String Notes

I love this time of year. I get to plant things in the garden, the flowers are all blooming, and best of all, my 35,000-person town has suddenly shrunk by 40,000 people! It’s possible to get into restaurants, the roads aren’t so crowded, there are hardly any pedestrians on campus.…

I finally got the peas and lettuce and spinach planted a week and a half ago, far later than my usual third weekend in March. It’s been cool and wet here, not good gardening weather at all. But finally it seems to be turning into spring. The radishes and the…

Enjoy! Why yes, I am having fun with my new macro lens, thanks for asking. :) And in case you missed it: chocolate egg science.

I was in Maryland for a couple days, and then Portland, OR for a week. It was mostly work, but I did manage to escape for a bit. More photos to come, as I sort them out. While I was gone a whole pile of things accumulated in my “post…

This makes me happy. All of these photos make me happy, or I wouldn’t post them, but that one is particularly cheering. It was very cold today, but sunny, so I got to do a bit of plant photography while participating in the daily dog excursion. The new macro lens…

I put my holiday gift certificates toward a macro lens for my DSLR, specifically for the purpose of photographing flowers. And string, but did I really need to even say that? And here it is spring already, and there are beginning to be flowers, so I finally ordered it, and…

Not only is spring official in the northern hemisphere, it’s apparent in my yard. Suddenly everything is doing its thing. The snowdrops are in full swing. The tulips shot up while I wasn’t looking, and so did the daffodils. Given a year to get established, the Dutch tulips are up…

I recently acquired a new scanner and embarked on digitizing the box of photos from the archaic days of film cameras. By coincidence the baby Grendel photos were at the top of the stack, and what better entertainment for a Friday afternoon? My pooch is the one on the left,…

A couple odds and ends: baby squid and monster squid. They’re string-related, I swear! In a triumph of science, feeding silkworms to make them spin colored silk! I skimmed the original journal article too. The scientists fed the silkworms dye mixed with mulberry powder, and when the right chemical type…

Or not. It was into the 40s today, but we’re supposed to get more snow this week. Also sleet, slush, and rain. Where’d I put my galoshes? The tree is looking a bit better, but it’s lost at least one of the trunks. I’m seeing a few other signs of…