green things

carrots: Why can I not get carrots to go to seed? This is my 3rd year growing carrots. Heirloom seeds, not the commercial/hybrid/whatever kind. Frost/snow always arrives before I ever see flowers from my carrots. Each year, I have to order more seeds. This year, I'm trying Dragon Carrots. Do these plants not seed in their first year? I don't think that carrots will winter in Minnesota very well. Do I really have to keep a living tuber in the ground so they can flower/seed in their second year of life? *sigh* That would be disappointing since I don't think a carrot would ever naturalize to this cold climate.

Even this lengthy description treats carrots as something that you purchase from elsewhere rather than seed continuously at home. I want a sustainable/renewable system, though, rather than a production/shipping/consumption system. :(

Just for grins, here are a few shots of the back yard. I don't have an original photo before I started playing in the dirt, but it used to just be plain grass with a row of sun-burned hostas in a row along the garage wall separated by creosote railroad ties.  It still needs a lot of work to complete the transformation, but I think it looks much more "inviting" now than it ever did before. :) 



Green Lantern:  My favorite comic book series was Green Lantern.  I kept hoping that the movie industry with its modern special effects would someday get around to making a movie about this great character.  An attempt to create it as a "wacky romantic comedy" thankfully tanked before it got off the ground.  The current incarnation of the project is slated to be released in the summer of 2011.  I was secretly dreaming of a black man with glowing jade green eyes, a la John Stewart of "Justice League" animated tv series.  (His character was voiced by Phillip LaMarr of MadTV fame, believe it or not.)  But no.  Alas.  Instead, it's Ryan Reynolds. 
http://weblogs.variety.com/bfdealmemo/2009/07/ryan-reynolds-is-the-green-lantern.html?nid=2854

I'm skeptical.  I hope it turns out to be such an amazing movie that it gets a long life in a whole series of movies, but.... yeah, I'm skeptical.

Blob:  What, pray tell, will this turn out to be?  Just algea?  In a 15-mile gelatinous blob?
http://www.adn.com/2835/story/864687.html

Am I the only one thinking that maybe the hivemind xenofungus from "Alpha Centauri" has arrived?  Was I the only one who ever played that game?  *laugh*