MinxterBLOOM

XKCD comics abut science, maths, and other nerd-geek obsessions.

Randall Munroe is the cartoonist: very droll, very wacky, very pointy-headed in a science way. Most of his cartoons are black and white. But this, echoes of 6th grade scratchboard work, is especially nice for my garden blog. Enjoy.

which is quite wonderful. Here is a 2005 NASA image from the Spitzer Telescope image bank that fanciful observers call flowerlike. NASA says the nebula evokes a camellia blossom. One JPL group sees the flower as Raffelisia-like. Another scientist says the flower is more a crysanthemum-shape. Anyhoooo....the astral body is a nebula. Read more here at NASA's website.

Located about 2,000 light years from us in the constellation Lyra, the Ring Nebula is a favorite night body of backyard astronomers.

Corolla of petals The "ring" is a thick cylinder of glowing gas and dust around a dying star. Previous images of the Ring Nebula taken by visible-light telescopes usually showed just the inner glowing loop of gas around the star. The outer regions of this doomed body are especially prominent in this new image because Spitzer "sees" the infrared light from hydrogen molecules.

Button center The implosion of what was once a star.

Flowers, like stars, are finite creatures. Yet, they do bewitch us for a time.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Harvard-Smithsonian CfA

Another case of "Heavenly Blue" but this vine is flinging itself through magenta bougenvilla.

The image appears in James Wagner's blog. He saw this combination at the Ray and Charles Eames House in Pacific Palisades, CA. He did not respond to email, so I did not want to post a full image.I have wondered what flowers might have grown in an Eames garden.

I do not see too much documentation on what the Eames couple enjoyed in flowers. I have always liked this fabric designed by them circa 1947. Here are a few quotes from the Eames partnership:

"Choose your corner, pick away at it carefully, intensely and to the best of your ability and that way you might change the world."

“We wanted to make the best for the most for the least”

“The same stars that shine down on Russia, shine down on the United States. From the sky, our cities would look much the same”

“Ray [Eames], who is my wife and not my brother.”

"You know what looks good can change, but what works works."

"My wife and I had made a commitment to disregard the sacred enclosure around a special set of phenomena called art; in our view preoccupation with respecting that boundary leads to an unfortunate and unwarranted limitation on the aesthetic experience."

McClure and Zimmerman offer lovely bulbs. Here is "Tresemble," a white triandrus daffodil. Much like "Thalia" this moderately recurved daffie is more modest than a golden trumpet.  I planted some on Sunday, with blue Muscari.

Click into the picture to go to Mc & Z.

Home to the Bells of Bloomsbury fame (Blooms-a-bury is such a gardener's pun!), Charleston House is a must-see for bookish gardeners.

Among the many fancies of that house and garden are astonishing textile patterns, a penchant for silver-foliaged flowers, and a droll, troll-style of painted furnature.

Vanessa Bell wrote in 1936, “The house seems full of young people in very high spirits, laughing a great deal at their own jokes… lying about in the garden which is simply a dithering blaze of flowers and butterflies and apples.”

I plan to paint two rooms this winter in some sort of homage to Vanessa Bell. More details later.