where does the time go?

There's no time for pondering this question while listening to Nina Simone, it's time to get seedlings started indoors or in cold frames!

If you live in the Hudson Valley, please consider getting local seeds from the new Hudson Valley Seed Library, making yourself familiar with the important work they're doing, and enjoying the artist designed seed packs they've created.For extra credit, actually organize your garden plans.

animal rights terrorists

I've clearly been concentrating too hard on covering up my garlic breath to notice the connection! The cartoon is by Tony Peyser, and I came across it on the important Green Scare site Green is the New Red.

touched

We've talked botanigrams before (moss graffiti, guerilla gardening and the like), billboard alteration, and wheatpasting, but here is another version, clean tagging or reverse graffiti. This version, by Paul Curtis, is paid for by advertising agencies, and riffs off those who've been writing messages in dirt for years. Using graffiti styles as advertising isn't new, unfortunately, but creative types are happy to steal back methods that have been lifted from street artists.

Using cleaning brushes (or in some instances, power washers and stencils), tagging or drawing into grime does have the allure of things that have been touched or used a zillion times. Picture the worn and darkened wood of your grandma's trowel handle. It can be that beautiful.

But it doesn't mean I have to give up spray paint!

guerillas

Guerilla Gardening means all kinds of things, from beautifying neglected public spaces, to growing food in those spaces, to harvesting unused food on public land, to making political statements with shrubbery.

Years ago some friends and I had fantasized about delivering a public message to a homophobic religious group who happened to have a large, freeway-facing lawn. We planned to write our message in vinegar, letting the grass die over a number of sunny days. (It's just a less toxic version of leaving a message in glass etch on a shop window.) This project never happened, alas, I still look at horticultural messaging with longing. A teen friend showed me up by mowing "fuck you" into her parent's lawn when pressed to do chores. They thought their lovely daughter was so brilliant they had a hard time being angry.

Sometimes, the plants speak for themselves. Other times you need to deliver a botani-gram. Here are one|two|three! methods for moss graffiti that are very enticing. I'd stick with beer or soy yogurt instead of buttermilk to keep it vegan.

animals of iraq

A beautiful and heartbreaking new coloring book from Nick Manske.

drawing day

I was all in wrap-up-the-day mode when I remembered it's drawing day. I ran out and did a couple quickie drawings, and got my first ever wasp sting while I was at it. Wow, that hurts.