The Great Amaryllis Experiment continues happily so far, albeit very slowly.  In the last week several of the seedlings have produced a second leaf, surely a good sign that they are healthy.

 

They’re getting plenty of sun for now, spending several hours most days out on our deck in the bright sunlight.  I started slowly getting them used to the direct sun but they are certainly tough little sprouts – unlike most seedlings it seems they can take all I can give them in the sun department.  It is making me worry a bit that they won’t be happy this winter in the dark depths of February.  May have to look into some grow lights!

I’ve also gotten a bit concerned about mineral buildup.  We have pretty good water here but the shallow trays and hot sun can dry them out quickly so I’d be going through a lot of water with them, forcing a much quicker buildup that a normal houseplant.  Therefore I’ve switched over to distilled water for them at least during this hot and sunny spell.

All nine of the initial seedlings are doing fine, though only four so far have produced a second leaf.  The individual seedlings sprouted over a period of about two weeks so I’m not worried about the laggards.

Additional news: Their mother, happily growing in the garden with their father right next to them, are busily producing a second growth of nice rich green leaves – and two side bulblets as well!  By winter I’m going to have to find a home for nine separate seedlings, two bulblets and the parents, and we have very little windowsill space.  Could be a challenge!

OK, so that subject may be a bit over the top, clickbait.  But I am a bit excited, and that too needs to be tempered because the fruits of this experiment could be as far as five years away.

What am I talking about?  Earlier I posted that we had great success with our two amaryllis bulbs, one with four huge blooms and the other rewarding us with two stalks sporting four blossoms on one and three on the second!  They were a delightful sight in our dining room in April.  Since both varieties were blooming simultaneously I spontaneously (sorry, couldn’t resist) dabbed some pollen from each onto a bloom from the other.  (I knew some species of flowers can’t self-pollinate so hadn’t tried this in previous years when we only had one bulb flowering at a time, but I’ve since learned that amaryllis can self-pollinate.)  Voila!  Seed pods began to develop and dried up about a month later, yielding 50 or so seeds in each pod.

After drying them for a few days I sowed about 20 in two small trays (good use for recycled Chinese food dishes I’d say).  It has taken four weeks but at least 8 have sprouted:

The biggest one is only about half an inch tall but they’re starting to accelerate their growth a bit.

Gardening Know How gives some basic tips on growing these and if things progress well I’ll likely need to dig up some additional details, but the basics sound fairly straightforward: plenty of sun, moist soil but well drained (I put quite a bit of sand in the mix I’m starting these in), and fertilize periodically.

If all of these mature – a big if, and something that will take at least three years and perhaps as many as five – maybe, just maybe, I’ll get a pleasing hybrid between the pink and the red of the parents.

Stay tuned with an update around, oh, some time in 2022?

Lovers of flowers are usually lovers of butterflies as well — count me in!  If you’re in that camp, check out the videos on YouTube by Henrik Bloch.

There are several out there, such as West Africa:

There are others spotlighting lepidoptera from Thailand, Bolivia and more.  Definitely worth checking out!

Earlier this month I was able to spend two weeks in the Colorado Rockies – aspen turning gold, an early snow had frosted the peaks (and some of the valleys), and, while there were some overcast and occasionally damp days, there were enough stellar blue ones to make the visit quite memorable.

One such memory was visiting the Denver Botanic Gardens.  If you’re in the area and the weather cooperates, definitely check it out.  There are a few dozen different biomes and specialty gardens, with a different one around each corner, making exploring the paths a delight.

What made it particularly special is that the Peacock butterflies had apparently come down from the mountains to feast on the remaining flowers in the gardens.  There had been plenty up in the valleys yet, but they were swarming in the park, with the aster plants (one of their food sources) often having 20 or 30 flitting about on some of the larger specimens such as this one:

Good timing for me, unplanned, but if you’re in the area in early October you may also get a special treat from such a visit!

You may not have heard about metal prints before — i know I hadn’t until a few years ago.  They are a glossy print on an aluminum base,  What’s the appeal?  Super bright colors to start with, shiny but not a lot of glare, and deep rich blacks that make floral scans really stand out.  I’ve had a couple printed up and love the result, the most recent “acquisition” being Banquet.  The price initially may cause hesitation, but they come (from the FineArtAmerica site I use) ready to hang: there is a wood rectangular frame underneath it, inset quite a bit from the edges of the print, so it stands out from the wall by about 3/4 of an inch.  No frame to buy, it is ready as-is!  Another bonus?  You can hang them in a bathroom!

Scanography is one of those pursuits that sound easier than it is.  It took me quite a while to get the hang of it and “plan out” my inspiration.  I had some successes early on but they were often accidental, with some of my best happening by circumstance versus any specific planning on my part.  Shibumi is one such happenstance, where a storm-dropped flower had just a touch of a curve to the top that adds a nice visual interest but was nothing I did consciously.  (Shibumi was just honored with 3rd place at the Blackstone Valley Art Association’s open show from January 13th through February 26th at the  Alternatives Gallery in Uxbridge, Massachusetts.)

That happenstance often comes from lots of work that may not be immediately apparent.  I was doing a bit of hard disk cleaning, deleting test scans or images that didn’t measure up and thus warrant the time required to do the detailed editing.  I noticed that I’ve now captured over 530 scans – a fair amount of flowers cut, so no wonder my wife looks askance whenever I head out with a knife.  That 530 translates down to only about 100 images that I’m happy enough with to consider publishing and making available for sale.

Today my wife and I had the pleasure of a attending the “Onstage at Symphony” program at Boston Symphony Hall.  This is a community orchestra event for people that do not play professionally but have the talent and love of the music and want to perform.  Musicians from all over Massachusetts participated (including our younger daughter) and put together a delightful program with works from Tchaikovsky, Coleridge-Taylor, Grieg, Mascagni and Saint-Saens.  I’m certainly no musician but I dare say few would have been able to find fault with the result of this melange of people from across the region.

(The conductor, Thomas Wilkins, was a delight with his intros and insights into the pieces as well.)

What made it more impressive?  Only three sessions of practice.  Yes, they got together for the first time on the Wednesday before, a second session Friday night and a last one in the morning before the Saturday presentation.

OK, only three days of practice is probably not a full representation of all that went into the production.  There were 80+ musicians, ranging in age from in their 20’s to into their 60’s or so, representing tens of thousands of hours of lessons and practice spread across a lifetime and no small investment in lesson fees or college music class tuition.  The experience of those teachers should be added into the mix as well, as the talents of the orchestra came about through the experience they imparted into the next genertion.

Ah, what about the instruments?  Countless years of learning and plying their trade were needed to master their craft, no doubt with quite a few violins, cellos and basses not measuring up and becoming firewood,

The sum total is incalculable but few would quibble that this “three sessions” of effort was actually the culmination of hundreds of thousands of hours, if not well north of a million, that pooled together resulted in the talents on the stage this afternoon, delivering an hour’s listening pleasure.

Did I mention that the concert was free?  Well, not really – just the hour sitting there. Everything that brought it together was a hefty, but well spent, investment.

 

Marketing must be a frustrating job.  The number of advertising channels is exploding: YouTube, sponsored ads on targeted sites, general search engine placement ads, Twitter, Facebook, even Pandora radio with ads catering to the tastes of listeners of particular music genres.  With so many channels and campaigns running simultaneously and competing for attention, understanding the impact of a given campaign must be a challenge.  Ooh, sales bumped up a fraction — was that because of a tweak to the keywords in a campaign, or just because the weather is warmer/colder/drier/wetter and impacted buyers’ moods?

Why am I musing about this?  A little microscopic experiment.  I received a coupon for $100 in Google AdWords if I spent $25, so I thought I would test the waters.  I wrote my ad copy, selected some likely keywords, set my daily spend limit and fired it up.  Sure enough, traffic to BIts of Nature did increase, changing from a dozen or so visits a week to double that per day.

Two weeks later the money was burned through.  What did I get?  Nearly 82,000 “impressions” — my ad appeared in a search result and so presumably was “seen” by a person, akin to driving by a billboard on the highway.  Seen, but that’s it.  Approximately 400 people actually clicked on the ad and visited the site, which is what actually results in money being drained from my Google account.  This came out to about $0.40 per click on the ad.

The result?  Zilch, nada, bupkis, doughnut hole – no sales of prints, no calendar sales, nothing.  Didn’t even get any comments posted on any of the art.

A few more short-term eyeballs, no art on anyone’s walls as long-term eye candy.

I really didn’t expect any sales so I can’t say that I’ve been let down.  It is likely more a testimony to the myriad competing demands for those eyeballs and the range of artists out there with competing wares.  Take a simple search on Fine Art America for “Lambs Ears”, a fuzzy light green plant that cooperates nicely in filling in our flower beds with some ground level interest: http://fineartamerica.com/art/lambs+ears.  The result is at least 90 photos or other art featuring these plants (buried among a couple of hundred pics of sheep of various ages).  The demand for pictures of Lamb’s Ears plants would seem to be … um … low.  Yet even this niche “market” has plenty of offerings just on this one web site.

The moral of the story?  Artists, love your work.  If someone buys it, count your blessings.  Oh, and have deep pockets to advertise like crazy if that’s your business plan, because you’ll need a lot of “impressions” before you get a chance to make an impression.