I had a mountain of unwanted plastic pots, mostly in the 3-5 inch size, leftovers from when I was growing more than just a few orchids around the house. The pots were used, a little old, but basically functional. I… Read More »a mountain of plastic pots
Here’s the side view of my studio. The colors are pretty atrocious and I wanted to try out some different options. Colourlovers lets you play with colors in lots of ways, and I started there. I used their tool to… Read More »color resources
The graphic at the top of this blog is based on a picture of a giant staghorn fern that I’ve been growing for the last decade or so. This is the plant: The board it’s mounted to is four feet… Read More »giant staghorn fern
I was looking at some of the work of the six finalists who’ve been invited to submit book proposals as part of the Critical Mass photography competition. One of them, Beth Dow, has a beautiful body of work based on… Read More »garden photography: beth dow
I’ve had a couple recent posts on insects. While I’ll on the subject it looks like there’s a whole subculture of insect snuff films on YouTube. Notice that the “no animals were harmed during the filming of this video” assurance… Read More »carnivorous plants in action
So…you think humans are the only critters who farm and garden? Think again. From a Science in Brief column in yesterday’s LA Times comes this about ants: Study finds ants longtime farmers Ants took up farming some 50 million years… Read More »ant farm[ers]
I’ve written about our cat Scooter. A while back I’d bought myself a Sputnik camera, and old Russian roll-film camera that takes two pictures simultaneously, each of them of the same thing, but with separate lenses spaced about the same… Read More »garden cat and abu ghraib in 3-d!
A lot of nurseries around here tout plants as being hummingbird- or butterfly-friendly. Those little critters are awfully decorative and fun to have around, but the major work of pollination belongs to the bees. For instance the California almond crop… Read More »in defense of bees
Shown here with its last flowers of a long season that started last fall is Protea x Pink Ice, a hybrid between the species P. compacta and P. susannae. Although one of the growing guides says this stops at 5-7… Read More »protea pink ice
Below are instructions on constructing the steel planters I discussed in my last post. For each planter, you’ll need: 5 sheets of 12-guage steel, cut perfectly square (I used pieces 1-foot square) disposable welding supplies: either welding wire or steel… Read More »steel cube planters, part 2