August 2025, pt. 4

It’s been a wonderfully slow morning, naturally waking early, enjoying a sudden rainfall, and puttering in the morning as family moved about. We hosted for a few days this week, welcoming family and old friends to the house, enjoying some barbecue and other good summer foods.

We’ve been to Kiwekì Point a few times recently—what a space! The different elevations, vegetation, and pathways (plus public sculpture and views!) offer an interesting experience each time. It’s great, too, to have a pedestrian connection from Major’s Hill Park to the point, instead of awkwardly dashing across the road or taking a long circuitous set of sidewalks. It’s all been validated by how busy and cheerful the space is—every time we’ve been, there’s been plenty of people, sometimes just passing through, sometimes setting up for picnics or otherwise. Go Ottawa (okay, really, go NCC) for another excellent public space.

Just three links this week:

• Last week, Buttondown (the email provider I use for this newsletter) had an incident during the hours I normally send the newsletter, so it only went out Monday morning. In a way that confirms my continuing choice to use them, their customer support team had replied to my bug report email by Monday morning, and shared their postmortem on the issue by Monday evening. Neat to see behind the scenes.
• I appreciate Robin’s argument in favour of sharing some optimism: “It often feels like optimism is an act of revenge, an act of spite or rebellion, because optimism requires diligence and effort whilst pessimism feels like the default, the thing requiring no energy or effort.” (Okay, aside from celebrating public space, another optimistic one from me: pollination! What an incredible thing, that all these trees and flowers and fruits and vegetables need the right pollen to land in the right place, and by some fateful combination of wind / bees / human hands / whatever else pollinates them, we get such abundance, year after year after year. Wow!)
• An excellent explanation of tree structure (heartwood, sapwood, cambium, bark), and how it can be used to grow a hedge: trees can be mostly cut through, then bent sideways, and continue growing, as long as the cambium is maintained. This is from Paul Lamb, master hedgelayer, whose site describes various hedgerow styles (the first photo shows the cut and bent trees, with a thick enough cambium layer intact to support the tree’s continued growth).

All the best for the week ahead!

Lucas