garden

[emc]

I take it that Peyton is pretty playful? I have a feisty little dog though. Sassy barks when my wife comes home; and whenever she sees something moving outside! Her perch in the living room gives her a good view!
At the end of Art's clip; the cat grabbed at something. Perhaps an unlikely nose. I couldn't tell for sure. that's why I called it a feisty kitty.

Peyton is a handful, he can be very sweet but also quite the monster. I have tamed the monster such that he doesn't bite quite so hard now but I would like to see him bite a little less. We have a little dog too... Tyler... he's good at that barking at strangers and squirrels thing... especially squirrels. Funny how most little dogs act like they're King Kong or some such critter... anything but a weak little dog. Reckon that makes for a good alarm though... just have to feed it a couple times a day and requires no electricity! Tyler has his perch in our living room too... back of the love seat for a good view of the front yard garden and driveway.

[orin stepanek]

Hey Ed! I like your horse's head!

[emc]

Thanks Orin!

I was a little worried about the pinkish coloring but my wife tells me that it takes a real man to wear pink. She tells me a lot of things… like “take out the trash Ed”, “Hey Ed, the oven vent light is flickering”, “The yard sure is in a mess”, etc. etc. She just doesn't realize how pressing planetary and cosmological problems can be.

How's your garden?

[orin stepanek]

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

Hi Ed! Actually; my wife is the best friend I have. She asks me to do things also; but I don't mind. After living with her for 47 years; she's like my right arm.

[emc]

Thanks! Cute song.

47 years! You sound proud and well deserved. It's 30 years for my wife and me and she is my best friend too. I kid around a lot but she puts up with me. I'm very proud of my wife. She is a natural born care giver... I've seen her bring animals back from near death. Her garden has begun to wither after the cold snap we had a few days ago. Morning Glories are dead now.

Is your garden still growing or has cold weather taken its toll?

[orin stepanek]

My garden quit 2 or 3 weeks ago. i took the morning glory vines and piled them up next the the border brush my neighbor has as a lot divider. I wouldn't mind so much if it were a hedge; but it is a hedge gone wild. It is about 20 feet tall and the trees are about an inch apart. I just cut the branches away from my side so I can cut my lawn uninterrupted. Than I mulched the morning glory vines up. I figure the seeds will start growing up into the hedge and that ought to look pretty next year. I mulched my garden over also. I mulched the leaves yesterday but so many more came down today that you wouldn't know it.
Today was a beautiful day and I walked on my treadmill and peddled my recumbent bike. I worked on a picture puzzle today. I got to get that done before Turkey day; so we can use the table for company.

[emc]

Sounds like you’re the garden warden. Does your wife help out? How about Sassy, does she help with the digging?

My wife asked me if I wanted a puzzle for my birthday… I explained to her that my job is putting puzzles together… circuit board design is a lot like Tetris and Connect-the-Dots. The engineers shovel in the parts, I figure out where they will fit then connect the wires… bingo, another internet board to expand/congest the IP traffic bandwidth.

[orin stepanek]

Sounds like your pretty handy with computers. I learn a little more as time goes by. I used to be in medical devices before I retired. Then I went part time at Walmart for a while. Now I do domestics at home. I stopped at Walmart this morning to pick up a package I ordered online. My ex boss spotted me there. She came over asked how I was doing. That was nice of her.
I garden because it's fun. Tomatoes and pumpkins are easy. I don't do so good with melons . I did get a few bell peppers though. Next year I will have fewer tomatoes; they ripen faster than we can eat them. I froze a lot of them this year.
I used to play Tetris. It gets too fast for me toward the end. I do like to play Free cell and Solitaire on the computer though. My computer has a pinball game on it that the grand-kids love.

[bystander]

circuit board design is a lot like Tetris and Connect-the-Dots.

Circuit board design has always seemed to me to be a bit like abstract art.

When I worked at AT&T Technologies (Western Electric), part of the factory was circuit board manufacturing and assembly. It was amazing to watch. One machine would punch the holes, another would apply a solder mask, another would etch the mask according to the circuit design, and then another would apply the solder "wiring" to both sides of the board. On the assembly side, workers would plug in the components (don't understand why this wasn't done by machine, too) then another machine would make all the solder connections, in mass. I always found it fascinating to watch.

[emc]

I think of circuit board design as an art (with a fair amount of science thrown in). I believe my background in art and as an electronic technician has helped me over the years. And I suppose circuit board design could also be compared to a raising a garden… there are many different types of components/plants that can be inserted/planted in the printed circuit board (PCB)/soil but care has to be taken such that the components/plants aren’t too close together or there will be issues with processing/growth. The components/plants once inserted into the PCB/soil will need connectivity to the surrounding matrix in order to function properly. Herein there is little chance for comparison… The connections for the PCB are done by man and the connections for the plant are done by natural processes. However, the fruit of the PCB/garden both provide some enhancement for human consumption if enough goes well.

I think APOD/SA* is a lot like a garden… but it is cultivating people.

[owlice]

Ed, I think SA* also cultivates education and knowledge, as does APOD. I've certainly learned a lot from APOD over the years, and not just about astronomy, but also about art, poetry, and wow, has it ever been good for my vocabulary!

But speaking of gardens, I spent a little time yesterday yanking stuff out of what passes for a garden (and another area that should be a garden). I have a lot of stuff that smells good (mints and basil and sage and rosemary and so on) in the garden, so my yard waste smells wonderful. I had clumps of stuff in the front that came from spouted birdseed. These would probably look quite pretty clumped together, but just looked wild and messy scattered as they were. (Obviously that they have been there all spring/summer/fall hasn't bothered me, despite looking wild and messy!) They, like some trees, had turned a dark red and it was time to pull them out.

[bystander]

There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can't prove that there aren't any ... — Richard Dawkins
Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too? — Douglas Adams

Frances Griffiths with Fairies[sup][i][b]1[/b][/i][/sup] [i](Credit: Elsie Wright (1917))[/i]

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Elsie Wright with a Fairy[sup][i][b]2[/b][/i][/sup] [i](Credit: Frances Griffiths (1917))[/i]

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Fairies and Their Sun-Bath[sup][i][b]5[/b][/i][/sup] [i](Credit: Frances Griffiths/Elsie Wright (1920))[/i]

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Frances and the Leaping Fairy[sup][i][b]3[/b][/i][/sup] [i](Credit: Elsie Wright (1920))[/i]

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Fairy Offering Posy of Harebells to Elsie[sup][i][b]4[/b][/i][/sup] [i](Credit: Frances Griffiths (1920))[/i]

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Cottingley Fairies

Next stop, Fairyland!

The Case of the Cottingley Fairies

[Ann]

Thank you for that post, bystander! I love it! I have seen those "fairy photos" in a coffee table book about Sherlock Holmes and his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Isn't it amazing that the man who created this iconic detective, this epitome of sharp-eyed observation and rational thought, would himself end up as a spiritist who believed in fairies? According to that book I read, Conan Doyle seemed to believe for real that there were actually fairies in those pictures!



Elementary, my dear Watson. The murderer has left no footprints, no fingerprints, nor any other traces. Therefore, we are dealing with the supernatural. Therefore, the murderer was a fairy!

Ann

[Ann]

I want to point out that I like fairies as a fantasy, or to put it differently, as fantasies go, fairy fantasies are as nice as any others, or often better.

When there is a low mist over the landscape at dusk or dawn, Swedes have traditionally said that the fairies are out dancing.



Dancing fairies or not. It is beautiful anyway.

Ann

[Ann]

I apologize for posting three times in a row in this thread. First I want to thank you for some really nice videos here, not least the bengal kitten and the secret garden video. Second i just want to say that I hate winter, and I hate seeing it approaching. Oh, but today the TV news reported that a woman here in the southernmost part of Sweden, close to where I live, had just harvested two grams of saffron, grown in a small field of her own just around here! That cheered me up.



Saffron crocus.

Ann

[orin stepanek]

Oh Ann: it's too early to get Spring fever! Crocus, Daffodils, and Grape Hyacinths are the first to bloom in my flower bed. The Daffodils are poking through the snow usually in mid February. I always worry that a heavy late March snow will damage them; but they always seem to survive. We had one of the worst Winters that I can recall last year and the Daffodils were just Beautiful. :The nicest thing about Daffodils is that they stay in bloom for a long time. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWY2mEhk ... re=related[/youtube]

[Ann]

Thank you for the video with William Wordworth's famous poem, Orin! It's a great poem. I, too, love spring. Actually I like all the seasons, except winter.

As for the saffron crocus, it actually blooms in September or October and is harvested about now, in early November.

Another crocus that blooms in September is Colchicum autumnale. In Swedish it is called "Naked virgin", because it has a stem and a flower but no leaves, so it is "naked". It is also called "Timeless", because it doesn't know the time, so that it blooms in the fall.

Click to view full size image

Colchium autumnale. The leaves you can see don't belong to it.

Ann

[orin stepanek]

As for the saffron crocus, it actually blooms in September or October and is harvested about now, in early November.

Ann

Saffron is the most expensive spice. It's a good thing very little is needed for flavoring. Too much can be toxic!
http://www.farsinet.com/saffron/

[BMAONE23]

As for the saffron crocus, it actually blooms in September or October and is harvested about now, in early November.

Ann

Saffron is the most expensive spice. It's a good thing very little is needed for flavoring. Too much can be toxic!
http://www.farsinet.com/saffron/

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

[geckzilla]

Another crocus that blooms in September is Colchicum autumnale. In Swedish it is called "Naked virgin", because it has a stem and a flower but no leaves, so it is "naked". It is also called "Timeless", because it doesn't know the time, so that it blooms in the fall.

In Okmulgee where I used to live we have something similar to these called naked ladies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amaryllis

I just read the Wikipedia article and only now have realized they are not native to the area. I guess someone liked them and brought them over from Africa.

[orin stepanek]

In Okmulgee where I used to live we have something similar to these called naked ladies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amaryllis

I just read the Wikipedia article and only now have realized they are not native to the area. I guess someone liked them and brought them over from Africa.

I have a flower that looks like this by my yard shed. In the spring it has heavy foliage that withers in the early summer. After you forget about them they pop out of the ground and bloom; just like in the wiki picture. My neighbor calls them surprise lilies.
I just looked up surprise lily and it is the same as the naked lady. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lycoris_squamigera

[orin stepanek]

The only plant that is still green in my garden is my Blackberry bush! Last year is stayed green through most of the winter. It is only two years old; but must be one tough little plant. This year was the first year it had berries, but the birds got to them before I did. I have a netting to use on it for this coming season; but I don't want to keep the bees away either.

[Beyond]

Orin, melons need sandy soil or they don't do well. Watermelons i think are also like that. A couple of years ago one of my neighbors grew some nice looking watermelons. Then she cut them open and they were all white inside. She didn't grow any after that!

Do you make "cow-tea" to put on them? Or even the rest of your garden?

[orin stepanek]

Orin, melons need sandy soil or they don't do well. Watermelons i think are also like that. A couple of years ago one of my neighbors grew some nice looking watermelons. Then she cut them open and they were all white inside. She didn't grow any after that!

Do you make "cow-tea" to put on them? Or even the rest of your garden?

OK! What is "cow-tea?" I have a lot of sand under my soil. I think when they dug the basement that the dirt was pushed every which way so my soil is layered. The tomatoes and the cucumbers do really well though; and I can't complain about the pumpkins.

[Beyond]

Cow Tea is made by taking about a 30 gallon container and filling it about half full with water and then adding about 5-gallons of the freshest cow manure that you can get your hands on((or in))and let it soak in the water for about 3-days. Then discard the crust on top and water your plants normally with the cow tea that you have made. I think it is a 3-part water to 1-part manure mix. If you make it too much stronger than that, you may burn the plants.
Sandy soil is not exactly just mixing sand and soil together, even though that is what i did. I found out later it's something a bit different, but i forget what as it was about 30 years ago.

I did that many years ago with a bunch of cantalope plants and you should have seen them grow! They had such a nice healthy color to them.
When they were all getting ready to unfold their flowers for pollination, i starting thinking of stuffing myself with nice big juicy cantalopes.
When i checked them one morning, i discovered that "something" had eaten off ALL the ends of the plants!!
I never tried growing them after that. I was too -unprintable-.