I got four large galvanised steel planters at Ikea. Today I drilled holes in the bottom and filled each of them with half a bag of red lava rock and potting soil to just below the rim. I've also watered them.

The plants I bought at Annie's Annuals in Richmond are soaking in the bath tub while I decide how to plant them. The colour scheme is pale yellow combined with hot pink and dark purple.

These are the plants I've got:

• 3 Fragaria vesca 'Golden Alexandria', height 12", yellow foliage, red berries, sun to part shade, average water
  
• 3 Fragaria vesca 'White Delight', height 12", green foliage, white berries, sun to part shade, average water


• 3 Viola 'Etain', height 10", light yellow flowers with lavender edge, sun to part shade, average water


• 3 Salpiglossis 'Kew Blue', height 2', velvety purple, sun, average water


• 3 Dianthus gratianopolitanus 'Grandiflora', height 12", hot pink, fragrant, sun, average to low water


• 3 Scabiosa ochroleuca, height 2', light yellow pin cushions, sun, low water


• 1 Alcea rugosa, height 5', light yellow flowers, sun, average water


• 1 Lobelia speciosa 'Fan Blue', height 24", blue spikes, sun to part shade, average water


• 1 Ipomoea tricolor 'Tickle me Pink', height 8', pink morning glory flowers, sun, average water

Now to decide how to combine them. Obviously I want the three specimen plants in separate pots. That leaves me with one pot with no centerpiece. That's OK. I'll go for a sort of meadow effect in that container.

Next I don't want flowers of the same colour combined. So, e.g. the yellow hollyhock will not share a pot with the scabious, because they're yellow too. I'm going for contrast.

This is what I've come up with. Feedback welcome.

Pot A
1 Alcea rugosa, yellow
3 Salpiglossis, purple

Pot B
1 Lobelia speciosa, purple
2 Viola 'Etain', yellow

Pot C
1 Ipomoea tricolor, pink
3 Fragaria vesca 'White Delight'
3 Fragaria vesca 'Golden Alexandria'

Pot D
3 Dianthus gratianopolitanus, pink
3 Scabiosa ochroleuca, yellow

Alas, it's now dark so the actual planting will have to wait until tomorrow.

Tags: garden
Current Location: north san jose
mood: müde

I had a conversation about the dangers of trancework to those who have unresolved trauma with dpaxson and lwood a few weeks ago. The context was a book about trancework. Having done trancework while dealing with unresolved trauma, my point of view was different from theirs. They had, on the other hand, taught trancework to people who had unresolved trauma and witnessed the fall-out. An important point they made, was that witnessing the fall-out can be very distressing to the teacher and other group members.

( draft for warnings )

Tags: depression, health, paganism

Kieron and I went to Las Trampas Regional Wilderness in early March. This is the view south from the trail not far from the car park at the end of Bollinger Canyon Road. Note the flowering trees on the right.

Wallpaper, feel free to use

( three flowers )


( scat, possibly mountain lion )

Tags: alameda, east bay, kieron
Current Location: east bay hotel

Wallpaper, feel free to use

( 3 more ubercute photos )

Tags: monterey
Current Location: east bay hotel

This is the view from the Crescent Crest Trail toward Briones Ridge. The golden dusting is from the California poppies.

Wallpaper, feel free to use

( live oaks and Mount Tam )

Tags: contra costa
Current Location: east bay hotel

Valleywag writes that Martha Stewart is jonesing to buy Etsy but the founders and investors are unlikely to sell so soon after the latest round of founding.

Tags: internet
Current Location: east bay hotel

These are wildflower photos from Briones Regional Park. I started out at the Bear Creek staging area. From there I took the Crescent Ridge trail out and the Valley trail back. Next time I'll take the Briones Crest trail back. Valley was a bit flat and boring.

There were quite a lot of wildflowers about, so I took a lot of photos. This is Sisyrinchium bellum according to Calflora distribution map. Unfortunately there is too much contrast in this photo. Calphoto has more and better photos.

Clearly I need to bring my macro lens when I go out hiking in spring so that I can take better close-ups of small flowers such as these.

Wallpaper, feel free to use

( lupines and lizards: five more photos )

Tags: contra costa
Current Location: east bay hotel
mood: einsam

This year's prize as the UK's oddest book title was If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs. I like to say that when you write for the web, you should give away the story in the heading. The publisher of this book seems to have taken this advice to heart. It's a self help book for women by a male American author using the pseudonym Big Boom. Second and third came I Was Tortured by the Pygmy Love Queen and Cheese Problems Solved. Joel Rickett from The Bookseller, a UK booksellers' magazine, blogs about the prize too.

Aurum Press are going to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of The Bookseller's Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year by publishing a small-format hardback gift book with the original jackets of the best winners and runners-up since the prize was launched at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 1978. The title will be How to Avoid Huge Ships and Other Implausibly Titled Books. Sounds like perfect bathroom literature to me.

According to an article at SFgate, the subject of this post was the 2006 winner. I wonder if they published a Western edition.

Tags: books, linkage
Current Location: east bay hotel
mood: amüsiert

The Associated Press' science writer, Malcolm Ritter, wrote about a study published in Wednesday's issue of Neurology. At SFgate.com the article had the heading Big Belly Boosts Risk of Later Dementia.

This is exactly the kind of headline that makes Sandy Szwarc, the Junkfood Science blogger, see red. In an article with the headline Computer Gaming: Your waist doesn’t really go to your head, she picks apart the study and the media coverage of it.

Szwarc starts out by discussing how to recognise when supposedly scientific findings are used for marketing purposes. Then she goes on to point out the flaws in the study. Some of these are:

Dementia was defined as corresponding to certain billing records in Kaiser Permanente's invoice system. Among the codes included was the one for "memory impairment." Needless to say, not all memory impairment is dementia, not even for the elderly. Even Wikipedia is more stringent when defining dementiaas "the progressive decline in cognitive function due to damage or disease in the brain beyond what might be expected from normal aging."

According to the Merck Manual of Geriatrics "Diagnosing dementia is extremely imprecise and requires a very thorough physical evaluation to differentiate it from benign age-related memory loss. It also needs to be differentiated from a lot of treatable conditions that mimic dementia among elderly, such as the effects of illness; prescription medications; hypothyroidism; vitamin B12 deficiency; depression and isolation; and poor oxygenation due to lung, heart or circulation problems."

75% of original cohort was excluded and there is no data on how they differed from those that were included in the study. In addition, although the 2008 study reported this week uses the same data as one from 2005, there are unexplained differences in the results.

Finally, this was a retrospective study, i.e. it looked at records of past events and tried to draw conclusions from these. Retrospective studies are considered the weakest type of observational study and should be used mainly for generating hypothesis.

Read the AP "science" article and Szwarc critique of the study side by side to get the full view. Szwarc also has a number of interesting articles on the so called obesity paradox.

Tags: health, linkage
Current Location: east bay hotel
mood: wach