Spring

When the grass widows are blooming, it's Spring.  For signs of excitement in the prairie, though, it's best to go to spots like this that have been established for a few years.  The areas I planted last fall are still pretty bleak (below). 

 In areas I planted in fall of 2013, there's more activity...

 

Close up, this second-year growth looks like what you might expect in the first year at this point, but a prairie unfolds at a very slow pace...Below, the wide-bladed leaves are Western groundsel, and the five-bladed leaf to the right is an Upland larkspur.  I hardly saw any larkspur last year, but in those areas now are numerous drifts of it.  It just takes this long to get going, and may not bloom until next year or the year after.

For comparison with images I've shot of this area in previous years, this is what a planting looks like in the second year.  Patience, patience...

Karma

It was not even a month after I had bragged in the previous post about how I had nursed my c.2002 computer and recording system past their planned obsolescences, and saved thousands by doing so at no loss of quality.  Had my backup G4s...oh yeah...

First the main hard drive failed in the computer.  Dead.  The backup G4 was a "great machine" (words of the excellent Mac service guy at our local Moscow, ID dealer, VGH--good people...), but ultimately it had been made a year too late to work the version of ProTools I had.  Just like that, my system was toast.  Except that this realization took about two weeks.  At least I'm backed up, and they say that I will be able to open my version 5.3 files in...version 11.3 (!)  But a new computer meant that I could no longer use my perfectly wonderful fancy audio interface because current ProTools doesn't support the old interface.  They had me.

I was surprised how vulnerable I felt when I realized that my last 13 years of work clings to electrons in a backup and back-backup drive here, and until a few days ago, I actually wasn't sure that my files would open.  I've spent some time thinking about what I could recall if I had to.     

Above, work has stopped this morning while I wait to hear back from my helpful "sales engineer" for why the HD PCIe card doesn't quite fit into the slot designated for it in the Sonnet chassis, so I can thunderbolt that bad boy into the HDX interface.  Why don't these things ever go "click, click, click--GREAT!--Back to work!"?

So it's Irish fiddling until I hear from the guy.