browsers being deterred. I suppose this is enough, but I would be happier with something more positive, from some source more reputable than Facebook.

And while reference 3 is reputable, it does not bear on the browsing question, despite trying for browsing in the search window.

However, I have been reminded that Meta is busy on the AI front too, although I was not able to do much with the window snapped above without logging in. There are limits. And I associate to the perils of crowdsourcing information on social media. Rubbish in, rubbish out. You can't make a silk purse our of a sow's ear. And so on and so forth. And so to the book noticed at reference 4.

Down the other side of the hill to deal with a couple of trolleys from M&S, one an ancient one from 2011. A little tired, but still decent. And an oddity as nearly all M&S trolleys in Epsom are less than a couple of years old.

Another oddity in that the floor of their part of the Ashley Centre seemed very slippery. With care, I could walk by just sliding my feet around. The hard rubber of the soles of my Merrell trainers - if indeed they are rubber soled - seemed to give no purchase at all and I was quite glad to get back onto the solid ground of M&S proper, as it were. Maybe the floor of the part of the Ashley Centre from where I had recovered the ancient trolley and which had been the indoor café, had just been polished for some reason. It was roped off.

On to inspect the blockage of Hook Road. Snapped above from the town side. Blockage but no action: no holes and no men. Or women for that matter: I think I have seen the odd woman in among the mainly male JDT crews.

And from the country side. Even more blockage, but still no action. But some evidence in the form of coloured hieroglyphics on the road that there were lots of utilities running under the bridge. Maybe the gas people need to maintain instant access just in case something with their works in and around Manor Green Road goes wrong?

And further down, I was pleased to find that the fine Weeping Atlas Cedar - Cedrus atlantica ‘Glauca Pendula’, aka the blue cedar - is still alive and well. Maybe I should tip off the heritage people and get them to list it? Grade II listed tree; Grade I if it had been on the other side of Hook Road.

I was impressed by the fine show of cones.

Google Images agrees with my long standing identification, originally supplied by the owner of the tree and confirmed by finding other specimens dotted about: there are, for example, several at Wisley, although they are not as good as this one. He adds value by telling me that the cones are male.

In response to a supplementary, he tells me that the smaller duller cones are not the females, rather last year's males shrivelling, withering away. Female cones are big, usually sit on the top of the tree, and are rare on this variety of cedar. I can't see anything of the sort in my snap. Maybe I can turn something up on this in the Wisley library next time we are there.

And some home for a light lunch before heading off to Kingston. A visit to be reported on in due course.

PS 1: I now find some confirmation of Google Image's story about female cones at reference 5. While his reference is the advertisement infested (but informative) reference 6.

PS 3: which prompts the thought, regarding the worries expressed at the end of reference 7, that the AI training part of the Google world probably favours the sites that participate in its advertising schemes. And I believe that copyright lawyers are fussing about the rights of copyright holders when their material is gobbled up in the course of training large language models. 

The industrial version of an old-style academic recycling someone else's material through his own output, without troubling to acknowledge the source. Such an academic might not even be consciously aware that he is doing this: he has soaked the material up to the point where it is has become part of himself. Notwithstanding which, it is good manners to acknowledge one's debts. But then again, most old-style academics were satisfied with their salaries and perquisites - and were not on the look-out for significant, additional income streams on the side. Status and standing yes, money not so much.

All slightly different for those corporate versions of models which have been trained in part on corporate materials, on the corporate Intranet. Presumably, advertising is not an issue there. Although I remember at the Treasury, when desktop computers first became the norm, central functions were fond of issuing central messages about important things like reminders to complete this or that return or the proper use of litter bins - to the irritation of busy front line users who needed to get on with their work...

PS 3: it is all very well for our politicians to mull over getting back into the EU. But does it occur to them that a significant minority of the members of said Union might think that the Brits are more trouble than they are worth? Far too keen on moaning and throwing their weight about...

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/09/two-ponds.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/09/disease.html.

Reference 3: https://mdc.mo.gov/discover-nature/field-guide/oaks.

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2018/11/a-last-outing.html.

Reference 5: https://kcarboretum.org/cedrus-atlantica-pendula.

Reference 6: https://savvygardening.com/weeping-blue-atlas-cedar/.

Reference 7: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/09/a-morning-outing.html.

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