Springs Here!

Well, 

It's been way too long.  I have a very long post I would like to do involving the Dandelion salad I ate a week or so ago.  It would be revisiting one of my first entries "Dandelion's Gone".  Why do I have so much affection for my own output, anyway?  God help my children one day.

So, there is a blog entry in my future which will show the changes that our somewhat warmish late winter have wrought in my life in the form of gardening in early March.  I built a huge cold frame, and just yesterday attempted to take a picture of the Mesclun mix I have growing within it.

Also, just today, I planted about 155 onions (Bermuda and Yellow evenly split).  I am beginning to feel the strange heat that comes over me every spring.  Last year it caused me to ramble on the phone with my parents about vaguely hyperbolic theories of recycling, regeneration, and other concepts normally consigned to dark quiet places (at least for those of us who have taste).  My sweet mother at one point, realizing I was perhaps no longer actually capable of hearing confusion in the grunts of her and my father on the phone, said, "I guess he's just rambling," to my Dad, who was speechless.  The only consolation for such an embarrassing episode is the fact that they've been enduring it for thirty-five years.  Haven't abandoned ship yet.  Also, my friends and mentors who counsel me in such matters have told me something precious I could have no way of knowing due to having no children (and maybe having just a little to do with the fact that in my solar system, damn it Jim, I'm the Sun, not the Son):  sometimes when throwing attention at their children a parent can become a little ashamed of the sheer boredom they experience in listening to their bundles of joy babble, cashiering the unconditional love a child just knows will come like rain from Mom and Dad.  I know I'm guilty as charged, sorry if you would rather not conjecture the preciousness of your relations with your own.  

So my Garden Blog is called Cabinet of Natural Curiosities, for now.  It's at cabinetofnaturalcuriosities.blogspot.com.  It is very much a work in progress, but is going to be the best damned garden journal (with the most widely applicable usefulness ect.) I've certainly ever had.  The blog is named after Albertus Seba, a nineteeth century pharmacist, zoologist and collector from the Netherlands.  The kind of guy Linneaus and Darwin dropped in on.  He created from his amazing collection culled from all over the world to supply his apothecary, a series of engravings.  These were eventually brought together in a volume (once translated) called the Cabinet of Natural Curiousities that sells to this day from Taschen for nearly a hundred dollars or more.  Barnes and Noble has a Taschen version for under thirty dollars.  It is not the best edition ever to come out, but none the less makes a hell of a gift for kids and geeks like me.  Even better, search Albertus Seba.  Or rather, just hit the link.  All his work is in the public domain, I was delighted to discover.  So download it, look at it, and ask yourself if, as a great man used to say, "Nature's for the eyes that see it."  Seba suggests nature is not for just anyone.  

Oh well.  

I will write another entry soon.

Andy Coffey