theora

More BPAL nattering

2016-02-22T01:50:37Z

On the theory that doing anything is often (not always) better than doing nothing, here's me nattering further about perfume.

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Reading about smelling

2016-01-20T18:28:09Z

I don't remember how when I heard about Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab (aka BPAL). I've never been a perfume wearer; in fact I've been generally anti-fragrance for most of my life. But when you go to their website, everything sounds so interesting and mysterious and potentially delightful that you think (well, I think), "I want to smell like that," or even just, "I want to know what that smells like."

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Roses

2015-05-31T00:12:55Z

The last thing I need is another plant obsession. But last year I decided I needed a rose for the trellis in front of the house, and somehow ended up with Night Owl (supposedly purple, by which they mean purple for a rose). I think it produced maybe one flower last summer. And then yesterday I walked around the corner and found this:

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Garden May 2015

2015-05-18T01:54:37Z

I aten't dead, and all that. Think I last posted over a year ago. Was a difficult year and continues difficult. But the garden carries on.

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State of the Garden - April 2014

2014-04-16T01:01:11Z

We'll start with the obligatory daffodils:

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State of the Garden - March 2014

2014-03-17T01:48:19Z

There's still snow in the garden (this time last year I was planting peas!), but but but...

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Today's data

2013-10-01T23:25:45Z

The United States ranks 8th in the 2013 Global AgeWatch report card, which tracks older peoples' well being.

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theora @ 2013-09-07T22:36:00

2013-09-08T03:35:25Z

Over Labor Day we visited my parents in Maine and I took some pictures of their garden.

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Facts of the day

2013-09-05T23:10:51Z

Recent analyses of the 2001 Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (ECLS-B) documents a disturbingly high level of depression among the nation’s mothers. Forty-one percent of 9-month-old infants live with a mother suffering from some form of depression, including 7 percent with mothers afflicted by severe depression. For infants living in poverty, the data are even more troubling: more than half (55 percent) of these infants live with a mother with mild or moderate depression, and 11 percent are being raised by mothers who suffer from severe depression.

Source [PDF]

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Greek

2013-08-25T02:34:44Z

Once again, come fall and back-to-school, I feel the pull to read Greek. Grabbed Selections from Herodotus off the shelf (with a glossary in the back, thank you very much), and we shall see how far I get with it.

Ἡροδότου Ἁλικαρνησσέος ἱστορίης ἀπόδεξις ἥδε, ὡς μήτε τὰ γενόμενα ἐξ ἀνθρώπων τῷ χρόνῳ ἐξίτηλα γένηται, μήτε ἔργα μεγάλα τε καὶ θωμαστά, τὰ μὲν Ἕλλησι τὰ δὲ βαρβάροισι ἀποδεχθέντα, ἀκλεᾶ γένηται, τά τε ἄλλα καὶ δι᾽ ἣν αἰτίην ἐπολέμησαν ἀλλήλοισι.[translation]

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Sleeping beeeauties (sorry, sorry)

2013-08-19T16:14:14Z

Now a couple from closer to home. Went out the other evening to have a look at my garden and caught some bees asleep on the flowers.

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Bigelow Prairie Cemetery

2013-08-19T15:10:36Z

I recently had a chance to visit Bigelow Prairie Cemetery in central Ohio. It's an old pioneer cemetery where the indigenous prairie plants have survived. It's totally surrounded by farmland in cultivation since the 1800s, now corn and soy fields (I'm guessing GMO round-up ready stuff at that), so the cemetery is one of a very few places where the native vegetation survives.

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Garlic harvest

2013-07-20T02:09:21Z

Garlic harvest this past Wednesday. I'd planted most of a 4'x8' bed, yielding a harvest of about 110 heads. Maybe a quarter of this will be used to plant up next year's crop in October. Garlic is the only thing I can grow enough of to meet all our needs.

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Things which make me go buh

2012-11-30T22:15:21Z

Flipping through yet another holiday catalog featuring festive fair isle sweaters modeled in snowy winter backdrops, it occurred to me that catalog makers must believe cold weather imagery has sufficient appeal all over the country that it's worth loading their Christmas catalogs up with picture after picture of it. Unless, of course, they send out different catalogs to the parts of the country where it doesn't really get cold or snow, which I doubt. I just don't get how pictures of weather which isn't yours would be appealing. But then I'm also bewildered by Christmas decorations involving fake snow and snowflakes in warm places, and actually find them rather upsetting. So this is probably just another way in which I am weird.

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Gratitude Project Day 17

2012-09-05T19:48:52Z

I'm grateful for garden blogs (and garden bloggers!). There's a bunch I read, they're all a bit different, and they're all pretty neat. Blogging takes a lot of effort (at least for me it does). I've never been able to keep it up for very long. I'm very lucky that other people can and do produce lots of content that I get to consume (and for nothing).

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theora @ 2012-09-05T15:35:00

2012-09-05T19:35:27Z

Hah. Reading back, what I should really be grateful for is parentheses.

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Gratitude Project Day 16

2012-09-05T19:33:09Z

I'm grateful to live in Massachusetts. I'm finding it hard to word this without sounding dismissive of "flyover states" or "red states" or whatever the current sneer is. That kind of condescending crap is neither accurate nor helpful.

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Gratitude Project Day 11

2012-08-22T18:36:49Z

(Am keeping up with this offline, will catch up with the posting eventually.)

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Gratitude Project Day 14

2012-08-17T19:39:06Z

I'm grateful for the best album EVAR (don't argue): Operation: Mindcrime. Holy crap, Geoff Tate's voice. Have I mentioned I suffer from vocalist lust?

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Gratitude Project Day 13

2012-08-17T19:28:42Z

I'm grateful for the Perseus Project, which is quite possibly the first website I ever visited. When I was in college circa 1995, one of my profs told us about this place you could find on the computer that had most/all Greek literature in the original - and most importantly, you could click on the words and get the definition! (Vocab was not and is not my strong suit.)

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Gratitude Project Day 12

2012-08-17T18:57:20Z

The catchup begins. And Day 11 is coming, but I need to upload a couple of pics first.

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Gratitude Project Day 10

2012-08-11T02:14:15Z

Today I'm grateful for open access journals, College & Research Libraries in particular. I can't quite express why (seriously, I've been trying to write this for half an hour). It's partly to do with having no connection to a university right now - a state I've been in rarely enough in my adult life that it feels quite odd. It's partly because it's been a year and a half since I had reason to read any librarianship literature, and I'm pleased to find that it still holds my interest (certain topics, anyway). It's partly that I'm glad I won't have to pay for a subscription to College & Research Libraries when I eventually get back into the job market. And it's partly a general approval of open access, for reasons I'm not going to get into right now because 1) I can't brain and 2) it's bedtime.

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Gratitude Project Day 9

2012-08-09T23:05:15Z

Today I am grateful for chocolate. Nom.

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Gratitude Project Day 8

2012-08-09T22:57:32Z

I am grateful that jaq knows how to do computer stuff that I don't know how to do but want done. For example, he's set it up so that we can play all our music via the web (if on the local network). He made a square-foot garden website (though to be fair I made the initial site as XML practice - I think that's all gone now in the name of improved functionality). He put together our web gallery so that we're not reliant on Google/Yahoo/other evil company. He set it up so that we can watch video from the computer on our TV (which is a 90s era twice hand-me-down). Although his geekery means we sometimes end up owning gadgets with no particular purpose in mind, that's a small price to pay.

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Gratitude Project Day 7

2012-08-07T19:44:26Z

I am grateful for oatmeal, which is yummy, versatile, full of whole grain goodness, and a mild galactagogue. Not bad for grass seed. Plus, after who knows what adulteration, it can become instant oatmeal, which I can make in the morning with only the effort of putting the kettle on and opening a packet.

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