A helpful reader sent along some tips on preventing birds from eating my snail bait:
“To protect the birds & other animals from the bait, try the meal instead of the pellets. Dampen it a bit–damp not wet. (It will attract more
snails & less mammals.) Then stick it under bits of crockery or under an aluminum pie plate, an old ashtray, some wood…just prop the cover-up enough so the snails & slugs can slither under but the birds can’t get to it easily.”
Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns), a documentary about the kings of quirky pop, They Might Be Giants, has its “theatrical premiere” this weekend in New York. It has been making the festival rounds, and will be in “limited theatrical release” this summer. The film looks to be as droll as its subject matter. (via BrainLog)
Public broadcasting pioneer David Ives died on Friday while visiting family in San Francisco. Ives was president of WGBH in Boston during their formative years. Under his tenure, WGBH became the largest supplier of programming for PBS, delivering such classics as ”Nova,” ”Frontline,” ”Masterpiece Theatre,” ”Evening at Pops,” ”This Old House,” ”The Victory Garden,” and ”Mystery!” His bow tie and half moon glasses were familiar to local pledge drive and auction viewers. He served as a trustee of my alma mater, Wellesley and spent much of his retirement continuing his work in public service.
Ever the progressive airline, Virgin Atlantic Airways plans to offer a frequent flier program for cats and dogs. There will be “Bone-us Miles” and a “Frequent Feline club.” This new marketing scheme celebrates the UK’s lessening of quarantine restrictions for cats and dogs.
Packed away in wax-covered boxes and long-forgotten in a cellar, these antique seed packets were discovered when the William D. Burt Seed Co. building was torn down. The packets were created using hand lithography, with a limestone slab stippled by an artist for each color in the print. (via memepool)
A non-spoiler, in my opinion, purely because I don’t want you to overlook it: Cornel West has a role in The Matrix:Reloaded.
Sharing of the Green
Here for your reference are my list of garden-related links with an emphasis, of course, on my Northern CA climate:
You Grow Girl – nifty tips and journals from female gardeners
Container Vegetable Gardening – from Clemson Univ Extension, useful tips on selecting containers, soils, and varieties for vegetables grown in pots.
Trees of Antiquity – Heirloom Fruit Trees for your home; apple varieties you’ve never heard of, plus fruit like quince, plumcots, pawpaws.
Four Winds Growers – if you want dwarf citrus, start here.
SFGate.com’s Green Gardener column archives
Nichols Garden Nursery – herbs and rare seeds
Master Gardeners of California
Great Plant Picks – “a plant awards program designed to help the home gardener identify unbeatable plants for their Pacific Northwest garden.”
California Rare Fruit Growers – “the largest amateur fruit-growing organization in the world.”
Baldo Villegas’ Bugs and Roses page – the many photos of common rose ailments have been very helpful to my novice rose tending.
Plus: a list of garden weblogs from Cold Climate Gardening.
My spoiler-free advice for viewing The Matrix: Reloaded is to stay until after the credits are over. Also, someone had a little fun writing the captions for Yahoo! Movies’ WireImage photos from the premiere. Example: “Jada Pinkett Smith, Keanu Reeves, Hugo Weaving, Laurence Fishburne, Monica Bellucci and Carrie Anne Moss set up a camera and wait for the timer at the Hollywood premiere of Warner Brothers’ The Matrix: Reloaded.”
Old recipes and cookbooks are a fascinating source of history. The Seattle Times took a look back at its old “Dorothy Neighbors” columns, the nom de plume of their group of home economists who provided recipes and answered the queries of homemakers from 1928 to 1980. They list a sampling of some of naive old questions. The Times used to hold an annual recipe contest, with hundreds of winners. Their test kitchen, a rarity for a newspaper, was used to verify the entries, but that only began in the 1970s. Recipes from past eras were clipped and saved onto index cards and then stored in a large filing cabinet. One drawer is devoted entirely to molded salads. What a treasure trove of recent culinary history. The oldest recipe on file, “Cherry Preserves with Pectin,” is from 1934 and uses 7 cups of sugar and 4 cups of fruit.