The Plantae P.O.V.

Have been anticipating "The Botany of Desire" since promos ran about a month ago, and it was on PBS last night. Truth be told, I've been waiting for longer than that. The program was based on a book by the same title that Michael Pollan wrote a while back. While I was taking the botany course at UConn, one of the teaching assistants sold me on it, and I decided to check it out at the library. I never got a chance. Whenever I looked, it was always taken out. Even the library in town here has a copy that seems to never be on the shelf for long. I guess that if I ever want to read it, I'll need to shell out.

In the meantime, however, the program was excellent, especially with all of the photographs and video in HD.

In a nutshell, Pollan uses four types of plants --- the apple, the tulip, cannabis, and the potato --- to explore mankind's relations with the plant world (I looked on disapprovingly during the cannabis section). Like that old joke about aliens determining that dogs are the leaders of Earth, Pollan asks, 'Who's really in charge here?' We do things for these and other plants. We breed them in mass quantity. We feed them. We perpetuate them in our culture. We think we control them. But, as Pollan notes, by looking from the plant's perspective, one could easily argue that they have power over us.

As I've written before, the botany course was probably the most interesting class I took at the U. I think what hooked me was seeing the green algae Volvox under the microscope the first time. It spirals as it moves through the water, and the formation is just beautiful. Like the flagellate movement of Chlamydomonas, you would almost swear that there is something alive in there with conscious thought. But, alas, there is no brain and its movement is entirely random and acted upon by chemical attractions and environmental conditions. Soon after, though, there's the thought 'What if we're like that?' What if humanity and anamalia are simply creations that do nature's bidding --- entirely controlled by chemical forces whose complexity we don't understand? And I think to a large extent in responding to this last question, we do and we are. Earlier this year came the discovery of "zombie" ants whose brains are controlled by a fungus. Would it be so hard to consider that other animal species could be similarly controlled? There's an argument in there that could cozy up with philosophical Hard Determinism.

Pond Project

Here are some pictures of the progress so far on rehabbing an existing diverted trickle-stream. Drained the lower pond and cleared out a good depth of silt. Moved rocks out of the way. Shoveled in some ledges where rocks will lay to hold down the liner (will be doing the other side tomorrow). Built a small section of wall at the lower end nearest to where the water-in-the-lawn problem is --- used rounded rock toward the inside so there will be no sharp edges against the liner. Plan on doing a small trench down the middle of the lower pond section to allow for run-off of stream water that may trickle underneath the liner through the dividing berm / dam. These were taken after a bit of rain, so there is more pooled water in the lower section that is mostly drained now. After the lower section is completed, the homeowner wants some of the water lilies moved there (they are in baskets) as it is getting crowded in the upper pool. Also says that mosquitoes are not a real problem, probably owing to the number of frogs that reside there.

Irises

Further to the recent spat of botanical pictures, today I took a few more. I'm not sure of the genus - species name of the flower, but they are a white iris variety. Tried several different modes on the camera and played around with some lighting, as I had to take the pictures indoors, out of natural light (it's been sprinkling or full-on raining outside since about 11 a.m.). The picture on the above left was taken in 'Flower' mode and came out with darker contrast than the picture on the right, which was in 'Text' mode. This lower contrast defines the flower outlines better and minimizes some of the shadowing. Yet the picture on the right looks softer, more natural... more inviting.

23 May 2009

Went to Sam's Club this week for the first time in over a month. Picked up some basics that were getting desperately low or we'd run out of a while back --- which includes good melting cheeses for my favorite comfort food dishes. I also had a photo of a bunch of daffodils (shown at right) developed in a 16" x 20" poster-size print (~$6) that I stuck in a frame that's been uncomfortably empty for a while. The Fuji film kiosk (I have always used the Kodak machine in the past) had its issues with my picture, however. The dimensions of my photo apparently didn't jive and when it brought up the image, part of the daffodil stems toward the bottom were cut off. Tried shifting the view window, but that would have cut off some of the yellow flowers. Then, tried to de-magnify the image which was not allowed. At this point you say, "Sh--!" But then came the compromise of magnifying the image to crop out the stems shortly below the ribbon. Was a little dissatisfied with how the darkness of the white background came out. But, having put it up in the frame it seems to work in that room. It would be nice to get a photo-quality printer to get a higher degree of quality control.

Also went to Lowe's to check out what they had for tomato plants, which wasn't much. All that was there were the $3.50/each Bonnie plants. In previous years, I've gotten the traditional black plastic 6-pack of smaller tomato plants there in different varieties. I've tended toward getting the Roma and Celebrity types because they have neater appearance and a better tomato 'flesh' ratio. Sure, Beefsteaks are large, but they are very seedy and have a lot of the placenta rather than the meat --- in this regard, the name is way off. Was also looking for some more herbs for another strawberry planter --- rosemary, sage, and I've been looking for a lady lavender plant to fill the wide top opening. I mean, aren't these pretty standard things to stock? Guess we need to go to a real garden center.

Otherwise, I mowed Hell's half-acre yesterday, trudging through the allergy agony that continues today. But before that, I drove around and did a second coat of white fence paint on our municipality's road signs. They consist of 4"x4"x8' pressure-treated posts, with routered 3" letters with the road names, painted white with black lettering, and then set in concrete at their respective intersections. This was a project that my oldest brother did for his Eagle Scout award... oh... about 15 years ago, now. Since then, we've done some general upkeep and I've finished a few signs that never got made and repainted some that badly needed it. Now comes the time that many of the signs needed to be repainted, and 6 need to be re-set as either the concrete has broken up or they have been vandalized through the years. Doing the white paint is the easy part as I just went around with a 3" roller. It's painting the black lettering that is very time-consuming.

Botany as Art

"Sugar Peas" © Ann Parker 1995

I believe I mentioned in a previous entry that I wanted to share some artwork that was on display at the Homer Babbidge Library (aka Club Homer) at UConn while I was there.

The artist, Ann Parker, calls the series "Botanical Metamorphics." Ms. Parker used a process called Photogramming (I guess it is trademarked) to capture the images, which she describes in a couple of short explanations:

"Using only a light source and a lens to project forms onto archival colour-sensitive paper, photographer Ann Parker has eliminated both film and camera to produce Photograms she calls Botanical Metamorphics. Parker's work explores the structure of botanical subjects and reveals their inner forms.

As a society we have become sadly out of touch with the powerful simplicity of nature," she says. "We are presented with an overwhelming choice of fruits, vegetables and flowers, but they more and more frequently come to us dyed, saturated with chemicals, bleached, dehydrated, reconstituted, gassed and tightly cocooned in plastic. I want this new body of work to not only amaze and delight, but also emotionally involve the viewer in the absolute beauty of botanical forms."

The pieces are rather large --- some were nearly 3' x 4' --- which was what struck me initially. The size allowed for a viewing that was like looking through a giant microscope. As you view from further or nearer, you see the object from different levels. From further off, you got the macrocosmic effect of seeing such things as a fig section, daffodils, a beautiful jack-in-the-pulpit, or "Sugar Peas" which I've included above (my favorite). But as you walked closer, mimicking magnification, there was such detail revealed in each plant or fruit that most people never get to see.

The impressiveness of Ms. Parker's work was heightened for me because, in that senior-year semester, I was taking a botany course to fill a science requirement. I hadn't expected to enjoy that class as much as I did. If the realization hadn't come so late in the day academic-wise, I might have seriously considered switching majors. Anyway, the concepts we were learning in class and the lab really meshed into the displays. You could see the individual hesperidium sacs in the citrus piece, the sclerids in the pear, the pistils, stamens and seeds. I was also in a Shakespeare course --- my first real foray into his writing, and was struck by how much the Bard called upon botanical imagery; this is especially the case with a deep reading of the often simplistically treated Sonnet 18. There are occurrences in learning that just come together, sometimes from completely different subjects that augment each other to create a higher level of understanding and change the point of view one might have had only studying one subject.

The pricing on these works is considerable --- if I recall correctly, anywhere from about one thousand to two thousand dollars. At this time, that's a little out of reach for my budget. It is my (selfish?) hope that Ms. Parker might allow these to go into poster prints, but I could allow that she might want these to be treated as non-commercial art.