Friday, March 21, 2008

"For Cynthia" is Beginning to Brighten the Landscape

Each day brings some new indication of spring. Today's change: the tightly furled yellow buds of the forsythia have begun to open. It's always a lift to see the bright sunshine of the forsythia blossoms against the cool clear blue sky of spring. (The photo here was actually taken last year. So far the only forsythia blooms open on our bushes are onesies and twosies about 2' off the ground.)

Just last year I learned that this spring reliable can also serve as a reminder/trigger: it's time to apply corn gluten to the lawn for summer weed control.

I like the idea of using natural signals to time particular garden tasks. It makes biological sense to me.... Truthfully, it also seems a little poetic. And when we're applying a substance that's a fertilizer to already established plants, rather than a poison to almost everything it touches (like so many petrochemical substances that get used by many gardeners), it seems truly life enhancing.

So, folks, let's get out there and get those spreaders spurting. Here's to the golden sunshine of spring!

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous8:14 PM

    You're a dork. For Cynthia, indeed. :-)

    You could've broke out the camera for some of the previous posts, btw. Or at least linked an article or picture of that goatwing thing.

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  2. Is that any way to speak to your mother?!!!!

    BTW, I need to discuss the etiquette of using other people's photos from the web with you. I don't have a personal photo of the goatweed leafwing showing the upper surfaces, which are the glamorous ones, but I'm hesitant to "lift" a photo from some other site. Any thoughts?

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  3. Anonymous7:59 PM

    Well, you can just embed and image that still links back to their site, which means techinically you're not taking it from them since the link still goes to them...and it has an added benefit in that you use their bandwidth instead of yours. If that bothers you, a lot of stuff out there is Creative Commons "licensed" or public domain, so it shouldn't be a big deal. Worse comes to worst, someone might send you a "please don't use my stuff" email, and you take it down.

    Speaking of which, you should think about explicitly creative commoning your pictures.

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  4. Ouch, you computer geek, you.

    I guess I'll have to find a time to connect with you personally to figure out what/how to "embed an image that still links back to their site" and what the details, pro and con, are of "creative commoning" my photos.

    Try speaking English once in a while, please!

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