Out with the old

New Year's has never been much of a big deal; what's the point?  OK so you start a new calendar.  Mostly the New Year is just one of those sign posts or markers to indicate where you are, like one of those mileage signs along a highway.  And here the New Year will start some 7 hours earlier than at home making 2014 seven hours longer for us, if indeed, this is remembered a year from now. Resolutions are sort of lame; if you want to do something different, OK, then change, but why now exactly?  New Year's is a good excuse to have a party, to eat some food, drink some wine, and socialize, in this case with family and friends of our German students.  TPP once found out the official date in Thailand was based on a different calendar that is several hundred years older and offset from the Gregorian standard by a couple of months, but actually this is one of those things, how the calendar we use got to be the way it is remains unknown to this author. Somehow it never came up as a topic.  Shows us just how arbitrary the whole situation is especially as the new year is not pegged to any particular celestial event like the solstice. New year's works for many people as having a time to wipe the slate clean, an excuse to try something different, and maybe something to look forward to is all a survival mechanism, a personal jedi mind trick, something to keep us plodding forward.  So that's how it will be. TPP will keep putting one foot in front of the other and marching into the new year. Tonight's party should be fun, and not the usual party fare either. Staying up to midnight will be easy with a bit of eastward jet lag to help out. It will be fun to see how other people treat the new year celebration. and with fire works, so say the natives. So happy new year all; enjoy yourselves, and we'll see what comes. Tomorrow.

Kris Kringle Mart

Yes, our arrival in Germany was on the 27th and that is past Christmas, but in Hamburg, the Christmas markets were still going strong, which is nice because this is a new experience.  It was very festive and filled with lovely sights and great smells, so you have some glugwein and some bratwurst to join in the fun.  And that keeps you going until it finally hits you that you have had very little sleep over the

past 28 hours, or something like that, then you sleep like a dead person for 12 hrs.  Hamburg has been quite some fun, of course the tour guides were the best. However the internet in our hotel really sucked, rather it was really expensive, which sucks, so thus the blogging hiatus.  You hear so much about other German cities, and so little about Hamburg, and that now seems puzzling.  But mostly it was about spending time with friends and getting caught up and reacquainted.  TPP had forgotten how much fun big train stations are, and airports just totally suck in comparison. To not sound like a complete grouch TPP will avoid ranting any more about air travel, or people with babies or little tots on airplanes. Yes, what can parents do, but damn your kid was disturbing and annoying the hell out of at least 40 people, and quite frankly they were not doing enough to be considerate.  Buy them a seat next time!  Oops, closing in on a rant; change tracks.  So from Hamburg the Phactors have traveled to Ulm, a little visited city, to see more friends and spend the new year's celebration with them.  OK, this is a bit spooky.  The city is socked in with fog (good thing we came by train rather than plane) and you can hear one of the bawh-dee, bawh-dee sirens and suddenly it's like the Third Man!  Please, don't say you don't know about the Third Man.  OK, time for some dinner.  Anyone been to Hamburg?  Impressions welcomed.

Impending travel

In times now long past, the Phactors always traveled for the holidays because all of our relatives, and many old friends, lived in New York State.  This involved running a gauntlet of potentially very bad winter weather from Cleveland to Buffalo NY, and this was a long drive even when the weather was good.  As the family dispersed the frequency of our visits declined.  Sometimes Mrs. Phactor's family would gather in their adopted state, North Carolina, but that was a long drive for us too.  So now quite a few years have passed when the Phactors have been home-bodies for the holidays, but this year, something different happened.  So the Phactors find themselves finishing up Christmas in a hurry, and in somewhat of a surprise to ourselves heading off to visit friends in Germany and Switzerland.  This is the first time TPP has packed to travel bereft of Hawaiian shirts and shorts, so his normal packing strategy is just not going to work. At any rate it has been a long time since the Phactors began the new year in another country. The best news is that this involves no driving, and especially no driving in the vicinity of Lake Erie. But the dread has already begun; TPP likes going places, but hates travel.  Stoic endurance is the practical state of mind.   

Yes, we'll have no bananas

This is a rather depressing report on the spread of a blight that threatens bananas, worldwide!  This may not seem particularly important to some people, but in many tropical areas bananas are a starchy staple and important part of their diets on a par with potatoes for those of us in the northern temperate zone.  The root of the problem is that bananas, at least the widely planted varieties, are based on a limited genetic base.  As the report points out, this will make it easy for this plant disease to spread.  Everyone knows that basing a crop on a limited genetic base is dangerous, but it seems it takes a disaster or near disaster to get a breeding program going.  HT to AoB blog. 

Cooking something up

Today, the Sunday before Christmas, made a perfect day for cooking.  So with plenty of time, and to help ward off the cold, wet weather, this was a day well-suited for Mulligatawny soup.  It took awhile to find the recipe, hand-written years ago, on a file card tucked in one of our oldest recipe files.  One of the problems with liking cook books is that you can't always remember where certain recipes are, especially like this one, from a now unknown source, and a soup that haven't been made in awhile.  It isn't a hard recipe, but working from scratch you have to cook some chicken and make a spicy soup broth.  And then quite a few ingredients get chopped up and all of that takes some time.  Mulligatawny is a chicken soup that takes a lot of its character from the Indian tradition so the primary flavoring is a curry powder as well as ginger rhizome, Indian bay leaves, and cloves.  It also includes a chopped up tart apple to add a fruity highlight.  This will make a nice hearty soup for din-dins.  But that wasn't all.  Unable to pass up a bargain, TPP bought a package of chicken gizzards for $1.35, and turned them into an escabeche, basically cooked gizzards marinated in vinegar and oil with green pepper, onion, a lot of chopped garlic, some pimento stuffed olives, and a few dashes of hot sauce.  Mrs. Phactor who missed lunch today because of charity gift wrapping is giving it a try right now with a very superior glass of rioja, a gift from a client.  Got the last few presents put together, some decorated boxes with cookies and candies for a couple of people who deserve being remembered with a gift.  The hardest part of cooking is the underfoot cats who think your only purpose in life is feeding them no matter what time it is.  Of course all of this left the kitchen a disaster, so just now TPP got time to get a cocktail and some escabeche for himself.  Ho, ho, ho.

Doh! Violated one of my own rules!

It was just a moment's lapse, a second or two of being less than vigilant, and it happened!  It must have been the Christmas cookie that distracted TPP.  Because without any warning, the eyes shifted, and too late, there was Bill O'Really's column, and it was so damned annoying!  Doh!  TPP had violated one of his own rules for enjoying the holidays, and yes, Bill, there's more than one, so some of us just say, "Happy holidays!" Bill thinks people who do this need to "get over it", but the king of arrogance is the one who gets bent out of shape about this every year, and calls his pet peeve the "war on Christmas".  Now if Bill, who likes to drag out facts, knew anything about Christianity at all, he'd know that December is the wrong season for Christmas, so Christians decided to put their celebration right in among all those other celebrations on purpose.  It certainly wasn't the fault of those other religions because they were older, but even though Christmas has become the 800 lb. gorilla of holidays, it doesn't mean the other holidays go away.  Apparently being in the majority and still not being able to dictate seasonal greetings is just so irritating and that's what makes Bill so angry.  Well, happy holidays Bill.  Now, get a life.

Cupressoid conifers - hard to identify

TPP is working on an expanded dichotomous key for ornamental conifers that can be cultivated here in the upper midwest.  It's only to genus right now, but it's for people who see a conifer of any sort and just say, "pine tree".  There are some tricky bits and it's always those darned cupressoid conifers.  The problem is always the same, if you've got cones, it's easy, but if you rely on just vegetative features, then it can be darned hard, and that's what you have to count on.  The biggest problems are distinguishing Thuja (arborvitae) and Chamaecyparis (false cypress), although distinguishing Taxus (yew) and Cephalotaxus (plum yews) is hard too.  Taxus baccata is tough enough, but T. cuspidata with very 2-ranked foliage is even more like Cephalotaxus, so TPP is so happy Torreya doesn't grow here to further complicate things; this genus has been put into both families in the past but is currently with the yews.  This still needs more work because those darned taxonomists have taken Chamaecyparis nootkatensis and transferred this species to Xanthocyparis so TPP's garden diversity just went up a genus, but some of the observations were based on his nootka cypress so no idea how to distinguish this genus from Chamaecyparis.  Also trying my hand at distinguishing Siberian cypress (Microbiota) from spreading junipers (Juniperus); this seems pretty weak right now, and you hate to just say red cedars are prickly.  At any rate here are some couplets extracted from the whole key to see what you think.  So rush right outside and see how these work. TPP thought he had the plum yew figured out until he took a good look at his upright cultivar of a plum yew whose leaves are helically arranged.  Siberian cypress and plum yews are some nice low spreading shrubs that grow well in light shade, and the former is hardy to zone 2! 

3.  Leaves green beneath, apex of keel leaves convexly rounded such that apex points inward toward stem, lateral lvs do not meet to form a seam; cones oblong, scales thin  .................................................... Arbor-vitae (Thuja)
3'.  Leaves whitened beneath, apex of lateral keel leaves straight or concavely curved such that apex points upward along stem axis, lateral keel lvs meet to form a distinct, sometimes white, seam; cones round, scales thick ……….……………… White cedar, false cypress (Chamaecyparis)
 
4. Rounded branchlets; awn-shaped lvs stiff; shrubs to small trees of various sizes ...…. Red Cedar, Juniper (Juniperus)
4’. Slightly flattened brachlets; awn-shaped lvs flexible; low-growing shrub up to 60 cm (2 feet), usually less than 25 cm (10 inches) tall …………... Siberian Cypress (Microbiota)
 
14. Dark solitary seed surrounded by green aril turning pink-red with maturity (only on female plants); lvs more or less 2-ranked horizontal branches; common. .............Yew (Taxus)
14’. Ovules oval, green maturing to golden brown (edible); lvs strongly 2-ranked on horizontal branches; rare................................…………Plum Yew (Cephalotaxus)


 
 

Who you gonna call?

Ahh, don't you hate it when this happens?  You just go out for awhile, and the next thing you know a cat has gotten themselves tangled in your blinds and can't get out of.  One of TPP's kitty girls frequently locks herself into a room by closing the door aggressively, but she only gets out when someone notices she's missing (not a quick learner).  Now this cat is about 3 times the size of the average housecat, which is about 8 pounds.  So this bobcat is about the size of the F1's Maine coon cat (26.5 pounds!).  Ours once ruined a set of draperies because they were in his way and claws just open drapes differently than fingers.  But, and here's the good news, no one attempted or even suggested shooting the cat!  Hmm, then this story could not be from the USA where that's always the first solution to animal problems.

The gifs that keep on giffing

These are weirdly strange gifs, but fun.  They are a form of animation that has been around for quite some time.  When TPP was a kid, his younger sister got a bunch of kiddie phonograph records of nursery rhymes and songs that included gifs.  You'd put a faceted mirror in the center and as the record turned, the gif was animated. Yes, that's surely tough for many of you to imagine especially if you have no idea at all what 78 rpm means. Ah, a bit of searching and here's the exact items, the Red Raven Movie  record and magic mirror.  It was pretty amusing trying to figure out exactly how this worked, but it was much loved by my sister.  As soon as you see the record you'll see the similarity to the gifs shown at the link above. What a blast from the past!  Funny what triggers old memories.

End of the semester, at last!

Well, that's another fine semester shot to hell.  While too busy because of competing demands upon TPP's time, it was a good semester student-wise, really!  Four-fifths of the students in my botany class got As and Bs at a ratio of 1:2, a ratio that has not changed in this class for over 15 years.  The other fifth got Cs and Ds (poor study skills that survived junior college and poor work ethics).  The more advanced rainforest ecology class was probably the best ever, uniformly hard-working, bright, cooperative, and not in the least annoying.  How great is that?  There's always a feeling of great relief to be done, at least with the course work.  TPP started the task of cleaning up the semester debris that had accumulated in the lab and other work areas (the desk is still piled high), and picked up a project started about 2 months ago to figure out where things stood.  Spent some time trying to figure out how to distinguish, easily, yews from plum-yews.  It's a piece of cake if you have reproductive structures, but how often does that happen?  Having always had trouble thinking about holidays during a semester, it was time to think about some presents and then take some action.  So TPP visited 4 shops this afternoon.  One clerk asked, "Panic shopping?"  What's the date?  "The 17th." Well, until it's the 24th, it isn't a panic.  The 17th is really early shopping.  This is the problem when you starting holiday shopping back in November.  Came home and got a lot of great help from the kitty girls wrapping a few things, well, just one cat really, but she's such a help especially with ribbons.  Still need some cookies and other treats for a few special people, so tomorrow, maybe TPP will bake some cookies.