Birthdays!

Well, we had lasofia this week, and rachelcaine and juliefortune....anybody else? Happy birthday to one and all!

This week has been so screwy, I'm pulling out my hair. A report before the end of the weekend, I think.

Iris bulbs planted. Too close together, will need to separate in three years. But -- they are planted, and starting to do their thing! I think I have some oxbloods left in a pot that need to be moved...

Bumper Stickers of the Day:

Buckle up. It makes it harder for the aliens to suck you out of your car.

This is not an abandoned vehicle.

More on honeybee die-off

There is, of course, a lot of disagreement about this -- but at least people are hard at work trying to find a solution.

Sabin Russell, SF Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, April 26, 2007

"A UCSF researcher who found the SARS virus in 2003 and later won a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" for his work thinks he has discovered a culprit in the alarming deaths of honeybees across the United States.

Tests of genetic material taken from a "collapsed colony" in Merced County point to a once-rare microbe that previously affected only Asian bees but might have evolved into a strain lethal to those in Europe and the United States, biochemist Joe DeRisi said Wednesday.

DeRisi said tests conducted on material from dead bees at his Mission Bay lab found genes of the single-celled, spore-producing parasite Nosema ceranae, which researchers in Spain have recently shown is capable of wiping out a beehive."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/26/MNGK7PFOMS1.DTL