I've been wanting to get some photos of the spring flowers around here, and even though it was kind of overcast this afternoon, I did that. You can view the whole series by clicking on this photo, and then proceeding to the next, and the next, until you reach the end. There are eight selected snaps.

Bleeding Hearts is an old fashioned garden flower, perennial, that produces long strands of little pink hearts in May. Gary likes them and has two very nice specimens going. Our planting style is what is sometimes called "naturalized," in which the cultivated plants are blended right into the natural environment rather than being placed in formal beds.

Tags: farm gardening
Current Location: Rainy oak grove
Mood: artistic

I've been meaning to post this one all week, so here it is.

This Beurre Bosc pear tree is about six years old now. Two years ago it had a handful of flowers and produced a single pear. This year it has finally produced full blossom. Unfortunately, between the colony collapse disorder which has reduced the US honeybee population drastically and the fact that a companion pear tree of another type didn't survive, chances of actual fruit are vanishingly small. The next closest pear tree is about a half mile away as far as we know. Taken on Friday, May 9, 2008.

The bee thing is kinda scary. Outside my window at work there's a crabapple tree that has been loaded with pink blossoms for at least a week. I've been watching for honeybees, and I think I've seen two. A few bumblebees, who do pollinate but aren't as efficient and thorough as the honeybee. A few other insects who may or may not really pollinate the flowers. Like 'em or not, folks, we need the bees. Food crops like squash, pumpkins, okra, beans, and most fruit trees absolutely require pollination, often with pollen from a different individual plant in order to bear fruit. Something (and I'm very much afraid it's a reaction to genetically modified crop pollen) is completely destroying the honeybee colonies. (You can read reams about it by looking up "colony collapse disorder" but so far no one really knows what the actual cause is.)

Bees eat pollen, especially when they are in their larval stage. Some of the GM crops have genes inserted to produce the same toxin that Bacillus thuringiensis makes. That toxin kills caterpillars of the moth and butterfly variety. I don't know what it might do to bee larvae, but we may be finding out right now.

Rachel Carson, in her book Silent Spring, predicted that humans would eventually poison the natural balance by overusing pesticides, thereby destroying the pollinator species, and triggering crop failures on a massive scale. She may have been right about the results without guessing correctly at the mechanism.

Tags: farm, gardening
Current Location: Home in the oak grove
Mood: worried

I couldn't resist running out at dusk to see if I could get any nice photos. It was gloomy earlier but started to clear up just before sunset. Here's the best one I got, I think. Looking west over the vegetable garden, about 8:20 pm on 15 May 2008. This one was tilted up to maximize the sky, and therefore received a shorter exposure that reduced the vegetation to silhouette. I played with the gamma a bit to reduce the sky's glare, which also emphasizes the colors. With a little help, even a cheap camera makes a nice photo.

Tags: farm
Mood: chipper

Haven't done one of these in quite a while. Stolen from drgnkiyo.

( Fictional characters and sexual charisma )

Tags: meme
Mood: silly

*Folds up the Wednesday shield that vimsig gave him, since it's almost bed time*

Wednesdays are interminable, I swear. Someone figured out how to sneak an extra 12 hours into them.

Had lunch with Gary in Woodstock, which was nice, and then went over to the Woodstock Public Library for a catalogers' meeting, which is always at least interesting but tends to run long, which this one did. Back to Harvard for the evening shift, where staff were being harrassed by some middle school age boys who were just being obnoxious for the sake of doing so, testing to see what they could get away with.

The copper pipes have been replaced so the air conditioning works again, for the moment. I wonder if they'll stay in place long enough for us to get a fence and security camera set up back there. A gray and gloomy morning at least turned into a sunny and clear afternoon and a pretty sunset.

Coding on the MUSH continues albeit slowly. Character requests can be queued to trnsmnt (at) ix.netcom.com if you don't want to wait for the web application form to come up. They'll be saved up until we're ready to "go live." Minimum information to provide for each character request is a login name, a species, and a gender. Your e-mail address is assumed valid on the mail sent. Please limit yourself to two requests maximum for now.

Here's a species list. Other species than those shown here may be delayed for later consideration.

Herbivores: mustang, deer (could also be elk), hare, squirrel, goose, woodchuck, dove, mountain sheep

Omnivores: bear, raccoon, skunk, fox, coyote, badger, raven

Carnivores: ocelot, bobcat, wolf, otter, weasel, hawk, owl, heron

Tags: work
Mood: tired

I was joking yesterday about the connection between Homeland Security and Pitney-Bowes (makers of postage metering equipment, for those who don't know) but it's no joke.

Today I happened to be the one who answered the door when the letter carrier came. He explained it to me and gave me a little printed notice that they are pasting onto packages and returning them to the sender.

The actual weight limit is 14 ounces. Anything 14 ounces or under can be mailed in a mailbox or handed to the carrier with stamps on it for the postage. Anything over 14 ounces must be taken to the post office in person in order to mail it... [Why 14 ounces instead of a pound? Who knows?]

UNLESS...

You use a postage meter to put the postage on. If the postage consists of a meter label instead of stamps, then the old rules apply and you can put it into the mailbox or give it to the carrier. So terrorists can't use postage meters? Or steal them? Or use them illicitly at their cover job? What a crock of you-know-what.

(Yes, I know, postage meters have registered serial numbers on them. I also know it isn't hard to obscure or damage the serial number impression, and that postage meters can be stolen and at least used until the cash recorded in them runs out. I'm still not impressed with the "effectiveness" of this measure.)

Mood: annoyed

The HVAC guys were at the library today to start repairing the damage done by the copper thieves. They say that it's likely the thieves were interrupted by something or someone. Otherwise they would have done far more damage. They advise enclosing the entire equipment area in security fencing immediately. I know that isn't going to set well with the city, the library board, or my boss. Not so much because of the cost as because it will "look like an armed camp." Of course the city has a wellhead within about 500 feet of the building and that is surrounded by chain link and barbed wire.

Some little progress on the MUSH environment. More habitat built, and one custom command adapted and installed. MUSH code is like LISP, nested parens and brackets until you want to go mad. It's also more or less object oriented, which is logical in a sort of perverse way, but OOP always hurts my head.

For several years, our mail carrier at the library has been taking our outgoing mail with him. Being a library, of course, we mail a certain number of books to other libraries. We use a postal scale and put on the correct amount of postage, and he's been taking them for us. No more, though. Apparently the word came down that he could no longer accept anything that weighs more than a pound. Letters are OK, packages are not. As this came to me second hand, it also included the instruction that it wasn't legal to put stamps on such packages any more, which I find hard to believe. But we are told not only must we take them to the post office personally in order to get them mailed, but we can't prepay the postage unless we use a meter. What's with that? Is Homeland Security now in league with Pitney-Bowes the way the Bush administration is cozy with Exxon?

Speaking of which, as I predicted, the four gas stations in Harvard jumped their prices again today to 4.09 for unleaded. They've been increasing the price twice a week for a while now, sometimes in jumps of 15 or 20 cents. This makes them still the highest priced stations within at least 25 miles.

Mood: crappy