Art – Page 58 – Ellis Hollow

Blue alliums

Click on images (most of them, anyway) for larger view.

I had to step away from the screen at work this afternoon. I don’t do it enough, but I took a quick spin through Minns Garden — a lovely garden right outside the Plant Science building at Cornell University. I was moving faster than a stroll and paying more attention in my head to what needed doing back in the office than what was going on in the garden. I actually got three steps beyond these alliums before doing a double-take and going back for a second look.

Unfortunately, no tag. So I can’t give you a variety name. There were some other interesting alliums on the other side of the garden, too:

More midsummer highlights in Minns: Anemones. Boy I’d grow a lot of these if it weren’t for the deer.

And the potted bananas, which are getting huge. (They’ve overwintered a few winters in the greenhouse. But I’m not sure there’s room for them this year.)

potted bananas

OK. If you’ve read this far, you’re probably wondering about the technique on those alliums. Cut a small hole in the center of a paper plate and a slit connecting the hole with the edge. Slip it around the stem of the allium to catch the drips. Shake the can well and spray. At least that’s what this year’s garden tenders told me they did.

Simpsonized

Over the weekend, I couldn’t resist Simpsonizing myself. And it actually came out pretty good.

me simpsonized

It wasn’t 10 minutes later that I read what I have to agree is the truth about this little feature in the Onion AV Club Tolerability Index:

onion tolerability index

As usual, AV club is right.

July bloom day scans

I’m actually early to the party this time. With rain headed our way, I thought it good to go ahead and do this month’s scans. Click images for larger view. Apologies for lazy nomenclature and mis-IDs.

Update [7/15/2007]: As Layanee and Carol both pointed out, there’s a big article on scanning in the latest Horticulture (which has been sitting in my huge stack of unread gardening magazines). It’s by Ken Druse, so you know it’s gotta be good. (Print’s not dead. Sign up for a free issue of Horticulture.)

Monarda, Asian lily, sedum, spiraea, lychnis, Rosa ‘Cuisse de Nymphe’, allium, daucus, stachys (the other one), Scotch thistle.

Astrantia, viola, sorbaria (about to pop), verbascum, sedum, that weed that looks like fried eggs, digitalis, Verbena bonariensis, Verbena hastata, coneflower, teasel, rock garden campanula?, wild composite (aster?).

Digitalis, Asian lily, allium, astilbe, monarda, sorbaria (popped), astrantia.

What I learned by watching LiveEarth

I’ve had LiveEarth — Al Gore’s climate crisis concert extravaganza — on in the background while blogging tonight. I’ve learned a few things:

Madonna plays a decent rhythm guitar.
Recycled tires and oil drums can be used to good effect as a stage background.
Kelly Clarkson has some pipes. (I had no clue she won American Idol. Maybe AI voters are smarter than I give them credit for.)
Red Hot Chili Peppers are, indeed, hot.
The Beasty Boys can still belt out Sabotage.
Drink enough gin and even Bon Jovi sounds pretty good.
Lenny Kravitz = Jimi Hendrix wannabe.
Bobby Kenedy would be great heading up EPA, but I already knew that.

I’m sorry I missed the Spinal Tap set featuring a performance of Stonehedge.

It’s easy to dismiss efforts such as these as all hype. But I don’t. I see the names of kids (mostly kids, I guess) scrolling across the screen who at least took the time to visit the LiveEarth website and took the LiveEarth pledge, and I’mÂ encouraged. And I recall a similar concert more than 20 years ago, just about this time of year.

On July 13. 1985, Bob Geldof and Midge Ure’s LiveAid concert reached 1.5 billion people worldwide to raise funds for famine relief in Ethiopia.

I was a wired gardener back then, too. I remember weeding and listening along with the rest of the world on my cassette player/FM radio strapped to my belt, and realizing (while Phil Collins was singing “I can feel it coming in the air tonight … “) that the world had changed.

Is there still hunger in Ethiopia? You bet. But while I’m no fan of unfettered globalization, I’m glad that word travels faster and farther than it did just a generation ago. We’ve still got some work to do to make sure that that word is truth. But I, for one, am hopeful.

Look for Al to declare in October or November.

Updated/bonus track: So they could get a venue on every continent, LiveEarth included a pre-recorded performance by Nunatak — a garage band of British researchers in Antarctica. (Do they have garages in Antarctica?) They’re not bad, really — especially when you consider how cold their hands must be.

Happy Birthday Frida

frida Yesterday was Frida Kahlo’s 100th birthday. Today’s NY Times has an article and multimedia feature about a huge show featuring her work at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City.

While Frida’s painful self-portraits fascinate me, I like to think that it was on her good days that she turned to plants as the subject of her work.

See, for example, Still Life with Parrot. I also posted some other pictures here.