111

A beautiful day, I sat in the sun at the pond and watched birds, after feeding the bees who appear to be thriving.  Then I went for a ramble through the meadows but didn't encounter my deer friends today.

111
In number theory, a perfect totient number is an integer that is equal to the sum of its iterated totients. (in number theory, Euler's totient or phi function, φ, is an arithmetic function that counts the totatives of n, that is, the positive integers less than or equal to n that are relatively prime to n.)  That is, we apply the totient function to a number n, apply it again to the resulting totient, and so on, until the number 1 is reached, and add together the resulting sequence of numbers; if the sum equals n, then n is a perfect totient number. Or to put it algebraically, if

where

is the iterated totient function and c is the integer such that

then n is a perfect totient number.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/111_%28number%29

So 111 is a perfect totient number.

It is also the unlucky number in cricket, called the Nelson by all cricketers, named after Horatio Nelson, who apparently lost an arm and an eye and a leg.  Although he didn't really lose a leg, so perhaps he lost something else in his nether regions.

The score of 111 is considered unlucky and it is believed that more people go out on that score than any other, although this has not been statistically proven.  David Shepherd, the famous British cricket umpire, used to stand on one leg at 111, to ward off the evil Nelson.

The amazing David Shepherd.

I read about an amazing match between South Africa and Australia on the 11th of November 2011, (11/11/11), and the time being 11.11am, so that the scoreboard read: 11:11 11/11/11. At that exact moment in time, South Africa needed 111 runs to win, and almost the entire crowd at Newlands cricket ground and the umpire, Ian Gould, hopped about on one leg for that minute, to help South Africa go on and win the match!

Compost
In my childhood, my mum and dad always composted potato peelings and all other organics.  My mother would peel potatoes or butternuts, or cut the ends off green beans, or shell peas, always over a single page of a newspaper, and then wrap everything up neatly and this would all be buried, the newspaper decomposing alongside the waste.  Subsequently there was a little covered bin which was regularly emptied by my dad, usually dug into the ground and then gone back to at a later date and used in his garden.  When they moved into their little retirement home he had a big vegetable garden in which he grew amazing vegetables of all kinds which he would give away to everyone, always having a surplus because of his green thumb. 

I have had a vegetable garden for much of my adult life, and even when I haven't, have always felt compelled to compost all our food waste.  Here in America, there are nocturnal 'critters' who sort through your compost for edible delicacies, and who like to spread everything out over a wide area in the process. 

In 2009, San Francisco became the first municipality to pass an ordinance making it mandatory for everyone living there to separate their recyclables, compostables and landfill trash and to participate in recycling and composting programs.  The city has a goal of zero waste.  Would that all other cities would follow suit. 

When we lived at our beloved 16 Cross Street and the boys were just little things of three or so, Tim was working in the garden with them, burying all the compost from the big bin.  When Tim had put everything in the big hole he covered it up with soil again, and then led the little boys in a stomping dance all over the earth which needed to be tamped down by their little feet and his big feet.  They were singing and stomping to beat the band when I came out to see where they were, and suddenly Matthew bent and picked up something up out of all that fertile earth, had a good look at it and then turned to me and said, "Look mom, I found something like a woman!"  It was a little forked stick, looking a bit like this:

Amazing, this little boy had a vision of the archetypal woman somewhere in his collective unconscious. Why did he immediately identify it as a woman and not a man?

Perhaps we can hark back to ancient Venus figurines, because for about 30 000 years before Christianity, the earth mother goddess featured prominently in many religions all over the world.

Stylized “Venus” figurines carved in ivory, Aurignacian-Gravettian (c. 24,800 bce), from Dolní Věstonice, Mikulov, Moravia, Czech Republic; in the Moravian Museum, Brno, Czech Republic. Height (left) 8.3 cm and (right) 8.6 cm.

Lady of Villers-Carbonnel comes from northern France and is believed to be over 6,000 years old. The 21 cm figurine was made from local clay and was found in five or six of fragments amongst the ruins of a neolithic kiln.

It was the sweetest thing, really, and we all remember it, this darling little tow-headed boy looking up with such wonder, his first discovery of a lifelong fascination, the allure of the feminine.