I found some of these flowers several weeks ago, at the very beginning of spring, in the gravel pit near the rental property. They were strange-looking and piqued my curiosity, so here's a post about them.

Coltsfoot


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Spring is a-come here in Bangor and the low, boggy forests that surround it; and when I think of spring in that vast region of North America bordered by the Great Lakes & St. Lawrence, the Mississippi, the Ohio, and the Atlantic, I think of the silver maple. So here's an entry about that.


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Hey! Look who's back! Yes, it's Mark's Tree of the Week posts - now delightfully modified into Plant of the Week posts, so as to give me more stuff to type about. Aren't you excited, o my invisible and probably nonexistent audience? I'll bet you are!

So, anyway, it's a little late to post this entry, since its subject, Aruncus dioicus, stopped ( Read more... )

It's pretty late, and I really should be getting to sleep, especially as I'm going to be waking up early in order to get some work done (I've started trying to take advantage of the fact that it's much easier for me to keep my focus early in the day than it is at night), but I've got to talk to somebody about my brilliant idea, and if I don't do it ( Read more... )

According to WDCB (90.9 FM, "All Things Jazz", spewin' its noise out of the College of DuPage), today is Wes Montgomery's birthday. And, as we all know, Wes Montgomery kicks ass. Well, kicked ass. He's been dead for some forty-odd years. But nevertheless!

Click to view

Click to view

Click to view

Anyway, new story installment tomorrow night, and a new Tree of the Week next week. No, ( Read more... )

It's begun to snow outside again, a fact for which I am very glad. The return to freezing temperatures the past few days, after the thaw earlier, did not entirely reassure me that we were still in winter's grip. But fresh snow, no matter how little, is reassuring. Still, it would seem that the fabled time of "Deep Winter" is over, and the long, ( Read more... )

Death And The Prince: A Serial Fairy Tale ( Read more... )

I'm not sure exactly what it means, but one knows that one has reached a certain critical point in academia when one starts seeing references to certain authors in one's textbooks and going "Oh! That guy! He's so cool!"

So cool since 1986,
--mark

At 10:45 AM Sunday morning, three intrepid urbanites - Susan, Steve (amrikisalaami - he blogs about the Middle East while I blog about the Middle West!), and myself - set out on a miniature road trip out to the Nachusa Grassland in North-Central Illinois, about 20 miles west of Rochelle. This 2800 acre patch of tallgrass prairie and oak savannah has been ( Read more... )

As I was sitting here in the Library, procrastinating on studying for finals, I found this horrible, terrible site: The Terrible Crossover Fanfiction Generator. Some of my favorite results:

Your challenge is to write crossover fanfiction combining Frankenstein and Nancy Drew.
The story should use shopping for a Wii as a plot device!

Generated ( Read more... )