Mid-afternoon in the garden of good and evil

Nothing is more famous in Savannah than the St. Bonaventure cemetery.  The cemeteries in New Orleans are very interesting what with all the crypts and graves packed in, but St. Bona is huge and park-like with drives in between all the sections and all sorts of trees and shrubs.  If you were looking for someone and didn’t know where they were buried, you’d never, ever find them. It was well worth driving through and stopping here and there to look at interesting sculptures, crypts, or stones. The bird girl is not really there; she resides in the Jepson museum, but lots more great sculptures are there, just not so famous.

Botany 2016

Each year the Botanical Society of America, with a number of its sister organizations, get together for a 4 day phantasmagorical orgy of botanical science and socializing. As you may guess us botanists are spread rather thinly across the landscape, and since the human bio-medical tail, and its attendant money, wags the biological dog, there just aren't that many of us. So getting together once a year is a big deal. Some of these people are our bestest buddies, colleagues, collaborators, former students, former mentors, and so on. This year the event is in Savannah GA, and you're saying TPP, isn't it a touch hot and humid this time of year. Well, yeah, which is why the botanists get such a good deal here, and other places like NOLA, Mobile, San Antonio, and Stillwater (actually still can't believe this last one), but the meetings are indoors in refrigerated conference centers except when way back they were on university campuses.  
So the Phactors are enroute and stopped for margaritas in Chattanooga, not famous for its drinks, but if you look back a couple of blogs you'll see that some people travel with their own supply.
The next few days will be jam packed with research and teaching talks, and posters, and meetings (don't like them, but you have to do science's business too.), and social events too. Ah, you're jealous. TPP has been to all but a hand full of these annual meetings since 1972. Understand the schedule doesn't leave much time for blogging.