First the good news. My good buddy Chris (landscaper who planted my apple trees) got some cages to cover the Groasis Waterboxxes to help keep the deer away.
On Memorial Day weekend I planted 20 choke cherry trees in 10 Groasis waterboxxes. Twelve of these were 12" choke cherry (Prunus virginiana) seedlings mailed from Cold Stream Farm in Michigan and eight were 2" itsy bitsy babies from CSR in Rifle Colorado
One of the larger seedlings seems to be doing well.
The other eleven, not so much. As you can see by the close up this one is dead- and snaps in two with a little flick of my thumb.
The others are dead or dying.
It seems that spiders have contributed to their demise. I'm not sure what kind of spider, but anything which makes a funnel web I give a wide berth. My camera has a zoom which fits nicely in the Groasis opening so I could get a view right down at plant level without getting too close.
Of the 8 baby seedlings 6 are still green so there's still hope. I think I'll try and plant new seedlings in the fall where the other's have died but I'll definitely go with smaller ones.
I was fortunate enough to score a comp ticket to the first annual Aspen Brainlab. It was a one day marathon of 20 minute speeches on - you guessed it- the Brain with an impressive line up of Speakers.
I decided to try a new technique of note taking inspired by Sheryl Connelly (Futurist for Ford) and her
"Art of Listening"
I'd already been informed by the Aspen Audio Visual crew that there would be 12 Powerpoint presentations. Since I firmly believe that Edward Tufte is absolutely correct and that Powerpoint is Evil I was pretty sure that listening and working on the ipad wouldn't degrade the experience. If you haven't seen the Powerpoint Gettysburg address it's a must...
I also completely agree with Peter Doolittle that we are "We built for images. We need to take advantage of that."
Here's one of 7 "layers" created during Brainlab:
The top is Chris Nowinski - Harvard Grad and professional wrestler (full disclosure: yes I've worked for WCW- and there were a lot of times that the wrestlers got "a bump on the head") who talked about the devastating effect of concussions in sports- especially for kids. He told numerous stories of athletes who committed suicide after multiple concussions. He also emphasized how doctors ask "how many concussions have you had?" instead of "have you ever been knocked out? seen stars? had the world turn orange?" He also showed some rather dramatic MRI images which illustrated a "brown out" after concussions which mimics Alzheimers.
I was reminded of Jane McGonigal's struggle with concussion. Jane is a top notch Game Designer (World of Warcraft) and her TED talk on the evolutionary potential of problem solving in the gaming world is a must see talk. Her brilliant process of recovery was to create the game "Concussion Slayer"
The second half of the page is Barclay Morrison's (Phd) talk on how to prevent the effects of a concussion in the first place. His technique uses the principles of thermodynamics to equalize the positive and negative charges in our neurons. An overabundance of negatively charged neurons means the brain will compensate by increasing the amount of fluid which increases swelling and reduces oxygen. This is the main cause of brain damage after a concussion. He stops this by reactivating genes with specific (positively charged) cells. Other than that the only solution (literally and figuratively) for reducing brain swelling is salt (yep, table salt) or sugar (nope, not one lump or two sugar).
No, swallowing a handful of rocksalt (which was the cure all for altitude sickness and dehydration according to NOLS in the 70's) will not cure your "bump on the head" after falling off your mountain bike.
I wonder if our "reptile" brain is located at the base close to the spinal chord because chances of injury are less there? Which brings me back to Heather Berlin's (Phd) presentation on improvisation.
Her talk was the most interesting one of the lot for me since it dealt with the concept of "flow". Jazz keyboard Artists were asked to perform both memorized and improvised tasks while in an MRI. The freestyle (improvised) MRI showed the DCPL (dorsolateral prefontal cortex) deactivated and the OFC (orbital frontal cortex) increased in activity (boy I hope I got that the right way round). Basically your attention decreases but within a context and the the subcortical (reptile brain) decides what to do before you are aware of your decision process (which is how subliminal advertising works). This loss of self awareness was generally experienced as something positive *as long as you could escape* back to a self aware state.
... and now I'm back to my little note taking exercise... because what I was feeling while listening and drawing was "flow". The images and associations came without thinking or filtering. It's not quite as much fun as skiing fresh powder with some rockin' tunes on the iPod or riding a dory down the Grand Canyon... but it's close.
If you're walking on the cobblestones in front of St. Germain des Pres in your Bruno Magli stilettos with pink fox tails swishing across your butt and someone comes up behind you singing "chippie chippie chippie" they do not mean this...
This is the kind of chippy I have here, the Colorado Chipmunk and they are endlessly entertaining. They love the birdbath and the sunflower seeds I've put in the birdfeeders. When they're babies they're light enough to sit on the "squirrel proof" bird feeder. Of course they *love* my raspberry bush.
I found what was left of a raspberry between the bush and the birdbath. Only a Chippie would try and carry it somewhere to eat it.
Duffy would really like to find out what a chipmunk tastes like- but I think he likes killing pack rats more (good thing that). Besides, Chippies are really fast
and really loud
I have to admit to driving Mom nuts by listening to the Chipmunk Christmas album over and over again, as only a 6 year old can...
This is what they really sound like:
I can't remember which business it was, but there was one where the woman by the front desk admonished everyone to be careful when they entered because of the baby chipmunks. Apparently mama had her nest in the hallway and you were likely to see 3 or 4 babies skittering across the red carpet to the other side of the corridor at any moment.
They do top out the cute meter.
It's amazing how much their pouches can hold. I once saw a Yellowstone crowd completely entranced by a chipmunk stuffing nuts in it's mouth as they ignored the begging bear across the road.
...and yes.... I was describing mom walking across the St. Germain Eglise cobblestones in her stilettos and fox... and the look on the poor boy's face when he finally got close enough to see her face and realize he'd just "whistled" a very chwette 80 year old was priceless. I laughed, his buddies thought it was hysterical, Mom didn't even notice.
