Friday Fabulous Flower - Beach Rose

Today's vacation adventures included exploring beach and salt marsh conservation areas, very interesting and very fragile coastal communities of great importance ecologically. So why not pick a fabulous flower from this area like the beach rose? OK, some of you may wish to suggest to the Phactor that this is a picture of a rose hip, the fruit of the beach rose (Rosa rugosa), not the extremely fragrant pink flower. However, one of the best definitions of a fruit is a flower at the stage of seed dispersal. Large patches of this rose, probably individual clones, dominate certain portions of sandy coastal areas, but this rose is an exotic species naturalized in these areas. A little later in the season these fruits will be more flavorful and juicy, and they make quite nice jelly.

Postcard home - Pilgrim Tower

One of the great things about traveling is seeing monuments to historic events, and with immigration a national issue, how fitting to see the first illegal immigrants to North America, the Pilgrims, commemorated by a grim looking Gothic tower towering over Provincetown MA. You can climb the Escher-like interior, up, and up, and up, and up, and so on, to the top and have a look around, and Provincetown does look pretty good from on high, much better than down on the tawdry touristy streets below. And what better way to commemorate our history than copying someone else's architecture. Fortunately the accompanying museum was pretty interesting so you don't feel "rooked" for having paid the entry fee. Having a great time, wish you all were here. More later. Ta.

Someone noticed!

Wow! It's always a good feeling when someone out there reads your research, and understands its importance,and in this case, it's Notes from a Changing World. Thanks!

Too busy to blog

Yes, when in high vacation mode the Phactor has too little time to blog, much. Some of the reasons include: steamed mussels, boiled lobster, fried clams, lobster omelet, scallops, and, well you get the idea, because when you live in the great Midwest for very long, unless you were born and bred in the great Midwest, you build up a seafood deficit that takes quite a bit of effort to erase. And of course sun, sand, and seawater can add greatly to your appetite, and thirst. So you take advantage of the local catch, and brews, that didn’t have to walk, hitch a ride, or fly on a plane, or worse yet, be frozen and thawed, to get to the great Midwest. So the whole point is to eat fresh seafood until it comes out your ears. So dear readers do forgive my limited sharing while my R&R continues. It's a big deficit.

On the Road Again - Driver Alert

Hey, all you interstate drivers! Just to let you know, a lot of you seem to be of the opinion that you can drive and talk on your cell phone at the same time, and while, yes, this is technically possible, your variable speed, your wandering across lanes, your unawares reaction to other drivers suggests what the rest of us already know, you can't! All day long today data points were collected, and every single one of you who committed the above mentioned offenses were gabbing on your phone! Of course, maybe you're just this bad at driving all the time. Start with something within your grasp, like chewing gum.

On the Road Again - Bad Lane Karma

As if interstate driving were not bad enough, and it's bad enough to give air travel at least a consideration even as it sinks lower than anyone thought possible. While airlines now starve you; interstate highways bore you with soulless chain food. Thank goodness for those few individual eclectic little places that manage to hang on, and the people who help you find them. Worst of all the Phactor's bad line karma, a curse of unknown origins, continues to haunt me on the interstates, so no matter what the cause of traffic backups, beyond the fact that there are too many vehicles and too little road, the lane in which my vehicle is traveling will be the slowest to navigate the problem whether lane reduction, construction, tolls, or a discarded gum wrapper. On today's nearly 600 mile trek, an odyssey undertaken every couple of years when the urge to see ocean or mountains becomes over whelming, it was more of the same. To help you notice this evil lane karma, there was a sort mobile place marker, a motorhome the size of Moby Dick driven by Herb and Thelma from some small town in Ohio, and they are proud enough to emblazon this on the back side of their gigantic traffic obstacle, and if you didn't notice the 1st time you passed them, you notice the 2nd and 3d times. Yes, this massively cumbersome and slow beast actually made better time through three traffic backups. The odds are clearly against it. And all of this furthers the legend of I-80/94 from Chicago to Gary, which no matter how much they build on it remains one of the worst stretches of highway in the world.

Botanical recipe - Margarita

The Phactor is officially on vacation, and while traveling you may be certain that all of his necessary survival gear is on board, and in this case, this includes my favorite summer vacation recipe, a jug of margaritas. They once saved the Phactor's life, well, OK maybe not my life, but my sanity when my venerable VW van broke down in Provo Utah, which is a pretty city, but you ain't gonna get any of life's essentials, like alcoholic and caffeine beverages. The margarita is an American invention, supposedly first concocted by a Dallas socialite some 60 years ago while visiting Acapulco Mexico to make the most out of Mexico's most venerable invention, tequila. Very few American inventions have been as successful, and presently this particular mixed drink is our most popular (almost 20% of all mixed drinks), and with good reason. It's a wonderful drink, and makes the most out of tequila, itself distilled from the "beer" made from fermented agave (starchy stems).

OK here's the recipe for my travel margaritas, and you don't have to travel to enjoy them, just stash the jug in your fridge.

750 ml bottle of gold tequila
250 ml bottle of triple sec (the original margarita recipe called for Cointreau)
250 ml lime juice (fresh is best)
3 tbsp sugar (do not over sweeten, and if you like things really tart, omit the sugar)
water to dilute to 2 liters (this dictates the volume of your jug).

Shake to dissolve sugar. Rub slice of lime on the rim of a low ball glass and dip the edge in coarse salt. Fill the glass with ice cubes, and then fill with the margarita mix. Adjust your Panama hat to keep the sun out of your eyes, and enjoy. This is not a cold weather drink.

Word of warning, this drink tastes like ever so good limeade, but if you serve it without sufficient ice for dilution, you'll find yourself knocked on your butt. Enjoy.

Botanist - An Endangered Species

You don't have to try to convince me that botanists and botany are an endangered species here in the USA where the human-biomedical tail wags the biological dog. Here's a brief report on botany in the USA that doesn't exactly offer much optimistic news, but it's no surprise to the Phactor. More on this later; the energy for a full-fledged rant just isn't forthcoming today. A bit of vacation and the annual botanical meetings are upcoming these next two weeks, and this report is sure to be topic of conversation among my colleagues.

HT to Get Your Botany On.

Friday Fabulous Flower - Yellow Coneflower

The sweltering heat and humidity of the midwestern summer season are upon us, and many of my exotic babies, natives of milder climates, suffer, while a few plants hailing from more southern climates, rejoice. But the plants that do best, year in and year out, are natives. So this friday's fabulous flower is a native of the tall grass prairie, the yellow coneflower (Ratibida pinnata). Some people confuse the yellow coneflower with the black-eyed susan, which is in another genus altogether. Both are members of the sunflower family, so actually this isn't a fabulous flower, but a fabulous inflorescence composed of brown radially symmetrical disk flowers centrally and yellow bilaterally symmetrical ray flowers appearing like petals (as in "she loves me, she loves me not") around the periphery. The yellow corollas of ray flowers droop downward (as shown), while the corollas of black-eyed susans are held more or less out at right angles (there are other differences too). The disk flowers in the center (top) of the button haven't opened yet. Inflorescences like these present the appearance of a single flower because that's the point, to cluster a bunch of small flowers in such a way as to present a bigger display. Pollinators always looking for the biggest reward are attracted to bigger displays, and inflorescences like these are one way plants with small flowers enhance their attractiveness and reproductive success.

Lincolnland politics

Here in Lincolnland we have a two party system; politicians are either inept or crooks, and sometimes both. Our former Governor Bag-o-chips, on trial for corruption, has rested his case without offering a defense except for proclaiming his innocence to the press, but not the jury. Whether found innocent or guilty hardly matters at this point. We have been duly entertained by the spectacle, but now wish to move on. What is known for certain is that his only interest in the job was to seek a higher and more lucrative office, that he paid little attention to the affairs of state, actually never trying to earn the salary he found so paltry or show himself worthy of higher office, that he spent an inordinate amount of time scheming how to get the money that would allow him to seek a higher and more lucrative office, and that having been a horrible excuse for a governor he still could not understand why the people of Lincolnland disliked him so very much. What has not, and in all likelihood will not occur to Bag-o-chips is that he is quite guilty of a far worse crime; he violated the trust of the people who elected him. So for that reason alone the choice we voters have this fall is comforting because the choice is between the current inept occupant and his even more inept challenger. How can we go wrong?