earth day followup
April 25th, 2008 | Uncategorized
How about that?! Zinnias. Planted Sunday, came up Thursday. Well, one did. Today there are a whole bunch up.
How about that?! Zinnias. Planted Sunday, came up Thursday. Well, one did. Today there are a whole bunch up.
38 Responses to “earth day followup”
weeewhoooo.
ain’t life grand?!
Yay, baby plants!
You grow girl!
(Oh, I’m ashamed of myself; that was terrible.)
wow that was fast. 🙂
Awwwwwww…..they’re cute!
To life,to life,l’chaim!
how incredibly beautiful! I miss the northeast.
Unlike me, you actually water your plants 🙂
Nice zinnias. Or at least they look great so far.
HEY! Alison, have you noticed that Free Rice has updated? I just cracked 52 and about choked on my soda when I realized it was going over 50. They also have made a change that feeds words you miss back at you, which I think makes it easier to score higher.
You guys still playing? Did everyone know this but me?
Thanks for the update,kate mck.
Let the sun shine!
Free Rice is a reward activity for my 7th and 8th graders, who play it in groups of 3. “Good using root words to guess right,” I murmur as I eavesdrop on their discussions, purring with delight.
Kate, I’ve been too crazy busy to play Free Rice for a while. But someone mentioned here recently that they scored a 51. I’m looking forward to trying my hand.
I’m making myself a little Monday eve playdate to try Free Rice again. I’ll stop when I reach 51, I swear.
Seeing these little sprouts after having having seen them (or their stand-ins) planted gives me such a leap of joy, here in my balcony-less apartment in the Big City. I do hope we’re treated to further occasional dips into their development.
Thank you so much, Alison!
I love zinneas. I hate
gardening. The whole rubber
glove digging in the dirt thing.
I like rewards, but hate working
for them. I know, I know, for you
gardening isn’t work. I can
feel the joy. Zinneas.
Had never heard of Free Rice until 30 minutes ago. Guess what I did with the last 30 minutes? 800 grains! YAAA!
There ought to be a law against sites like Free Rice. It’s more addicting than drugs. For those who have gotten to level 50 or above I offer my heart felt congratulations. I got to level 46 and started yelling at the screen so I decided to call it quits for a while.
No rubber gloves in the garden. Get your hands in the dirt it’s more fun that way.
This is my first post. I have been lurking around. I love Alison’s DTWOF strip.
Jain — “Good using root words to guess right,” I murmur….
I love teachers!
Awww,thanks ILT. Kiss a teacher for me today,OK?
Jain–Good to see you posting again. Interested in another meeting of the western OR DTWOF fan club?
Inch by Inch (song by Guy Carawan)
“Inch by inch,row by row
Gonna make this garden grow
Please bless these seeds I sow
And make it fertile ground…”
Feminista, you beat me to posting the “Inch by Inch” song! I play it often, sung by Pete Seeger. When we had a building full of dykes in San Fran in the 1980s, we converted the back yard into a community garden and that’s where I learned the song, planting with my sisters.
Pulling weeds, pickin’ stones
We are made of dreams and bones
Feel the need to grow my own
‘Cause the time is close at hand
Grain for grain, sun and rain
Find my way in nature’s chain
Tune my body and my brain
To the music from the land
Hey, “http://EncoreSeraphine.com”
I love your zinnia poem.
and I feel the same…
Hi Feminista, Deena, Deb, Marsha, other Willamette Valley fans–let’s swap starts, Free Rice stories, cartoon analyses!
And radishes, and chard. All of them are cheap dates, ready to put out for the price of a drink (of water, and a bit of sun-warmed soil).
Hey! That’s a GOOD thing! “Cheap ‘n’ Easy” was my favourite T-shirt slogan.
The kids are always playing free rice at the middle school computer lab where i sometimes sub. every computer in the whole lab playing free rice at the same time, it’s a ball! i think there may be some computer magic going on because the words are a heck of a lot less difficult than the ones that come up at home.
How it works is if they get them right they get harder words. If they get them wrong they get easier words. It self-levels–one of the many reasons teachers are fond of it. There’s a short piece about it in this month’s NEA Today, our union publication.
Yeah, that IS the magic of Free Rice. It matches itself to your ability level. So, like, if you have trouble with “inveigle,” it won’t throw “frangible” at you.
david mallet is the author of the garden song. {i actually thought it was bill staines.} i prefer this version:
slug by slug, weed by weed
my garden’s really got me teed
all the insects love to feed on
my tomato plants.
sunburned face, scratched up knees
my kitchen’s choked by zucchinis
i’m shopping at the A and P
next time i get a chance!
i got up to level 50 playing free rice, but it took me 10,000 grains before i could bring myself to stop. scary, huh.
I learnt it by Arlo Guthrie! Also there’s “Inchworm Inchworm…”
Thx,cybersita,for posting the Anti-Garden song. I’ve sung both versions in song circles since the mid-80s.
Rise Up Singing sez: Dave Mallet’s the composer/writer of the Garden Song;Pete Seeger penned an alternate chorus. Eric Killburn wrote the words the to Anti-Garden song. A protracted and shared effort,truly in the folk tradition.So it’s not surprising that we learned it by hearing different folkies sing it.(pg.52,Rise Up Singing. Edited by Peter Blood and Annie Patterson**,1992.
**Blood and Patterson are married and met at Oberlin!
Jain-
Sounds good! I got my emails and will mail back a more thought out reply from home tonight. 🙂
Zinnias are very easy to grow, and I haven’t had a year without then less. During a bad drought summer I watered them *once* and they did just fine.
Best of all, if you kep cutting them they grow even more flowers! If you don’t want cut flowers, just snip off the dying blooms and compost them.
I hate gardening gloves too, but luckily for me I don’t mind os much getting my hands scratched and filthy.
Hey y’all –
This is totally off topic. But if anyone’s in the Northampton, MA area tonight, Ryan Sorba is speaking at Smith tonight. He’s a hate speech evangelist who uses circular logic, out-of-context bible quotes, faux science and repetition to deliver a talk called “the Born Gay Hoax.” The link takes you to a google video.
Some of us are protesting tonight. I’ll be there, in super sparkly drag, ready to turn my chair around at the start of the talk. We’re hoping to make it so he’s delivering his speech to all five Smith College Republicans, and a room full of fabulously queer backsides.
If anyone wants to come out and show support (and see the shitshow), email me: dlhoratio@yahoo.com for directions and info.
Thanks!
~Dane
do you have japanese beetles there? they were all over my zinnias back in PA.
I bet the zinnias are recognizable as zinnias now. Will there be a follow-up-follow-up?
I zipped over to Free Rice last night and upped my level from 51 to 53. Part of doing well on it, as always, is knowing the techniques for taking multiple choice tests, and figuring out how the test-makers think. I have long had the techniques for standardized tests down pat, I’ve pretty much scoped out how the Free Rice people think, and I’m a good guesser.
There is also the site’s practice of repeating words that one has gotten wrong not long before. Since the system gives you the correct definition the first time you miss it, the second one is a freebie. I consider that cheating– not that I don’t take advantage of it, of course.
Thus a high score on Free Rice requires a good vocabulary, but not necessarily an exceptional one.
Jana C.H.
Seattle
Saith JcH: Some people drink, some people gamble, some like whips and chains– I buy books.
DaneGreat…I hope your protest went well. I love the logic that if you are born with physical male or female parts, then you must be born heterosexual. He never mentions hormone levels at all, which amazes me since they power sex drive (and quite possibly who we are attracted to based on pheromones, etc.). What about the fetusses that start out as male, but end up female because of the mother using the pill at the time of conception? What an idiot.
Dog update…he will now great us at the fence gate, but as soon as we move to open it, he runs into his house. Progress though for sure 🙂
For those of you living in Northern New Jersey, there was a nice write-up and photo of Alison in today’s Star-Ledger. The article talks about collaborative writing at Rutgers’ Writer’s House. I’m visiting my parents’ this week and my mother pointed out the article to me. That in itself was pretty cool too.
Slowly but surely, ksbel! I’m so glad to hear it.