Thursday, May 29, 2003

Loooong day—sheesh!

Doing some work for a client in Branford, about a 45-minute drive each way. Today I parked in the middle of I-95 for nearly two hours while they cleared up an accident. Sucked--WSHU was doing it shill routine (pledge drive), WFUV wasn't coming in right, and the rest of the stations around here are crap. I forgot to lug my book-on-cd along.

After getting home from work, rushing to walk the dog, then rushing to work out, then rushing to take a friend grocery shopping, I finally made it home for the evening at about 9:15 pm. Only ... Stanley was still working, and didn't get back until the 11pm news was on. Bummer--I knew it was a job he didn't even want to take on, and I wanted to jib-jabber to him about the new project I started (a corporate website redesign), which looks like it's going to be pretty interesting.

It's supposed to rain all weekend. I was kinda hoping to finish planting stuff, and especially get tomatoes in. Plus, the lawn is literally up to my butt (yeah, I'm short, but not THAT short!), and awesomely needs to be mowed. Or scythed. I would just throw wildflower seeds over the half acre and call it a meadow, but I doubt our neighbors would go for it. Besides, I keep losing the dog in the high grass ...
posted by lee on 05/29/03 at 08:27 PM
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Saturday, May 31, 2003

Of salmon and storms and multi-colored roses

Farmed Salmon Looking Less Rosy by Marian Burros, New York Times, May 28, 2003

THE images of salmon farming that the industry promotes seem pristine and natural, of fish frisking in icy cold clean waters, of wise management saving an endangered species while providing shoppers with the fish they love.

But critics say that image of the regal salmon, America's most popular fresh fish, is not the whole reality. Recent lawsuits accuse the industry of polluting the ocean, endangering dwindling stocks of wild salmon and failing to tell shoppers that they use artificial colors to make the fish red.

The criticisms echo many of those leveled at huge corporate farms on land.

"We've come to the point where we view these farms as hog lots or feedlots of the ocean," said Jeff Reardon, the New England conservation director of Trout Unlimited, which has worked with salmon farmers in Maine to reduce the number of fish that escape, to protect wild trout and salmon. "They breed disease and parasites. Like other big animal feedlots there are lots of problems. Some of their practices are beginning to improve, but over all the impact is not lessening."


Salmon Color selection chips[Sigh] I love salmon, and we eat it, or brook trout, at least once a week. I had to idea salmon farming created pollution or environmental hazards. I was surprised to see that salmon farmers can select the color they want their farmed salmon to be. Wild salmon, according to the article, are pink because of the krill and other stuff they eat (like flamingos), but farmed salmon don't eat krill, they eat fish feed, and salmon farmers are given a choice of what additive they want in the fish feed to turn the fish their favorite color of pink. But I guess I shouldn't be that surprised since I know the reason Perdue chickens are that weird yellow color is from what the company feeds them (I think I heard it was marigold seed that does that, but I might be nuts ... ) I wonder if it's a Pantone palette ...

STORMY WEATHER
Poor Ginger--she's so frightened of thunder. Here she is, looking at me and worried that I won't come in and the thunder will get me:

Ginger looking very worried


Right now she's wrapped around the bottom of my chair--I'm afraid to move lest one of the wheels catches her fur and yanks it out.

NEW ROSES
We haven't had a chance to put our new roses into the ground yet; either it's been raining like crazy or we've gotten home too late to do it. I wanted to do it this weekend but, as you might guess from the above, it's raining AGAIN.

But they're blooming! And they're gorgeous! I know pretty much where I'd like to put them, though it might involve getting rid of some raspberry bushes (Stanley doesn't like raspberries and I don't care enough about them to care if the bushes get yanked. They're pretty scaggy-looking things anyway). They're climbing roses, so I'd like to put them on a trellis in the sunny part of the yard, with a clematis on the other side.

onerose.jpg


The old climbing rose bush off the patio is just loaded with buds this year--when that one blooms, it's going to be a sight to see.

I did some experimenting in PhotoShop, working on a shot of the roses I took this morning. I like playing around with the filters and effects and seeing what I can come up with. In this triptych, the first shot is the original photo, the second is kind of an old faded color photo look (kind of), and the third, well, just moody.

copyright 2003 by Lee Fleming, InfoPulse LLC. If you want this for some reason, just ask me by sending email to lee at infopulsellc dot com


It's very weird--Ginger is snoring so it feels as if I have a chair with Magic Fingers. Ah well, time to throw dinner in the oven; maybe Stanley will make it home sometime soon. He's off in Pleasantville, NY doing a job there that he did not know he had to do when he left this morning. Hope he's charging weekend rates.
posted by lee on 05/31/03 at 06:24 PM
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