October 30, 2009

As one of those evidently rare people who considers "social networking" sites to be the antithesis of what they claim to be, I've managed to avoid the whole Facebook craze. I was therefore surprised to read an article in the New York Times about FarmVille, an addictive program that allows people to farm online. That's right, the computer-obsessed can now grow virtual crops, harvest them, and exchange them for online coins that they can use to purchase everything from seeds to grow more crops or an elephant. There are now 60 times more people farming online in the USA than in reality. This is likely because online, you get financially rewarded for growing crops unlike in real life where buying an elephant is the far more practical choice.

October 23, 2009

I used to have a plant hardiness zone map on this site, but it seems to have disappeared into the blackhole at the centre of the Internet, never to be seen again. Here is a link to the Plant Hardiness Zones in Canada put out by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. It includes lists of indicator trees and shrubs, so that you can get your bearings if, like me, you live in a mountainous area where it's not always obvious what zone you're in. You can even enter the names of specific plants and pull up maps which show you their range.

October 16, 2009

Somehow I've always thought of winter in Scotland as being harsh and desolate. Earlier this week, I discovered that BBC Scotland hosts a radio show called Scotland's Gardens which, by the sounds of it, is a fairly typical gardening advice show. What interests me about this week's episode on bringing colour to your winter containers is that if you were to actually follow the advice throughout much of Canada (except possibly those warm pockets on the west coast), you'd end up with a porch full of cracked pots and dead plants. It seems Scotland isn't as harsh and desolate as I thought. They can apparently place ceramic pots outdoors in the dead of winter without fear of slow-moving shrapnel, not to mention the suggestions for plants to put in those pots go beyond the evergreens typical of winter container gardening in this country. (If you listen to the clip, you'll love the haggis-thick accents, which take several seconds to decipher.)

October 9, 2009

From the first moment I discovered that amber is fossilized plant resin, it's been my favorite gem. So then it's not surprising that when an article on amber turns up in The New York Times, I take notice. This article explains why the discovery of a certain type of amber may help to prove that flowering plants evolved much earlier than previously suspected. Either that or non-flowering plants evolved protective mechanisms similar to those displayed by flowering plants much earlier than previously known. Take your pick.

October 2, 2009

Yet another documentary seeks to explain the sudden disappearance of bees that, thanks to a relentless fascination with acronyms, we all now know as CCD (or Colony Collapse Disorder for those of you not raised in the texting generation). Pesticides are getting the bulk of the blame in this documentary although other contributory factors are considered. Personally, I like the beekeeper who dubs the disappearing bee phenomena as PPB (or Piss-Poor Beekeeping). The film, called Vanishing of the Bees gets its theatrical debut in Britain next week. No word on when it's going to grace our shores.