Lies, Damned Lies, and Sean

Plant trickery

I notice that roses have reddish leaves near the tops of their stocks, where the new growth is.  Is this a genetic accident?  Wouldn't green leaves produce more energy?  I suspect that roses evolved to have new leaves that are reddish because, from a distance, they resemble flowers.  Thus, for little cost, the rose plant may better attract pollinating insects toward it.  If a bee lands on a leave it quickly determines that the leaf hasn't nectar, so it lands on one of the plant's nearby flowers.

Walking around the yard I notice other forms of plant deception.  We have a dove tree, which blooms in the spring.  Our tree's blooms have just ended, and I failed to photograph them, so an example of a dove tree shown here was stollen from elsewhere.    Around the time it is in bloom, some of the dove tree's leaves, which may be distant from a flower, appear partially (or fully) like pedals.  Shown here are a couple such leaves that have fallen off.   Notice how these are part green and part white?  The white pedal-like part does not produce energy very well (if at all), and it is less hardy too.  In spite of these shortcomings, the tree finds false pedal production advantageous because it likely draws more pollinators to it, much like the rose.  

A final example I found in the stawberry patch.    Rather than flagging distant bees and butterflies, the strawberry plants produce a few red leaves to help attract animals that eat their berries (and thus disperse the seeds).  Yonder red leaves look like a bounty of strawberries.

I fixed the lawn tractor's radiator

This afternoon I replaced the radiator on our Honda 4518 lawn tractor.  It had spontaneously sprung a leak in the last few weeks.  We tried fixing it using a leak-sealing liquid that is poured into the radiator, but the hole was too large.  I ordered a new radiator, which came to $211, at a local equipment dealer that handles Hondas.  I also replaced the rubber hose to the overflow container, which had cracked.  

A consequence of the radiator hole was that the engine block became very hot when I was mowing the lawn — so hot that a plastic timing belt cover melted.  I ordered a new cover for $76, and I need to install it, which will be a pain, as a drive shaft goes from the engine through the plastic cover to the hydraulic transmission.  

The garden

Today, I weeded the roughly 25 x 30 foot garden at Noelle's.  My mom was the champion for it, but I seem to have been stuck with most of the most work, which I limit to one hour per week on average.  Noelle helped in the late winter by adding partly decomposed horse manure to the area.  The garden contains broccoli, beans, (snap and snow) peas, eggplant, corn, pumpkins, zucchini, cucumbers, pattipan squash, lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, spinach, catnip, cauliflower, sunflowers, leeks, onions, garlic, bell peppers, hot peppers, and carrots.  To keep the weeds down and prepare the soil, I rototilled a couple times.  After rototilling I tried using some fancy cloth groundcover to limit the weeds, but it was partially transparent and porous, so the weeds still rapidly grew beneath it.  To keep out Noelle's dog, Elle and wild animals, such as rabbits, a two-foot wire mesh fence rings the garden.