hobby « Kenny Smith | Omnes hic sumus discere.

hobby

errands / hobby / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
1
Oct 19

About that

I had yesterday off. And unlike the last two times I had an off day, I did not go into the office for a meeting.

So I went to the tailor instead. New suit pants need sizing and that guy is the man for the job. It would be helpful if the tailor’s name was Taylor. Once, in some parts of the world, names were tied to vocations or locations. It had its conveniences, not the least of which was that it bound people into one place and role. Why, some ancestor of mine worked in metals, I guess, and look how far I’ve come since then.

…

Well, I’ve just looked up the other five of my most proximate family names. They are all English, or diminutive of German, or maybe Greek, or just rare and relatively unknown to the Internet. One site says there are 242 people in the U.S. with that rare name. Surely that’s an underestimate. But I didn’t even know I had that name until well into adulthood and I don’t think I’d ever heard it around the ancestral haunts, so I’d agree it is rare. But it, and the rest of the family names, seem to be without detailed insight and description. Not like “Smith,” I guess. Not all names, it turns out, are terribly patronymic. But names ought to mean something.

Anyway, the tailor did his measuring and marking. I went to the store, where I saw this this scarily detailed poster. Despite it’s insight, it leaves off some important suggestions: after counting money, before and after performing surgery, after high-fiving your mechanic, after pulling a double-shift in the infectious diseases laboratory and so on.

Also, the instructions are missing. That’s a deliberate choice by some germy Batman villain, I’m sure. But we’ve all been to a restroom and where people demonstrate poor hand hygiene. Warm-to-hot water, soap, 20 seconds. Sing Old MacDonald song to yourself if you must.

MacDonald, by the way, is a common Scottish patronymic surname meaning “son of Donald,” meaning “world ruler.” So Old MacDonald was one of the less ambitious members of the clan, one supposes. Anyway, the Internet goes on — oh, how it goes on — to tell us that MacDonald is from the Gaelic Mac Dhamhnuill.

Anyway, I’m sure the merchant has noticed the problem with the poster. It’s not the dirtiest restroom you’ve ever been in. Nothing that a coat of paint and some better lights couldn’t fix. But here’s my worry. If your initial read, as the merchant who placed that poster, is that you should tell people when, you are absolutely right, and you should tell them how.

At home, sanding wood this afternoon. I’ll be sanding wood into my golden years, but it’s going to be a nice project, when I get through with the sanding in 2024. (There are 10 pieces still to go on the sanding. They are substantial pieces. I’ll get three or four done before next week, I hope.) So there I am, sitting in a chair in the garage, in between the cars, taking down some western pine from milled and kiln-dried lumber, into the dimensions required for the project, and then through sandpaper of 100-, 150-, 220- and 400-grit. The end pieces will then get a few passes with 600-grit. Then I have to somehow de-dust 24 large pieces of wood, condition, stain and seal them. And then I can assemble the finished product. It’s going to be awesome.

In 2024.

Oh, also, welcome to Catober. You met Poseidon earlier in the day. You’ll meet his sister, Phoebe, tomorrow.

They’re neat. OK, she’s neat. He’s a complete and total handful. That’s the first picture I took of either of them, and it almost perfectly encapsulates his personality. We got them midway through the summer and they are now getting good and settled in. We’ve more or less learned their styles, they sometimes acknowledge us.

We’ll do the photos throughout the month. I just couldn’t do it in September. Maybe, I hope, it’ll be a bit better here.

Poseidon got his name because his original one was not good, and he also loves water, so now he’s named after the god of the sea. Phoebe, on the other hand, came to be associated with the moon in late Greek mythology, but she was originally a Titan with gifts of prophecy and calmness. Names ought to mean things.

flora / hobby / Monday / photo — Comments Off
29
Jul 19

Yeah, have some more flowers why don’t you?

Did you like the pretty and flowering things I shared last week? Well, good sir and madam, you are in luck. Because things are still flowering and blooming and looking nice this week as well. It’s a small window of time, it seems like, before we begin to lament the changing of all outdoors, so let us concentrate on it intently. Shall we?

I’d like you to meet my friend, Eryngium yuccifolium, but if Latin isn’t your bag, you can call it the far superior Rattlesnake Master.

It is a tall grass prairie land plant, and if it wasn’t in a landscaped box on the corner of a city street you might still see it around these parts. It is one of those prolific parts of the parsley family. Sometimes you can find it in places as far away from the prairie states as Florida and Delaware.

The common name, by the way, comes from the plant’s use in some Native American cultures. It has nothing to do with the balls of the fruit, which don’t rattle, or the way they can feel like you’ve been hit by a viper, but part of the plant was used in some instances as a snake venom counteragent. Also, this plant is great for restorations and sends out a 50,000 watt signal to insects. It is very popular with bees, beetles, butterflies and any wasp that can make it over for a visit.

Fibers from that plant were also used in making shoes. The Internet is just full of useful information, if you ask me.

You might also enjoy this Hibiscus grandiflorus, or swamp rose-mallow hibiscus. They sport five large petals, they’re all velvety soft, as you would expect from a hibiscus. The shrub itself can grow to about six-feet, but this particular guy is a long way from home. Usually you’ll see this in the Gulf Coast states and in more swampy, wetland areas. Why it’s growing in an alley here is a mystery.

There’s probably a holiday gift story behind it. A present sat on the back window of a car on the drive back up here. And then the thing died, and someone put it outside at work. The next time somebody noticed there was a new growth, and then the flower crept up, sickly and weak. Some good shade, some good rain and now it’s sitting right there on the corner of the property. An aunt’s neighbor shared a cutting and now it is in a tiny alley behind a side street of a small business and it’s just waiting for its next act.

Pixar would do movies about this sort of thing, you know, if plants had mobility. The animators could give them all the agency in the world, and the flowers would be great clues to their personality. You know this one would be the biggest diva in the second act of the movie. There wouldn’t be a spinoff character, but there would be a laugh, and some plastic toy version, modeled after the animation. So it wouldn’t be quite right, but it would be close enough. But since this flower didn’t get the really poignant stuff, like the rose, or the active shots, like the ivy or daises or the daffodil, it wouldn’t sell well. You’d see it in bargin bins at knock off stores within a season, and no one would buy the things. Just another bit of plastic to step on in the middle of the night and inspire a new hit from Kraftwerk. And then one day there would be a revival. These things which they couldn’t move for eight bucks, so they discounted to three on account of the lesser displays and the damaged packaging, would suddenly be pulling down $45 or 50 dollars, more in the original packaging. And a kid would scream. The kid would have to have it. They’d just diiiiie if they couldn’t get it and the Gen Z parent would think back on when they had almost the complete set of these guys and they’d roll their right into their kombucha when they got a Gryzzl alert about a live action movie remake. Hollywood has no new ideas anymore, they’ll say, and meanwhile the kid is hyperventilating because Jan has it and I neeeeeeeed it and Jan! Jan! Jan! And sure, that’s not even grammatical, but kids these days, am I right? And then you’d hit on the idea! It’s perfect! It’s cheaper! And it’s beautiful! “Let’s just go, honey, over to the greenhouse and get you a real hibiscus. Your grandma can show you how to re-pot it.” And that’s when you’ve lost your kids forever.

Stupid Pixar movies.

There are 1,500 species in this particular family — including okra, which we enjoyed as a part of our dinner last night — and some of these mallows range into Canada. Maybe this particular one just needed some space.

Tonight we enjoyed tostadas, so I fully expect to run across some tortilla plants or pepper, onion or bean bushes tomorrow.

flora / Friday / hobby / photo — Comments Off
26
Jul 19

Friday flora

Consider, if you will, the humble saw grass.

This one is called purple saw grass, because not everything can have a creative name. But by way of an apology over nomenclature, it displays a fine versatility. If you look at it from the right angle you can imagine it as something much more exotic, and more importantly, you can imagine yourself as some place much more exotic:

Sawgrasses range over great temperate portions of the world, including most of the central and eastern parts of the U.S. People normally think of the river of grass, as you’d find in Florida’s Everglades. It’s a picturesque image. But there’s a lot to have issue with here, while you’re imagining. The taxonomy is in dispute. Some of these things aren’t even grass, but sedges, which are merely a grass-like plant.

Hey, when you’ve got those lovely culms to enjoy. On some species you’ll see them reach a height of eight feet, but this particular one won’t quite make it. Lovely enough to walk by, however:

They also make for a pretty fair photographic foreground:

But enough about sawgrass, how about something less interesting!? That’s why you’re here, surely. Right?

This is a clump of something called Euphorbia.

It’s a catchall word, covering a wide range of flowering plants (or spurge). Poinsettias would fall into this group, as would a lot of ornamentals. There are more than 2,000 different plants under that genus and is quite large, genetically speaking. And you can find some sort of variety almost everywhere in the world. Carl Linnaeus wrote about Euphorbia in his critically important “Species Plantarum” in the middle of the 18th century, and that’s probably why it’s such a generic thing today. “Linnaeus wanted it that way,” but no one thinks to ask if ol’ Carl was having a bad day.

Some things that look like cacti are Euphorbia. Some things that have flowers which actually aren’t flowers fall into this genera too. I think ol’ Carl was just trying to meet a deadline.

I asked that bee, but he didn’t know either. He just wanted to be left alone, to do his pollen thing. It was almost the weekend, after all.

And to you I say Happy Weekend. (It should be capitalized in every instance.) Have a nice one and come back to tell me about it on Monday.

flora / hobby / iPhone / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
25
Jul 19

Things which grow

Please enjoy photos of these lovely growing things on campus and around town. This first one is growing not too far from my office. It is called the Casa Blanca Lilium, an oriental hybrid lily. The texture on the petals is a beautiful thing. They’re pretty easy to grow and lovely to look at, aren’t they?

How do you feel about the Acer palmatum? Commonly called the Japanese maple or, as I just learned the red emperor maple, they can be shrubs or small trees. I suppose that has to do with its care, being pruned or out in habitat. This one is found in a well-manicured flower garden at a downtown church:

Cultivated for forever in Japan, Korea and China, they started spreading around the world in the 19th century. There are three subspecies and dozens of cultivars. Maples on the seas.

Here’s the Phlox maculata:

It’s a perennial, indigenous to the eastern United States and now also growing in Canada. Or maybe you’re more interested in the bee. That, of course, is your common bumblebee, one of the 250-plus members of the Bombus genus, about four dozen or so are in the U.S. Don’t ask me which one this one is from, we aren’t that close.

He was a pretty fair model, though.

Those aren’t bad, I’d say, for cell phone photos.

hobby / photo / Wednesday — Comments Off
20
Mar 19

Here’s my plan

One day, when the world slows down and I don’t have things to do or places to be, I’m going to do a study of leaves.

I’m going to pick a branch and mark it, somehow.

And then I’m going to take a picture of it each day, from buds until leaf drop. I’m going to do a study of a leaf.

That’s my plan.