Hey there, long time no post
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@rustyfingers, I don't think Amanda has met either of your kids, but I'll ask when they visit this weekend. Maybe at BeeLady's party, but I'm not sure they were there. I've met them, but I think it was another time.
I've thought of you as academic funding has been thrown into chaos. I've got a proposal for a monograph out at an academic publisher at the moment, and I'm working on a proposal for an edited collection with a colleague who has a publisher in mind. Both of them are British publishers. (And one of them owns the other one, but the contraction in the number of both academic and commercial publishing houses is a whole nother conversation.) Both projects probably belong with British publishers anyway, since there's a lot more interest in our research focus, Agatha Christie's work, in the UK than there is here, but American academia is a scary place right now.
Yes, let's find a time to get together!
@Mary-Anna btw my publisher is a UK-based publisher as well. And I recently found out that my book (published in hardback and ebook versions in 2023) will be released in paperback in Sept. (yay!)
I feel lucky that I ended up with that publisher rather than a US-based one.
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@Mary-Anna btw my publisher is a UK-based publisher as well. And I recently found out that my book (published in hardback and ebook versions in 2023) will be released in paperback in Sept. (yay!)
I feel lucky that I ended up with that publisher rather than a US-based one.
@ShiroKuro Congratulations on the paperback!!! That's exciting!
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@ShiroKuro Congratulations on the paperback!!! That's exciting!
@Mary-Anna thank you!! I'm super excited about it!
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Great to see you!
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Just gotta say...it's so good to have you back, @rustyfingers !
@wtg thanks! It's great to be back. Have missed you all.
Hi @Steve-Miller!
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@wtg my new mantra is "don't fall". (My old saying was "life is too short to wear uncomfortable shoes".). The fall I took was on New Years Day. I was hanging a picture and missed the last step of the stepstool on the dismount and fell backwards hitting my head on the first step of our central staircase.
This past August I fell again hanging pictures. I was standing on my bed and walked into a running ceiling fan, which knocked me down onto the bed. Ended up with a laceration on my head, but no other damage.
I'm not allowed to hang pictures anymore.
Thanks for the link to @Big_Al 's knee saga. BA, what a nightmare, and did you really say they used leeches? I thought that went out in pioneer days. So glad you were able to stay with your daughter during your long rehabilitation.
In my rehab my physical therapist and I spent a lot of time figuring out how to get me into my house, which has 8 stairs. We ended up using a shower chair to manage the stairs. Something like this:
Link to video. (She makes it look a lot easier than it was). Once in, I lived in the living room on the first floor for a few months.We also spent a long time practicing getting into a car. To this day I say to myself "don't hold the door" every time I get into or out of a car.
@rustyfingers said in Hey there, long time no post:
BA, what a nightmare, and did you really say they used leeches?Yes, they really did use leeches. As the plastic surgeon explained to me, the leeches feeding on the blood promoted vascularization of the muscle that was inverted and transplanted into the wound left where all the dead tissue and knee cap had been removed. Without the growth of new blood vessels, the muscle could probably not have survived. The leeches came from a leech farm that one of the local hospitals maintains for this purpose.
They would be applied a couple at a time and were about the diameter of a pencil and less than an inch long, They proceeded to ingest blood and became about as big around as my finger and about twice as long as they started. When they had finished feeding, they would release their grip and try to crawl away. At that point, the nurse would collect them and drop them into a jar of alcohol, which ended their lives.
There was great interest in seeing this procedure in the hospital. I counted as many as twelve people in my room watching once.Big Al
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I leave the food gardening to thecomputerdude.
Also I've developed an interest in birds.
Happy belated anniversary everyone.
@rustyfingers said in Hey there, long time no post:
Also I've developed an interest in birds.
I saw a hummingbird today! It made a brief stop at a columbine flower in my front yard.
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How cool! My columbine is doing pretty well this year after several meh years, but I've never seen any hummingbirds near it. Maybe when the weather warms up a little...
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Pretty!
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Pretty! I've never grown columbine, but I got some at a garden sale that was basically stuff people dug up out of their yard and donated to their church.
What variety and color of columbine did I buy? I don't know, because it was just a pot that said, "Columbine." ! I hope it's as pretty as yours.
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Mine is a native here...red Columbine . I've been trying not to buy cultivars. https://gobotany.nativeplanttrust.org/species/aquilegia/canadensis/
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The columbines have been proliferating around our house. They're seeding themselves in new places and have really thrived this year. There are no spectacular colors, though. They all range from near-white to shades of purple.
Big Al
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The ones I've seen in people's yards around here look like red Columbine, so I may have gotten a native plant. I have my eye on some other plants native to New York, since they fit into my current gardening scheme which is, "Hey! I'm in a new-to-me growing zone. Let's plant some things I've never been able to grow before!"
This house has a very small yard, but it seems that it has been inhabited for 140 years by people who weren't very interested in flowers. Most yards in this part of town have a lightly tended Victorian-cottage-garden-packed-with-flowers look that I just love. Ours had some untended foundation plantings, three huge trees, a couple of patches of hostas and a hydrangea bush. The church plant sale was held by people thinning out those gardens full of things that are easy to propagate and hard to kill, and I kinda love the continuity of that.
So I got some lilies-of-the-valley, even though I know they're thugs in the garden, so I planted them in a bed bounded with a wide sidewalk. (Most of this stuff is going there, actually.) I also got some hellebores, because I have a lot of shade, some foxgloves, and some iris. A friend gave me some daylilies, rose of sharon, and Montauk daisies, too. Quirt is correct when he says I need to take a break from planting before I put in more than I can take care of, but as I read that list I think I should go get some native plants to balance out the exotics. Gardening is an illness.
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Isn't it fun?
I just nuked our inherited three rose of Sharon shrubs last year as they are invasive here. Pretty in bloom, but I finally brought myself to cut them down. True to form, this year I have thousands of seedlings trying to reclaim the space.
Similarly, I've been fighting a losing battle with the lilies of the valley in the back yard. So far, they are winning. Again, so pretty in bloom, but invasive here. (I fondly remember the "white coral bells round from my childhood.)
I intentionally planted hostas. They are thriving, but I'm thinking of replacing them with Solomon's seal, which is native here and grows equally well in shade. Snapped this picture on a walk by an empty lot.
I've also had really good luck with our native wild ginger, which is going gangbusters under a mature but invasive Norway maple cultivar under which little else will grow.
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Oh and in case you think I'm a complete fanatic about native plants (I am), I have two rows of Lilylady's spectacular day-lilies, which are of course not native, but I'll never remove them.
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I think peonies don't love being moved, but maybe if it is a young volunteer it will be ok.
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I think peonies don't love being moved, but maybe if it is a young volunteer it will be ok.
@rustyfingers said in Hey there, long time no post:
I think peonies don't love being moved, but maybe if it is a young volunteer it will be ok.
That’s good to know, I’ll tell Mr. SK.
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We seem to have a spontaneous peony in the yard, under a tree, that wasn’t there last year. Mr SK wants to move it to somewhere we could see and and enjoy it more readily, but it seems like other spots would toi much sun for it…
@ShiroKuro said in Hey there, long time no post:
We seem to have a spontaneous peony in the yard, under a tree, that wasn’t there last year. Mr SK wants to move it to somewhere we could see and and enjoy it more readily, but it seems like other spots would toi much sun for it…
Is it certain that it's a peony? I mean, is the mother plant nearby? I always thought they spread out via their roots but I didn't think they cast seeds out that could sprout. One possibility is that there was a peony there before and the previous owner of your house dug it out but left some root bits behind and they've sprung back to life.
Is it possible it's a bleeding heart? Their leaves have similar shapes, but a peony leaf is sturdier and more leathery.
Peony:
Bleeding heart:
Bleeding hearts bloom earlier, but a very young plant might not have any blossoms at all. They do spread their seeds around...
When the world wearies and society ceases to satisfy, there is always the garden - Minnie Aumônier
