first efforts

Garden plans

This is what our garden looks like right now, but I'm starting to dream of spring. Last year the main plan was just to build our boxes and get the Square Foot Garden up and running. With that under our belts, I want to fine-tune a few things and add some new stuff. Here's the list so far...

1. Get a rain barrel. We'd been planning this anyway, but now the City of Champaign will give us a $25 rebate if we buy one. Nice!

2. Start a compost pile. I'm still thinking about how best to do this and where in the yard to put it. I don't want to compost food, just yard waste, coffee grounds, egg shells, that sort of thing. We need it to be accessible to the garden but not too attractive to animals (ours or others'). 

3. Add to garden: kale, more spinach/greens this spring, more early girl tomatoes, more cukes, further attempts to grow cilantro and dill (which always fry out for me).

4. This isn't food-related gardening, but I want to set up a prairie plant/wildflower garden along a south-facing fence in our side yard. Am taking suggestions on what's easy, what looks good, what grows well and fast but doesn't totally take over.

Gardeners among you, anything else I should be thinking about, trying out, testing?

Happy 190th birthday, Susan B. Anthony!

Nice hat!

Bush's favorite painting, part two...

Quick follow up to last month's LONG post on George W. Bush's favorite painting, W.H.D. Koerner's "A Charge to Keep"...

Tonight I finally read the story that actually contained the image in question. It's called "A Charge to Keep," authored by Ben Ames Williams, published in serial form in 1918 in Country Gentleman magazine. Sorry, lefty bloggers, not a story about a horse thief. Nor, however, does it seem to have much in the way of a deep Christian message of leadership. It does not appear even to be Methodist.

The plot goes something like this: young Jasper lives with his father in pristine wooded country. On his deathbed father makes Jasper promise never to sell off their land to the local lumbermen who covet its timber and would love nothing more than to "ravage" it. A convoluted plot unfolds in which Jasper fights against unknown forces trying to drive him to sell the land. Add to this the dead father's sketchy gold miner past, tales of dark revenge, and the appearance on the scene of an attractive young girl who can paddle a canoe and swing an ax. When all is said and done, love is found and the charge is kept. 

We can, I suppose, find some irony in the story's environmental message, given that the "charge to keep" is in fact one of wilderness conservation. But apart from Bush specifically, I remain amused by the misinformation about the Koerner image. It's not so much that folks were wrong about where the image did and didn't appear, but that they were wrong in such a highly specific way. Weird.

Picturing suffering and disaster: The case of Haiti

Yesterday the New York Times LENS blog posted a short essay in which it asked the question, "Were there too many photographers in Haiti?" It's an important question, and not only for Haiti in 2010. As LENS points out,

At one point there were almost certainly too many photographers in Haiti. But which point? This question is scarcely new. It attends every war, every conflict; each famine, disaster and political upheaval.

The post and accompanying images, slideshow, and thoughtful comments at LENS are well worth checking out. This weekend a live, real-time conversation on these issues will happen over at BAGnewsNotes, which is hosting a salon on visual coverage of Haiti this Sunday afternoon from 3-4:30 pm EST. (Yes, cross-programming with the Super Bowl pre-game shows). Invited guests include 5 photojournalists, 3 of whom were shooting in Haiti in the week after the earthquake. I'm looking forward to moderating the discussion, hosted by The BAG's Michael Shaw and BAG producer Neil Harris. Visual politicians among you, feel free to check it out and join in.