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I recently got a UV LED flashlight, and now I play the What-here-is-florescent-game wherever I go. So, chlorophyll is not, but dust and mold are - mold fluoresces bright yellow (I'm having a bit of a problem with blight at the moment). But one of the stranger things I noticed, was that my tomato seedlings fluoresced red. And on the larger tomato plants, the undersides of the leaves and the newly growing ones also fluoresced red. And on the green onions, the bottom part of the stalks, that area glows red too. So, I'm guessing that it's areas of the plant which have little chlorophyll where this is occurring - or that the chlorophyll is not blocking the light. Most of the other plants I have examined don't fluoresce red. So does anybody know specifically what is fluorescing? I speculate that it might be another pigment like anthocyanin, but that's totally a wild guess.

Update: Oh I should also mention that I have not yet found any flowers which fluoresce. So maybe it's not anthocyanin - if I had an apple I could test this.
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  1. Is it just me, or does Coriander/Cilantro smell like an old cat litter box to anyone else? (It tastes unpleasant too.) Edit: If Cilantro is not unpleasant to you, what does it taste like?
  2. My birthday is coming up in a few days, I want everyone to NOT give me any presents. I have too many physical objects in my life right now, and I don't need anymore — except hard drives. (Or certain specific camera lenses, which I don't think anyone is going to buy for me.) (I'm considering going up to Harbin to celebrate.) Edit: Oh yeah, and there's a campout rave thing Jul 10-12.
  3. For the last several months I've been saving tomato seeds from the various heirloom varieties that I find at various vegetable markets, and planting them, and waiting, and waiting, and being disappointed that none of the seeds sprouted. Except that in the last few weeks, all of the seeds sprouted. I now have at least 200-300 seedlings of many unusual and delicious heirloom tomatoes. So does anyone want any tomato plant seedlings? Also, I still have mimosa tree seedlings too.


Edit: Speaking of weird sensory things, do you find that most glass is slightly green colored. I mean like car windshields and stuff. It's very noticeable when looking at red light through it, most of the red color gets filtered out. My camera lenses don't seem to cut out the red when I look through them, so the terrible red fidelity of my photos is probably just from the sRGB colorspace or something (or the IR bandpass filter cuts off too high). It's kinda frustrating, because I can't get red things to look right. (Kodachrome is much better at this.)
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Mimosa Tree SeedlingSo, about a week after everything got mowed, the neighbors had the crab apple tree right along the fence next to my garden cut down. And the tree cutting people dropped all of the cut tree branches on my garden, crushing the two remaining plants, and knocking over some pots on the patio.

I found out that the neighbors also wanted to replace the fence between our two properties. I told the landlord (and my roomate) repeatedly that I did not want the fig tree next to the fence cut down, and to make sure that they do not cut down the fig tree. In anticipation, I also dug up all of the plants I had growing near the fence, and transferred them into pots — which was good, because the fence people destroyed everything growing within about two or three feet of the fence (chopped up and left on the ground).

I was awoken at 7am by the fence people (I didn't know which day they would come), and I rushed outside in my bathrobe, and stood guard over the fig tree. I told everyone there at least twice, to not cut down this tree. I couldn't stand around all morning, so while I was inside getting ready for work, they cut a six inch by three inch notch out of the side of my favorite trunk¹ of the tree. Fucking morons. The hole they cut was so that a decorative edge along the fence wouldn't be touching the tree. The proper solution to this is to cut the notch in that board of the fence. Anyway, I tarred the cut they made so it wouldn't get infected, it reached the core wood, hopefully the tree recovers. [Back when the tree killing people did this, they didn't tar the cuts and one of the neighbor's trees that they cut off the overhanging-our-yard branches from is now half dead from a fungus infection.]

I got some two by fours at the hardware store (I should have asked for some of the wood from the old fence, but it was removed before I had thought of it), and built some raised garden beds. I used up all of the soil I had made from compost, and so went to the nursery to get some bags of topsoil, and while there, impulsively bought about ten varieties of tomato plant. (The one plant I had managed to grow from seed had been killed, so I guess I'm cheating now, but if I want any tomatoes before autumn.)

Apparently, some number of years before I moved into this place, there was a Mimosa tree growing next to the fig tree (next to the fence), which had been cut down years ago. Every year it grows new stems and leaves, and I water it trying to get it to grow, and then the yard murderers keepers chop it all down and throw it in the trash. I'm planting stuff around it (as everything that was growing along the fence is gone now) because that should be enough of an excuse to keep the yard killers away from it until it reestablishes itself. (The stump is growing some new leaves now, yay!)

As I'm now watering that area every day, all of the Mimosa tree seeds that have been sitting in the ground for years, are now sprouting. I've counted at least fifty seedlings, and they can't live where they are now. So I've been transferring them into pots, while their tap roots are still only about three inches long.

So… I have all of these Mimosa tree seedlings (see photo) that I don't know what to do with. If anyone reading this wants one, or a dozen, tell me and I will give you as many as you want. They will grow a very deep tap root, so don't plant them over your septic tank. I don't know exactly what species they are, since I haven't gotten the parent to grow long enough to flower.


¹ The fig tree has two trunks, my favorite one is the one you can climb up onto the roof from.
foxgrrl: (Default)
So, yesterday I did some gardening, something which I've had extremely little time to do lately. (In fact the gardening I was doing made me an hour late for something else.) I had to leave in the middle, but I was going to finish up when I got back, or today.

While I was gone, someone went into my backyard, and mowed everything down. There was no one else home at the time. I was furious and first thing this morning, told my roommate to totally cancel the yardkeeping service. He was surprised that showed up unexpectedly yesterday. And when he called them, and the landlord, they said that they had not been by yesterday.

So, this means that some complete stranger, entered our fenced backyard with a lawnmower, mowed everything down, and left, touching nothing else. WTF?

I've been trying to stay in a good mood all day, but I've almost broken down crying from this twice. I was so excited to see the baby plants that were just growing back, and now they're all gone. I was just watering them yesterday afternoon. I feel like I'm wasting my time. Everything I try to create is destroyed almost immediately. I can't turn my back for five minutes.

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