Month: March 2007

As the snow returns …

Snowy spruce

Kokopelli in the snowI forgot to knock wood on that last post.

We picked up 8 or 10 inches late Friday and Saturday. It continued snowing lightly during the rock garden society activities. (I’ll blog about the tufa workshop later.)

Then we picked up another 8 or 10 last night. Official snowfall figures were lower. But the storms often drop a more as they make their way up our little valley.

It wasn’t exactly the Blizzard of ’93 that dropped more than 40 inches of snow in these parts in mid-March of that year. (I remember actually shoveling off my raised beds after the storm so I could get some lettuce planted.)

It’s supposed to hit 60 by the end of the week. But I’m hoping it doesn’t get too warm as my son is coming up from Florida for some late winter snowboarding.

patio furniture under snowjade in snow

As the snow retreats (lotsa pix)

I love the frenzy of flowers in late spring/early summer.  And the garden here peaks in September when the shear mass of plant  material is nearly overwhelming.  But nothing beats seeing what pops up as the snow retreats.

We hit 63 yesterday and today, and had a little rain today.  The snow has retreated quickly, and we had a nice blanket of ‘melting snow fog’ this afternoon.  (Click on images for larger view.)

snow fog

The rain and melting snow has our little creek up over it’s banks.

over the banks

The snow pealed back to reveil Eranthis (winter aconite) in full flower.

Eranthis

The hard cyclamens are also looking good and flowering within a day of seeing the sun.

cyclamens

cyclamens

And the Hellebores are getting off to a good start …

Hellebores

I’m just as excited to see vegetation that amazingly survives (if not actually grows) under the snow, like these Digitalis ferruginea …

Digitalis ferruginea

… Verbascum …

Verbascum

… Lamium …

Lamium

… and this viny groundcover that’s taking over the patio.

groundcover

Best picture of the batch: This Verbascum has been nibbled on a bit. I wonder by what?

verbascum and bunny turds

Snowdrops, iris and other goodies are coming on, too. More pix from the compressed spring coming soon.

Glass Flowers of Harvard

Salvia patens Cav. Blue Sage. Lamiaceae. Model 118 (1889).The Corning Museum of Glass — just an hour down the road from here — will be serving up an exhibition May 18 to November 25, Botanical Wonders: The Story of the Harvard Glass Flowers.

The exhibition celebrates the singular triumph of glassmakers Leopold Blaschka (1822-1895) and his son Rudolf (1857-1939); provides insight into the intellectual appetite of the late Victorians, through the lens of botany as an academic discipline and craze; and offers close-ups of the people and the craft process behind the Glass Flowers.

Judging from the photos, they’re really spectacular. The exhibit site includes sketches and details about how the glass flowers were made.

Maybe Julie and the Austin crew should start planning a road trip to escape the dog days.

More on the glass flowers at the Journal of Antiques and Collectibles.

When Sports Illustrated warns about global warming …

SI cover… maybe it’s time to start doing something about it.

I read SI religiously from age 8 until I was into my 40s — first for the pictures of my favorite quarterbacks, later for the swimsuit issues, and then one day I came to realize that SI has just about the highest quality writing and photography of almost any periodical — jock or non-jock.

I kept getting it long after I stopped reading the timely sports articles because the ‘off-topic’ articles were long and meaty and a joy to read.

I know most readers skip right over them.  But even if they only get to the second paragraph  of this cover story, they’ll get the message:

Global warming is not coming; it is here. Greenhouse gases — most notably carbon dioxide produced by burning coal, oil and gas — are trapping solar heat that once escaped from the Earth’s atmosphere. As temperatures around the globe increase, oceans are warming, fields are drying up, snow is melting, more rain is falling, and sea levels are rising.

I’ve seen An Inconvenient Truth and read about climate change from political and environmental perspectives. But it was fun to see how SI put a sports spin on the subject. One of the examples they provided about how jocks are taking action:

Two years ago the men’s lacrosse team at Middlebury College calculated its “carbon footprint” (the amount of global-warming carbon dioxide its daily activities generated) and raised money to purchase enough renewable-energy credits (investments in wind power) to offset those emissions. The team thereby became carbon-neutral — a status also claimed by last summer’s soccer World Cup in Germany, cycling’s Team Clif Bar Midwest and the Vermont Frost Heaves, this writer’s American Basketball Association team, which rides in a biodiesel-powered bus.

Long-time activist and author Bill McKibben (The End of Nature) is quoted in several places. My favorite:

We’re still so used to the idea that we can deal with the forces of nature that we think nothing of naming our teams Hurricanes and Cyclones. In 10 years, that will be like calling a team the Plagues.”

Global warming in SI? I can’t help but think that we’re near the 100th monkey on this issue.

Update: [3/13/2007] Michael Shaw over at Bag News Notes (he analyzes media images) blogged about the cover, drawing Katina parallels.