Blossoms, Beginnings, and a Hint of Mirrors
After what seems to have been several weeks of sunshine, today dawned cloudy and wet on our nice little farm, but that actually felt like a welcome change. Not something we would have expected to say after such an overcast and damp autumn and winter, but life can be like that!
The first photo is from our cherry orchard, currently in full blossom as you can see. It still has some of the old traditional trees that were tall enough to need some impressively long ladders (of which we still have a few!) to pick the fruit, although that also tends to be a race of time against the starlings.
Old Roots and New Shoots
The older trees are steadily needing to be replaced as they die away, but (perhaps sadly) their replacements aren’t going to be nearly so tall. Nowadays all fruit trees tend to be grafts onto a different rootstock, which determines how tall they are going to become, and ease of picking now tends to take precedence over physical grandeur.
But for a bit of contrast, we’re also posting a photo from the farmhouse garden, where the blossom is just a bit more colourful, although that tree has never been seen to bear any fruit at all!
On the Horizon: An Optical Collaboration
We’re writing this post while we’re awaiting the arrival of a new academic collaborator, for a project that you will be able to hear more about very shortly. But for now we can just say that it’s “all done by mirrors”.
The specific idea is from our visitor, but it just so happens that Cairn has a lot of “previous” when it comes to mirror optics, going way back to the last century with the design of our Optoscan Monochromator (still in production), and most recently with our DMD-based “Cairnfocal” confocal microscope, where the function of a spinning disc is taken over by one of those cool Digital Mirror Devices. More to follow in the coming weeks and months!
Best wishes.
Dr Martin V. Thomas