Archive for the ‘gardening’ Category

Most of our parsley has been trying to go to seed for the last month and I’ve just given up and let it go. We noticed a swallowtail butterfly on it a few days ago, and then we noticed lots of leafless stems. The caterpillars have arrived. We decided to get up early this morning to take photographs of the swallowtail caterpillars at different stages. First, I’ll show you the most recognizable.

Now, this is the smallest one we could find today.

Now, for the in between.

I also hunted for eggs, but didn’t find any. It looks like we were too late for this group. Maybe there will be another group. … Please. While we were looking, Richard spotted this guy.

I learned today that Joan Broerman, the founder of the Southern Breeze chapter of SCBWI, reviewed Growing Patterns: Fibonacci Numbers in Nature on her Book Log blog. “Lavish photographs by both Campbells and easy to follow diagrams support the brief but clear text so even the most math resistant reader will be drawn in, totally unaware of how much he or she is learning,” Joan wrote. You can read the entire review here. Thank you, Joan.

It was a big weekend for Growing Patterns: Fibonacci Numbers in Nature. On Friday, I started the day as a guest on The Gestalt Gardener, a radio show on Mississippi Public Broadcasting hosted by Felder Rushing. We talked about the book and getting kids excited about the natural world, math, and gardening. I am a longtime listener to Felder’s show so I was familiar with its rhythms; Felder fielded about 8 calls and we fit our conversation in around them. The show was re-broadcast the next morning, which coincided with our signing at Lemuria. Many of our guests at the signing told us they had heard the show. I thank Felder and Ezra Wall, the show’s producer, for having me.

Lots of friends, old and new, came out for the signing, which began during Lemuria’s regular Saturday story hour. (Thank you, Patty, for taking photographs.) One attendee, named Kimberly, brought along an observation she wrote after spending some time talking about Fibonacci numbers and pinecones with her grandmother. (Her grandmother had heard the Gestalt Gardener show.)

I promised I would post a photograph of this amaryllis blooming so here it is. In a post back in December, I showed what it looked like when it had just been planted. I love the bold color and bodacious blossom. Wow!

Richard and I added compost to our raised beds two weeks ago, and yesterday, we planted seeds. We planted lettuce, spinach, kale, swiss chard, beets, and leeks. Richard got a rain barrel for Christmas so some of our watering will be collected rainwater. We have plans to add a few raised beds this year. The zucchini and yellow squash need their own boxes.

A wise person (also known as my Dad) left a comment yesterday. He suggested I change the subject from the countdown, sensing it was becoming an ordeal. He was right. I decided to take a picture of my Christmas cactus. It is making me happy with its exuberant blossoms. My cousin, Tim, brought this with him four years ago when he came to bring our uncle some furniture and household items to replace those he lost in his New Orleans home after Hurricane Katrina. It was a welcome bright sight then and now. The plant spent the summer outside and nearly doubled in size.

Mom and I planted our amaryllis bulbs this week. The others haven’t shown us any green yet. I’ll be posting updates through the cold days ahead. We’ve got some apple blossoms, amigos, and some sort of peacock, I think.

I have some new work to do. I got revision comments back on a magazine piece slated for August 2010. Among other suggested fixes, I need to bring the reading level down. That’s always tricky. I’ll take a stab at it and then ask for help from my critique buddy.

I am also psyching myself up to submit a piece to a literary magazine for the adult market. Yikes!

It’s my birthday and my 250th blog post so I decided I needed some pretty pictures to brighten a dreary day. My yard is very, very green because of all the rain. When I got back from walking the dog I noticed dozens of mushrooms across the front lawn. I don’t know the names of any of them. I will have to learn how to identify mushrooms. If you look very closely, you can see one has a spider crawling across it. I was shooting with our brand-spanking-new Nikon D700, but I was too lazy to put on the macro lens.

It’s not as if I need an excuse to take photographs of flowers, but I spent a very nice hour or so yesterday reading and enjoying The Metamorphosis of Flowers by Marie Perennou and Claude Nuridsany. It was inspiring. My parents lent me the book. (Aside from being glad to have them in town, it is fabulous to have their library in town as well.) Perennou and Nuridsany are the authors of Microcosmos, the book that inspired the movie. Lovely, lovely photographs and beautiful writing.

Today marks my most varied (and abundant) harvest from the garden: a cantaloupe, an eggplant, an okra, a cucumber, and two kinds of tomatoes. Yum! The okra, eggplant, and tomatoes went into a side dish for lunch. How far we’ve come from the first seedlings .

Today’s other news is that Growing Patterns: Fibonacci Numbers in Nature is very nearly finished. I never think I’ll ever get to this point with a book, but I almost can’t bear to look at it one more time. (My editor reported dashing across to the other building on the Boyds Mills campus to write final changes into a final proof.) I know this feeling will pass. It is beautiful and I’m grateful for everyone who has helped it get to this point. Now, it’s time for it to be a book. Already. The seed for this book started germinating in February 2008 at an SCBWI/Southern Breeze conference.

The caterpillars took their leave.

I helped the first bunch find new homes. Two went to neighborhood kids. Six went to an elementary school librarian who planned to take them to friends and several classrooms.

We had six left. Munching happliy. We were planning to take pictures images of their transformation. When we went out to walk this evening, however, the remaining caterpillars had disappeared. Poof!

Richard suggests they left because their food supply had been depleted. Maybe. Maybe they noticed that their buddies had been removed. We’ll have to get back in touch with some of our adopters to see if we can get photographs of the chrysalis and adult stages.

How many black swallowtail caterpillars can you see eating my parsley? I already farmed out three to friends whose kids wanted to watch the transformation. I don’t really feel like sacrificing my parsley, but I don’t feel like ending this either.

Here’s a slightly different angle. Both of these images were taken with my Nikon Coolpix S560. I decided to see what I could do with the macro lens and the tripod. The ones that follow were taken with my Nikon D70 with the Tamron macro lens.

These flowers are blooming on my back deck. I mounted the Nikon D200 (equipped with the 50 mm lens) on a tripod and set the ISO at 800. The top photo of the trailing verbena was shot at 1/500 of a second at f/2.2. Do you like the blurring of the flower petals? The bottom one was shot at 1/30 of a second at f/8.
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The crown of thorns (on the right) was shot at 1/15 of a second at f/8. I bought this plant because I needed a two-petal flower for my upcoming book, Growing Patterns: Fibonacci Numbers in Nature (Boyds Mills Press 2010). To my great delight, it is thriving on my deck. I love the contrast of the leaves with the stems and thorns. I love the flowers, too. After I showed her a preview of my book, a friend told me she has had her mother’s crown of thorns for more than 20 years and it continues to thrive.

We have tomatoes! Actually these are the second decent sized picking. The first batch never made it into the house. Richard was perturbed because he only got to hear about them. I decided to photograph this batch. I am still not happy with my little point-and-shoot, but I guess I can’t expect it to do what my DSLR does. Once again, I have selected a bowl made by N for the display. He’s a cool cat!