A world without writers

I miss me my Colbert and Daily Show. But our lives would not be so rich were we without writers. Hat tip to Avedon at Eschaton.

Update: Folks are contributing ideas for the sequel over at drifty’s:

“He’ll accept my offer because it will be a good offer.” — The Godfather

“Kansas has much different terrain, so we must be someplace else.” — The Wizard of Oz

Best I could come up with: Please proceed and provoke me. It will be a memorable occasion. — Dirty Harry

Update: Not The Daily Show, With Some Writer from the Daily Show gets to the point in Daily Show style, and really let’s you know that (despite my love of Jon Stewart et al) how much the writers are responsible for the snark.

Update 2: And this from Colbert’s striking writers:

Belated bloom day scans

This morning, I finally had a chance to get out into the garden with enough light that I didn’t need a flashlight to see what was there. Were it not for the recent cold (seasonable, actually) weather, I thought I might actually be able to scan some things that most reasonable people would actually consider blooms. But all I found really were materials suitable for dried flower arrangements, which I usually put together over the Thanksgiving holiday, anyway.

So, this may be my final bloom day scan until March — unless we have another mild winter and we have snowdrops in January like last year.

Ornamental grass wrapped in thunbergia, lunaria, milkweed, ironweed, motherwort, bittersweet.

nov scan

Heuchera, clematis, milkweed(?) seeds that happened to drift in during composition.

nov scan

In lieu of bloom day scans

A few years ago, I attended a lecture by Felder Rushing, who is neck-and-neck with Piet Oudolf in the race for most influential gardener in my life.

At the beginning of his presentation, Felder wanted to point out that not only were we crazy plant people, but we were strange even by standards of gardeners in general. He asked for a show of hands to a series of questions starting with, How many of you grow more than a dozen varieties of a single species of plants? More than half gardeners in attendence raised thier hands

The question that really got me was, How many of you have ever given a tour of your garden by flashlight?

Well, honestly I haven’t. But I wouldn’t hesitate to.

If I wanted to do my usual bloom-day scans, I would have had to use a flashlight because light is pretty scarce around here before and after work. Bloom day scans will have to wait for the weekend.

Meanwhile, I’ve had a bunch frosty and fall-color pix collecting here over the past couple of weeks. So instead of scans, here’s a chance for my usual pix purge.

Really hard frost (~19 F) last Sunday:

frost on grasses etc.

Sunrise has hit the far ridge, but hasn’t hit the garden yet.

frost on grasses etc.

Frost patterns in the miscanthus.

frost on grasses etc.

Frozen monard dots. (Thanks Piet.)

frost on grasses etc.

Jade and the plants soak in the sun as it burns off the frost.

frost on grasses etc.

Beads of water after the sun melts the frost.

frost on grasses etc.

Morning sun on Solomon’s seal (Polygonatum)

frost on grasses etc.

Miscanthus floridulus flowered this year, at least 12 feet tall.

frost on grasses etc.

At Cornell, ‘We grow the Ivy.’ It turns red in the fall.

frost on grasses etc.

Scans this weekend, if I can find some time…