New Camera!

Anybody that knows me knows I take a gazillion photos. I love my Sony Cyber Shot for the ease of use and most of the bells and whistles (movie mode, manual abilities), but I wanted to be more artistic and DH Bob wanted more telephoto abilities.

So after months of research and intense negotiation with DH (we plan to buy two bodies and share the lenses, so we needed to agree on a system), last weekend I ordered a DSLR Nikon D80 and watched the shipment tracking across the country with a lot of excitement! Got it Friday and was shooting before dark. I had family commitments yesterday but today after it warms up some (it's 21 degrees now) I'm heading out to a nearby nature center to see what I can see. Which probably won't be much for a few weeks, but that's not the idea; the idea is to get familiar with all the controls. Next weekend a friend and I will head up north to an area where migrating snow geese congregate.

I always wondered at those photographers who rattled of the details of what lens setting, aperture, etc. with each pic; how could they write everything down when snapping so quickly? Find out the shooting details are recorded with these cameras! Duh . . . but boy will that help me learn!

Spring (almost)

This says it well and applies to Michigan as well as the South!

Summer in the South

The Oriole sings in the greening grove
As if he were half-way waiting,
The rosebuds peep from their hoods of green,
Timid, and hesitating.
The rain comes down in a torrent sweep
And the nights smell warm and piney,
The garden thrives, but the tender shoots
Are yellow-green and tiny.
Then a flash of sun on a waiting hill,
Streams laugh that erst were quiet,
The sky smiles down with a dazzling blue
And the woods run mad with riot.

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Pictures??? Test???

I was wondering how to make my garden pictures where if a viewer clicks on them, they get a bigger size. Mine don't do this and maybe because I made them elements instead of a post? So let's see; I'll upload this another way and see if it's clickable . . . by the way it's the lovely Sabine Baur.

Oh! That worked. Let's see if I can change the ones on the right.

Daylily Hybridizing - my program

This blog is a week old and I have only mentioned my favorite subject in passing! That isn't like me lol.

I love daylilies. I love the variety of colors, heights, sizes, edges, eyes, patterns, and shapes. My favorites are big ruffled full forms with round petals and well-behaved sepals. I love unusual forms and spiders also. Eyes have to be either dramatic or patterned. And edges - whether colored, ruffled, toothy or fringed . . . Love edges.

I also like that it's so darn easy to make new hybrids. Well, it is easy but to be worthwhile, extensive records must be kept . . .

The first few years I bought seeds. I didn't have established mothers with the desired characteristics. In 2004, 664 seeds were started and 569 germinated and were planted outside. 7 were lost that first winter. Last fall I dug up and composted all but 36 plants, which will be moved in the spring. These made the "cut" for further evaluation. In 2005, I cut back to buy just shy of 480, planting 404. There were several beauties which bloomed last year. Last year there was a disastrous event - aphids infested the seedlings in May, just before they were scheduled to go outside. I watered one morning and they were fine. Two days later I was walking by and stopped dead - my babies were inundated and of course I didn't have anything on hand. By the time I started spraying insecticidal soap, it was too late. I planted the poor almost lifeless things anyway and still lost probably 2/3 of them. I will know in the spring.

So this year I'm going to do things differently. I'm going to try direct sowing into the ground this spring. Wish me luck!

Now I have good established moms and have more seeds than I have space . . . and still bought 18 crosses . . . it's a sickness, I tell you.

I don't coddle my seedlings. I do mulch but more to keep weeding to a minimum than to protect seedlings. Like most hybridizers, I'm looking at the complete plant, not just the pretty bloom. I have one tiny one with a wonderful knarly edge, the best edge I've seen on a little one, but the bloom won't open fully. I'll use that as a bridge plant, hoping it will pass the edge to its kids.

My supervisor lets me use vacation time creatively. I take every morning off the second, third, and fourth weeks of July, our peak bloom time. I get the pollen first thing in the morning and bring it inside to dry, then go back outside to take pictures of EMOs (early morning openers). I string a notebook and pencil around my neck to record my pictures and take field notes. My camera allows a voice recording while taking a pic but that just didn't work well for me. By the time the picture taking session is over, the pollen is dry and I can start dabbing. The garden is just outside the back door so it's convenient to do it one dad at a time. I have different colored wires assigned to different dads and when I brush the pollen onto a pistil, I twist a wire behind the bud and move on. Nothing more distracting than having white tags blowing around when you view a garden. And I find it clumsy to write the pollen parent on the tags anyway. This way works well for me.

When the dabbing is done, it's time to go back out to the seedling patch and take pictures of those not fully open earlier. Then it's usually time to shower and head for the office.

I am a pod squeezer. There I admit it. I keep close watch on ripening pods so I can collect the seed before the pod bursts and the seed falls to the ground and is lost. I take a bunch of small envelopes out to the garden and write the pod parent on the outside, then put pods and wires in the envelope (when, of course, the wires - the pollen parent - are the same). Later, I remove the seeds and leave the envelopes open so they can dry a few days. I identify the pollen parent, write it and the number of seeds on the outside, seal it, and put in the fridge for the winter.

It's a lot of work but so much fun to rush out to the seedling patch and be the first person in the world to view a particular flower. Maybe someday I'll create something worthwhile of registration and distribution. If you are still with me, and interested, some of my babies are on this photo album: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=j3gp31b.50hlj1yb&x=1&y=-a5ipvv

Planting Plans for 2007

I got just under the wire with Bluestone Perennial's early bird discount this week. I ordered a few new things and others which I have grown in the past which have petered out, probably though neglect or being planted in the wrong places, which I know better but stubbornly refused to accept - for example the delphiniums looked wonderful where they were but didn't get enough water because they were on the slope. If there's any sign of life to them I'll move them in the spring.

Here are some old favorites I'm trying again: Anchusa Dropmore didn't have the best form but what a great color. I have a lot of blue that time of year and will have to remember to buy other colors blooming then. Digitalis Mertonensis - I loved this and gave away bunches, only to lose what I had left. My Malva Alcea Fastigata never got tall for me here so I am pulling out the old bunch and putting in new after amending the spot.

These are new to me: Aster laevis 'Bluebird', Eupatorium coelestinum 'Wayside', Geranium 'Nimbus', Nepeta 'Six Hills Giant' (was highly recommended), Calamintha nepetoides (also highly recommended) and Artemisia pycnocephala 'Davids Choice'.

I also (of course) have new daylilies coming in the spring, including my first-ever expensive new intro directly from the hybridizer - Frank Smith's incredible hemerocallis 'Princess Diana' which I saw at his place last May with an incredible number of buds. I tried to limit my purchases to plants I would be actively using in my breeding program - White Noise for its throwing of wide white edges in its kids (one of my goals), Spacecoast Surprise Purple for the white edge, Poets Reverie, Annette's Magic and Spiny Sea Urchin for their incredible edges, Cerise Masterpiece for its awesome scape - the best scape I saw in Florida. I won Harborwalk from my club's Dig and Divide program, and bought American Freedom for that program. Coming are club wins: Senegal and Destined to See. Also bought the following for breeding: Enchanting Esmerelda, Alexa Kathryn. And I fell in love with some older varieties because of people posting pictures: Antique Rose, Violet Explosion, Broadway Ruby Slippers, Skinwalker. I keep saying I'm finished.

Got a catalog from Arrowhead Alpines and plan to head out there in the late spring to round up the garden acquisitions!

Come on spring! I have to dig a new bed for these new plants!

Toastmasters

When I started this blog it was to be about gardening. But my life is not of one dimension and neither should my blog be one topic.

To start at the beginning, I have always been shy and introverted. When I was young I wouldn't say boo to anybody. The older I got, the more I saw I was denying myself a fundamental need for social interaction. Sure I work full time and have lots of friends at work. But I lacked the ability to feel comfortable with people I didn't know well outside the work situation. In my 40s I forced myself to get out and mingle. I'll never forget the time I was driving to Chicago to meet a group I had been talking with over the internet. I so dreaded meeting them I stopped outside Chicago and was sick in a fast food restroom for half an hour. But I digress - the other half of this shyness was a fear of public speaking.

I worked for one company for 21 years (it has since been sold and closed). My coworkers were like family. I wanted to say a few words about my boss at a company party. They gave me a microphone and I froze and mumbled something. Sigh. Then I attended a funeral of a friend's mother. Her daughter got up and gave a moving eulogy. I thought "I could never do that!"

It took a while before I was thinking "I could do that, and I'm going to do it." Luckily I haven 't had to deliver a eulogy for my mom and hopefully it'll be a long time before I do! But I CAN with the skills and confidence I have gotten with Toastmasters.

I joined a local group of Toastmasters who meet in the morning twice a month in downtown Lansing. What wonderful people! They are friendly and supportive and entertaining. When you join, you get a manual of ten different projects. You focus on something new for every speech, for instance one project focuses on gestures and another on varying the way you speak. Beside speaking, members get different "jobs" every meeting. One person counts the "um-ers," the filler words most speakers aren't aware they are using. Another finds a word not normally used and challenges speakers to use it while talking. A timer keeps tracks of all speeches and makes sure speakers stay within time limits. Someone has the invocation, someone the thought of the day, someone takes notes. For encouragement, ribbons are awarded for Best Speaker, Most Improved Speaker, Best Evaluator, and Best Table Topic Speaker, so someone tallies the votes. Of course the officers are the unsung heroes!

In a typical meeting, we start with three or four speakers, who are then evaluated by other members. Sounds scary but it isn't. Toastmasters are trained to be positive and encouraging, but to offer suggestions for improvement. After all that's why we're there!

After the prepared speeches, we move on to Table Topics. Now this is real scary for newbies but it is really a lot of fun. A Table Topic Master chooses a theme and makes up some topics which are sealed and participants have to speak for at least a minute but not more than 2 1/2 minutes . . . the rub is they can't open their topics until just before they speak. But if you can't think of what to say - say something! Even if you go off on a tangent that's OK - even if you lie or make something up that's OK too. The idea is to think fast and talk while keeping your brief speech organized with a beginning, middle, and summary.

Because of my brain surgery, posted yesterday, I took a year off from Toastmasters as trying to work was taking every ounce of energy I had. I returned in 2006 and told my mentor I wouldn't be able to speak, that the capability just didn't exist, and she gave me jobs (timer, grammarian, etc.) so I could be involved. When I felt able to string a few words together coherently, I told them, and have been speaking again since November. I'm still on that first manual and have room for lots of improvement. But it sure feels good to be able to talk to a group of people. Back to daylilies (I always talk about daylilies!), the President of my local club asked me to present last meeting and I said SURE! I won't say I wasn't nervous but I got through it! A few years ago I would have said "Me? No way!!!"

A Brain Vein Drain (Cavernous Angioma)

“The MRI detected a mass in your brain.”

I heard these words a little more than two years ago, in January 2005, a few days after sudden and severe double vision sent me to an emergency room. They began my odyssey with a Cavernous Angioma, or CA.

Let me tell you a little bit about CAs. CAs, also known as Cerebral Cavernous Malformation, or as Cavernoma, are clusters of abnormal blood veins in the brain or the spinal column. A typical CA looks somewhat like a raspberry, and can range in size from microscopic to inches in diameter. It is made of multiple little bubbles (or caverns) filled with blood and lined by a single layer of cells called endothelium. These cells are similar to those that line normal blood vessels, but the bubble-like structures of a cavernous angioma are leaky and lack the other layers of a normal blood vessel wall.

Some are present from birth; but 20 percent of people with CA have a type which runs in families, and those with this variety usually have multiple CAs that develop anytime. Experts say one person in every 200 has at least one CA and of that, only a third show symptoms.

Most CAs will not cause symptoms unless they bleed, and most bleed so slowly they are not life threatening unless they are in the brainstem. And the good thing, if you know you have one and it hasn’t bled, you can lessen your chances of a bleed by simply being careful – you can avoid blood thinners, you can avoid roller coasters, you can keep your blood pressure low.

CAs were known to medical science back in the late 1800s but are being found more frequently now because of the widespread use of Magnetic Resonance Imagry, or MRIs. Previously, CAs were found during surgery or more commonly, autopsies! CAT scans and Angiograms seldom detect them and the symptoms are often misdiagnosed. What’s the first thing you think of when you hear of someone having seizures? Epilepsy. With headaches? Migraines. Vision problems, nerve problems, balance problems? Multiple Sclerosis. These are symptoms of bleeding CAs.

Symptoms depend on the location. CAs in the front of the brain can cause seizures. In my case the CA is in my brainstem. Although my swallowing, breathing, and heartbeat could have been affected by that location, the double vision was my only apparent symptom until the surgery.

The treatment – watch and wait, or brain surgery. There have been attempts with a concentrated laser beam, called a gamma knife, but the success rate is very low and the risks of damaging surrounding tissue are very high.

At the time, I didn’t have to make the tough decision between the real dangers of surgery with a likelihood of permanent deficits, and “watch and wait” for the possibility of another bleed, with a chance of the same permanent deficits. Even though my CA was in a bad area, surgery was necessary since I was being treated for DVT, a leg blood clot. My blood had to be thinned to treat the clot, and to prevent further clots, which was the exact opposite of what was recommended for “watch and wait.”

I‘m not going to recount the surgery. I think everybody who has had any surgery knows the fear, pain, and gratitude for support.

I could not stand unassisted when I left the hospital and couldn’t walk unassisted for weeks. I kept a calendar onto which I wrote each victory; from being able to shower on my own, to carrying a cup of coffee into the living room, to graduating from a walker to a cane. The steps of progress, every single one, were celebrated. Unfortunately, the recovery has been frustratingly long and a matter of two steps forward, one step back. The brain heals very slowly. I still have double vision, which is corrected by prisms in my glasses. I have balance issues and general right side shakiness. I freeze up when stressed and have moments when the brain doesn’t seem to make a connection. At this point I have no idea if my deficits will be permanent or not, but compared to what could have gone wrong with surgery in the brainstem area, I consider myself lucky to be able to breathe, swallow, and walk! Sure, there are some things I can no longer do, but at least I can live and work more or less normally, though it’s tempting to wear a t-shirt saying” I am not drunk.”

Follow-up MRIs show that the part they couldn’t get is expanding. At first I was very angry . . . and scared. It took a few days to get to a better spot, emotionally. They took out what was bleeding and what is left is not bleeding and may never bleed. And if it does, well, I’ll just have to deal with it.

Because I now know that I can face almost anything. I owe everything to the incredible support I was given by family, friends, and coworkers, especially my best friend and husband, Bob, who left a job in another state and came back to care for me. He is gone again and I was terrified to let him go. Letting him go was another positive step in my own recovery. You have to keep reaching for your goals.

Winter blues

Our winters are milder than most - in this part of the state (by Lansing) we are just out of the range of lake effect snow and it's unusual to get more than a foot of snow at a time (although it happens!) We also don't get the bone-chilling lows of the plains states. Five below; maybe ten below. But we do have long winters. Dreary winters. Boring winters. I try to keep the blues at bay by designing new beds and starting seeds. Now I'm trying this blog. This is all new so bear with me!