Y'know, I used to buy old travel books from used book stores for research for my scenic design classes. Now there's street view. And for period stuff, Flickr Commons can be pretty great. I still like my travel books, though.

In the last hour a bunch of road destruction vehicles have gathered around my corner. Do not like.

Wow geoguesser is a time-killer. Must. Shut. Down. Computer.

Well, I got my exam results. The letter says I passed the written test with a score of 95, which sounds pretty good. Unfortunately, when I look up the eligibility list online, 95 puts me in Rank 4 and only the highest three ranks can be considered for appointment, so that's discouraging. I can't take it again for 12 months and raising my score from 95 to 100 seems not very achievable

Oh, I am sorry - t, but I have faith in you to get those five points next year.

Oh, I am sorry - t, but I have faith in you to get those five points next year.

Agreed.

It took me til now to think to look this up.

Yay! I can stop trying to figure out which Central American town that is with the Spanish and the tropical coastline!

Both probies were a no show and a ton of vols didn't come in, I'm assuming because it was overcast, but there was no prediction of rain. I was disgruntled at first, but we still got a ton of work done. Spent the afternoon in the greenhouse propogating more Coleus (Wild Lime!) and got shamed yet again by kids in a birthday party tour asking for Venus Flytraps.

So I called up our vendor, and they were in stock! Scooted out early to make the trek, and what should have been a five dollar purchase wound up over a hundred dollars. Whoops.

My new passion is definitely all the many and varied permutations of Coleus and picked up onesies to use as stock plants and other fun things that I'll either use at work or at home. Some fun plume Celosia in yellow and a hot orange. I'm starting to think that if I need a second career that isn't as physically draining, I should start looking at nursery production.

It's a sickness, really. I'm pinching, belatedly, the Coleus back and the stems are long enough to shove into plug trays, so hey! free new plants! I can give them away to coworkers and plant up my own yard if I decided to be a good doobie and not sell cuttings of patented/trademarked plants.

To think that I used to hate Coleus.

Coleus are lovely! (Coleuses? Colei?) I have a couple of types in a pot on my front porch--one lime green with a bit of pink and purple and one a bronzey purple with bits of green. They look great growing next to one another.

There are still Colues that I despise. Inky Fingers is ridiculously easy to propogate and grows like wildfire, but the dark purple with the fringe of green looks ugly and boring to me. I've found that dark-leaved plants, while technically interesting and awesome, visually turn into dark pools of shadow in the garden. I'm a chartreuse gal, brighten that shit up! I'm a big fan of Sedona (which is finicky) and Wasabi (so much bright green!). I even did and experiment with a few Helychrysum cuttings that seem to be doing well (got them shoved under the greenhouse benches so they don't get stressed by the sun and heat).

There are still Colues that I despise. Inky Fingers is ridiculously easy to propogate and grows like wildfire, but the dark purple with the fringe of green looks ugly and boring to me. I've found that dark-leaved plants, while technically interesting and awesome, visually turn into dark pools of shadow in the garden. I'm a chartreuse gal, brighten that shit up! I'm a big fan of Sedona (which is finicky) and Wasabi (so much bright green!). I even did and experiment with a few Helychrysum cuttings that seem to be doing well (got them shoved under the greenhouse benches so they don't get stressed by the sun and heat).