Jan 27 2010
A cabbage palm frond. But don’t try to eat it. Even if it is lunch time. Maybe it would be better to reach for some lettuce instead. Though you probably won’t find any in your yard. Better head to supermarket for that.
Jan 21 2010
SkeptVet will be hosting the next Skeptics’ Circle. If you blog and have posts to submit, please do. Head on over to The SkeptVet Blog.
As for the “meaning” of the above photo? Your interpretation is as good as mine. Of course, those interpretations exist not in the photo, but in our minds. Art truly is subjective.
Jan 19 2010
Nature is such a free-for-all. Consider this backyard photo of the trunk to a small tree. Or maybe front-and-center in this photo is the growth of lichen, and the tree is just a stage.
Lichens are composite organisms consisting of a symbiotic association of a fungus (the mycobiont) with a photosynthetic partner (the photobiont or phycobiont), usually either a green alga (commonly Trebouxia) or cyanobacterium (commonly Nostoc). The morphology, physiology and biochemistry of lichens are very different from those of the isolated fungus and alga in culture. [Wikipedia]
Jan 16 2010
I feel for the people of Haiti. A tragedy. Can any good from this disaster? Sure, if human beings choose to do something. Will it outweigh the bad? Not by a long shot. At least in the short term and on the individual level for those who have lost loved ones.
On a much, much smaller scale, I feed a tad of sadness for the destruction in our backyard. Not brought by an earthquake, but by that recent rogue week of hard freezes. I surveyed the damage yesterday. Come spring gardening time, it’s almost going to be like starting over.
Starting over. There is hope in that. In the wake of loss, what better response is there than to roll up your sleeves and do something?
Jan 14 2010
If conscious and cognitively capable, would unicellular organisms floating in a drop perched atop a flower blossom wonder about possible “others” residing on unseen alternative blossoms and the fleeting world of dewdrop life which they depend?
An intriguing, popular, yet quasi-scientific solution to quantum and cosmological puzzles is the idea of multiple universes. Ours is merely one of many. The one we can see and know. The many? Fully hypothetical. At least at this point. Will there ever be a different point from which to see and perhaps know another universe? I wonder.
Jan 12 2010
The cold snap has nearly bulldozed our yard with frost damage. I won’t know the extent of it until I prune some bushes in a couple months. Have the freezing temperatures burned most to the ground? For the many hibiscus, my guess is “yes.”
My plan to aid plant recovery? Actually, I have none. Rather than drastic measures to fight what nature has wrought, I tend to “go with it.” Maybe water a little; maybe sprinkle a handful of fertilizer here and there. More importantly, I will take note and refrain from re-planting any particularly hard-hit vegetation.
The wise gardener refrains from placing a plant’s personal aesthetic “fitness” above it’s fitness for the local climate.
Jan 09 2010
That doesn’t happen very often. Walking with the dogs in our yard this morning, I got hit atop the head with hail. In Florida. Okay, the hail was half the size of peppercorns. But frozen stuff it was. Actually, sleet is probably a better word for it.
It’s been a weird week of cold weather. Many many plants look like lettuce that has been placed in the freezer overnight, then thawed in the sink. A flaccid, dark brown/green. Some plants look fine, including our rose bushes. They are the wilder, more “ancient” variety (less tight blossoms with fewer petals). The plants that have weathered the cold better have thicker, waxier leaves it seems.
It is presently 32 degrees outside and looking like it’s going to be a gray day.
That is the live forecast from my spot on the globe.
Jan 08 2010
It’s Friday. Thank Gawd for that. Actually, maybe we should thank social custom/convention for it. For if no one agreed it was Friday, it wouldn’t be Friday.
What is Friday? This is what the Online Etymological Dictionary says:
O.E. frigedæg “Frigga’s day,” (see Frigg), Gmc. goddess of married love, a W.Gmc. translation of L. dies Veneris, “day of (the planet) Venus,” which itself translated Gk. Aphrodites hemera. Cf. O.N. frijadagr, O.Fris. frigendei, M.Du. vridach, Du. vrijdag, Ger. Freitag “Friday,” and the L.-derived cognates O.Fr. vendresdi, Fr. vendredi, Sp. viernes. In the Gmc. pantheon, Freya (q.v.) corresponds more closely in character to Venus than Frigg does, and some early Icelandic writers used Freyjudagr for “Friday.”
Okay. How’s this: Today is the day–in a human-constructed pattern–preceding a day I do less office work. Yahoo!
If I punched a clock, today would be the day I before two sleep cycles without punching.
Party!
Jan 06 2010
There was a thin layer of ice on our goldfish pond this morning. An interesting attribute of the physics in our universe is that water expands as it freezes. In a solid state it has more volume than in a liquid. Which is unusual. It also explains why ice forms on the top of a pond and floats. More volume for the same quantity of molecules equals lower density. And floatation.
I wonder what our universe, and more importantly, our planet, would be like if water didn’t expand upon freezing. One thing’s for certain: speed skating wouldn’t be included in the winter Olympic games.
