Full disclosure

sloggerI feel it’s my ethical duty to disclose the text of this email I just sent to the good folks at sloggers:

Hi Alec:

Sorry to be so long getting around to this. Life has been hectic.

Let’s go with the standard:
http://www.sloggerstore.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=38

Size 12 (mens), prefer brown but color doesn’t matter much to me.

I appreciate your support of GardenRant. They are good folks with more influence and reach than you might expect.

Craig

After a suitable evalution period, I’ll add them to my garden footwear review.

AP on colony collapse disorder

Via CNN: Mysterious honeybee killer could make dinner bland. Key quote:

bee in irisThe top suspects are a parasite, an unknown virus, some kind of bacteria, pesticides, or a one-two combination of the top four, with one weakening the honeybee and the second killing it.A quick experiment with some of the devastated hives makes pesticides seem less likely. In the recent experiment, Pettis and colleagues irradiated some hard-hit hives and reintroduced new bee colonies. More bees thrived in the irradiated hives than in the non-irradiated ones, pointing toward some kind of disease or parasite that was killed by radiation.

The parasite hypothesis has history and some new findings to give it a boost: A mite practically wiped out the wild honeybee in the U.S. in the 1990s. And another new one-celled parasitic fungus was found last week in a tiny sample of dead bees by University of California San Francisco molecular biologist Joe DeRisi, who isolated the human SARS virus.

However, Pettis and others said while the parasite nosema ceranae may be a factor, it cannot be the sole cause. The fungus has been seen before, sometimes in colonies that were healthy.

Then there was this curious twist …

Too dependent on honeybees?

Recently, scientists have begun to wonder if mankind is too dependent on honeybees. The scientific warning signs came in two reports last October.

Read the whole article.

More spring pix

Cleaning up some images from a couple weeks ago that I never got around to posting. More to come this weekend when the tulips finally break.

Emerging bloodroot.  These are singles.  The doubles are running a few days behind.

emerging bloodroot

Backlit pulmonaria.

pulmonaria

and Tulipa ‘I haven’t a clue’.

tulip

Peachy primula.

primula

Pulmonaria and stone.

pulmonaria

End of accelerating sunlight

As spring progresses, our days grow longer, faster as the sunset gradually moves down the ridge to the west. It all starts accelerating around the equinox. The downside: Accelerating darkness in fall.

accelerating sunset