Crocus Smile, the Fourth Year

I know you've all been waiting for pictures of this year's blooming of the now famed art installation, "Crocus Smile"!!  Here it is!

And yes, an individual crocus bonus, because they're so amazingly beautiful.  Once again, let me say, the crocuses are more obvious in person.

And, this year, I've tried adding more bulbs (that I'd left in the garage over winter).  Hopefully next year's smile will be even better!

Crocus Smile, the beginnings
Crocus Smile, Year Two
Crocus Smile, Year Three

Springish

It's snowed a couple times this week, not much but a little. 

When I left on Saturday, I did the glance back at the house, just to make sure that the garage door had closed and so forth, that glance you do, and saw that there were a couple bits of yellow from crocus blooming.

Then the snows came.  But this morning, I went out and took a couple of pictures.  I really like the first picture.

 

 

 

One of the things I enjoy about the blog is that you can look back and see when you post about things.  I was thinking that our spring is unusually early this year, but looking back, I can see that I often have pictures of crocus up in mid-March, so spring's pretty much on track with many other years.

 

These are all from the area where I tried to make a crocus smile the fall before last.  This year, a few crocus are up, but not at all enough to tell that there's supposed to be a pattern.

 

I forced some bulbs this fall/spring, and now have a couple of tulips blooming in the house.  Unfortunately, I've had a really bad infestation of aphids, which killed some of the tulips as they were coming up.  They also killed some of the artichoke plants, much to my dismay.  I finally got to the point where I got some insecticidal soap, and I get a paper towel wet with the soap and then gently wipe down the leaves, killing some aphids from the wiping, more than anything, I think.  It grosses me out for some reason, but I'm desperate to try to save the remaining artichokes, so I do it every few days. 

 

At any rate, here's a close up of some tulip pollen.  (The flower is leaning a bit, so the photo isn't actually on its side.)

 

 

 



Crocus Smile, The Second

In fall 2013, I decided to plant some crocus bulbs in a pattern on my lawn.  Here's a post about it the next spring, when things were coming up. 

My crocus are done blooming for the spring, alas, but the plants are doing their part.  The smile didn't really work great this year because different crocus bloomed at different times.  You could see there was something, but you couldn't really see the smile unless you knew that's what was there.  Now, however, it's much clearer, in a way.

 

It's more obvious in person, but you can probably make it out if you look.  And yes, one of us needs to mow her lawn.

Crocus Smile

Last fall, I was thinking aloud (in the company of friends) about doing that thing where you put crocus bulbs in your lawn, and then in the spring, they come up, bloom, and die back before it's time to mow.  One of my friends suggested I do a pattern.

So I did.  Or at least, I tried to.  Using some wrapping ribbon, I laid out a smiley face, and then worked around it planting the little bulbs.

Behold, smiley face.

Then I took away the ribbon and we had that little winter thing.  You know, with the cold and arctic blasts and such.

And now, the snow's gone, and things are starting to come up.  But, naturally, not all at once.

So here's the same patch of lawn:

If you embiggen seriously, you can see three very tiny bits of yellow.  On the left, just a bit directly towards the camera from near the tip of the shadow, there's a tiny spot.  On the right, if you work forward from the tree in the back, there's another spot, and then forward more, another spot.

I had bags of mixed crocus bulbs, and it looks like the yellows came up first.

You can also see that I pruned some of the lower branches of the tree (it was getting too difficult to mow near it, and getting in the neighbor's way, too).  But mostly you can see that the tree isn't leafing out yet.  Nothing is.

And do you wonder, as I do, what caused the optical illusions of curves in the vinyl sidings of the houses?

Edited to add:  I took another picture this afternoon, and there are a few new blossoms showing up!

Crocus Smile, the Third Year

The first year of the crocus smile, taken on April 19th.


The second year of the crocus smile, taken on April 29th.


This year, it's way early!  It's been visible for a couple of days, but I just decided to take a picture today.  I'm thinking that this year, I'll pull some bulbs from elsewhere in the yard and try to augment it some.  I've got some areas where crocuses are a bit crowded.  And they're yellow, so they'll stand out well.


It does look better in person, though.


Still, it feels so like spring!  (but I'm told we're expecting a big storm tomorrow.


But I'll be headed to SAA!  Anyone want to meet up?


Fie, do you have my number?  (I have yours, and I can text now!)


Our spring break is this week.  I graded and recorded a set of exams, and have been taking care of stuff that really needs to be taken care of.  It's amazing how good some sunshine and sleeping in feels!

Spoken too Soon

I appears I may have welcomed spring in just a tad too soon.

It snowed yesterday evening; I drove the last hour or so through it, and it was hard driving. But then, I'm a whuss about snow driving.

It wasn't much snow, and it's already melted from the driveway and road near my house (and I suspect other roads in the area). That melting really brings home what I've heard about the ways concrete and asphalt store heat way more than plants and soil do, because the snow's still on the lawn and soil a little (though it is melting).

There's a reason I keep posting pictures of the same crocus. There's only one. Yep. There are other crocus plants starting to come up, but this is the only flower starting so far. Keep your fingers crossed for more!

(One of the bonuses to taking out the ugly bushes in my front yard is that I'll be able to put in a bunch more crocuses and other bulbs for early spring hope next year.

Grading Queen of Spring

Two weeks ago, there was this. The crocus were starting to bloom, and this was looking like a tiny blue pineapple.

And now the tiny blue pineapple is becomming a flower, a grape hyacinth even. It's still pretty tiny, but it's there!

On March 15th, the crocus were looking promising, and the daffodils were just starting to come out of the ground.

And today, the daffodil blooms are opened up! It's really looking like spring!

I did a bunch of grading yesterday, and I'm going to do a smaller bunch today, to finish up the second pile, and then I'm going away for a couple days. For once, I procrastinated a bit less than I could have, and I'm feeling a lighter load as a result.

Hurray for spring!

A New Lens on Life

I got a new camera lens today, a macro lens designed for taking more close up shots of small stuff.
The top picture here is taken with my regular 18-55mm lens, which is a basic, take a picture lens. It's good for pictures of people and such, okay for landscape stuff (at my level).

The picture below is taken with my new 50mm macro lens. It's weird because you'd think at 50mm, it wouldn't work better than the old lens for close ups, but it has a closer focal distance, so it does. But it doesn't zoom at all, so I have to move back and forth a bit.

This is my first effort; I took the first picture this morning, just for fun. But I took the other about 4pm, so the light isn't as good and the crocus isn't quite as open as it was.

But it's the same crocus flower.

I keep taking pictures of the same two little patches of flowers, because that's what's up and flowering. A couple other flowers are beginning to look just about ready, soon.

Now I have the ganas for a fancy zoom lens. /nod

Quiet

We're coming to the end of spring break here in the NorthWoods.  A friend from college spent the week here visiting.  They were recently "made redundant" in their job, and so are unemployed, but got a decent severance and such.  And their profession is one where there's lots of job movement through a career, so I expect they can find a job pretty quickly in their field.  Unfortunately, they're also really burned out on their field.  So we'll see.

At any rate, it was wonderful having a friend from my previous world visit.  Since my friend was feeling tired and burned out, we spent a lot of time relaxing, chatting.  We did some driving around, going out for meals, and hanging out.  I introduced them to some favorite Netflix series.

My friend left yesterday.

Now life feels quiet.  My house feels quiet.  (Not that my friend is loud, but it's quieter.)

I did some grading and such, so I'm all caught up there.  I spend yesterday rereading a novel to teach this coming week, and still need to reread a play or two.  And plan classes, of course.

I'm working on a really difficult violin piece.  I missed two days of practice over the break, so that's not too bad.  Strings suggested an exercise book for third position, and I've been working on that.  The biggest difficulty with third position is reading notes and putting my fingers in different places than before.  (The position thing has to do with where the fingering hand is on the fingerboard.  First position is nearest the end.  Third position is with the first finger where the third finger usually is.)

I'm also working on additional scales, in second and third position.  Some are physically difficult for me (reaching up the violin), and all are mentally difficult in terms of thinking about what notes I'm playing.

So I'm plugging along there.

I haven't been birding at all yet this spring, but I've heard about a great pond about 40 miles away, so I'm heading up there in a bit, I think. 

And my crocus smile is up.  I've got a new plan to try to fill in spots.  I got some crocus bulbs in fall, and left them in the garage all winter (so they'd get cold enough, but not too cold).  So I'm going to stick them in the empty areas today using a dibble stick thing and some bone meal, and hope they'll come up!

Meanwhile, Gent Wevelgem is on (it's a bike race in Flanders) and very exciting.

Crocus Report

My crocuses came up and bloomed midweek, but I didn't have time to get out there in good light with a camera. But here they are.

One of the things I really enjoy about the blog is that I can look back and see what's what with things. For example, I did a search for "crocus" on the blog and was surprised to see that while we're all talking about what an amazingly early spring we're having, I had posted pictures of my crocuses at about this time several years. So it feels early, but the crocuses aren't saying it's that much earlier, maybe a few days, maybe not. I suppose that's why we write things down?

Since I wasn't here in fall to put new bulbs in, or to redig older plantings, I'm happy to see that lots are coming up anyway! And thinking about where to put in some new plantings.

Spring break officially began for me yesterday afternoon! Let the relaxing begin! (And the grading, and reading!)

Crocus Smile, Year Five

It's time for the annual Crocus Smile art installation picture!  If you recall, just last week, it looked like this.  (Scroll down for picture.)  Now the snow has melted, and you can see the smile.

It's quite a bit later than last year, but also fuller.  (The spring before, I added some bulbs, and they appear to have survived to come up this spring.)

Year Four
Year Three
Year Two
The First Post

And it's way bigger than it was for the first couple of years.

In other exciting news, yesterday, I saw my first ever Purple Finches!  The top picture shows three males (one you can only see a bit of behind the feeder).  Birders always talk about male Purple Finches looking like they've been dipped in raspberry.  They're much redder than House Finches on the back and wings.  And they don't have dark stripes on their flanks as House finches do.  They also have notched tails, which House Finches don't.  (It's not the best picture as a picture, but it shows the important identification features I was looking at.)

 The next picture is a female, which is the same size, also has a notched tail, and has a serious light colored stripe above and below the eye.  It's way more streaky on the body, but the eye stripes are the field marker people point to.

In other birding news, I went to some friends' house for breakfast this morning; they live on a wooded lot next to a lake, and it's their first spring there.  It was glorious weather, and we saw all sorts of great birds.

I saw my first Red-Breasted Nuthatch not in-hand (I'd previously seen one that had been mist netted for banding at bird school last year).

We also saw Yellow-Bellied Sapsuckers, including one that was sucking sap, so to speak.  It was monitoring three holes drilled closely together, and sucking sap from each in turn, all without moving more than it's head.

We may have seen a female Redstart or maybe it was a Yellow-Rumped Warbler (it was very grey, and seemed more grey with no real yellow markings, but...)

Also Mergansers, Buffleheads, Kingfisher, Bald eagle, Downy and Red-Bellied Woodpecker, Jays, Chickadees, Robins.  A very good morning!

I still have some Redpolls feeding on my deck, and a few Juncos, but the American Goldfinches are bright yellow now.  There are also Mourning Doves.

Breaking News: T.S. Eliot was Wrong

Evidence of Eliot's error:

Yesterday, for the first time since Sunday, I got home early enough to take a walk around and enjoy the yard. In the two days since Sunday, the yard has started the green up thing.

The crocuses have been bringing me hope since March, but now you can see the daffodils (I think) starting up, too. Weirdly, a couple crocus bulbs seem to have been upended, so I stuck them back in. I should water them to give them at least a bit of a chance.

I missed seeing these last spring, and had forgotten how many different colors I'd put in (mixed bulb bag). Now I want to put in a lot more, because a little patch here and there isn't enough! In my yard fantasy, I have something blooming all season long. But in reality, I have a tendency to plant a lot of early blooming stuff because I'm so desperate for spring.

Two summers ago, I planted a couple forsythia at the side of the house where there was nothing really interesting. It's not a side of the house that's easy to see from anywhere except the neighbor's yard, pretty much (or my own), but still, I wanted something there. But last spring, of course, I wasn't here, so I've never seen these bloom. They'd probably look more promising in front of a dark backdrop, and without cages, but a good many of my plants live in cages because otherwise the rabbits kill them with alacrity. (And even so, the deer trim the tops.)

But best of all are the Tamaracks! They have these lovely soft green needles all summer, but then the needles turn bright yellow in fall and drop. All winter, they look like Charlie Brown's Christmas special.

And then in April, they start to bud, and little bits of green start to show, the needles beginning to grow. And tiny bits of pink here, too. I think those are the parts that will become the little cones.

I put the Tamaracks in the first summer I moved here, along with a couple of pine trees (in different places). The pines have probably doubled in size, but the Tamaracks seem to be growing very slowly.

All this, and it's mid-April and spring has come bringing joy to the Northwoods!

QED.

(Photographing plants up close, I really need to think about getting a lens for doing such things, so that I can get more of the picture in focus.)

Dickenson was Wrong

Hope is not the thing with feathers. Hope is the first sign of green sprouting as the snow melts in the spring.

A friend spotted his first spring robin yesterday, so maybe there are feathers involved after all?

It seems like these bulbs (mostly daffodils in this bed, with some Grape Hyacinth and Crocus, too) are sprouting awfully early this year. But they should be hardy, and not too badly damaged even if we get more snow (and we probably will).

Green

We're having our late February/early March melt right now, which means things are especially ugly. Several months worth of salt, grime and gravel are eating the snow away at the sides of the road, leaving nasty black facings. During the day, snow melts now (rather than sublimating, as it seems to when it's colder) and then freezes on streets and sidewalks at night.

We usually get more snow through April, but what comes from now on is usually heavy, wet snow with the occasional freezing rain. It's way harder to shovel than the light, dry snow we get when it's most cold out.

But yesterday, I had cause to walk over to another area of campus, by the administrative fort. There's a protected area next to the fort, where the sun hits from midday through the afternoon, but where the wind is minimal and the snow seems not to fall as much. I think of it as the earliest place in town to get spring, so I made a point of walking by, and indeed, there are some crocus and daffodil buds breaking ground already. I also saw some dandelions greening up.

For me, winter here starts when it starts snowing, which can be late October or late November, or in between. This year was in between.

Winter lasts until it's warm enough, for me, into the 60s. So sometimes we have winter into May because it's in the 40s during the day, windy, cold, and miserable.

But things look better now, because I can at least walk by the green buds next to the fort.

Crocus Smile, 2019

Here's a picture from April 17!

And April 10th:

Previous years: 

Year Five

Year Four
Year Three
Year Two
The First Post

Spring Starts Now

Meet the two newest members of the BardiacShack household!

 

They're red pines, and they're about 3 feet tall right now, maybe 4.  (It's hard to get the combination of heights right when you plant on a slope and want to leave a nice berm to help hold in water.)  I know they don't look like much, but about five years ago now, I planted some white pines, and now here they are:

 



So things do grow!

Happily, my neighbors' dog is here and helped me.  (NOT.)

At any rate, she is always lovely to have around, very good company!

When I first moved here, about 11 years ago now, I planted 6 trees.  Two white pines (not the ones above), two tamaracks (one has died, alas), a hawthorne, and this sugar maple.  It's always a bit slow to leaf out in spring, but it sure has grown!

And finally, some crocus in the back yard, because they're beautiful.

I saw my first ever Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker on Thursday.  At first I thought it was a scruffy Downy Woodpecker, but then I saw that it wasn't, and voila, it was a Y-B Sapsucker!

More Spring!

The crocus are done, and now it's daffodil time! What gets me is that I feel like I put in a ton of bulbs, but when spring comes around, there aren't that many coming up yet. I obviously need to put in more bulbs!

The forsythia flowers are still going strong (despite a storm I thought might knock all the blooms off), and lots of other plants are coming up. I can see the sedum coming back, the salvia, the Siberian iris. The dogwoods look like they're getting ready to bloom.

The magic of the tamarack continues; the needles are getting a little longer, and the little pink areas (which I think are the "flowers" which become cones) are getting bigger, too.

I'm way behind in being ready for my bike trip, and I'm whussy enough that I don't much ride in the rain, and it's been raining, so I haven't ridden for a couple days. My longest ride so far is about 25 miles, and I have about a month to get to 65 miles (the longest day on the trip) and a week of 30+ miles a day. Did I mention there's hills there? And it's a higher altitude than here (by about 6 thousand feet).

I read somewhere that Grizzly Bears can run about 35 mph. My top biking speed ever, so far as I know, is 39.9 mph, going down a steep hill. I was scared enough that I couldn't pedal even a little to put the bike computer up to 40. So, I'm guessing if I meet a Grizzly, I'd better hope I'm far away and it's busy.

If not, I'm planning my epitaph: Bardiac: Exit, pursued by a bear. (Okay, you saw that coming, right?)

Hope and Despair

Spring really is coming. My crocus says so!

News about budget stuff just gets worse and worse. In a nearby state, there's talk about having state employees pay more towards their health insurance benefit. We're looking likely to do furloughs here. One of my colleagues says they should just admit they're making pay cuts. I'm wondering if calling it a pay cut means it never comes back, while calling it a furlough means we go back to the regular pay eventually?

I have a contract letter that says how much I'm supposed to be paid for the year. Can they force me to take a furlough and earn less? How does that work as a contract?

NWU has been doing a big budget study project; the project is supposed to help the administrators decide in a reasonable, informed way, what goes, because some things are going to go. I have no idea what those will be, however.

All the departments and such did comparison studies with data about campuses similar to ours, and by and large we found that we get paid less and teach more students AND produce more research than those schools. In my department, that means we teach way more students in comp classes than our similar campuses do. It doesn't mean we do as good a job teaching as they do, however.

So, with the budget crisis, we're looking at adding more students to each class. Add a couple students to each comp class over the semester, and drop a whole comp section (one taught by an adjuct, of course) and save money on that adjunct's salary. That sucks for the adjunct in major ways, and for instructors across the board, and for our students.

There's the rock.

Educational assessment is always aimed at saying that we're doing a good job; there's never any benefit to saying we aren't. So, we assess writing and say that yes, students are improving, though not as much as we'd like. We have no way to compare how well we're teaching with comparable campuses.

And that's the hard place.

We can't get at how much better we might do if we taught smaller classes, nor is there money to pay for instructors enough to teach smaller classes. Instead, we'll get more students, and then that new number will become the new standard, and that will never go down. Even if I could prove that teaching 16 students instead of 28 meant that each student learned 20% more, it wouldn't matter because no one with real power really cares about our students enough to vote to pay for it.

The dean and chairs are talking about ways to mitigate the added load of additional students in our classes. In some classes, profs will start using bubble tests, but it's hard to imagine how to teach writing without actually having to grade writing, and that goes not only for composition classes specifically, but for philosophy classes, history classes, and so forth, all of which are writing intensive fields.

I'm looking at the rest of my career and figuring things will never get better.

I used to think it might, but the more I hear people complain about paying taxes, the more certain I am that things won't change for the better in public education.

So as I look at the rest of my career, another 15-20 years, I'm wondering if it's worth it? Or what the alternatives are.

Hope for Spring: the Artichoke Saga

Back in October, I posted a couple pictures of artichoke plants I'd brought in, hoping to keep them alive for the winter.

Poor artichoke plants!

In November, suddenly a bunch of the outer leaves died off.  I was sad, but hopeful that the rest would survive. 

And then in late December, the rest of the leaves started to die off.  Happily, in early January, the friend whose expertise with plants made growing artichokes in this climate possible was by, looked at the plants, and diagnosed them with spider mites!  SPIDER MITES!  Ugh.

So, in desperation, I went to the local little hardware place and the hardware person helped me get a dormant plant spider mite insecticide, which I sprayed.  And then I waited.  And things seemed a bit better, so I waited.  After a couple of weeks, there were little leaves starting from the center again, so I cut away the deadest of the old leaves and sprayed again.  And then I waited some more.

Today, I cut away the last of the dead leaves and took a couple of pictures.

Now if you compare them to the October pictures, they look awfully pathetic and sad.  But if you compare them to how things looked in early January, then they look pretty hopeful.

As my friend pointed out, it's a good sign that they're putting on new growth.

She also pointed out that since the other artichoke plants we've grown have been first year plants tricked into thinking they're second year plants, if these plants make it into the spring looking this good, then I'm way, way ahead of the game.

Looking at the October pictures, I realize that I didn't take a picture of the light set up.  In those, there's one bulb.  But early on, my friend suggested that one wouldn't provide enough light, so I moved a different lamp there, one of those lamps with five bulbs on sort of moveable stem things, all of which are now lined up and pointing down at the plants.  They're also right in front of a big window which does afford some natural light, though it being winter, not much.

Back a couple of months ago, my neighbors were going to drop off their dog for the weekend; usually, in winter, the dog's crate goes right in front of the picture window where she can see out at the birds and the neighbors.  But because the plants are there, I asked them to put the crate in the summer spot (which is fine, but doesn't have birdTV and isn't in direct, hot sun to keep her from overheating in summer) because of the artichoke plants.  And she was so funny about asking if that was the light that's always on in that window. 

Yep, I'm growing artichokes, but I think my neighbors thought I was much more interesting agriculturally.

As you can see in the background of the first picture, I've also forced a couple of bulbs.  The hyacinth did great, one is pretty much done flowering, and the other is in full bloom.

The crocus seem to have died, but the daffodils seem to be starting.  Here's the currently blooming hyacinth.

I'm at that point of winter where I can't quite believe that it will ever be warm again.  But yesterday, I went out in the afternoon (about 4pm) to try to see the local snowy owl (no luck), and realized that it was light until WAY later than it had been in January when I went out to try to see it and it was getting dark by 4:30 or so.  So there is hope, right?

Now is the Winter of our Discontent made Glorious Spring!

Look what I saw when I got home this afternoon (before dark and everything!). It's the first full out blooming crocus!

And then I looked closer, and saw another!

And there are some more that are just about ready to bloom, too. It's not exactly a carpet of flowers, but it's a little bit of hope on a sunny spring day, and I'm thrilled.



I turned in an application to teach abroad today; my chair signed it and the dean (I'm told, and I have no reason to disbelieve) signed it. (That is, they said that they could live without my presence for the semester and things would manage to go on.)

Now it's on to the Study Abroad office here, and then if they pass it, a study abroad office elsewhere, which is where I'm most likely to hit competition from a lot of other people.

Please cross your fingers for me.