Mapping a Garden

Just finished the final map for this year of the butterfly garden at hitchcock center. I used MS Word's drawing tools--specifically the autoshapes--for the plants, put ID numbers on them, and used different border and fill colors for the different plants. While this is not a perfect tool for mapping a garden, it's an accessible one and certainly easier than trying to do it with pencil and paper. It's easy to move plants around, add them, or delete them. I wanted something that would be helpful next spring when the same or a different crew is assigned to clean up the garden.

Orchid seedlings 1 month after de-flasking

This is taken a day early, on June 5th. I see no sign of any real growth in size, but they look healthy and there's no sign of rotting or pests. They obviously made the transition from the flasks to community trays OK.

Unflasking the Seedlings

The flasks arrived in the mail this morning. Here's a picture of the box they came in and the two flasks--which are actually spaghetti sauce jars with a small hole in their lids, stuffed with cotton. The seedlings are in a dark grey sort of lumpy media, which is why the flasks look sort of dark.





I removed the lids from the flasks, filled them with lukewarm water and poured the water out a couple times to remove most of the grey media. Then I dumped them in a small plate and rinsed them there a little more. Now they look like this.


Then I separated them out and sorted them roughly by size. Here some are on a newspaper to give a better idea of their size.

I filled a mixing bowl with sphagnum moss, wet it thoroughly, put a layer of it in the bottom of each tray and then one by one wrapped each seedling in a bit of sphagnum and put them in one of the trays. There were about 40 seedlings per flask, some of them very very tiny. When I was done, the trays looked like this and I put them under some fluorescent lights, partially covered with a piece of saran wrap.


I'll keep them moist but not wet. I'm a bit concerned about having them all in the same large tray in case of a fungal infection and may get another tray and move half to a different location just in case. I did use brand new trays and a new bag of sphagnum.

Story of an orchid cross

On May 28th of 2007 I crossed LC Mini-Purple "Blue Hawaiian" with C Brabantiae. This is what they look like. Brabantiae is the spotted orchid and is somewhat larger than the Mini-purple.





While the pod on Branbantiae did not take, the one on Mini-purple did. It seemed to take longer to mature than the pod from a similar cross I made a few years ago, but it did mature. I sent it in for flasking on May 8th, 2008. I expect the flasks back this week.

My intention is to post images of the baby plants every week or every other week. If these bloom out like the similar cross I made, they will be pink with darker pink on the lip and a few but not all will have some spots or freckles.

Update on LED light testing

At this point, the first marigold under the fluorescent lights is beginning to flower. There are buds on the marigolds under the LED lights, but they haven't begun to open yet. In addition the stems of the plants under the fluorescent lights are a dark red, while those of the plants under the LED lights are a mix of green and pink and do not look as sturdy.

Knitted Hats

I've been experimenting with knitting hats the last couple of weeks. The first one was too large because I used a rather stretchy yarn. The second one was a bit small, but wearable and I really liked the yarn--Tahki's Bunny Print. The third one, using Licorice and black worsted came out just right. The pattern called for knitting them from the top center down, starting on double-pointed needles and then moving to circular needles. I began on straight needles and then just sewed together the small gap. This was much easier than dealing with a few stitches each on double-pointed needles. Part of the sizing problem is that the hat is sort of scrunched together on the needles so it's difficult to really tell how large it is.

Here's a picture of the three hats. The Bunny Print is the one on the right. I made the black and white one for my son's girlfriend.

Clay Art Listserv Exchange

The clayart listserv has a pottery exchange for those not going to NCECA, the big pottery contest. Last year and this year I've coordinated the exchange. There were about 100 participants. This is what I sent my exchange partner--minus the plants. They're there to show them sort of in use. One is a thrown pink hanging planter and the other is a handbuilt weedpot for the wall.

This is what I got in exchange. It's always fun to get a surprise in the mail.