Tales from the Microbial Laboratory

a worsening native azalea obsession

Native azaleas are becoming a bit of an obsession - although I keep forgetting their names (this one I got from Pete a few years ago, and it was missing it's tag and if I am remembering correctly, it was part of a group of native azaleas that he got from the Lowcountry Chapter of the South Carolina Native Plant Society).  I have good intentions:  yes, I tell myself to keep the tags or write down the names (and the dates purchased/planted) in a journal.  But honestly, it rarely happens.  I get caught up 'in the planting' and the 'viewing' and the truth is it's nice not to document it all.  I like watching plants grow.  I don't think this is the flame azalea (Rhododendron calendulaceum) - but maybe there are redder ones (with less orange).  I've had this azalea for three years now, and this is the first year that it has bloomed - and what a treat it is.   I'm now starting to eye some of the later blooming ones - the ones that bloom in mid-summer.  Here are some useful links (an abbreviated list) - that is, if you are so inclined to become obsessed with them as well:

• East Coast Native Azaleas
• Georgia Native Azaleas
• Fern Gully Nursery
• Azalea Society of America
• National Native Azalea Repository
• Dodd & Dodd Native Nurseries

the 'new green'

With permission from the always creative Annie over at The Transplantable Rose - I'd like to present one of her most recent video creations, a parody titled 'Greened House'.  As someone in the (very slow) process of designing a home, and one on the green side, this just made me laugh and laugh.  On this Sunday evening - and Earth Day no less - I thought I'd share it with you.  Enjoy!

Altered Oceans

Sullivan's Island, on a Sunday afternoon, August 2005.

In the 2007 Pulitzer Prize announcements for Journalism, in the category of Explanatory Reporting:

Awarded to Kenneth R. Weiss, Usha Lee McFarling and Rick Loomis of the Los Angeles Times for their richly portrayed reports on the world's distressed oceans, telling the story in print and online, and stirring reaction among readers and officials.

You can find the five-part series, Altered Oceans, here.

Osteospermum hybrid 'Soprano Vanilla Spoon'

a bud

Cl. Cecile Brunner bud. 

There's thousands of them out there - the combined fragrance on my front deck this morning is amazing.  But then it's a beautiful spring morning, and a Saturday, and the dogs know it and I know it and the cat doesn't care about it and there are tomatoes to plant.

Varieties:  brandywine, ildi, sungold, matt's wild cherry.

I'll start there.

No meat.

The later blooming native azaleas are taking over in the garden.

So, the day started with taking (Dog)Wood to the Vet for a follow up to her gall bladder removal surgery.  Since she's back to chasing squirrels and trying to sneak cat food, I'm assuming that the removal of her gall bladder (and it's infectious agent) is helping her liver out - so I'm pretty optimistic about her bloodwork.  I'll find out tomorrow. 

When I got home at the end of the day, and opened the gate and brought the car in - as I was closing the wooden gate back up I heard a sound, a dull roar if I'm allowed to exaggerate after a difficult week - and realized that the sound emanated from my Savannah Holly that is in bloom - and 'in bloom' means that a 25' holly is covered, literally, in tiny white flowers.  The entire tree was covered in more bees than I've seen in one place EVER, and perhaps I've found the missing bees.  I mean, they were LOUD. 

In between taking Wood to the Vet and listening to bee harmonies, I was at work.  Today I mostly thought.  Pondered.  I think that I committed to getting a graduate and postdoctoral training grant in on the 19th of May (I know, I know, that's soon) - so I thought about the grant, and the who/what/where/why should you care of it, and I talked to someone who is in the know about it, and then to another someone, gauged their reactions - and suddenly I'm emailing and coordinating - and the deadline looms.  Another call tonight from a collaborator (do any of us have lives?) and suddenly we have shape:  microbial (pathogen) diversity in a coastal gradient...air above a saltwater marsh, the saltwater itself, sediments and inhabitants (dolphins, invertebrates) ...the tools:  microbial phylogenetics, metagenomics, functional genomics, and spectroscopy.  Grant - done (well, not really but let me just think that for the weekend). 

But the lab is having trouble:  with reproducibility of developing protocols, and contamination of bacterial DNA (those stupid, stupid bacteria are on EVERYTHING).  Routine problems really that require tedious troubleshooting and slows down what we want to do but as we troubleshoot we learn (does that sound professorial or what?) but deep down we know that that is really crap and that it just slows us down in this case.  We'll figure it out, it's a snag, a snag that has happened before.  For now we'll blame it on the tenacious polysaccharides in the coral mucus and leave it at that.  Polysaccharides will be our common enemy.

And in SEED Magazine today (June Issue), or from a few days ago, since I keep forgetting to check my mailbox, there was a quote from an article that went: 

There are moments that have fundamentally altered our relationship with the natural world, tipping the balance of power in our direction.

This quote was in an article that discussed the 11-episode BBC/Discovery production Planet Earth.  The article discusses the power of images in making us connect emotionally with the environment - instead of the power over the environment that we obtained when we made the atom bomb, travelled to the moon, and unraveled the mystery behind DNA.  On a simpler scale, this made me think about a recent post over at Garden Rant about the disconnect that many have with the natural world - and I suppose that paving and habitat destruction is the power that we weld there.  Either that, or simple neglect.  I don't know, I need to finish the SEED article before I ramble on much further. 

So, the garden is exploding.  My mother went for a walk today, the first one in awhile - and it felt good to hear from her that she had joined her friend again for a walk.  And when I asked her what she was doing tomorrow, she immediately talked about the chickweed that was a problem in the peony bed and how badly she needed to get that out.  Ahh...the therapeutic power of weeding in this sinister battle with lung cancer - never underestimate the contribution of a pesty stand of weeds. 

But much of my day I can't discuss:  hmmm...this would be inappropriate to write about here, and I can't go into this...and this drives me so nuts that I can't keep it to myself and although I want to have a good 'ole rant about it, I'll refrain, but let me just say this:  just because you have a Ph.D. AND a M.D. behind your name, doesn't mean that you have a clue about the human condition.  So all I can really share with you here are the random events in the day and not the meat of it.  I was going to say 'your loss' but in reality it's probably 'your gain'.

Oh - and then my brother called tonight and asked if I wanted to adopt a one week old baby girl.  Really.  He did.  Oh, I don't have to do it this weekend, but next weekend would be great.  And he'll keep the kid until I end my Airstream stint if I want.  And he's serious.  Long story.  But it made me remember something that someone said to me several years ago:  they asked if I didn't like children because I had dogs.  It was such an odd thing to say that I think I looked at them (in the way that a dog would, with their head tilted to one side) and said 'But isn't it illegal to just pick up kids off the street?  Wouldn't I go to prison?".  Well, it seems that this evening my brother has found a way to avoid the whole prison part of the equation.

It's kinda been one of those days.   

and another

Aquilegia vulgaris var. 'Black Barlow'

another face

A Penstemmon species, not sure which one.  It's pretty though, and blooming like crazy.

faces of flowers

I'm not sure how one looks into the face of such emptiness, of such rage.

At the end of the day yesterday, the lab went out for beers at Moe's - to celebrate many things, but mostly to just step out of our work day and to celebrate that.  The entire day had been one of small conversations:  about guns, gun control, about why a 23-yr old would need a Glock, about why a 23-yr old would need that much ammunition, about compassion, intervention, and civil liberties, we talked about the coral holobiont and how to organize a review article with a microbial focus, about silly games that allow one to throw their hands up over their heads and shout out 'I win!!!' with glee, about how to handle 'los leaners' for a Cinco de Mayo game of horseshoes.  We talked about a man that dresses up each Sunday in a different and brightly colored suit for church services and about neighborhoods with real rich color.  On the way home I drove by the candlelight vigil for Virginia Tech.  I was late, but there were still a few candles burning.

I don't know how to look into the face of such rage.  I look into the faces of flowers, and I'm not equipped to handle such rage coupled to such sadness.  But in all of the chatter about how to stop this kind of thing from happening, I still can't help but think that each of us, individually, need to be more responsible.  I don't know about the intricacies of the mental health system, but I know that it fails many.  But someone from my group said something very important yesterday:  it has also helped many.  College campus counseling centers, at Virginia Tech and elsewhere, have helped many people.  As have other mental health institutions.  But maybe we all need to be more aware, and take on a greater amount of responsibility with respect to the people that are around us.  Someone posted a comment on this site this week about how their University president sent an email out to everyone on campus about how they needed to watch out for each other, in the caring sense, and to not be afraid to reach out for help.  Every college campus should receive such a message, and I am disappointed that my institution has not reached out to it's community in anyway as of yet. 

I need time in the garden now, and I need to look into the faces of the new flowers that are opening up in my garden every morning now.  I saw my first ruby-throated hummingbird this morning, also checking out those faces - I'm glad that they are back with us here.

But that rage is haunting.

 

a still morning

Well, the wind has finally stopped blowing enough to photograph the garden again.  Someone told me on Monday that we had winds clocked at 65-70 mph on Sunday - which doesn't surprise me here along the coast, because it felt more like a dry tropical storm than anything else.  The garden is definitely wind-blown and dry - but here it goes, blooming away.  It doesn't really demand all that much.

I'm procrastinating.  I'd love to spend the day in the garden - I've got lots of small branches to pick up, and I've got some perennials to move around.  I also didn't know that northern sea oats reseeded so prolifically - wow - I'm thinking that I want to move them outside the front fence, and I'll let them go wild.  Anybody want some?

I've got to get to the lab.