Flora and Fauna - Plants and Critters

Thursday, 23 April 2020

Update

Well I'm getting a bit closer to rebooting my blogs.
I have been looking at setting things up on WordPress and/or Wix.

Basically I want to keep the same format as I have on Blogger. That is the ability to have multiple blogs because I want to keep them separate so that people interested in specific topics can access posts related to that niche without being distracted by other posts on other topics.

I guess that the Flora and Fauna - Plants and Critters Blog will remain the primary and biggest blog in part because I have already written a lot on posts over the years.

I just need to sort out how to set things up as well how to manage the financial and legal issues.
That is how to finance the website and how to manage the IP rights.

Saturday, 21 March 2020

Changes to this blog

I have not posted anything on this for a while. There are several reason.

I have been busy completing an LLM in Intellectual property and ICT Law
Trying to get a small independent publishing company: Island Ink Publishing Co. Ltd. off the ground.
I have been wanting to tidy up the blog edit posts and generally reorganize the blog
I have been working on trying to compile some books using material I have used in the blog.

One area is basically a series of books based on the Intriguing Plants category which will include what I have already posted on but with additional information. In essence going much more into depths in covering various plants.
Another is a separate series of stand alone books looking plants from various perspectives one being poisonous plants.
Another category of books are approaching plants from a legal perspective. ie legal issues related to plants and gardening. Basically combining my passion for botany, horticulture, photography and law.

I was also stopped posting things because I was angry when I tried to monetize my blog and was told that I was ineligible due to suspicious activity which I traced to some people diverting dodgy traffic through my blog posts as well as using some of my photos as click bait to divert traffic to dodgy sites. So not only was I prevented from being able to gain some revenue from my own work but others were infringing on my copyright not to mention using my work in relation to sites that I certainly do not want to be associated with.

At the moment I am basically looking at rebooting this and some of my other blogs elsewhere. I was going to do this originally as a mirror site but now I have decided that it would be best to just move everything to a separate platform maybe even a website that I will have more control over. although I have considered posting material on Medium or maybe via Patreon.

I am sorry if people have been wanting to read more posts and see more photos but because of this last reason I am very reluctant to continue to post new material. Taking the photos, researching the material for the posts and writing the up take a lot of time and it is not really fair to expect someone to do this if they cannot get any financial benefit out of their work and worse if others are deriving financial benefits while the person who created the works is not able to do so. Hopefully I will get things sorted out and resume posting new material. I actually have a whole series of posts still in draft form waiting to be posted.

Monday, 29 August 2016

Some rooftop garden fruits and flowers

Well it looks like I'll be leaving Bristol after three years here. Two of those years have been in a flat above the Bristol Music Store where I sort of let my need for plants go a wee bit out of hand.

Our living room / kitchen had plants in every window and then some in a corner that got sunlight. I never turned the heaters on in my bedroom because they were situated infront of the windows and were covered in plants as was the wardrobe which is close enough to one of the tall windows to get lots of light.

Then since there was a flat area of roof out side that I put a few pots out on and then a few more. My bedroom windows were the designated "Fire Escape" although once onto the flat roof there was no way down and as that flat area was surrounded my higher roof areas ... no one on the ground can see you unless you managed to scramble up onto sloping roof and get attention while making sure you did not slip and fall from three story height.

In any case although I had battles with marauding seagulls who pulled up seedlings and scattered them with malicious calculation and searing heat during summer I did manage to get some strawberries as well as some Siberian Irises, Lilies and Agapanthus to flower as well including onions.

The Lilies were pretty cool because they started of orange and then changed to a Deep red. I cannot remember what the variety was. The flowers of the first year were pitiful and I almost threw them all away in annoyance because as with some of the other plants I had gotten the actual flowers did not come anywhere close to the ones in the photo on the label.

For example the Calla lily which was supposed to be a brilliant yellow came out green. And when I say green I mean it was the exact same colour as the leaves abd stems so unless you noticed that it was not a leave due it's shape being different you would not even know there was a flower there.

The red onions I planted were actually intended for the kitchen but although they all flowered for two consecutive years none got to the size they were supposed to be so although I did harvest a couple and use them it seemed pointless although at least the flowers were intriguing and quite beautiful so it was not a waste of time.

I was disappointed that the giant garlic did not grow much either. Some just grew huge leaves and then vanished. I think at least one was stolen by the seagulls with whom I have a running feud because of their malicious destructiveness. One more than one occasion when I heard sounds outside and went to check and found one up to no good the pestilent creature glared at me when I shouted at it It looked like it was challenging me too, before it decided I was beneath it and flew off very casually.

Notes:

I am using the taxonomical classification system used by ITIS (Intergrated Taxonomic Information System). I have decided to use this system in order to avoid confusion as well as because it offers a comprehensive hierarchy from kingdom right through to subspecies whereas other sources only go as far as order or provide the names of some of the higher taxonomical ranks but only indicate "unclassified" rather than providing the rank.
When and where possible I will endeavour to include alternatives classifications although I may limit this to occasions where an opportunity arises to discuss the reason for the different classifications.
Flora and Fauna - Plants and Critters Blog by Vincent Albert Vermeulen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Based on a work at http://plantsandcritters.blogspot.be/.

Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://plantsandcritters.blogspot.be/.

My other blogs

· Flora and Fauna - Plants and Critters (on plants, animals as well as gardening, conservation and environmental matters): http://plantsandcritters.blogspot.com/

· The Blood of Souls (language, translation and etymology) : http://thebloodofsouls.blogspot.com/

· Whiskers on Kittens (Life with Kittens and Cats in general) : http://whiskersonkittens-vincent.blogspot.com/

Saturday, 9 July 2016

Upcoming posts

It has been a while since I posted anything new due to assignments, research projects and exams taking up my time.

As I mentioned in my most recent post I'm now getting on with a whole lot of housekeeping issues related to this blog as well as my other blogs.
I am currently in the process of going through all the drafts that I had been working on before I had to put things on the back burner to see what needs to be done to complete them. This can range from:

Adding photos - which necessitates my hunting through gigabytes of photos to find the ones I need. Although, fortunately I have them filed according to date and location. I have also slowly been adding the appropriate tags to my already vast and growing photo archive. Once I have found the photos I want to use in a post I then need to resize them. I need to do this because I tend to take photos at the highest resolution possible but I cannot use those photos because that will impact on the accessibility of my blog by people whose computers / internet access prevents them from processing such high resolution photos. Having been in that situation I know the impact of high resolution photos and web pages that crash or take ages to load due to limited internet speed or processing power or worse ... eating up a whole months worth or internet megabytes (yes some parts of the world you pay by megabyte not gigabyte). So once I have done that the only thing left other than cropping if necessary is to upload the photo and add the caption.
Finish writing the post or rewriting the post. That can range from:

Things as simple as just rereading what has been written and then finishing it off.
Verifying some information from reputable sources (which I can then include in the references). Sometimes this leads to new information or contradictory information which I then need to sort out and figure out what is based on solid science and what is pseudo-scientific nonsense. Sometimes it leads to controversy or simply to a debate over something ... which while it complicates things and delays completion of the post as it means I need to read more on the subject, it also means that there is an additional element that I can write about or at least mention, depending on how important the controversy or debate is. Something as simple as the reclassification of a plant could end up in a simple paragraph explaining why this happened or if it is the reclassification of a whole genus or family then that might take a bit more. Or if it is over the efficacy of certain properties then that might start getting a bit technical. Sometimes when that happens I turn to some experts I know to read what I wrote to make sure it makes sense and is correct. In which case I acknowledge their assistance.

Adding all the appropriate tags / labels so that the post appears in web searches as well as so that people can find stuff internally by going to the labels and seeing what s available
Adding all the references and their web links
Reformatting the font, text and general presentation of the data so that the whole blog has a uniform look as well as making it easier for people to know exactly where to find information they want in each post.

Anyway ... its a long slow tedious process which requires time, patience, persistence and meticulous attention to details. Hence the long wait ... Also as this includes fixing up published posts and adding to the lexicons, the lack of new posts gives the illusion that nothing is happening. So, to allay this I thought it might be a good idea to lay out some of the primary posts that I am hoping to get completed over the next few months:

SOME UPCOMING POSTS

Propagation of African Violets
Intriguing Plants: Giant Hogweed, Heracleum mantegazzianum
Intriguing Plants: Umbrella Liverwort, Marchantia polymorpha
Intriguing Plants: Strawberries
Intriguing Plants: Adendium, Desert Rose
Intriguing Plants: African Violets
Carnivorous Plants: Sarracenia psittacina
Carnivorous Plants: Nepenthes
Carnivorous Plants: Drosera capenis, the Cape sundew

Incidentally I will be also working on my other blogs including my blog on etymology, language and translation issues: The Blood of Souls (which takes a lot more time researching and writing) as well as a couple other blogs which are in the process of transformation or formulation.

I also am hoping to get a crowdfunding project to publish a volume of poetry entitled: Dragon Waif: A selection of sketches from the other side of my soul.

I'm also planning on a few more photo expeditions to botanical gardens and other sites for material to use in this blog and others.

Flora and Fauna - Plants and Critters Blog by Vincent Albert Vermeulen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Based on a work at http://plantsandcritters.blogspot.be/.

Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://plantsandcritters.blogspot.be/.

My other blogs

· Flora and Fauna - Plants and Critters (on plants, animals as well as gardening, conservation and environmental matters): http://plantsandcritters.blogspot.com/
· The Blood of Souls (language, translation and etymology) : http://thebloodofsouls.blogspot.com/

· Whiskers on Kittens (Life with Kittens and Cats in general) : http://whiskersonkittens-vincent.blogspot.com/