The rites of spring

As a partial explanation of my absence from the blog for several days, I'll offer this photoessay showing the outburst of growth in the woods behind our home.  This past winter was unusually prolonged, so when non-Arctic temperatures finally arrived, most people in this part of the country rushed outdoors.  I headed to the woods behind our house.  (The photos should enlarge with a click)

This tree arches over the entry to the woods; this past winter we had several dead and undesirable trees taken out and failed to realize that this tree was leaning on one of those.  When its support was removed it bent to the extent that the top branches now touch the ground.  Not sure if they will collect enough light there for the tree to thrive, but for now it creates a living gateway.

In the Upper Midwest of the U.S., the primary choices for foliage plants in shaded woodlands are hostas.   This cluster at the base of the arching tree was one of the first I planted perhaps 10 years ago.  It will fill out to cover the entire mulched area before midsummer.  All except one of the clusters have had Repellex tablets placed in the root zone in an effort to dissuade rabbits from enjoying lunch here; one plant serves as a control.  We'll see what happens.

 

An even more striking foliage plant in my view is Pulmonaria spp.  I think we planted just a few; now they have proliferated in scattered locations in the woods.  I love the leaf patterns; the flowers are a bonus in the early spring but don't last long.  

These Lilies of the Valley came to us in an exchange with a neighbor to whom we donated some of the pulmonaria.  The other flowers in bloom this week include the bleeding hearts (photo at the top of this post), phlox, trillium, bluebells, dandelions, wild geraniums and violets.

 

Last fall I spent uncounted hours laying down landscape fabric and then dragging tarps full of hardwood mulch to the woods to create walking paths.   There's still lots of work to do to finish the paths (I'm laying down logs from the cut trees and partially embedding them on the sides of the paths to keep the mulch from spreading.   The paths give me a more secure footing for walking and also subdivide the garden into areas where we can experiment with different botanical combinations.

This hosta was the first one I planted in the woods after I spent the better part of probably two summers grubbing out the buckthorn and honeysuckle underbrush by the roots.  The soil back here is black loam several inches deep, and the other plants love it once you remove the invasives that steal all the water and light.  This fellow will be huge by the end of the summer; I probably should subdivide him.

We've added bluebells; these are not the English bluebells that you see in immense masses in the forests of the National Trust in Britain.  I put chicken wire around this cluster this week to keep the rabbits at bay, because we want to harvest the seeds to scatter in other areas of the woods.  Last summer the rabbits nibbled these down to the ground.

 

It makes sense to incorporate some landscape features into the planting scheme (and it makes way more sense than trying to move them).  Here three varieties of hosta cluster around a set of large boulders.

Some phlox was initially planted in the center of this area; it has now spread up and down the hillside.  The ferns are escaping from their bed and may have to be restrained because they will shade out everything else, and they are aggressive spreaders in soil like this.

A felicitous combination of plants - Jacks in the Pulpit at the far left just getting started, a variegated hosta, a Pulmonaria cluster, and at the far right some native violets.

Both the white trillium and the yellow ones need some protection from rabbits until they manage to spread to some distant locations.  The chicken wire is unattractive and "unnatural,", but is a temporary means to an end.

I really enjoy having Jacks-in-the-pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum) in the woods.  Never had to plant them; the year after I got out all the invasive underbrush, a couple Jacks emerged.  Now there are hundreds of them; the largest/oldest ones in the woods get as high as my thigh.

Last fall I wrote a post for this blog about propagating Jacks; I heard recently from my friend that her transplants have emerged and appear healthy.

I'll be back out in the woods and yard in the days to come.  Also facing the annual monster chore of Cleaning The Garage.  And hobby and family stuff is accelerating - and the Monarchs will be arriving within a week or so.  So the blog posts will be fewer for the next several weeks.

Scrimshaw pie crimpers

On a recent Venue visit to the New Bedford Whaling Museum, I was captivated by a gallery filled with scrimshaw items, carved by American nineteenth-century whalemen as gifts for mothers, wives, and sweethearts during their long sea voyages... scrimshanders carved baleen, walrus tusks, and whale teeth into hundreds of thousands of pie crimpers.

Serious pastry chefs today still crimp the edges of their pies using their fingers. Some might go as far as using a fork or spoon to create decorative patterns; and the truly gadget-obsessed, or those with no limitations on their kitchen storage space, might even own a simple stainless steel crimping wheel.

Nineteenth-century scrimshaw pie crimpers, however, are not just useful for sealing pies with an attractive flourish. They incorporate forks for punching air holes, knives for cutting off excess pastry, tart tampers that double as decorative stamps, and, most importantly, two, three, or even four crimping wheels, each of which would imprint a different pattern on your pie crust. 

More photos at the Edible Geography source. And a new word for me: scrimshander.  Not in my Random House dictionary, but I found it along with scrimshandy, and scrimshoner as a referent under scrimshaw.

Photo credit: New Bedford Whaling Museum/Nicola Twilley.

"Retronasal olfaction" - smelling food after it's in the mouth

As most readers of Edible Geography will know, smell makes up to ninety percent of what we perceive as flavour, primarily through a process known as retronasal olfaction, in which odour molecules travel from the mouth to the nose via the throat as we eat.

More at the link.

Giving new meaning to "Hire the Handicapped"

Excerpts from a New York Post story:

Some wealthy Manhattan moms have figured out a way to cut the long lines at Disney World — by hiring disabled people to pose as family members so they and their kids can jump to the front, The Post has learned.

The “black-market Disney guides” run $130 an hour, or $1,040 for an eight-hour day. “My daughter waited one minute to get on ‘It’s a Small World’ — the other kids had to wait 2 1/2 hours,” crowed one mom, who hired a disabled guide through Dream Tours Florida.

“You can’t go to Disney without a tour concierge,’’ she sniffed. “This is how the 1 percent does Disney.” The woman said she hired a Dream Tours guide to escort her, her husband and their 1-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter through the park in a motorized scooter with a “handicapped” sign on it. The group was sent straight to an auxiliary entrance at the front of each attraction.

The New York Post is admittedly not the best choice for a source.  Via Reddit, where the thread included these comments:

"Former Disney employee here.  The only thing new here is the way people are getting to bypass lines. To me, this is actually more honorable than what I usually see. Typically, average joes and obese people complain they can't walk or stand in line due to some BS medical reason. Disney doesn't want to look bad so they give away wheelchairs. People fuck the system like the liars they are to wait less. I know most redditors aren't rich and I'm sorry to bring another side of the argument to people, but think about it like this; these moms are hiring people who want a job, and are taking them to fucking DISNEY WORLD. Ya it may be a shitty sounding tactic, but it's a lot more honest than other people I've seen while working. "

"It is actually shady for the handicapped person. They are selling ADA access. Kind of sick, when the ADA is there for them to function in society, not exploit for money. My guess is disney will just start logging these people and banning them from the park, since they are undermining the VIP access that disney sells."

"It sounds like a secretive and highly sketchy operation with folks pulling in quite a lot of cash. If the disabled tour guides are paying FICA and income taxes, fine. They might only have a problem with Disney. If they are working under the table while collecting disability insurance payments they might have a bigger problem. Social Security Disability Insurance (and Medicare coverage before age 62) require people to be unable to work. Income from work would have to be disclosed and might disqualify them from disability benefits, not to mention the problems with the IRS. "

Here it is!

Posted at imgur.

The Battle Song of St. Trinians - updated

YouTube link. 

After watching one of the original St. Trinians movies I could NOT get the theme song out of my head, and thought perhaps if I post it here and someone else will listen to it, it might jump into your head and out of mine.

Maidens of St Trinian's, gird your armour on.

Grab the nearest weapon; never mind which one.

The battle's to the strongest; might is always right.

Trample on the weakest; glory in their plight.

St Trinian's! St Trinian's! Our battle cry.

St Trinian's! St Trinian's! Will never die.

Stride towards your fortune boldly on your way,

Never once forgetting there's one born every day.

Let our motto be broadcast: "get your blow in first!"

She who draws the sword last always comes off worst.

Reposted from 2010 to commemorate the recent death of Ronald Searle, who created the iconic illustrations of St. Trinian's.

The first two or three films from the 1950s and 60s, starring Alastair Sim, Joyce Grenfell, and George Cole, were memorable components of my childhood cinema education (the later remakes were eminently forgettable). Cartoon via Fictions.  Ronald Searle tribute blog here.

Addendum:  Reblogged from 2012 because of a report in The Telegraph that the school which served as the inspiration for St. Trinian's will now be admitting... boys.

From 2014, they will be allowed at Perse Girls' junior school, part of the Stephen Perse Foundation - a group of independent schools in Cambridge...

The new system will see girls and boys aged 10 to 16 taught alongside each other in creative subjects and sports but separately in other lessons. They will however, also share facilities such as libraries and eating areas.

Tricia Kelleher, principal of the foundation, said this would allow the school to "remain true to its single sex roots" while at the same time, embracing the "best of all worlds".

She said the move was in response to requests from parents and would go some of the way to redressing the deficit of places for boys in Cambridge schools, adding it was not fair that girls "should have all the fun"...

Mr Searle, a sketch artist for the Cambridge Daily News, now the Cambridge News, said that as a teenager attending Boys' Central School in Cambridge, he would see the girls on the way home from school. 

In a letter to the school he said Perse Girls was a "positive source of inspiration" and added: "But I hope the school won't hold that against me, so many years after the crime." 

I don't dare play the video this morning, or else I'll have an earworm all day.

Geoguesser challenge

When you click on GeoGuesser, it uploads a series of five Streetview images from Google.  You can then explore short distances, and the goal is to find out where those locations are and mark them on the map.  Your score is apparently determined by your distance from the actual location.  I don't believe there is a time limitation.

I'm not sure what determines what distance you can "travel," but it does seem to be limited.  Some of the most relevant information in the photos has been obscured (notably license plates on vehicles), but you can read many billboards and building signs.

When you place your answer on the map, you can zoom in on the target for more accurate placement (assuming you know where you're going).

The five uploads are probably random; I was helped in getting a high score by having one American and two Scandinavian locations.  I tried again using Google in a separate tab to look up some words I saw and was able to raise my score to 16,801, but I don't know if that was "legal."

Start here.

Via Neatorama.

Hungary's "Attraction" shadow theater company performs

YouTube link.

With a hat tip to Warren.

You can see why it's called a "bloodwood" tree

"The bloodwood tree (Pterocarpus angolensis) is a deciduous, spreading and slightly flat-crowned tree with a high canopy. It reaches about 15 metres in height and has dark bark. The bloodwood grows in warm areas in the northeast of Africa, extending into Zimbabwe, northern Botswana, Mozambique and Namibia. The red sap is used traditionally as a dye and in some areas mixed with animal fat to make a cosmetic for faces and bodies."

Source, via The Soul is Bone.

73 to the 12th power is how much? Rudiger Gamm knows. Also 54 to the 17th power. Watch.

YouTube link.

This is Rudiger Gamm.  What's interesting is that even though he is a mental calculator, for this television show he appears to be not calculating the numbers, but rather reciting them from memory.

From his head motion I would also wonder if he has an eidetic memory and is seeing the number in his mind and reading it out loud.

Medical nipple tattoos vs. "titoos"

The embedded image shows the breasts of a mastectomy patient who has subsequently received cosmetic tattoos of nipples.  This is one of four examples depicted in a small gallery at BreastCancer.org.  It can be done with or without nipple reconstruction ("If you want the projection then tattooing can be done in conjunction with recon but if you do not need the projection 3-D tattooing can give you the illusion of projection without the additional surgery.")  It can also be done on radiated skin.

Found while reading about "titooing," which is pure cosmetic enhancement of people with nipples:

Gail Proudman, an independent clinician based in Merseyside, tattoos the nipples of more than three women a week and has seen a huge increase in young women coming in for the latest cosmetic trend. She explains: "A lot of people want their nipples made darker. It’s the fashion. Some people think theirs are too pink or their boyfriends want them done. I think sometime they are doing it because they are conscious of them being pale and they think it’s fashionable to have dark nipples...

The two-hour procedure, which can cost up to £1,200 for both nipples, lasts around 12 to 18 months and top-ups are recommended to restore any colour lost as the ink fades over time... In Liverpool, a number of salons already offer nipple tattooing and there at least 15 independent technicians based in the area. It is rapidly catching up with vajazzles, designer vaginas and boob jobs as the latest cosmetic procedure available to women nationwide. 

More re the pros and cons of the procedure in The Telegraph.

Michele Bachmann channels Cotton Mather

YouTube link.

"It's no secret that our nation may very well be experiencing the hand of judgment. It's no secret that we all are concerned that our nation may be in a time of decline.... Our nation has seen judgment not once but twice on September 11. That's why we're going to have '9/11 Pray' on that day. Is there anything better that we can do on that day rather than to humble ourselves and to pray to an almighty God?"

This response from Rachel Maddow:

To be sure, Bachmann, like everyone else, is entitled to whatever theological beliefs she wishes to embrace. But it's nevertheless jarring, to put it mildly, to see a prominent politician -- a former presidential candidate and current member of the House Intelligence Committee -- argue publicly that God's judgment of Americans' sins led to deadly terrorist attacks. Members of Congress usually blame the terrorists for mass murder, not us.

Incoming !

YouTube link.

In the spring in Minnesota, the ice is supposed to "go out."  But sometimes, it comes in...

There are valid reasons why lake associations and building codes specify setbacks from lakeshore; most of these have to do with preservation of the riparian environment, but as the video above shows, a setback can help protect a home.

This event happened on Lake Mille Lacs, which is large enough to have a long fetch for the wind; the risks would be lower on a smaller lake unless repeated icejacking occurred.

There is a second video of the aftermath of the ice heave.

The Telegraph has a report (with video) of even more massive damage in Canada (12 homes destroyed by a 29-foot wall of ice)

What determines the angle of a boat's wake?

I'd never given it a thought, but the question has been debated for over a century.

Lord Kelvin is still making waves. In the 1880s, the great British physicist—then a commoner named William Thomson—argued that the wake of a boat fans out at the same angle regardless of how fast the boat is going. But scientists and engineers have long known that boats sometimes appear to have narrower wakes. Now two French physicists say they've explained that narrowing. Their idea may not sail smoothly into the textbooks, however, as experts in marine engineering are skeptical.

An avid seaman, Kelvin analyzed boat wakes and came to a rather curious conclusion: No matter the speed of the boat, it should produce a wake with a "wake angle" of 19.47°. (See figure.) That odd constancy arises for two reasons. First, the speed or "phase velocity," of water waves varies with their wavelength, with longer wavelengths traveling faster than shorter ones do. As the boat moves, it creates waves of all speeds slower than the boat itself. And the longer waves generally spread out behind it faster than the shorter ones. 

The old theory, the new theory, and the counterarguments are discussed briefly at Science.

"One foot in the grave"

When life gives you lemons...

From imgur.