Spring time!

It's that time of the year again here in Denmark.

The crocuses started flowering, and I managed to sit outside for quite a while in a short-sleeved shirt without freezing to death. There's no doubt. Spring arrived this weekend.

It's been a busy winter. I...

... managed to fall sick with flue-resembling symptoms and fever three times in 6 weeks, beginning with the Christmas holidays.

... shoveled a great deal of snow away, like last year.

... closed probably around 100 issues in the Flot issue tracker (and had the misfortune not to discover a well-meaning fork until a month after).

... mapped a big bunch of roads in OpenStreetMap, mostly centered around Janne's parents home. Thanks to the effort of volunteers, we've got aerial photos of almost the entire country and will, I think, within this year have a complete free street map of Denmark. I found out mapping is a fine hobby; it's a nice way to relax while gaining the usual open source feeling of contributing to something greater than yourself.

... read 16 books on local history of Vendsyssel and Himmerland, the regions where I live, told by old people that recount their youth around 1900-1930, mostly with farming, quite an eye-opener, really, and a great complement to the things we were taught in history lessons in school. I also read the Arthur trilogy by Bernard Cornwell (it wasn't quite as good as his Saxon book series, although maybe I'm just biased because I prefer the brought-up-as-a-Dane protagonist from those).

... wasted some time with Tremulous 1.2pre after having stopped playing Tremulous for a long time. It is a surprisingly difficult multiplayer FPS. I mostly play the alien side because I like the speed, but since I'm still not very good at it, this means I have to trick other players into coming close enough to be vulnerable.

... and annoyingly failed to get into the habit of regular piano practicing again.

Garden design

I recently read The Design of Design by Fred Brooks, the guy behind the mythical man month and the magical silver bullet debunking. I'll save further commentary on the book for now, but one of things he mentions is that rules sometimes help the designer because it sets some boundaries within which creativity can blossom.

I have a couple of rules for my little patch of a garden.


A passiflora growing outside in the summer

A first simple rule is that there shall be no grass. None at all. While lawns are nice and everything, it takes a lot of labour to keep a lawn, ideally it needs mowing at least once a week. Even then, unless you have the perfect growing spot for grass (plenty of sun and water), chances are it won't be a pretty one. This is compared to the other beds which I weed maybe two or three times a year while otherwise enjoying the flowers.

Also everybody has a lawn. Most don't look pretty. No fun at all.



Another rule is that there shall be as little uncovered ground as possible. Naked fertile soil is a highly unstable labour-requiring condition, nature will have its way. It also looks silly.



Yet another, less simple principle is that the garden must grow organically, chaotically, like nature, as opposed to being a tidy, trimmed show case of culture. As few straight lines as possible. Make no mistake, it's still designed in the sense that I exert control, it's not nature; if I didn't manipulate it heavily, it would turn into a shrubbery in a few years. But I'm attracted to idea of a green wilderness, to seeing things grow vigorously.

So I tend only to pull up the most annoying weed, the species that are hard to get rid of, and I let the decaying plants stay where they die (from a pull-up or otherwise). It's easy and it works well, most of it is gone when the season is over.

I try not to have too many of the same species in the same spot. Nature seldomly has 10 similar specimens right next to each other at exactly the same age. This also offers some protection against various pests.

And most of the plants I've bought are from seeds or small specimens from the local super markets. There's no overall plan to follow, hence I can satisfy sudden impulses without getting into trouble. And I don't mind having to wait to see the results, watching things grow and looking forward to the adult specimen is part of the joy. It's like buying yourself a gift that you cannot in any way unpack until a year or two after.

A side-effect of the wilderness idea is that my little patch has a lot of small visitors. Which is certainly something to be happy about. Sitting a summer day in the sun, with bees buzzing around collecting honey from the flowers one has put in place many months ago, removing weeds here and there, noticing details one has never seen before, discovering new species that have invaded the soil on their own. I can think of nothing more peaceful.




Of course, I'm learning from this approach. This year I'm beginning to think I need one more rule. Plants on the pathways must be cut down no matter how interesting they look, otherwise it gets too cumbersome to get around, and then I seldomly get to see the outermost corners.

Spring!

Spring is upon us here in Denmark! The signs are subtle but sure.

My snowdrops are flowering.




Galanthus, snowdrops

The garden looks as if it is almost dead, but upon closer inspection small green leaves are shooting up. And the ground is soft and wet, not hard and frosty.


My mostly dead, but not quite!, garden

It's getting warmer, my trusty winter coat and wide scarf is getting too warm for driving up the hill on bike.


Me and a tame deer in Arden in December

Yesterday a pair of ducks had occupied the pond in the park. This morning two coots were grassing when I passed downhill. And in the evening blackbirds are singing.

Yay!

PS: If you're quick, there's still time for our special offer for new art on paper and canvas on YayArt.

Quiescence

No update for a long time. I've been busy, mostly at work but also at home with the garden.

I currently have our small garden full of bulbs. Many already have the first small leaves up, including some daffodils and tulips (in spite of it still being February!). I've buried so many bulbs that I have but the faintest idea of what is where. The last few batches are pretty much placed completely randomly.

I've also invested in seeds from Plant World Seeds. I chose them because they have several bags with different mixtures; our garden is not of a size where it's relevant with 50 flowers of the same kind. Janne also bought some seeds from a Danish merchant, mostly small flowering trees, so the house is now full of pots with moist soil and small white labels.

I'm currently mostly excited about the 12 pots of clematis montana (four seeds in each pot, unfortunately it can take three months before we see any seedlings), and a bag of dactylorhiza maculata (heath spotted orchid) that I haven't figured out how to sow yet. The funny part is that we haven't even sowed half of the seeds. The summer is still a bit too far away for most of them. I think we're going to have a problem by then.

I read somewhere that the original meaning of "paradise" is a garden. Last year it was a little empty. Not surprising given that I dug all of it in April and May. But we'll see this year.

In other news, I've spent some time today and yesterday working on time series support in Flot. I just committed the code to the SVN repository. I need to clean up a couple of things, test it a bit more and write up some documentation before release. Next on the list is reviewing the patches on the bug tracker and on the mailing list.

Age of plants

I found a fascinating article in the Danish Wikipedia about the biology of trees. Written in a intriguing language, like this quote about defense mechanisms (my translation):

Within seconds the tree knows that it has been hurt. As soon as the bark is breached, the tree needs to defend itself. If fungus and bacteria spores find an uncovered piece of wood - and they will - they will launch an attack on the wound and into the wood.

I wonder whether it'll survive the editing process in the long run.

I was looking for information about how old plants can grow. Indoor perennial plants and flowers are commonly multiplied by division. But that doesn't reset their age. If they have one. I still don't know.