Thoughts on a New Year

 Nothing actually different from one day to the next, but we rather like having even arbitrary reasons for doing things. After some serious thought TPP decided that the problem was too much consumption of bad news; items that left a depressing frame of mind, and mostly things that nothing whatever can be done about.  Doing small things for a stranded, alone, and lonely student proved to be way more worthwhile.  So ditching the 24 hr news cycle, ignoring the constant feed of bad news to phone or laptop was helpful in developing a better frame of mind.  If Trump's name never again is in a headline, would make things a lot better.  Finding out that some of my tropical friends in Australia are pretty much going about normal lives was frustrating news because so many in the USA can't even wear a mask, too much inconvenience.  Also noted that a short walk away a real micro brewery has a smallish beer garden, no inside service at all, and at temperatures in the 20s and 30s, people were sitting around drinking beer, it was a very cheerful thing, so much has this pandemic resulted in isolation.  This lack of basic socialization was clearly another reason for a down in the dumps attitude.  A little more social distancing would have been nice though.  At any rate TPP is determined to find some things, some topics, to blog about in an effort to improve his mental health, and maybe yours too.  So happier New Years to everyone because it doesn't get much badder than it is.

2015 - Another fine year shot to heck! Year end musings

What's a tree worth? This interesting thought came to me while watching the chainsaw pros quickly clean up the ice storm tree debris.  As TPP watched a nearly 20 foot limber pine zip through the chipper, you know you only paid $130 for the tree plus the cost of delivery and planting (too big), but even if someone were to give you $200 for a replacement, you can't get back the 8-10 years of growth. That begins to tell you how much a really big tree is worth, they're really priceless and they should not be taken down without damned good cause.
So instead of a tree limb mess there now exists a 15 foot wide 20 foot long empty space although TPP's Sinocalycanthus appears to have escaped tree fall damage.  Good thin it'd be pretty tough to replace.  So the Phactors get to rethink this border garden and maybe try something different; it was a bit too shady for the limber pine. 
This ends TPPs first full year of retirement and the most surprising thing has been how busy his life has been. So no daytime TV, no shortage of chores, no shortage of gardening jobs, no boredom at all. On the positive side, he cooks more Italian food and shops more for groceries. Further he resolves to clean up all of the kitchen messes he creates. 
This blog is also almost 8 years old. Although very few people noticed at first, readership has been pretty steady for the last few years. Hope you all appreciate the total and complete absence of annoying popup ads or pathetic bloggers begging for donations. Heck, TPP hasn't even tried to flog his real life counterparts book; hard to do when writing under a pseudonym. The assumption is that readers appreciate these efforts.  Hard to know what my readers think because - in general silence. TPP admits that the primary purpose of this blog is to get things off my mind, to blow off steam, and lower the blood pressure in a semi-constructive manner.
Politics is so very bad this year that TPP can hardly write anything at all because it all comes out sounding so very pessimistic that it doesn't help the old state of mind at all. Seriously thinking that candidates should be asked if they garden, and if not, then we should forget them completely. Hoe some weeds, mow some grass, grow some tomatoes and then we'll talk.  Maybe 2016 should be the year of Gardening for better government, then we sharpen our hoes and weed out all of the baddies.
Send your local politicians some seeds and see what they do with them. Maybe we can grow some better government, a real grassroots effort.  Tell the blogger what you thinks. Time to cleanup the kitchen.

Why blog under a pseudonym?

Over at Science Blogs, the new over lords, National Geographic, has decreed that bloggers using pseudonyms will no longer be permitted. Well, that certainly bites, and may the Phactor predict that the blog they purchased will lose many good bloggers and a great deal of their readership. Although SciBlogs never saw fit to include a botanist, the Phytophactor would now be banned anyways, so there. Who wanted to be in your blog collective anyways, and they put stupid ads in the siderail over which you have no say. So there! This blog is hardly controversial, doesn't use bad language, and generally stays clear of politics and contentious topics unless for mental health reasons the Phactor needs to blow off steam. Upon those occasions that he comments about the ineptitude of deans or provosts, readers find it comforting to think "that may well be the fool we've got here", and that's the point of never quite pinning down person or place, it keeps people wondering, thinking, and the blogger remains free of entanglements of institution, person, or place. Besides it's amusing to write in the 3d person.

Missed a land mark - 500th blog

The Phactor is not the most prolific blogger around; he has another job, and although blogging about botany might be considered part of it in terms of public outreach, other duties certainly loom larger. None the less having started this blog not quite three years ago the blogging frequency has grown, and just the other day the total passed 500. Probably time to begin purging some of the old little read and little visited pages. And my followers continue to increase in number also, 40, no the Indoor Garden (er) has joined so 41 as of today, is fast approaching both my age and IQ. Not really. The Phactor is much older and a bit smarter than that. It's funny how it goes. By far the most popular blog has been whether an artichoke is a fruit or a vegetable. Why do so many people care about that, or is there only one person in the world who thought to deal with such a question? Ah, that's it certainly. The blogosphere (never write that without thinking about how the word always reminds me of our impeached governor) is a curious online community, and you find yourself having great affection for some of the people that regularly interact with your blog persona. As the blog continues the Phytophactor vows to continue being true to form, which seems to be providing an eclectic collection of bits and pieces of this and that mostly revolving around botany, gardening, and the foibles of academic life. Thanks for staying with me folks.

300th Blog - Botanical field trips

Supposedly the first 300 blogs are the hardest, so the 301st should be easy. Just returned from a field trip associated with the Botanical Society of America's annual meeting, and it had a familiar qualities: a bus load of plant fanatics ranging from senior citizens to undergraduate students, generic food box lunches (How is it that they are all identical?), and someone who has the responsibility for getting us back on time. Now if ever botanists surrender to the clock, our professionalism is toast, and no use setting some precident of being on time. No when some little fern requires that a group bushwack through a mucky sphagnum bog, green briar, and poison ivy, why no problem. How fun to hear students tell us that this is their first national botanical meeting. If you tell them you still remember yours, which was in 1972, they look at you in rather disbelief that anything so ancient might still have functional gray cells. Sorry not to include any pictures, but no way to get them out of the camera and into this hotel computer. Sorry not to have a better story to celebrate 300 blogs over the past 2.5 years. This is not a torrid pace, and seldom is there time for more than one internet session a day; too many real things to do. Like visit beach communities and some strange holly forests with lots of ferns and fungi, and lots of plants that we associate with more southerly ranges (holly, mountain laurel, and so on). Now to wash off the dust, get a drink, attend a lecture on evolution and a mixer of several hundred botanists, some of the best people on Earth. What! You don't believe me? Well, just ask them!

Field work and blogging - incompatible?

April stands for so many things: spring begins, tax season ends (very significant if you're married to a CFP), the end of the semester is in sight, deadlines and events abound, and all of this pales because it is also the beginning of field season, that time of year when the natural cycle of your research organism requires that you begin spending significant amounts of time out of your office, out of your lab, and away from your university. There is a satisfying component to this work, especially if you are smart enough leave electronic communication devices turned off (or, if you are truly enlightened and have achieved oneness with creation, you do not own such things).

It is a good sign when you manage to find 107 out of 108 quadrats after your prairie has been burned. The 108th is still there, but it's location somewhat uncertain until the corner pin is found using a metal detector. And it is a good sign that the exposed bones do not belong to that graduate student who went missing last semester. It is always a surprise to see how many skeletons, both big and small (deer, beaver, fox, vole), are visible after a prairie burning. I wonder if my patch of prairie is something of an elephants' graveyard that all injured or terminally ill animals seek out.

But in spite of the fact that I am relieved of teaching and administrative duties this spring, I find it difficult to have the time to do field work and keep up with everything else. Two journals are waiting for me to review articles on floral biology. A doctoral research proposal is demanding my immediate attention. My own expansive estate is calling for attention. And I have a book manuscript and three research articles to complete.

And then there is the Phytophactor. In the middle of winter, when field work is out of sight and out of mind, starting a blog seemed like a good idea. I like the venting blogging allows. But I wonder about other bloggers, especially those in science. Apparently very few do field work. Maybe very few do science either judging by their attention to the pseudproductivity of blogging. Many seem rather young, and perhaps they have fewer responsibilities beyond their teaching and research. Or they have much smaller gardens, if any. Very few seem to be ecological or botanical. Does this say something about the temperment of botanical ecologists, or is this just a measure of how much time they have, or how little sleep they need? Dare I suggest field work and blogging may be incompatible? Nah!