I saw A LOT of poultry in Cuba. They were all just roaming around freely. Some were wild and some were owned by people, but free to go wherever they liked with the roosters reigning them back to the property at dusk. I saw poultry living in the woods, walking on the roads, and walking straight into houses. This made me very happy since I love the chickens. I love turkeys too.
Is this even a chicken? I think so, but, wow!
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My partner Davin Risk, designer extraordinaire and creator of the visual arts magazine MakingRoom (among other things) designed three beautiful botanical wallpapers that can be downloaded onto your iPhone or iTouch for free in just a few clicks. Thanks Davin!
METHOD 1: Straight from your iPhone or iPod Touch
1. If you are browsing You Grow Girl directly from your iPhone or iPod Touch, press and hold on a wallpaper image (Located at the bottom of this post) and choose “Save Image” from the panel that slides up. Save all three if you want to switch them up later.
2. Open the Photos app on your iPhone or Touch and choose the image you want from “Saved Photos” folder.
3. With the image displayed, click the icon in the bottom left and choose “Use As Wallpaper” from the panel. Tap “Set Wallpaper” to confirm. You’re done!
METHOD 2: Download to your computer
1. With You Grow Girl loaded in your browser of choice, right-click on an image (Located at the bottom of this post) and choose the “Save Image…” option from the menu. Depending on your settings, the image will either be automatically downloaded to a default folder or you will be asked where you would like the image saved to.
2. Next, sync the downloaded wallpaper to your iPhone or Touch. From iTunes you can choose to sync from iPhoto or your “Pictures” folder on OS X and from your “My Pictures” folder on Windows. With your iPhone or Touch connected and visible in iTunes, click on the device name and go to the “Photos” tab. If you haven’t previously, set iTunes to “Sync photos from” whichever album or folder you chose.
3. Once you pressed “Sync”, the new image(s) will be copied to your device.
4. Follow steps 2 and 3 from Method 1.
Seed starting season is just around the corner. It happens every year and every year I yell to no one and everyone that I’m not ready and could I please just have another day or a week, but it comes anyways. Then again, am I ever ready for anything garden-related? From seed starting season to the first frost I am constantly begging for mercy and more time while simultaneously wishing for spring and summer to come sooner and end my winter misery.
Apparently, I can’t have it both ways. Harrumph.
I’m REALLY not ready this year. So much so that I forgot about it completely until the catalogs started to appear in my mailbox. What will I grow? More importantly where will I grow? We keep saying this is the year we move. But we can never find the right place or there is too much work to be done and moving is too big a distraction or there is some reason why I can’t move the roof garden right now. And when I look for a new place to live and garden the endless list of requirements are too impossible to meet on a budget. I need appropriate indoor space, and I need some kind of decent outdoor space whether it be in-ground or on a roof or balcony that also gets lots of light because, I’m sorry, but I have to grow my sun-loving vegetables and herbs, and apparently over the years that has become more important than the thousands of things I hate about our current apartment. So this is the year we move. For real! I swear.
But how do I make plans with such a big question mark looming?
Whether I’m ready for it or not the march towards seed starting season presses on. Just today I sent in my yearly Seeds of Diversity membership payment in response to a final, act now or you’re out you irresponsible jerk notice. Is it really time to renew already? And to make matters worse I received notice that Seedy Saturday Toronto is happening earlier than ever this year. February 28! Only a month and a bit away.
Not ready!
Botanical Interests sent me some seeds recently. When they asked what I’d like to try I laughed to myself, chuckling about how early they were. Surely I won’t be making plans or ordering seeds for ages yet? WRONG! Well, at least I know that wherever my gardens happen to be this year, I will be growing the three packets I choose, ‘Zeolights’ Calendula, ‘Ruby Streaks’ Mustard Greens, and ‘Valentine’ Mesclun Mix come hell or high water.
It’s a start….
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I don’t know the name of this flower and have never seen it before.
Do you know or have a guess?
I very much doubt that it is a native since I found it growing on the property of the resort. Regardless, it sure was reinvigorating to see blazing colour in the middle of winter’s greyness. Sigh.
Even the bee was pleasing. Life! The hundreds I saw last year and the hives I could see and hear buzzing loudly up in the cliffs…. in that context the word “pleasing” doesn’t really come to mind. I was stung walking through some bushes. Good news: I lived!
Whether or not the bee in this photo is actually a killer bee is beyond me, but I’d like to think it is. I have a small obsession with killer bees. I know they’re a small menace, but there is something almost fantastical about the idea of killer bees swarming the world and taking over. Dun, dun, dun. What can I say, I watched a lot of giant ant and flying piranha b-movies as a kid. And of course, the Wu-Tang Clan have forever made it impossible for me to think about killer bees swarming the world without thinking of them. Their exploitation of the killer bee phenomenon and what was implied in some of the over-the-top reporting of them (the “Africanized” bee) was completely BRILLIANT.
And on that note, here’s my favourite Wu-Tang song (NSFW).
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The green pods are fresh off the tree and the brown pods are the ones to open. I tried opening a few with a big rock, but holy cow is it ever a lot of work.
Here’s a video of a friend trying to open an almond.
It’s been a year since I started the Daily Botanical feature. What a feat of happenstance that the first image was taken in Cuba and now the first image of 2009 was also taken in Cuba.
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