Plants I'm growing (and rain): Last peppers of the year

Winter approaches. Yesterday I picked what will likely be the last of the peppers from the garden this year – shishito, jalapeño, and poblano peppers. That said, winters are mild here. Yesterday I also planted two kinds of spinach, three kinds of lettuce, arugula, mustard greens, and mini turnips. Obligingly the skies dropped 1.30 inches of rain overnight. That brings the total so far in the 2025-2026 rain year to about 3.20 inches at my location.

Miscellaneous: The Warbling White-eye

You learn something new every day, they say. It seems to be so. Today I learned that the Japanese bird pictured here, known in Japanese as a "Mejiro" ("white-eye"), is not the "Japanese White-eye" I've been calling it. That name appears to have been superseded. Apparently there was a species split in 2018 I was unaware of. The bird common in Japan (along with a number of  subsepecies with ranges further south) is now properly known as  "Warbling White-eye" (still Zosterops japonicus). Closely related birds that were previously considered con-specific (along with a group of other subspecies) are "Swinhoe's White-eye" (Zosterops simplex). 

Books I'm Reading: The Joy of X – A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity

I picked up The Joy of X (Marriner Books, 2013) at Haneda Airport in Tokyo on my way back to the US after my stay in Japan in September. I chose it because it's a collection of essays that can be read in any order, although they are arranged so that, read in sequence, they take the reader on a trip through mathematics, starting with simple arithmetic and progressing through geometry, trigonometry, and calculus with side trips to explore various other kinds of math, ending with thoughts on the idea of infinity. On airplanes, I like something that can be read in bursts. The essays were originally published in a series in The New York Times. 

This was for the most part a quick, entertaining read. Most of the essays were easy to follow and engagingly written. A few of the later ones were more difficult, but that is more a reflection on me than on the book. I found the discussions of prime numbers and infinity of particular interest. Worth the time.