Free speech explained

Free speech is a difficult concept for many people, particularly those people who feel entitled to say anything they please because they are ludicrously rich. Exercising your freedom of speech is not without consequences, and here to explain this fully is a wonderfully direct way is xkcd, a favorite cartoon of this author.

A new Magnolia record!

Two new magnolias, a yellow-flowered butterflies hybrid and an anise magnolia (M. salicifolia) were both in flower for the first time.  The anise magnolia is 10-12 years old but was just a stick when obtained; now it's a substantial small tree and just getting mature. These joined our mainstays of the past few years: a saucer magnolia (M. x soulangiana), a star magnolia (M. stellata), and a tulip-flowered magnolia (M. liliiflora - 'Anne')(pictured).  So a new record - 5 magnolias in flower at the same time!  The anise and star are the earliest, and the butterflies and saucer are the latest, so they are at different stages, but overlapping. Our other magnolias are early summer flowering so this record is likely to stand for awhile, unless TPP buys some more magnolias.  Wonder when that special order will show up? 

Exhausted social butterflies

Near the end of semesters, especially the spring one, all sorts of social events get piled up on one another, and then there's spring stuff too. So Friday night the Phactors were out for pizza with a couple of young couples, and a couple of old couples (oh, we're one of those!), a sort of mixer type of social event, which was quite fun until they dropped our deep dish supreme as it came out of the oven!  The next morning the Phactors paid off the purchasers of a charity auction treating this charitable bunch to brunch after a wildflower walk. You can figure out TPP's part in all of this; funny how similar a taxonomy class field trip and a wildflower walk can be.  It was great weather, great food, and great fun. And you had a choice of Bloody Mary recipes, all well spiced, and with vodka, tequila, or akvavit.  If you have never tried the latter, do so.  That evening was a student awards banquet; great fun but hard to recognize everyone when they're all cleaned up as you never see them. Nice to see all the achievements recognized too. The next morning was a double header where the church president (Mrs. Phactor) was organizing and lobbying and having a congregational meeting to decide about replacing a furnace with geothermal system at an additional cost.  And in addition, TPP was speaking to the congregation about biodiversity and human population.  After that, immediately after that, our long time dinner group was having its spring brunch, and to make that possible at all, the Phactors were cooking yesterday during the afternoon and evening (before and after the banquet); our recipe was smoked salmon and scrambled eggs in filo pastry, a sort of breakfast strudel (most excellent).  And there is always way too much food.  Just 3 hours later, the Phactors went to another awards reception and retirement celebration. Now we are just plain exhausted, both overfed and over indulged in diverse beverages. It was a great weekend, but man, wouldn't want to try and keep up that schedule for very long. Is tomorrow a Monday? We need to rest up!

Simple pleasures - first lettuce of spring

Anytime the Phactors get garden lettuce prior to May it's considered to be a successful start to the gardening season.  It's hard to argue with garden fresh lettuce (and spring onions).  TPP uses big old black plastic pots or planter boxes and a row cover material.  Bibb and romaine lettuces (which come as plantlets), as well as broccoli, grow very well and have no problem with frosty nights. Last night our spring lettuce salad was one of those simple pleasures of life provided by a garden. The narcissi in the vase were another.

Taxonomy class field trip

A late spring always truncates TPP's plant taxonomy class, but what can you do?  Well, today TPP guided his class to a seep spring, a smallish marshy-boggy habitat where in this particular area is one of the few places where marsh marigold (Caltha palustris), which is not a marigold at all, but a rather spectacular member of the buttercup family, grows. This is also the only place to see a skunk cabbage (in flower no less!) within a day's driving range, and while it looks to be in the right place, TPP happens to know that it was planted in this location by a retired biologist!  The class also managed to identify spring beauty, a second species of Dicentra, D. canadensis, (got Dutchman's breeches last week), cutleaf toothwort (which used to be Dentaria, but now is a Cardamine), and a yellow violet (V. pubescens).  On the whole not a too bad field trip, and in particular most of this class is becoming quite good at using their field guide and identifying these spring flowers. Didn't have a camera, so this image is from the Wikimedia Creative Commons - thanks carol.

Spring field work

Well, it's been a late spring, and our field work has finally begun. This sort of sounds silly, but the first job is to actually find our study plots. Yes, they are marked, and yes, we've been using these plots, a long-term study, since 2006, but the markers must be able to survive prairie burnings, so they are metal and not too big. Our numbered tags got well scorched, dirty, and buried in ash, again. At times you can be standing just inches from a tag and not be able to see it. So, the prairie was burned last week, and today we started looking for them.  Burned prairies are dirty, dusty places, but already the green shoots are appearing through the black ash. It's fun to see what else lurked on the prairie that ends up being exposed after a burn.  Hmm, we found the charred "bones" of a meter stick, and the two brass ends were still exactly 1 meter apart.  Hate to think how many of these high tech instruments we've damaged over the years.  The partially melted remains of a fairly nice compass was found still in the middle of one study plot. A couple of small snakes that did not slither fast enough were roasted, so were the eggs of a ground-nesting bird, a big one, goose or duck? Quite a few bones here and there, nice and brightly white. Fortunately a couple of students lent us their young eyes, and we set a  new record in finding all the plots. Wow! What a huge help! It's a good start to the season, but man, TPP was just about black from the elbows to hands, and from the knees down.  

Earth Day 2014

Wow, has it been that long?  Yes, the 1st Earth Day was 44 years ago, a whole academic career ago, and at times you wonder what was accomplished?  What the frack is happening to the Clean Water Act of 1972?  Well, Walt Kelly's Pogo had it right all along. Too many papers, too much field work, and other semester debris piling up too quickly to write much more.  Too depressing to think about many of our pressing issues. 

What's on a cat's mind?

No one really knows, especially what's on this one's mind. Mind? This is an interesting article about people who study animal intelligence, and they say cats are just really, really difficult to work with.  People like to think that dogs are smarter than cats, but in TPP's opinion this is largely because humans and dogs understand each other better.  Communicating with a cat is more like trying to figure out an alien life form. Humans just don't think like cats. Naturally as solitary predators, cats are very self-centered even those that are very friendly and very well socialized. You just get them many of the things they like: warm place to sleep, kibble, etc. Cats are very good at figuring out how to get into and out of tricky places, and this takes some problem solving and evaluation of what you physically can and cannot do. When presented with a problem (how to get out of my yard), they find solutions. Go up onto the back steps, jump to the hand rail and walk along it. Jump to the top beam of the gate and walk across.  Then jump up onto the garage roof.  Jump across the narrow alley between our garage and the neighbor's garage.  From here access the back neighbors fence, and so on.  Retreat and retrace those umpteen steps when caught by startled owner.  Yes, this was a real adventure of the F1's mighty cat, a 26 lb. Maine coon cat. A lot of cat behavior seems very hard-wired, but cats are very careful and aware of their environment and they notice everything, when a piece of furniture is moved, they get upset because this is something that might affect their choice of a nap location.  Dogs don't seem to notice except to avoid bumping into it. Cats are very curious and investigative of their environment, and they find lots of things, for example, lost toys and things they consider to be toys, and they remember where little things were for quite some time, and they remember their "tricks" for quite some time, and both things would make them successful hunters. So this is a very different type of intelligence and humans haven't been smart enough to figure out how to test cats, but doggy tests won't work, and it ain't because they're smarter.

Dehydrated Jack Daniels?

One of my colleagues always used to kid around about having packed dehydrated Jack Daniels for field work. And now someone has invented a powdered alcoholic beverage?  OK, based on what TPP knows about chemistry, you can separate the water and alcohol, but then you still have to carry the same weight to rehydrate it later, and alcohol doesn't dry out; gas, liquid, solid, but not a dry powder. Something doesn't make sense. This powdered alcohol is called Palcohol, and when first this made the news TPP figured the Onion was at it again. Crazy! Can someone explain this and direct us to the dry margaritas?

Gardening the hole day

TPP is bushed, tired, not politically inept. Yes, hole not whole, because that's what he did today; TPP dug holes. That's the bloody trouble with new shrubs, they need holes.  And when you take down 5 or 6 old spruce you end up with an empty space that's at least 65' x 20' to re-landscape, and that's what we be doing.  Let's see a Japanese snowbell, a fancy purple lilac, a Korean pine, a Korean azalea (hmm, is there a trend here?), a June berry, a double-file viburnum, a couple of Korean spicebush viburnums (yes, definitely a trend!), and something, something else?  Oh, a fancy dwarf conifer for the Japanese garden, but that's out back, and a quite nice plum yew was planted there too (Cephalotaxus - look it up!).  Of course lot's of old standard hostas were moved to make room for the new stuff; in our gardens, it's never an easy planting because things must be removed to plant something new.  Anchoring this new front garden is a large Japanese maple, a Crimson Prince who is at least 8' tall with a 3-4" trunk, a fairly big fellow, so the Phactors wisely paid younger, stronger backs to plant that one, and it already looks terrific. This is high impact gardening, a hobby, a life-style, with a built-in exercise program.  Watch for our exercise video out soon.