Monday, January 11, 2010

Holiday Lights Set-Up (In Reverse)

Today began the epic take down of the holiday lights show which can be (and is) complicated by snow and ice conditions and temperature. The gang was able to bring in many of the obelisks as seen in the picture to the left with Jerry and Bill working with Dr. Gredler (seen unwinding). Marv, Terry, Larry and Dick W. started the process outside and it will take a couple months to get everything in as much of the show is frozen in pretty well. Urban worked on pruning while the carpenter quartet (Dave, Jim, Bob A., Vern) kept busy as did Del who is building more reindeer cutouts for later this year already. Rose came in to work on benches and both Marianne and Janice joined me in the office for various projects. We also saw Maury, Dick H., Charlie and Bob T. today. Lots of work going on!

I'll continue to keep putting in seed source recommendations. To the above right is Stokes (http://www.stokesseeds.com/) out of Buffalo, NY that has been around since 1881. In terms of quantity of seed for my orders, this catalog is one of my top five suppliers as their selection is very nice for many types of vegetables and annuals in particular. Stokes caters to the home gardener and farmer alike and is always well-received in my mailbox. To the left is a very interesting catalog from J.L. Hudson (La Honda, CA) that offers a fascinating array of seeds from around the world. Founded in 1911 by Harry Saier, the current operation is run by David Theodoropoulus who incidentally, wrote a fascinating book called Invasion Biology - Critique of a Pseudoscience. Very interesting. J.L. Hudson, which terms itself a "public access seed bank", has a website at http://www.jlhudsonseeds.net/. While only a black and white catalog, the descriptions are engaging and informative with comic relief throughout. I wouldn't be without this catalog although we usually order only specialty varieties as needed.
Above is a picture of my environmental pet peeve of the day. CDs and similar storage devices, while wonderful mechanisms for data storage, programs, music, games, etc. are primarly made from a mix of polycarbonate, plastic and aluminum. They don't break down easily (500+ years) and are not easily recycled. American consumers buy about 1 billion CDs every year and over four million CDs are thrown away each day. I've thrown away CDs and am feeling pretty guilty about it. I can keep rattling off discouraging facts about the casual disposal of these items but the encouraging news is that there are recent developments in groundbreaking CDs made of corn and some made partly from paper. "Techno-trash" is a huge problem on planet earth and will continue to be so until we can create better systems for reuse and recycling of our technology and its components. Try to maximize your duration of use/sharing for these CDs or look in to various organizations that recycle for you. Peruse http://www.greendisk.com/ and http://www.ecodisk.com/ for some ideas on what these services offer. See 'Wrapped in Raspberry' (Iris germanica) below (picture from Tina) that should be peaking like this in only 139 days, but who is counting? :)

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