Everyone else in our low-slung boat in the Okefenokee Swamp was leaning over the edge hoping to spy alligators. I was cowering in the middle, trying to stay perfectly still so we wouldn’t find ourselves swimming with reptiles. In other words, I was being a big scaredy cat. We did see enough alligators, egrets, and other wildlife to satisfy everyone, and I was finally able to enjoy the scenery. On one expanse of water, reflecting the day’s blue sky, we saw Orontium Aquaticum, or Golden Club, as far as the eye could register in all directions. The reflections of the colorful stalks had a deceptive, other-worldly look which I found beautiful, and I was almost charmed into forgetting the sinister setting. But on balance I still associate our day in the swamp with a sense of intrusion and courting disaster. The idea that pushing off into the streams, canals, and shallow lakes in a kayak could be a pleasurable pastime for some people almost leaves me speechless with dread.

Christy has decreed that for the little children’s sakes, and in order to preserve the Santa-Christmas present connection, there should be no gifts under the tree serving as decorations all through December as in the past,. In addition, we should minimize the use of such time-saving strategies as Christmas bags and the filling of pre-wrapped boxes that get saved from year to year. It is necessary, therefore, to get the wrapping operation in gear now, and I have dragged all my favorite papers, ribbons, and labels up from the basement. Rochester friends, please do not “just drop in anytime” until I give the all-clear signal, because I’m making quite a mess. Gift wrapping is no chore for me, however. I love to make things look trim and beautiful and don’t even feel the pangs of loss and desolation as ripped paper mounts in a pile on Christmas morning in a fraction of the time it has taken to create the perfect and bountiful tableau. Going back 50 years, I was the designated wrapper of presents in my family; in fact, I even wrapped the gifts I would receive a few days later from my parents. My mother would hand me boxes and say, “This one’s for Elaine…and this one’s for you, so use some nice paper that you like.” Although this may be hard to believe, I didn’t mind and actually keep that scene as a happy memory. I wasn’t even tempted to peek or shake. An extreme example of this willingness to suspend the normal curiosity of childhood occurred the year I was in sixth grade. There appeared in the living room of our tiny apartment a large box-shaped object covered with a sheet and pushed against the wall; my mother cautioned us not to touch or peek at it. I exclaimed, “I know it must be a television!” since by 1955 a t.v. had appeared in most of our acquaintances’ homes. My mother said, “It could be a washing machine…” and I believed her. I’m pretty sure my sister also resisted the temptation to look during the next few days leading up to Christmas. Joy of joys, it did turn out to be a television, proving to a child who still dwelt in The Land of Magical Thinking that virtue is rewarded and not peeking had turned the box into a treasure chest in which we would discover The Lone Ranger, Lassie, and Shirley Temple re-runs.

Like many people, I often go first to the Internet to find out whether a certain disease-causing organism is a bacteria or a virus, how much I should be paying for an appliance, who said what famous sentence, or which peppers are mild and which are deathly. I wanted to find some examples of early photography and came across Masters of Photography, a gallery of images, information, and links for more than 60 photographers. Some of them are familiar names to me (Ansel Adams, Arnold Newman, Margaret Bourke-White, and Sebastiao Salgado), others have a style or individual images I recognize, and there are some famous photographers who are not represented; maybe this is more about copyright issues or artists’ permission problems rather than personal preference on the part of the compiler of the site. I enjoy looking at the work of photographers who were pioneers or who recorded a specific era or topic (e.g., Jacques-Henri Lartigue) and those whose works display a unique perspective (e.g., Robert Doisneau). In the latter case, a lot of his images seem to be what some people call “grab” shots, captured by hanging around in the street watching for something to happen rather than posing people or taking a picture of some stationary object. How did Doisneau manage to include so much in each picture, and such funny juxtapositions of events to boot? Sometimes the images give me ideas for self-assignment; most of the time they just humble me. [The image accompanying this entry is from the Masters of Photography site: Robert Doisneau, Square du Vert-Galant, 1950.]

Right after Thanksgiving, the Erie Canal near us in Rochester was drained and appears to have dropped at least five feet. This has left a shallow basin of creamy brown water below the rocky inclined banks. I’d say the owners of this dock don’t have to worry about a wake from fast-moving boats for the next few months. The canal’s yearly cycle of water levels is controlled by the routine manipulation of guard gates spaced along the route rather than being determined by rainfall, although the focused rainstorms early last summer did cause flooding and damaged some of the locks, perhaps before the gates could be engaged. You can compare the water level shown here to the picture entry for Saturday, October 28, 2006 when the canal was still on its summer schedule. The Rochester Public Library has an online archive of Erie Canal photographs, including this page of winter images.

Raise your hand if you rejoice at seeing “spam” in your email inbox. That would be nobody I know. Many of us have subscribed to the Do Not Call lists that have actually succeeded in eliminating the dinner hour phone solicitations. We even seem to be getting less junk mail. But I still get excited when my seed catalogs start arriving, even though the growing stack includes many I didn’t request. In fact, yesterday I got four: an old standby, Seymour’s Selected Seeds, but also The Vermont Bean Seed Company (~100 varieties of beans in addition to other common and rare vegetables), Totally Tomatoes (40 pages of tomato varieties), and one that makes me feel like a special customer, McClure & Zimmerman (Quality Flowerbulb Brokers for the Dedicated Bulb Enthusiast). I haven’t figured out why they all have the same address in Randolph, Wisconsin, since the catalog style and seed offerings differ substantially; maybe it’s just a catalog fulfillment center with a room full of computers and not a single agricultural item anywhere in sight. This year, I’ve made two great Internet finds. Dave’s Gardens, a consumer-friendly site with a lot of information contributed by home gardeners, has a Garden Watchdog section where readers rate and comment on the seeds and service of many sellers. That’s where I first read about Renee’s Garden which has to have the best seed packets ever and horticultural information on their website about every unusual variety they carry. The image that accompanies this entry shows the components of a sample Renee’s packet, along with an amaranthus plant in this year’s bridge garden. In the end, I will set aside a couple of evenings in January with a highlighter and last year’s seed list, make my selections from the colorful array of catalogs, and then order online. Even though I notice that Renee’s Garden does not even offer a “real” catalog and may represent the future of seed sales solely on the Internet, this is one arena where I don’t think I’ll ever be comfortable going paperless.

One of the tricks that some digital cameras can perform is producing panoramic views. The LCD screen on the back of my Canon G6 helps by indicating where there is a seam between the previous image and the one being focused on currently. I then use a free “stitching” program, AutoStitch, that by some miracle combines all the images. The panorama that accompanies this entry, taken in the Japanese Garden at Seattle’s Washington Park Arboretum, was made from ten separate shots. Click on the picture to see it bigger; you may have to use the scroll bar to view the whole thing. A smaller view of a different part of this garden is made from three shots stitched together. Since a Japanese garden is really meant to be viewed as several small jewel-like vignettes rather than in a broad sweep, the panorama may not be as appropriate for this setting, but I sure do like the technology.

Christy and I spent the day after Thanksgiving chuckling in derision and feeling superior to all those people who went shopping on the busiest day in the mall year. Then we turned around on Saturday morning and hit the stores before breakfast, seduced by all those % symbols in the ads and one Door Buster Special item in particular. All we encountered at that early hour were bleary-eyed salespersons straightening up from the previous day’s chaos, empty aisles, and more good deals than we could possibly take advantage of. We came home triumphant in the knowledge that we had bought wisely and generously, been a part of the national madness, taken time for relaxing with good coffee, and minutely examined every superfluous kitchen gadget on the planet. We even have several coupons left (cannot be used for Incredible Values, Bonus Buys, Yellow Dot Clearance Items, Door Busters, Morning Specials, or Super Buys) as souvenirs of the day.

Although some digital images are printed or posted online straight out of the camera, many photographers have a favorite workflow involving cropping and enhancements or adjustments of such characteristics as color balance, resolution, or sharpness. Not satisfied with this degree of post-processing, some enthusiasts attempt artistic treatments and in fact there are expensive programs dedicated to producing such “painterly” versions of digital images. Debate rages in online forums about what constitutes legitimate post-processing; purists often label experimentation “over the top” if not illegal and un-American, but the words retouching, restoration, enhancement, painting, and smudging have begun to overlap in meaning and the proponents of various methods of manipulating photos generally give each other space and respect. I admire the results many digital artists achieve and have begun timid experimentation myself. I don’t want my finished images to be too obvious or heavy-handed. How did I do on this Abraham Darby rose?

Ten days ago at the turkey farm out Ridge Road in Clarkson, there were hundreds of identical white turkeys milling about resignedly in their crowded pen. Little did they know that this week the fence would imprison nothing more than a few feathers stuck in the mud. But the turkeys pictured here are the kind that have the good sense to be afraid of people who get too close. They were wandering around the Green Acres apricot orchard at blueberry time, when there are always a lot of cars and people invading their space. They scurried a few yards, stopped to browse, almost took flight (they can fly), and stopped to snack again. Every time I got close enough to frame a shot, they took off. Actually, such flocks of wild turkeys are a pretty common sight here in western New York, including literally in our own back yard. I don’t know if people actually eat them, at least not when they can get a perfectly good frozen bird at Wegmans for 39 cents a pound.

Because our Pacific Northwest trip often took us to the very edge of North America, we were always watching for an ocean sunset—and we did see many glorious ones. Victoria, on Vancouver Island, has a pretty little harbor filled with tiny tugboats, mammoth ferries, and tall-masted sailboats, so it’s a magnet for photographers and sky-gazers. One evening, after taking a lot of pictures, I turned to face east toward the shops and saw this rosy reflection in a window. You can see the ghost of a staircase inside, but the colors of the sunset predominate as they soak even the masonry around the window. I always have a hurried internal debate, before pressing the shutter, about whether people improve a picture or are a distraction, so you can click here to make a comparison and draw your own conclusion.

I have to keep reminding myself that there’s plenty to see close to home if I just slow down and look around me. I always carry my camera with me, even on a quick jaunt to the grocery store, which is one reason I don’t want a fancy camera with lots of lenses and accessories. But I often see something intriguing and make a mental note to come back another time “when I’m not so busy,” and then of course I never do. On an apple-picking expedition this autumn, I had parked the car serendipitously where it caught the reflection of one part of the sky and had a beautiful backdrop of another cloud vista. It was one of those days when it had been raining endlessly and would start again soon, but there was a brief interlude of crisp clarity. I could probably go back there ten times and never recapture that perfect moment.

When our book discussion group met at Carole’s house this summer, we got talking about the poet Billy Collins (any friend of Garrison Keillor’s is a friend of hers). She brought out her books of his work and refused to serve dessert until we had each selected a poem to read aloud. It wasn’t hard to find good ones and we smiled in recognition of the situations and ideas he portrayed; it was a very satisfying exercise for compliant ex-teachers. Oh, and I made up the part about dessert. One of the poems I chose to read was Forgetfulness, greeted with rueful amusement by my—yes, it must be said—gently aging acquaintances. Last night I heard the same poem read to greater comic effect by Billy Collins himself at a Rochester Arts & Lectures event. The whole evening was full of cheer and connection, and no matter what might be said in hallowed halls about “serious” versus light and accessible poetry, every person in that audience surely dwelt in the Kingdom of Fan Club by the end. He began by saying that this would be just a reading of some poems rather than a lecture about his writing process, since asking a poet to engage in self-analysis is as futile as getting your dog to look in a mirror. Then he used brief comments about each poem to reveal its inspiration or underlying idea, in the process conveying more about his mode of thinking and working than I’ve heard in many years of attending such lectures. I like the slightly subversive nature of many of his poems: a sweet, familiar beginning image, followed by some startling notion that feels as though you’ve abruptly shifted into reverse in traffic and are getting in deeper, more hilarious trouble by the minute. I particularly remember Flock, The Rex Hotel, The Lanyard, and, putting cheap similes in their place, Litany.

In the unlikely event that any real photographer or artist is reading this, please skip this entry and come back tomorrow. Today I’m thinking about a baby step I’ve taken in what I consider beautiful in my own images, and it’s ironic that some of my new favorites would have been consigned to oblivion (the computer recycle bin) only last year. I’m just beginning to understand how a soft-focus background can simplify the image and enhance the main subject, as in the half-dozen examples in this gallery (click Next in the upper right corner to move through the images). In the one pictured here, I wanted to show the rainbow of colors in a single spray of crocosmia buds. Wherever I looked there were lots of competing shapes (arcs of other flower stems and multiple sharp-edged green spears of foliage) that detracted from the already complex main idea of the shot. In the past I tended to value a shot in which everything was clear and in focus. By getting close and focusing solely on one part of the scene, I got what suggests a reflection or a double exposure. In the other examples, linked to above, I was pleased by the repeating but hazy shapes in the background. With more expensive camera equipment than my Canon G6, it is easy to get this effect on purpose, but I am slowly figuring out how to increase the likelihood of getting reproducible results with a point-&-shoot camera. Incidentally, the glory of crocosmia is considered to be the violent red of full bloom, in this case the variety Lucifer pictured here. In this image I have not done as good a job of de-emphasizing the background, but you can see how those compact oval buds have unfolded to create quite a show. A self-assignment for next year: capture these blooms without getting all the surrounding trees, rocks, and every blade of grass in dizzying focus.

One of the highlights of our recent trip to the Pacific Northwest was the day we spent at Butchart Gardens near the small city of Victoria on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Reading about this attraction did not prepare me for its beauty and intensity and I took hundreds of pictures, but I still had time to watch people viewing the plants and flowers. I was too inhibited (or polite?) to approach any of these intriguing people to have a conversation, so what I am writing here is either conjecture or something I overheard. The women pictured here were dressed in similar but not identical outfits, pale tan or grey and loose-fitting. They laughed and posed for one member of their group after another. Something about them made me imagine that they were members of a religious community on a holiday. A less enthusiastic pair of visitors pictured here reminded me of the bored but accommodating husbands you often see in a mall, sitting on a bench while their wives shop. In this case they had actually paid for the privilege, but they might have been thinking that one flower is pretty much like every other—and at this site there were probably hundreds of thousands of them. A group of at least a dozen young Mennonite women walking with an older man and woman attracted a lot of attention. I was drawn to the pink Crocs and digital cameras which somehow seemed inconsistent with the plain or spartan lifestyle I usually associate with their beliefs. I couldn’t help thinking that at $25 each, they had paid a whopping sum at the ticket gate. Still, the gardens themselves were what enthralled me, and I’ll be writing about them and putting up a gallery of plants soon.

Even when we live through a piece of history, we may remember only the narrow part we experienced. Autumn 2006 is the 50th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. I would have to go to a book or the Internet to reconstruct the details of the Warsaw Pact, the role of students in the uprising, the reaction of the Soviet Union, the numbers of refugees who escaped to the West, or the brain drain which enriched welcoming countries such as the United States. What I remember is that Hungarian refugees disembarked at the Summit, New Jersey train station in my childhood hometown. A close friend of my mother’s, Helen Sawyer, had enlisted my sister and me in a project to cut pictures out of magazines that could be pasted into scrapbooks and labeled for children and adults, most of whom would need an English vocabulary primer. I think I recall being at the train station one day when these scrapbooks were handed to families, or perhaps I have just imagined that event. For an account of one family’s experience, see this recent newspaper article. It is said that when we reach a certain age, we begin to reflect in earnest on our early experiences, take stock of our lives, and resolve to use the rest of our time accordingly. I have been thinking recently about how individuals, by small actions, weave the fabric of our collective lives, as Helen Sawyer and countless others must have done at that specific time in history. Perhaps nothing is insignificant.

Eric got tickets for an evening at the circus, an outing for Felix, Grandma, and Grandpa. Before showtime, they had an hour of up-close-and-personal on the floor with the clowns, jugglers, and elephants which was a good way for Felix to get acclimated. We were a little taken aback when he sat immobile and expressionless in his seat the whole time, but we were even more surprised the next day when he gave his father an animated blow-by-blow description of the entire evening. Grandpa was most impressed by the seven motorcyclists whipping around inside a wire globe, Grandma was charmed by the elephants, but Felix’s favorite was the clowns’ food fight! He was also impressed with Hercules the Strongman who could pull an elephant on a cart, catch a cannonball, and bear the weight of a car driven over his chest. Every day he wants to read his souvenir circus program and relive the excitement.

Freshly diapered, sippy-cup in hand, Coco toddles to the television and waits for permission to press the Play button. The default L-O-A-D-I-N-G sequence elicits a shiver of delight, the FBI warning screen is accompanied by a chortle, and the magic wandful of Walt Disney fairy dust triggers a dance of anticipation. She drops to the floor, swaying rhythmically as Baby Noah begins. Daddy showers in the first floor bathroom, Mommy checks today’s client schedule at the computer, Felix catches a few final dream moments upstairs, but Coco is mesmerized by the classical music, gentle voiceover, and alternating National Geographic style nature footage and engaging wind-up toys of this new installment in the Baby Einstein video line-up. At 14 months, she is already well acquainted not just with the usual menagerie of nurturing elephants, graceful giraffes, and comical penguins, but with wombats, dolphins, and caribou (“Let’s visit the polar regions!”). Grandma tries without success to seduce her with library videos—the sweet Is Your Mama a Llama?, the bouncy Chicka Chicka Boom Boom!--but it is Baby Noah that has captured her early-morning heart and mind. For the rest of the day she will play contentedly and read her books, ignoring the television until tomorrow dawns.

I love to figure out how to do new things or follow the directions/recipe to make something. It doesn’t help that you can find instructions for just about anything on the Internet! Here’s an animation for Halloween. I took an image of a jack-o-lantern, kept darkening the illuminated parts, the background, and the pumpkin itself, and placed each new version on its own layer in Photoshop. Then I made the animated gif in Image Ready, a part of Photoshop. As I was working on the project (simple in concept but with numerous opportunities for mistakes, all of which I made at least once), I kept thinking about the early 80’s when I embarked on the adventure of learning to use the computer language called Basic on my Atari 800. I’m still having fun doing things that serve no earthly purpose. (Click on the pumpkin to start the animation.)

At our most recent Elderhostel, we met several people who have bravely identified new directions for their lives. Donna, our historian/naturalist/guide, has written a book about her original dog training method. Dick, a retired federal civil servant, became an ordained Catholic deacon at the age of 64. Skip, an artist, and his sweet and strong social worker wife, Zenda, lived and worked in four different states in as many years after their children were grown and independent. But these are all still mainstream choices compared to the story we have to invent in the absence of any knowledge about the owner/artist who created the car pictured here. Ralph spotted it and gamely pulled over while I snapped a few pictures of it. Although producing car art is a new and popular pastime across the United States, there probably aren’t many automobiles decorated as elaborately as this one. Was it created just for fun? I’m guessing probably not, based on the serious themes that are represented pictorially and spelled out explicitly and repeatedly across the surface of the car. Is it so over-the-top and zealous that it might more properly belong in the category of outsider art (or art brut, tramp art, folk art)? The messages are earnest and simplistic but there is also witty word-play, for example the letters spelling out “Re-leaf” and “Be-leaf.” Look at these additional views of the car and see what you think.

On a recent crisp fall day, a brief break in the endless rain of the last few weeks, Ralph and I went down to Charlotte to walk along the newest section of the trail along the Genesee River. It is a long, curving boardwalk that stretches across a section of the river where it widens into the marsh. Check out this map to see the access point off Boxart Street for this part of the river walkway (red line, #1). The area was nearly deserted except for a couple of dogwalkers and construction workers putting the finishing touches on the railings. I expected more walkers or joggers seeking peace and solitude. Leaving the boardwalk, you continue northward through the woods toward the grand new structure that has replaced the Stutson Street liftbridge. A canopy of sassafras, aspen, and maples has dropped a yellow brick road of leaves on the wide paved path. We hope to explore every section of the trail in the coming weeks. More pictures here.

Just about any object or scene looks better than its actual self in the golden light of the sun going down. Standing on the Seattle pier and looking east, I saw this building go through several stages of beauty in less than an hour. It’s an attractive building with lots of design features, even in the harsh light of day, but I wonder if the architect knew how beautiful it would be at the end of the day. To me it looks more like a model of a building than the real thing.

Inukshuk/inuksuit/inukhuk/inukhut, but sometimes pronounced inutsuk, are seen all over the Pacific Northwest on banners, in giftshops, or informally along rocky beaches. When the pile of stones is built to resemble a human figure, it is an inunguak or inunnguaq. Whatever their form or precise name, they are all representations of signposts erected in the past by Inuit to designate wildlife hunting grounds, good harbors, or other landmarks on wide-open and featureless territory. They can consist of a few stones piled up, or they can have pointing horizontal features to serve as directional markers. Recreating these piles is a popular pastime among children and adults, as these children are doing outside the Anthropology Museum in Vancouver. The most famous contemporary one, The Inukshuk by Alvin Kanak of Rankin Inlet, stands along English Bay in Vancouver. Its design has been incorporated into the logo for the 2010 Winter Olympics to be held in Vancouver.

As we travel, whether to cities or to museums, Ralph and I often ask ourselves whether we can learn or enjoy ourselves as much if we act as our own guides rather than joining a tour. Before we arrive at our destination, we usually have a full list of must-see highlights we’ve tracked down during Internet exploration or from personal recommendations. On our most recent trip, we felt the power of well-informed, humorous, or charismatic guides, including Barbara at the University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology, “K-Girl” for the Underground Tour in Seattle, and curator Paul Hayes Tucker via acoustiguide at the Experience Music Project art exhibit Double Take, and it’s hard to imagine that we could have come away with so much understanding of the various topics without them. Donna, the naturalist who took us by ferry to Newcastle Island, one of the scores of islands that dot the Strait of Georgia and Puget Sound between Vancouver and Seattle, was a particularly talented teacher, with all sorts of interactive games and visual aids to keep us interested. Ralph and I had tromped through a forest on our own a few days before and had remarked that except for the very tall and straight cedars and moss on branches instead of lichen, it looked a lot like our temperate rain forests of the Northeast. Uh, guess again. Without Donna, we would have trudged right past the hill of 20,000 thatching ants, a beautiful but shockingly invasive plant, tree stumps whose bark keeps growing right over the top to form something out of The Hobbit, and salal, leathery greenery so plentiful that First Nation members harvest it by the railroad car-load for the florist industry. My advice for now is Always Take the Tour.

Thank goodness for the pumpkin patches that dot the landscape, at least in the northern half of the United States, in September and October. Otherwise, most of our children probably wouldn’t grasp the concept of agriculture. Our extended family doesn’t get too involved with Halloween hoopla except for cool, mostly handmade, costumes. Oops, enter Matt, with a reputation for quirky and just-this-side-of-good-taste home decoration. We will want pictures of this year’s effort, of course. In the meantime, Felix keeps changing his mind about his preferred Halloween disguise, fortunately before and not after I started on the triceratops costume. Close call. I’ve always wanted to make one of those Anne Geddes baby flower fairy outfits, and now I have our Coco. I should probably do that before she gets old enough to assert herself.

At the University of British Columbia Anthropology Museum, they concentrate on the cultures of Northwest Coastal Indian peoples, or First Nations in Canadian parlance. Everyone, including me, seems to want to know first and foremost about totem poles, and this museum displays them dramatically and in abundance. I have tried to make this photograph, shot in color, resemble the vintage photos that accompany many of the artifacts and that help put them in context for modern viewers. Carved usually from single trunks of the straight and tall red cedar, totem poles were used as inside and outside beam supports (as in this photo), mortuary and memorial markers (the former usually including a box section to hold remains), and decorative or ceremonial objects. The original poles don’t have deep, mysterious, symbolic meanings, although some of the characters do give clues to lineage. The ones we saw were more likely to have been found in groups within a village rather than in isolated forest locations, the way I had always pictured them. In an age when we feel uncomfortable knowing that the contents of our natural history museums are really somebody else’s history and perhaps ought to still be there rather than here, it is a relief to know that these wooden totem poles would have disintegrated before now had they not been preserved. They were often obtained from “abandoned” sites, although we know that European arrival in the New World was usually followed by “driven out” or “relocated.” In addition, many items were sold to the museum by First Nations families themselves. A guide at the Cowichan Interpretative Center stated that when a modern or vintage totem pole begins to show its age from weathering, it is taken out in the woods to return to the soil and a new one is carved to take its place. For additional images I took recently of UBC’s totem pole collection, go here.

…Rudbeckia, for being a garden workhorse. Have you noticed that some municipalities have converted to yellow fire engines (low on charm but highly visible and less likely to be involved in accidents)? All the vibrant members of the Black-eyed Susan or Rudbeckia family can be seen from down the block, hanging out in late summer on their bushy plants or in an arrangement, sometimes for weeks. Click here for a close-up of cut flowers. The hybrids have glorious names like Indian Summer, Prairie Sun, Maya, Chocolate Orange, Goldilocks, and Sonora, suggesting their palette of autumn yellow, orange, rust, and bronze. Except for the “common” Black-eyed Susan, which is decidedly perennial and almost invasive (in the best possible way), most of these varieties are short-lived perennials which bloom the first year from seed. They do come back the next year and start blooming earlier, but I don’t expect them to last forever. I start the seeds indoors and can count on every little plant to thrive in sun, part-shade, wet or dry, and even in the path of marauding deer. They’re like marigolds with personality.

The Greater Rochester Area Partnership for the Elderly (G.R.A.P.E.) sent out a call for submissions by local Seniors for inclusion in the organization’s 2007 calendar, and six of Diane Furman’s students from the Villages at Park Ridge had the honor of having their works selected as finalists in the competition. Click here to view all the honorees and their paintings. My mother’s acrylic, pictured here and titled Somewhere, was one of the finalists. An afternoon reception was held at Legacy in Brighton; all the art could be viewed in lovely surroundings before the judges selected the 12 winning pieces. We were please to learn that our friend Ann DeStefano’s painting will appear in the calendar!

Whenever Ralph starts to yank milkweed plants out of one of our gardens, I always plead that they are the favored food of Monarch butterfly larvae (caterpillars). Some years I see evidence of chewing on the milkweed leaves, but I’ve never spotted a caterpillar in the act or any eggs deposited on the underside. Doing some paint preparation this week, Ralph accidentally dislodged a Monarch chrysalis from a basement window frame where it was hanging near the milkweed plants but out of sight of predators. It really does have liquefied gold metallic spots and has the color and translucence of popular collectible Fire King Jade-ite dinnerware (example here). You can even see the outline of the metamorphosing Monarch’s black wing veins. It remains to be seen whether the process has been halted or the butterfly will emerge as scheduled. Next summer, the milkweed remains, though.

I know from exploring online, including this butterfly identification site, that this is a fritillary, but I can’t figure out which one. The closest one appears to be the Glanville Fritillary, but since it is found only in continental Europe and on a few small islands in England, I don’t think I have the definitive i.d. yet. For years, I have tried to plant flowers and shrubs that are supposed to attract butterflies, but not until this summer have I noticed a sizeable population of Monarchs, Swallowtails, American Painted Ladies, and others I don’t yet recognize. In our yard, they like lantana, with its many tiny flowers on each flat head, buddleia or butterfly bush, and scabiosa or pincushion flower. Since the ornamental pepper on which this fritillary had perched didn’t have any flowers open, perhaps it was just providing striking camouflage for its rust-colored pal.

One of the joys—and pitfalls—of the two-child (in my case, two-grandchild) family is noticing the differences between them. One of Coco’s most amusing characteristics is her adventurous style, when we are used to Felix’s calm, cautious approach. She’s a thrill seeker, he’s an observer; she is comfortable in precarious positions and at death-defying heights, he needs to accustom himself to new experiences gradually. Felix is the one who’s big enough to get up on the rocking horse alone, but she’s the one who’d be yelling “Ride ‘em, cowboy!” if she could only say more than five words. Luckily, although Felix takes the slightest admonition as a crushing insult, Coco understands exactly what a stern “No!” means, and she remembers and even generalizes her parents’ reprimands without taking them personally. It will be so interesting to see the two develop side by side.

Felix is fun, Daddy does a lot of things for me, Grandma takes me for stroller rides, Aunt Christy and Uncle Matt know good games, I’ll even put up with a babysitter, but the one I really want is Mommy.

Acalypha hispida (ah-cuh-LIFE-uh HISS-pih-duh) is also called foxtail plant or red-hot cat tail, but it’s most like fat and puffy pipe cleaners or chenille stems. I must have a miniature version in one of my patio pots, because the descriptions I’ve read and most of the pictures online show a 4-6 foot tall bush with longer chenille parts hanging gracefully in bunches. This one is cute, showy, and carefree; after a while, the fuzzy tails start to get ratty and brown and have to be clipped off. Otherwise, it’s pure fun.

Our Labor Day family gathering was fun on many levels, but one of its purposes was to introduce Christy’s future husband Matt to her brother’s family. One thing she has learned in the last few weeks is that when you announce your engagement you better have a ready answer to at least two questions: Have you picked out a ring? and When is the wedding? Although the second is a subject of lively conversation, along with the nature and location of the wedding celebration(s), many window shopping expeditions have resulted in a decision about the first. Matt calls it the Space Ring--since Pluto is no longer a planet under the new definition, this ring (with its resemblance to Saturn) probably qualifies as a secondary celestial body, too. In line with their artistic temperaments, their search for the perfect ring led them not to jewelry stores but to the galleries of jewelry artists and craftsmen, and they have selected the ring that suits them entirely: unique, handmade, and just far enough out in its own orbit to suggest eternity.

We tend to think of sunflowers as those massive, seed-heavy, lemon-yellow ones (view here) in farm fields. The iconic sunflower image by Vincent Van Gogh (view here) reveals the shapes and colors of real sunflowers in all their glorious imperfection, at least as they grew in his day. Today, these cheerful flowers are hybridized to produce a palette of rich velvety shades and various arrays and density of petals. This image displays the actual colors of some of our sunflowers with names such as Moulin Rouge and Strawberry Blonde (rosy ones), Ebony & Ivory, Jade, and Vanilla Ice (pale to green ones with dark centers), Autumn Beauty (fall foliage shades), and Sunrich, Sunbright, Moonbright, Sunbeam, Starlight, and every other combination of celestial bodies to suggest the yellows.

Scabiosa is an airy, graceful annual that produces beautiful cut flowers in the pink and purple family. Black Knight, pictured here, is a purple-black color with pink pins, although I’d really like to grow what may be an even darker English cultivar, Ace of Spades. The botanical name arises from the fact that the flowers were steeped to produce a “tea” used to bathe people with scabies (infestation with mites). It is widespread in Northern Europe and was brought to America by early settlers who carried it further westward (when people owned one outfit).

The vine Clitoria has a flower that is like an open sweetpea, and in fact it produces a pea-like downy seedpod. When I saw the name and the photo in a seed catalog, I knew I had to try it. Georgia O'Keeffe would have liked to paint it! Even when you consider the disappointing facts that a.) the seeds need special treatment (soaking before sowing), b.) most of the seeds didn’t germinate, c.) the remaining ones dwindled to exactly one pathetic plant for transplanting into a large patio pot, and d.) the flowers are white rather than the startling blue pictured in the catalog, you still have to admit that it’s a great match of name and appearance. For an amusing historical account of scientists and their wayward methods of naming plants, including this one, go here.

[This is the first in a series of flowers or plants I’ve been trying out, and they range from amazing to amusing with a few disappointments along the way.] Looking for all the world like a collection of miniature glowing cigars with rims of ashes at the ends, Cuphea Ignea is a cinch to grow from seed and makes a pleasing two-foot wide mound in a low planter. In New York this Mexican native shrub is grown as an annual. Either the flowers’ tubular shape or their color is the attraction for hummingbirds, and I have watched them hover for several minutes, sampling from each of the hundreds of inch-long blossoms before moving on.

As if a pink-champagne lisianthus weren’t beautiful enough, a close examination of its overlapping petals is more enchanting still. This further crop of a macro shot has been processed to suggest a watercolor effect. (As with all photo-blog images, you can click on the image to enlarge it; just click on the new version to get back to the blog page.)

Jacquie never lets a medical problem sink her, and she has already had plenty of opportunities to demonstrate it. She probably knows that there are a lot more babies’ heads that need cradling in soft crocheted blankets, more children dreaming of football and trains under her afghans, more books waiting for her at Amazon.com, more dragon boats to cheer, and DVDs queued up endlessly at NetFlix. Hers is the soul at the center of her extended family’s households, and though she feels slights deeply she is quick to laugh, forgive, and move on. She’s like one of those tiny super balls that startle and charm you with the height of their bounce, and I’m confident that she’ll be multitasking at the next book club meeting and joking about everything except her own challenges. Friends will smile and observe that the Energizer Bunny could use her as a role model.

An acquaintance once referred to gladiolas as funeral flowers, and experiencing it almost as a personal affront I’ve spent years trying to convince myself and others that as home décor they make a striking and modern impact. The colors are so luscious, and I don’t mean those garish combinations like yellow with a red eye or purple and yellow in the same flower. I love butter yellow ones combined with all the peach, salmon, and orange shades, or purple, pink, and fuchsia with what the growers insist on calling blue. I was recalling recently that Granddaddy Melker grew gladiolas in rows but I don’t remember ever seeing them in an arrangement in the house. Where did they all disappear to? Then I had an image of him fanning the flowers in a bouquet in a large, grey-painted, hoop-handled wicker basket that was just for holding flowers at the cemetery. After lunch, he would take the flowers to his little son’s gravesite and then continue on to the American store for groceries or to the bank or to Kovatch’s garage for service on his two-toned blue Oldsmobile 88. This was done without explanation or fanfare, repeated often throughout our summer visits. I hadn’t thought about this for years, but I suppose he would have said that gladiolas are funeral flowers.

In an attempt to allay the tomato anxiety of certain Labor Day weekend invitees, we commissioned a GPS (Garden Productivity Survey). There are at least 250 well-formed but still green regular tomatoes--and cherry tomatoes too numerous to count without incurring overtime charges. Tomatoes in some form will appear on the menu at every meal and family members may be asked to perform blind taste tests to determine which varieties should be planted next year.

This past winter during the Winter Olympics, we were strangely drawn to televised curling games. There are elaborate rules and rituals associated with a match, and we went online to examine diagrams and explanations of the game. The related game of lawn bowling is played throughout the world, less so in the U.S. than in Canada where it is often thought of as a Scottish pastime, and that is where we saw these women playing a match. Ralph spotted the slightly flat-sided or “biased” ball which causes a distinct curve to its path as it slows. (In this way it differs from bocce.) We noticed the apparent dress code and the restraint of the players as they watched to see how close the ball would come to the “jack,” a smaller white ball. For some reason, the bowler pictured here in fine form was the victim of a decided lack of team spirit and support from her friends!

With ticket prices for the Stratford Festival in the $60 to $100 range, you wouldn’t expect to see too many young children filling the seats, but Thursday afternoon the musical Oliver! was the bill of fare. Some Shakespeare purists bemoan the inclusion—and even the overwhelming popularity—of Broadway-style musicals on each new year’s schedule, but I enjoy them and the families packing the performances seem to concur. Pint-sized theater-goers must have been impressed with the acting, singing voice, and sheer cuteness of the boy who played Oliver; he is a small 4th grader who seemed even more miniature next to Colm Feore’s Fagin. The story is accessible and there are quite a few memorable and appealing tunes in Oliver, including Food, Glorious Food, Consider Yourself, As Long As He Needs Me, and Where is Love?. I’m not sure, however, what children might make of the likable Fagin and the way Nancy bows to abuse. As adults, will these children recall that their parents dragged them whining to a play or that their parents gave them a gift, like a savings bond that increases in value over their lifetimes?

The cult of the tomato requires that the first specimens be eaten plain, and this year’s early arrivals did not disappoint. Aren’t they perfect? But context is everything. To see these Supersweet 100 tomatoes in all their true glory, please click here. Surprise! But no tomato in our garden has ever been tastier, more dependable, more beautiful, or more prolific than this cherry type. Too bad you have to slice up so many of them for a BLT!

Another great use for a dried beef glass! (See the entry for May 14, 2006.) Along with our very hot summer, we’ve had periodic rains that have lessened the intensity of our garden watering regime. Some of the downpours have filled the ditch, usually a springtime phenomenon; it has delusions of petite grandeur and considers itself a pretty stream at times. According to our spiffy new rain gauge, in the last two weeks we’ve had two deluges of more than two inches each, several 5/8-inch rains, and a steady shower one recent night that amounted to 1 and 7/8 inches. The combination of blazing sun, sultry atmosphere, and plentiful precipitation has elevated some of our gardens to jungle status, kept the lawn springtime green, and given us a bumper crop of peppers, tomatoes, and flowers of all kinds. Of course, we have been forced to work outside in the relative cool of the early morning and then to retreat to the porch or the air-conditioned house for the midday unpleasantness, but it’s fun to have such high-tech instruments to measure the trend.

The winner is the person who can pull the library books off the shelf faster than Grandma can replace them, which is easy since she has to pay attention to the Dewey Decimal System.

If your victim doesn’t cry, you’re not doing anything wrong.

Always keep hydrated.

If you lavish as much time and affection on a “from scratch” garden as my husband and I do, the longed for moments of truth begin in midsummer when flowers astound us anew with blooms and the vegetables yield up something edible. An early milestone is the time when there are just enough beans hanging from the bushes to make a meal-sized pile (but not so many that someone is forced to think about freezing them or devising odd menu items just use them up). This is a delicate balancing act; the experienced gardener, knowing how many ways things can go horribly wrong, is tempted to plant too many of beloved items, leading to the storied baseball bat-sized zucchini or baskets of eggplants no one really likes no matter how exotically beautiful they may be. The handfuls of beans are borne ceremonially through the yard to the kitchen counter where they can be admired extravagantly, as though they differ materially from last year’s first beans. They are rinsed and cooked for four minutes and 45 seconds in the microwave, then dressed with butter, salt, and pepper. The diners comment on the perfect bean-y taste, compliment themselves on their cleverness in bringing these perfect specimens into the world, and bask in the virtue of living close to nature. They hardly think of the hours he spent spreading leaf mold, tilling, laying the landscape cloth weed barrier, or checking the fence against deer, rabbits, and woodchucks. They forget the time she spent examining seed catalogs, ordering seeds, kneeling uncomfortably to place the beans individually in the ground, covering them with clear plastic cups to foil both the birds that spot the sprouting plants and dive down for the seeds and the slugs and cutworms that leave little stalks behind after they eat the tiny seed leaves, and removing and replacing the cups daily for the first week to give the seedlings fresh air. They see only a miraculous mound of beauty that has come from nothing, paid for in a currency that is plentiful for old retired folk.

…”What are the subject lines of some of the emails Patsy received today?” Even if these, and many other equally ridiculously titled email messages, hadn’t been trapped by my anti-spam program, who in their right mind would open them anyway? I understand the economics of spam, which currently costs the sender so little, but would anyone be dumb enough to regard any of these as legitimate? Let’s not even mention the prescription drug and sexually tinged topics, which I suppose someone might look at. The most egregious offenders may be the senders who butcher the spelling of ordinary words to foil the spam filter. I’m a proofreader at heart and would like to take a red pencil to the screen! I use the free program ChoiceMail, a permission-based spam blocker which works effectively, requires very little time to maintain, and seems to have reduced the amount of would-be spam over time.

While everyone else with an iPod is busily assembling all the best tunes, much of my time at the computer in the summer is spent loading books on CD into my playlist. Then I can endure hours in the sun and dirt, “reading” these books as I plant and weed. I try to vary the fare, alternating worthy titles from my Must Read list with fun books that I probably wouldn’t bother with during the winter. I never walk out the back door into the garden without my headphones and iPod, and I have it positioned in my pocket so that I can pause and restart without having to touch it with my dirty hands. I’ve gotten so I don’t like to be in the same part of the yard where Ralph or a neighbor might be mowing because it really interrupts my flow. So far this summer I’ve enjoyed Back When We Were Grownups by Anne Tyler, Family Tree by Carole Cadwalladr, Dead Ringer by Lisa Scottoline, and Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke while transplanting hundreds of seedlings and laying out the cutting garden. I had been wanting to read this last book for a while, but at 800 pages (yes, 800!) I was resisting lugging it home from the library and figured I’d never finish it without incurring a hefty overdue fine. This way I could listen to all 26 CDs on my own schedule, although actually the time flew by. By the way, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell is about a cleverly imagined magical world and will become a fabulous movie some day. Already loaded on the iPod for my future listening pleasure are A Venetian Affair by Andrea Di Robilant, The Constant Princess by Philippa Gregory, Cinnamon Kiss, an Easy Rawlins mystery by Walter Moseley, and The Mayor of Casterbridge and Return of the Native, both by Thomas Hardy. How many people get to do their two favorite activities at the same time?

Composite, with a little help from Maxfield Parrish’s image originally used for a seed advertisement.

I came across a reference on a Digital Photography Review forum about a technique for photographing flowers against a piece of black foam core board. This material ensures that the background will not be a distraction and allows for easy digital manipulation, including darkening the background further or replacing it altogether. This is an Allium Bulgaricum blossom, from a spring-flowering bulb in the onion family. It towered over the tulips and seems suspended in time both in the garden and cut for an arrangement (more than two weeks and counting indoors, and it had been blooming outside for several weeks before that). For other examples of arrangements of my own flowers that I’ve photographed this way, see this online gallery. Since the Foam Core Addicts Society takes their art very seriously, I will take this opportunity to state officially that I’m not applying for membership until I’ve worked on my technique some more!

When I first listened to Bruce Springsteen’s album We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, I didn’t think about the artist or the concept (besides, a great deal has already been written about those aspects of the CD by more qualified observers). I was transported back almost 30 years when a family newly arrived in the United States sang some traditional songs from their culture and asked me to reciprocate with some “American” songs. Where to start? And what is American, anyway? My lame offering consisted of Home on the Range and The Erie Canal, the second because of Rochester’s local history. If only I had had this album then. The songs aren’t strictly American (for example, Froggy Went a Courtin’ goes back perhaps 450 years and is generally considered an English folk song, and the anti-war ballad Mrs. McGrath is Irish) but as a body they do a good job of capturing our spirit and history. Love, humor, storytelling, heroes, religion, political protest, and the westward movement are all represented and imbued with an olden days feel, thanks to the instrumentation. Springsteen has put his stamp on the tunes with some variations on the usual melodies and with lush harmonies that never graced a hoedown or barn dance, although that’s the predominant tone. If I had thought to sings some of these songs for my long-ago audience, they probably would have been confused about what those songs said about the essence of America. Now they’ve had all these years to experience that complexity for themselves. This is a picture of my friend Nghia, the matriarch of that family, my friends.

In the first few months of Corina’s life, her parents ran themselves ragged trying to alleviate her obvious physical discomfort and to jolly her out of her constant colicky grimaces. We all became experts at the “football carry” and were relieved over time to see her grow robust and calm. Now at nine months she scuttles about, mischievously heading for every mystery spot in sight—the open dishwasher, the staircase, the toy chests and bookcases, and the VCR. Shake the Cheerios box in the next room, and her eyes widen with anticipation. Put on the CD of Latin American lullabies, and she quiets down for a nap. Drag out the stroller, and she waves her arms happily, knowing that she will have an hour of Grandma singing, Daddy running, or the hypnotic and nap-inducing sight of the back of Felix’s head. Her favorite toy is the chocolate chip cookie counting toy, she actually likes silky tofu and prunes, and she’ll put up with just about anything if Felix is playing in the same room. Oh, happy girl!

Flowers go to a lot of trouble to help the birds and the bees do their job. It’s tempting to think that certain colors are especially attractive to pollinators; I’m absolutely certain that Japanese Beetles are partial to yellow roses and yellow Kerria blossoms, and the store-bought beetle traps are yellow, too. Bee Balm is vibrant pink or red, so that must be what bees prefer. But in fact, many insects see in black and white rather than in color. Flowers make up for this by having distinctive patterns to communicate where exactly a bee should be aiming. The Aquilegia or Columbine blossom atop which the bee is perched has a perfect target to guide its helper. Many lilies, Nellie Moser Clematis, tulips, and single peonies have similar lines radiating out from the center of the flower. This particular bee was very obliging and allowed itself to be nudged into place. It was dying of old age or may have been on its last legs for other reasons. It may not even be the type of bee that spends time in the center of flowers. But you get the idea.

Reviewers and ordinary people who have seen the movie United 93 have described it admiringly as thankfully devoid of Hollywood sensationalism, straightforward and factual in its recreation of events and conversations based on the knowable, and apolitical. If by “political” we mean cynically advancing a position for personal gain, or presenting only one side of a complex story, then I’ll agree that the movie isn’t political. However, the movie echoes a concern that has been raised since 9/11 about the ability of our government to protect us from attack. In her book, Who Defended the Country? Elaine Scarry reviews in harrowing detail the events of that morning and asks us to examine some of our assumptions about the speed with which our government can respond to modern threats. She concludes convincingly that, unlike the Pentagon which was unable to defend the Pentagon, only the citizens on United Flight 93, using a kind of expedited town meeting approach, were able to respond to the hijacking of their plane and thwart an additional attack on Washington. This book is part of a larger body of work and thought by Elaine Scarry on the consent of the governed. To listen to a radio broadcast from 2003 in which she explains and answers questions about her line of reasoning, go here . In the interest of full disclosure, and not because it confers any honor on me, I should say that Elaine is my sister.

Let’s say your 18-year-old daughter, on her way out for the evening, was vague about her plans or destination. Would you send her along in a car with an imprecise steering mechanism because, after all, she didn’t even know where she was going? Perhaps that logic would appeal to former Pentagon weapons expert Pierre Sprey. In a CBS Evening News story this week about the inefficacy of the ammunition used in Iraq, Sprey justified the use of underpowered, inappropriate, non-lethal 5.56 mm bullets, saying, "There is no such thing as a well-aimed shot in combat, because combat is fought by scared 18-year-olds who haven't been trained enough and are in a place they've never seen before." There are plenty of maddening aspects of the never-ending Middle East war, but cynicism such as this about the idealistic young men and women we send to carry out our mission is about as disheartening as it gets. By the same logic, maybe we should recruit even younger Americans, and more of them, and arm them with BB guns.

Photos from the WashingtonPost.com feature Faces of the Fallen

In Phil Douglis’s 35 galleries of Expressive Travel Photography, he demonstrates and describes how to use the principles of abstraction, incongruity, and human values. Although individual galleries concentrate on various categories of photos (e.g., metaphors and symbols, black and white, or portraiture), every image is full of meaning and impact. Accompanying each image is an explanation of what he was thinking or trying to capture. Douglis calls this enterprise a cyberbook, and if the viewer were to cycle through the images systematically they would add up to an inspirational course of study. For example, notes for the representative picture here shed light on Douglis’s deliberate choice of position to make the modern-day photographer seem a part of the Rembrandt, interacting with several of the characters, and he points out the effect of the classical palatte juxtaposed with the lavender shirt of the person in the foreground. I benefit from these descriptions as I look more closely at good photography. Of course, I have to live with the frustration of knowing that traveling the world over doesn’t hand me perfect material for photographs; I have to see it myself first. I wonder if I could get that same person to stand in front of a painting for me so I can practice.

Painterly Pixels at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2005 by Phil Douglis

One year at Homearama, one house featured fancifully hand-painted furniture and a child’s room with hand-painted wall decorations. I thought at the time that it would be the ultimate indulgence to pay an artist to create such a room. In my son’s new house, the large second-floor bedroom which Corina and Felix will share has walls with different animals and plants in each corner and a cloud-filled sky above, created by a local artist. The room is big enough for two beds, an assortment of dressers, bookcases, and toy chests, adult and child-sized rocking chairs, and a large center area for playing with quiet toys and listening to stories and music. One day, Felix frolicked on the back of a huge stuffed lion, chattering away:

Felix: Grandma, I’m riding the lion!

Grandma: Are you riding in the jungle or climbing on the rocks?

Felix: Grandma, we’re not outside; we’re inside.

Grandma: But you’re using your imagination!

Felix: I don’t like to use my imagination!

But it is what he does all day, whether he calls it imagining or not, and this room will be part of his meaning-making for many years to come.

It turns out that when Eric grabbed the instruments for the Front Porch Portrait (see previous entry), he was envisioning an image in the style of the liner notes of the new Bruce Springsteen album, We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions. I played with Virtual Photographer, a Photoshop plug-in, to achieve the grainy, brown-yellow toned look and added the text. Eric and Veronica are going to use it for their change-of-address postcards. I guess you’d have to be a Springsteen fan, and a forgiving one at that, to notice the slight resemblance, but a lot of Eric’s friends probably fit that description.

Three different times I’ve wished that a certain Republican were a Democrat. It usually happens when the person represents a view or displays some characteristic I hold dear. The people include Condoleeza Rice (The Early Years), Andrew Sullivan (recently), and David Brooks (when I watch him on PBS). In the case of Andrew Sullivan, I admire his writing and the apparent ease with which he produces spot-on commentary day after day. His essay for Time (May 15) entitled “My Problem with Christianism” at http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,1191826,00.html was a real hey-that’s-what-I’ve-been-thinking revelation, and to see an avowed Conservative laying out the case so clearly and unassailably gave me hope. To know that values and the family have been appropriated by conservative religious folks, with the help of the shorthand media, and then politicized annoys me no end. Sullivan hit a nerve with many folks, judging from the volume of responses in his online current events blog, The Daily Dish ( http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/ ). Check it out.

If you want the ultimate Savannah experience, you have to stay at the historic Stephen Williams House bed-and-breakfast on West Liberty Street. Check out the website at http://www.thestephenwilliamshouse.com/ for details about the various accommodations and common rooms. It’s within pleasant walking distance of anything you’ll want to see, the breakfast is unmatched, the garden is more charming than any we saw on the annual garden tour, and the innkeeper keeps you entertained with the inside story on everything about the town. Mark your calendar for the end of March next year when the squares will be swathed in azaleas and the homes and churches will be looking their best. Although March is the time of their famous music festival and a series of home and garden tours, it does not feel crowded as you walk the streets. And if you haven’t read John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, I recommend doing so after your visit when you’ll really be able to appreciate it.

Evidence uncovered at a Peck Road dig site indicates the presence at one time of a tiny race of highly-evolved mechanically-advanced humans. Over time, this location was used as a sand/dirt pile, a leaf pile, and a humusy compost heap. The truck and crane, first of this civilization’s artifacts to be excavated, are rusted but still serviceable. Further research has produced a photograph of children playing at this spot, and a present-day image of a descendent of the original family attests to the continuing popularity of this type of vehicle.

Their blooms don’t last for long, and the foliage hangs around too long—yellowing, then browning--while the gardener tries to camouflage it with later plantings. Deer and mice find them quite tasty (the buds and leaves for the big guys and the bulbs for the burrowers). In spite of all this, almost everyone enjoys seeing drifts of tulips in early spring, in colors ranging from white to black-purple and everything in between except blue. Some of the most beautiful are the Rembrandt class of tulips (for examples and botanical information see http://www.theplantexpert.com/springbulbs/Tulip9Rembrandt.html ) with their flames and stripes. Although Rembrandt himself is not known for flower paintings, many artists of the same time and place often included at least one tulip in their composite still life works, along with exotic insects, shellfish, and other flowers. Check out this gallery for examples of the work of one such painter, Jan Davidsz. De Heem, including Flower Still-life with Crucifix and Skull, 1630’s: http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/h/heem/jan/ . Tulip Fever, a novel by Deborah Moggach, illuminates the period in which fortunes were made and lost by tulip bulb speculators; bulbs that would yield virus-affected or “broken” blooms like the one pictured here were particularly sought after. Every year in early spring, the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York has a spectacular display of forced bulbs in the solarium, where this picture was taken.

In even the briefest conversations about illegal immigration, someone is sure to point out that this alien population performs the jobs that no Americans are willing to do. Such work is assumed to include long hours of low-paying manual labor that doesn’t require special skills or education. However, periodically there is a headline-grabbing incident that reminds us of a different, home-grown pool of labor performing a job no one in their right mind could really want—coal mining. Although changing technologies have certainly improved conditions since my grandfather, Martin Melker, went down in the anthracite mines of eastern Pennsylvania in his teens, it is still a dangerous, intense, and physically arduous way of earning a living. For about 40 years, interrupted only by a stint in France during World War I or by periods when the mines were closed or out on strike, Granddaddy left the house before the rest of the family was up, came home about noon absolutely black from head to foot except for his lips and eyes, showered in the basement, ate lunch, and then began his real life. He dug into the side of the mountain, this time from the surface, to build a four-story house and then a grand modern additional kitchen. He converted the rocky, steeply sloped yard into gardens with orderly rows of iris, dahlias, gladiolus, pink petunias, marigolds, and forget-me-nots as well as peas, beans, and beets. In life and at work, he was independent, tireless, and solitary, always willing to help but never asking for any. Until he died in the aptly named Coaldale Hospital, of Black Lung or silicosis complications, he loved and protected us and provided our vacation entertainment—consisting mostly of watching him work, his large hands and thin, strong body rarely at rest. His daughter and grandchildren, who prize education and have all held jobs requiring a lot of brain work and a minimum of lifting a finger, all happily remember him as a man who did honorable work nobly.

What is pictured in this image? Does the brain wave activity required to identify it or make sense of it interfere with our ability to evaluate it as beautiful or not? If we think it is a landscape seen from an airplane, do we appreciate it more or less than if we think it is sand on a beach? It is the latter, a tiny topographical map only a few inches wide, formed by successive waves leaving their deposit. Would I have found it so arresting if I had never seen a map or looked out the window of an airplane? Would I have even noticed it if I hadn’t been on the lookout for things to photograph? Does being a photographer eventually change the way we see the world? Does the world change because a photographer preserves an image?

Anyone who has ever eaten in a restaurant where your food is not already wrapped to go has seen a plate liberally adorned with kale. It’s deep green, frilly, and not easily affected by the heat or sauce of the food; haven’t you wondered fleetingly if they ever rinse it off in the kitchen and recycle it for the next unsuspecting diner? It keeps its biting taste and crunch even when it’s cooked—none of that dissolved slime you get with spinach cooked too long in the soup. If they put it in cans, Popeye would have been perfectly happy to substitute it for his favorite vegetable because it confers a certain indestructibility on the diner: no cholesterol, some dietary fiber, and a whopping 354% of the daily requirement of Vitamin A and 89% for Vitamin C. It maxes out on the high edge of the Nutrition Target Map (see http://www.nutritiondata.com/facts-B00001-01c20di.html .)

Ironically, as every second grader learns (but surely doesn’t really appreciate), the miracle of seeds and plant growth is such that this Iron Man vegetable comes up the hard way. The seed leaves (the first two to appear, but bearing little resemblance to the true leaves we will later recognize as kale) are big and hearty enough, but the stem of the seedling is long, brittle, and water-filled. If it bends, from human carelessness, the weight of its roots, or becoming entwined with its neighbors, the tissue is broken and that seedling is no longer viable. This characteristic makes it challenging to transplant the seedlings into peat pots for later transfer to the outside. Every year, my potting table is littered with the ones that could have been contenders. Nevertheless, there are enough that have survived the ordeal this spring and will by fall become a border of ruffled rosettes, pink and cream against the lovely blue-green of Osaka Ornamental Kale.

On the plane out to Chicago this winter the woman in the next seat pulled out a book of Sudoku number puzzles and went to work. I hope there was no smirk on my face, but I was thinking what a waste of time it must be to do the practically the same 1-9 puzzle over and over. Of course, that was before I ever tried to do one myself. What a difference a month makes. On my next plane trip, to Savannah, the woman next to me was doing the day’s newspaper Sudoko, but now I knew enough about these puzzles to recognize that she was basically guessing. (Even a little trial and error is a dead-end line of attack, not to mention that erasing newsprint is distressing.) By the time we arrived at our Elderhostel a few days later, I had gotten in the habit of trying to solve every Sudoku I encountered, and I made so bold as to offer some strategy tips to the woman next to me on the bus who was just learning about Sudoku. Now, most mornings I do at least one newspaper puzzle and one on the Internet. The best site I have found is http://sudoku.com.au/Default.aspx ; it offers new puzzles daily at four levels of difficulty and has several good options to suit a person’s favored strategies. Notice in the accompanying screen capture that all the possible numbers can be arrayed in given slot before the final numbers are figured out definitively; most online programs don’t have this capability and are more suited for printing out, solving, and then checking for accuracy. At this point, I approach each puzzle following a set sequence of solving strategies, although I’m still not too efficient (I may be ready to absorb a new principle soon, though). I can reliably solve puzzles designated Easy, Medium, and Hard, but I sometimes hit a wall on Tough or bail out because it’s not worth investing any more time. However, unlike with crossword puzzles, I’m pretty confident that every Sudoku is solvable and I can easily self-check my effort to feel a sense of closure…until tomorrow morning, that is.

As Christy said so succinctly, “What were we thinking?” Some people may be pack rats. Others are proudly resourceful and truly think they’ll someday find a use for their little-used treasures. So, down the cellar steps they carry the clothes and books and furniture that must make way for new acquisitions. Now, ten or twenty years later, as Ralph brings likely candidates up from the basement on the way out to the curb (or to the homeless shelter, the Salvation Army resale store, the minivan being packed for a Chicago trip), I’m flooded with memories of each item’s former life. Today I must acknowledge that Eric and Christy will never again lay their sweet heads down on pillowcases featuring Princess Leia, Cookie Monster, NFL team logos, or Wonder Woman. Do they even remember doing so? It’s okay to give away these pieces of their childhood; isn’t it better that our children are exploring boldly and enjoying so many aspects of life rather than simply falling asleep dreaming about doing it?

There’s no use having a collection of something if you’re not going to take it out and look at it once in a while. Based on my modest album of flower postcards, the first decade of the 1900s must have been their heyday, and the pansy was one of the most popular subjects. The cards themselves are often beautiful, but some of their value for me certainly resides in the messages: “Dear Son, We heard your wife is sick. Your Loving Mother” or “Hello Harlen—Are you going barefooted yet. It is awful hot. I am in second reader now from Mary.”

During this period, specific flowers were said to represent certain feelings or relationships. Pansies may have gotten their name from the French “pensee,” meaning “thought;” thus a pansy postcard conveyed both the sender’s carefully penned message and the unspoken one, “I’m thinking of you.” In the garden, a pansy cheerfully presents its open face to the world while other flowers are still making plans or staying safe from the cold. It is no fair weather friend.

I keep saying, “Someday, I’m going to [fill in the blank],” but someday is now. If I can’t find time now that I’m retired, I have only myself to blame. So-o-o-o, I’m viewing the tutorial videos for Painter Essentials 2, software bundled with the Wacom Intuos 3 tablet. This is a slimmed-down version of Corel Painter, but it’s still pretty complicated. My ultimate goal is to create watercolor and pastel versions of some of my photographs. For today, I’m just trying out the various brushes. Some of them create a more appealing effect than others, especially with the very realistic textured surfaces.

The first thing I do every morning is get a cup of coffee and sit in my comfortable armchair to view The Daily Critique from the Radiant Vista site -- http://www.radiantvista.com . There is a new viewer-submitted image every morning, and Craig follows a simple formula in each under-5-minutes discussion. In his respectful, calm, professional way he always starts with, "The first thing I like about this image...," highlighting such features as the kind of light, the "story," or adherence to such principles as rule of thirds, power points, or the golden spiral. He follows up with suggestions for "improving this image in a perfect world," often by pointing out how another angle or time of day or interaction with the subject might have changed the picture. When he demonstrates how a simple crop, a change in saturation, or a slight cloning out of small distractions can elevate an image, I bet even the original photographer is pleased rather than insulted.

I hope that over time I can absorb and use all the tips and principles I've heard him discuss. There is just something about Craig's voice and his gentle teaching that gets my day off to a serene start.