I think often about a stock tank of fish in the side patio.  I worry about raccoons, mostly, and icing over, somewhat.  Winter time puts a great deal of gardening effort in stark relief.  I love my real dirt garden but I also love, perhaps more, the garden of my dreams.  Pardon me:  I should say gardens of my dream.

Note:  This is a google gadget.  You can click on the gadget to secure the code or explore others.  I find that most are a quick trip to install. However, with some browers, you may not be able to customize the background picture. Gadgets are not made by google, officially, but are crafted by energetic code monkey types.  ABowman made this fishey one.  I also like his spider ap and the hungry turtle ap.

Here is an experiment with music.  Playlist allows you to create a widget of favorite songs.  The songs are housed somehow in cyberspace, so that you do not run a foul of downloading music problems.  I give you Johnny Cash's "Rose of my Heart."  Why?  Because my first garden was that of my father in Montana.  Country music and harsh winds shaped life and leaves there.  Click on the bar to hear him sing.  Go to Playlist to build your own soundtrack to garden by. I am building one based on garden themes to share. In winter, we read seed catalogs and imagine spring.  We can listen to flower songs, also.

continued.  This sequence or this sequence multiplied by two (making the Lucas series) fits with the petal organization of most flowers. 

0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 233 377 610..................For more on fibonacci numbers and flowers see Ivar Peterson's fabulous site.

I would like to grow "Strawberry Blonde" next summer, to enjoy but also to count the petals.

 (Available from Johnny's Seeds)

“Bring me the sunflower crazed with the love of light.”

                                - Eugenio Montale

Other petal  investigations?  Look at this table.

In winter I think of ornamental kale and cabbage.  I have never grown these cold weather architectural staples. Here is a classic pose.  This image is from Osbourne Seeds, a company that carries a wide variety of ornamental Brassicas. The whorl of rosettes is governed by the mathematical pattern called Fibonacci numbers. Fibonacci numbers comprise a sequence: 0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55..........

The first number of the sequence is 0, the second number is 1, and each subsequent number is equal to the sum of the previous two numbers of the sequence itself...

See the Wikipedia entry here. Turns out that this pattern also gives rise to relationships of proportion and beauty in art and architecture. The Golden Section and the Golden Mean.  Underneath the beauty of petals and leaves is Nature's math.  How heady is that?

The Walrus and The Carpenter

Lewis Carroll

UVA scientists last April released results confirming that air pollution interferes with scent released by flowers. This data suggests one factor in the decline of bees and other pollinators.  On problem is that air pollution interferes with the movement of scent molecules in the atmosphere.  In other words, the fragrance of a rose cannot travel as far amid pollution as it would under less polluted conditions.  See this video at Science Daily.

"The scent molecules produced by flowers in a less polluted environment, such as in the 1800s, could travel for roughly 1,000 to 1,200 meters; but in today's polluted environment downwind of major cites, they may travel only 200 to 300 meters," said Jose D. Fuentes, a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and a co-author of the study. "This makes it increasingly difficult for pollinators to locate the flowers." (My emphasis!)

The photo on the article home page shows three darling nerdie scientists kneeling in front of daffodils.  Only about a third of daffodil varieties are scented.  OK. I will give them this.  But the first two flowers in the video are incredibly UNscented:  oakleaf hydrangea and the classic orange ditch lily.  The third flower is a single shrub rose, whose scent, like the daffies, is not likely.

Permit me this peeve:  I dislike the random pairing of a flower without scent as a visual with articles about scent.  For example, I could post a Gerbera daisy photo with this post -- which I have -- as an occasion of such a sin.

                                                             NO SCENT ever in such a flower.