Early spring Saturday garden chores/exercise

It's a Saturday, and Spring Break!  What a relief to not be hustling around to prepare materials for the coming week.  That will be next weekend.  Let's see what's on the agenda.  Limbs.  It's only been 2 weeks since the last pick-up-sticks, but several extremely windy days have rendered this task necessary again.  Fortunately the Rhododendron hating oak hasn't damaged anything yet this spring.  Leaves.  A leaf barrier fence was erected around the west side of the pond to keep leaves from blowing in, at least some leaves, so now the wind-row of leaves needed to be removed from the fence before the fence can be removed.  Asparagus.  Time to cut off last year's aerial shoots in preparation for much anticipated goodness to follow shortly.  Woodchuck.  Drat!  Newly dug-redug burrow under the garden shed indicates a new resident.  Capture and relocation is the only viable control measure, but this is gosh awful early for them to be active.  Trellis.  A fence repair project requires that a clematis be retrained this year onto a trellis to allow the fence to be removed and replaced.  Because of gardens along both sides of the fence are gardens, the contractor must be very mindful of plants and not just trample them into oblivion.  We gladly pay more for plant watchfulness.  Neighbors are readying bicycles for some spring exercise, and surely it will be grand, but when they are exhausted what will they have accomplished?  If only they would try the Phactor's exercise program.  First, limbs. Bending and knee bends and lifting.  1, 2, 3, ..... 100 or more reps.  Next, leaves.  Twisting, and pulling, and reaching.  Keep that rake moving!  And so on.  And what a difference!  With my exercies program, things get done.  Oh, yes, always blog about garden exercise before doing garden exercies.  But now it's time for a coffee break!

Friday Fabulous Flower - ??

The family is obvious; this is an orchid, a quite colorful orchid whose flower is some 4-5 cm across, so 5 or 6 of these open on the same inflorescence makes showy display.  And orange is just not a common flower color.  Here's the problem: it is without label, so who knows what it is.  In all likelihood it is a hybrid, and therefore rather boring, that was picked up cheap at a "this-plant-is-done-flowering" sale, or even donated, and between the time it was purchased and the time it flowered again, any identification it had was lost.  Quite possibly it had no label to begin with.  Such plants end up as open house give-aways or things like that.  So any body out there with any ideas about this orchid?  Anyone?  Anyone?

Don't go nuts, go berries!

Eating berries has beneficial effects on your brain and may help prevent age-related memory loss.  Right.  Hmm, now where was this published?  Oh, yes, just ate a grape, and there it is, the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.  But grapes?  Well, yes!  A grape is a berry, and the article says blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, and other berry fruits.  Of course, two of the three are not berries technically, but apparently something (anti-oxidants?) in fresh berry fruits helps your brain function.  How about tomatoes?  Kiwifruit?  Naranjillas?  Currants?  Persimmons?  Poke berries? Clearly all berries.  Will my health insurance buy me some new strawberry plants as a preventative measure?  But here's what the Phactor really thinks; it's Berry-Go-Round that keeps your gray cells gay, er, gray.  Picture credit here.  Oh, and most of those wild berries are not edible, so know your berries.  

How to run a university - cutting costs one paper towel at a time

The Phactor's Scot ancestry makes him very frugal, and no one dislikes waste and inefficiency more.  But at times you have to wonder if the people in charge have any idea at all about how the university works.  In times such as these it's understandable that all units seek ways to cut costs and improve efficiencies.  So kudos to the physical plant for finding a problem and solving it.  Things like paper towels cost a big organization a lot of money what with bathrooms existing in nearly every building and use of them is free, a big employee and student perk.  But in examining the usage data, two buildings were using paper towels at a rate far above the rest, and both were science buildings housing biology, geology, and chemistry.  Physicists in both theory and practice apparently are not messy.  Where could all those towels be going?  Imagine their surprise to discover that laboratories have sinks because people in those labs have to wash things.  So the physical plant decides to cut its costs by simply deciding that sinks other than those in bathrooms are not their responsibility.  Just as the water, electricity, heat, and trash in places other than bathrooms are not their responsibility either.  So does this negate the need for sinks and paper towels in labs?  No.  So now each departmental unit will be buying paper towels, losing the economy of scale, and the physical plant gets to pin a medal on itself for a brilliant cost saving measure.  What they fail to grasp is that academic departments do not get the tuition they earn.  So where will this money come from?  Instead of purchasing educational supplies, the dept will be buying paper towels most likely at a higher cost than the physical plant.  Brilliant, no?  An astute observer will note that not only did not the university save anything, it probably ends up spending more because all one unit did was shift the cost to another unit.  Ah, but now that a dept is spending its "own" money, we will become aware of the wastage and use fewer paper towels.  Yes, let that water you spilled evaporate, it's cheaper than paper towels.  Such are the ridiculous antics at a state university, but they get their marching orders and lessons from the great state of Lincolnland itself.  Our governor has figured out that the university retirement system is a ponzi scheme that is using employees contributions to cover its obligations to retirees, conveniently eliminating the state's obligation to make employer contributions, so now they appear to be deciding that the universities should cover the employer contributions, which will be the biggest unfunded mandate ever.  So if the money is not coming from the state, where will it come from?  Anyone?  Anyone?  Oh, yes, tuition, which has risen far faster than the cost of living because of the withdrawal of state support, and who then is sharply critical of public universities as a result?  Why the very politicians who created the situation!  This mandate would cost each and every student about $1200 more tuition every year, about a 14% increase, passed on to students and their families because the state is loath to raise taxes.  The Phactor also figures the employee contribution would increase as well, thus taking an even bigger bite out of our largely stagnant salaries.  Mrs. Phactor will not be happy about that, and she has threatened to pull the plug.  Yes, this is not empty threat Lincolnland.  The Phactor will be forced to retire, take his money and run for cover.  The whole thinking in our state is just brilliant.  Of course, tea party conservatives would like to nuke public education/indoctrination mills completely.  So the stakes go up!  Hey, you, don't use a paper towel to blow  your nose; carry your own tissues.  My job is at stake!

Spring break - field season!

Well, one thing is pretty certain, spring break is next week and very, very few undergrads will be on campus.  As usual, spring break will be when the Phactor gears up for field season.  A couple of undergrads are involved with seed germination experiments: the effect of fire on germination of an invasive legume, allelopathic (chemical warfare) interference of germination of native prairie species by an invasive legume (notice a theme?).  Our first task, as it is every year, is to find our long-term study plots, whose locations in general are known, but in the exact specific, they can be hard to find.  Prairies are dynamic places, and things happen.  Who knows why?   Things get buried, things get dug up, especially if they mark the corner of a study plot.  And with an advance spring, the earliest suspects will be sprouting very soon, especially since the prairie was burned in the fall so nothing remains to burn this spring.  The blackened soil will also warm up a bit sooner too.  It's strange in the spring without any vegetation, when you can see the whole plot so easily, and when the 30 inch PVC pipes stick up so conspicuously, so it's hard to imagine how hard these will be to find (close to impossible) when the prairie vegetation reaches 7-8 feet in August.  And of course with all of this to do, the book looms, and the need to get it finished ASAP.  It'll be a great spring break.

Sowing botanical ignorance - common names

From a botanical perspective, common names are generally a nuisance, but at times the misinform the amateur.  So understand this, common names don't mean a thing.  A common and very annoying purveyor of terrible made-up common names is the mail-order, you've seen their cheap ass ads in the Sunday newspaper inserts, Blech's, or something very similar to that.  They tend to sell very young plants for very cheap prices thereby providing you exactly get your money's worth, but nothing at all like what is illustrated to the point that it's only a short step away from fraud.  Their ads tend to show a pretty spectacular picture with only a common name leaving you to guess what it may actually be.  Today's paper from a great midwestern city featured a striking "flowering fern".  Now anyone who knows anything about plants knows that ferns do not flower, but lots of plants have "ferny" leaves, dissected or compound leaves thought by people who never ever look at venation to look like ferns.  So so it is with this plant.  The image is probably Incarvillea delavayi, a member of the bignon family, mostly tropical trees and lianas.  Species of this genus are herbaceous Asian alpine plants, so they are hardy, but in my experience they hate hot summers, and this brings up yet another plant-selling fraud, alpines sold as hardy, i.e., winter hardy, which they are, but very heat intolerant, so not hardy at all in that respect.  Now calling this plant "flowering fern" really sends the wrong message to the botanically naive; many people will just accept that this is indeed a fern.  Nothing in the fine print even hints at its real name.  A better common name, one that has been used for this species, is fern-leafed trumpet flower which correctly suggests a relationship to trumpet vine, Campsis radicans, one of my don't plant this plants.  Other species are sometimes called hardy gloxinias, which implies a wrong family relationship, although bignon flowers do look a lot like some gesneriads.  So someday it will happen.  Some gardener without a clue will ask the Phactor what is the fern that has big pink flowers?  Gad!  And he will answer, "Ferns don't have flowers."  And they will say, "Oh, this one does."   So to play purveyors, if you must use common names, use well accepted ones, and then put the real species name in parentheses after wards, and if you cannot do this, then get out of the business.  To gardeners everywhere, beware the "hardy" alpine scam. 

Friday Fabulous Flower - Walking Iris

This is actually a quite fabulous flower in particular the contrast between the white upper half of the falls and the blue standards, both with the yellow-brown mottled bases.  A while back another species of walking iris was featured as the FFF, one with yellow flowers, but this one (Neomarica candida) has larger, showier, more striking flowers.  One of these days the Phactor will have to put this flower under some UV light to see the pattern.  Presumably the 3-branched style will show up brightly against a darker background.  These are members of the iris family, not the genus Iris, and they are easily propagated by the plantlets that form after the flowering is done.  Ours occupy otherwise almost wasted space under other larger plants against the north wall of our glasshouse.  Other than liking their heat and humidity they seem easy enough to grow , but you had better live where it doesn't get very cold.  

Davy Jones has stopped Monkeeing around

The Phactor was never a Monkees fan, too bubble gum, too cutesy, too lame, but for a reason that will shortly be revealed, he knows the words to almost all of their songs.  You see my dear departed Mother-in-law gave the F1 a record player, and all those nursery rhyme songs were terminally lame, so rather than listen to them one more time, the Phactor got the great idea of taking her to the local oldies rock and roll emporium and buying her a bunch of bubble gum band records, and that included the Monkees.  So now you get the idea; they got played over and over again, and there is no doubt at all that she still knows all of those songs, a great talent.  So it was rather sad to learn of Davy's death, just as the Phactor gets very sad over anyone dying in their 60s.  Yes,we know what those survivorship curves look like. 

Berry-go-round #49

Bora over at Blog around the clock did a great job of rounding up a bunch of plant related blogs even though February was a shortish, but slightly longer this leap year, month.  It does my heart good to see so many interesting plant blogs and makes me wonder how it is that people cannot find these wonderful offerings interesting.  So click on over to BATC and have a look at all the postings you may have missed.  Thanks, Bora.

Windy day blues

Yesterday was a terribly windy day even by the standards of the upper midwest where it's almost always windy thus explaining all those hundreds of wind turbines standing only a few miles outside our fair city.  Windy days depress the Phactor for several reasons.  Firstly, out estate has lots of big old trees and after every windy day, especially gusty ones, it takes an hour or so just to pick up all the limbs that fall.  Secondly, all kinds of crap blows around in the wind, and being down wind from a hospital construction project, all kinds of construction refuse ended up lodged in our shrubs and trees.  Thirdly, leaves left over from the fall blow all over the place, and most of them seem to land in our lily pond.  Fourthly, as if another reason were needed, and actually the primary reason for disliking wind, the Phactor is quite fond of broad brimmed hats, one might say attached, but while my constant companions, hats are not literally attached, and a short loss of concentration might mean a favorite hat could end up in the next county where it could be found by an agricultural peasant, the kind that thinks grain or tractor caps are stylish.  Now that's scary.