Saturday, May 4, 2013:  the 10th Annual World Naked Gardening Day! So - what are YOUR plans?!Sweet, sane, still Nakedness in Nature! —ah if poor, sick, prurient humanity in cities might really know you once more! Is not nakedness then indecent? No, not inherently. It is your thought, your sophistication, your fear, your respectability that is indecent. There come moods when these clothes of ours are not only too irksome to wear, but are themselves indecent. Perhaps indeed he or she to whom the free exhilarating ecstasy of nakedness in Nature has never been eligible (and how many thousands there are!) has not really known what purity is—nor what faith or art or health really is. ~ Walt Whitman 

Saturday, May 4, 2013:  the 10th Annual World Naked Gardening Day! So - what are YOUR plans?!
Sweet, sane, still Nakedness in Nature! —ah if poor, sick, prurient humanity in cities might really know you once more! Is not nakedness then indecent? No, not inherently. It is your thought, your sophistication, your fear, your respectability that is indecent. There come moods when these clothes of ours are not only too irksome to wear, but are themselves indecent. Perhaps indeed he or she to whom the free exhilarating ecstasy of nakedness in Nature has never been eligible (and how many thousands there are!) has not really known what purity is—nor what faith or art or health really is. ~ Walt Whitman 

April 8 is Draw a Bird Day  It all started in 1943 when a little girl went to visit her uncle in the hospital…. Not an official holiday, but one with a special sentiment originating in England in memory of Dorie Cooper, a 10-year-old who was killed after being struck by a car - but not before the walls of a hospital ward had been filled with hand-drawn images of birds by wounded soldiers. Today, Draw A Bird Day (story at the link) is celebrated world-wide as a way to express joy in the simplest things in life. 

April 8 is Draw a Bird Day 

It all started in 1943 when a little girl went to visit her uncle in the hospital…. Not an official holiday, but one with a special sentiment originating in England in memory of Dorie Cooper, a 10-year-old who was killed after being struck by a car - but not before the walls of a hospital ward had been filled with hand-drawn images of birds by wounded soldiers. 
Today, Draw A Bird Day (story at the link) is celebrated world-wide as a way to express joy in the simplest things in life. 

malformalady: The 88-foot-tall tree, a single survivor among 70,000 trees in a forest along the coast in Rikuzentakata, Iwate prefecture, has been artificially restored in a project to preserve it. Japan marked the second anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami that swept through northern Japan, damaging more than one million homes and killing almost 19,000 people.

malformalady:

The 88-foot-tall tree, a single survivor among 70,000 trees in a forest along the coast in Rikuzentakata, Iwate prefecture, has been artificially restored in a project to preserve it. Japan marked the second anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami that swept through northern Japan, damaging more than one million homes and killing almost 19,000 people.

March 14th is Pi Day! 

And to celebrate we are going to honor the Pinophyta Division (conifers) of the Plant Kingdom, specifically, trees with botanical names that begin with “Pi” ~ like Picea and Pinus. 

Pinophytes are gymnosperms (seed-producing plants) that include conifers. The Latin word Coniferae means cone-bearing, or fruit-bearing of a conical shape. Conifers in the Pinophyta Division consist of cedar, fir, juniper, redwood, hemlock, spruce, yew, and pine, to name a few. Coniferous trees can be found on every continent in the world, except Antarctica (where they thrived during the Cretaceous period). 

Conifers are evergreen and highly adaptable to very cold climates. Their needles “harden off” before winter temperatures plunge, making them resistant to freezing snow and ice. Their symmetrically-tapered shape and downward-sloping limbs allow them to shed snow in winter so that their branches do not break under the weight of accumulated snow. Isn’t it ironic that conifers no longer exist on Antarctica?

Pinophytes do not flower. Rather, conifers produce both male and female cones on the same tree. The female cone (ovulate cone) contains ovules which are fertilized by pollen-bearing cones (the males). Pollen is transferred to the female cone by wind and insect movement in the spring. While the pollen grains develop into seeds, the scales on the cone remain tightly closed to protect the maturing seeds. Once the seeds have matured, the scales on the cone begin to open and seeds fall to the ground, or are carried off by wind and insects. March 14th is just days before spring…the perfect time to celebrate Pinophytes.

Pictured above: a few “Pi” trees and their cones. Pinus and Picea are both classified in the Pinophyta Division of the Plant Kingdom. 

Happy Pi Day! Celebrating the day with Pinophytes.