Laughing Ravens

 This video was a test. It was only a test.  I wanted to see how plugging a lav mic directly into the camera would improve the audio sound. The second thing I was testing was the white balance in snow. Always tough to get right. The last thing I was testing was to figure out the exposure settings when using a variable neutral density filter. The filter turns and cuts off a fair chunk of light... but there's nothing to indicate what amount of light has been cut. So, there's a fair bit of experimentation to find the sweet spot when shooting video.  I hadn't thought about the fact that Blogger limits how large videos can be if they are hosted by Blogger, so this had to be uploaded to YouTube. Sigh. Feels like a klunky workaround.  There's nothing critical being said in the video. No pithy insights. Just me wandering around the snow, trying to test stuff. 

 I have been struggling to figure out how to begin this. What is a long cross? Who cares about weird inter-species cross breeding of irises? Why do I care? And what does this have to do with a TET talk?  Five years ago, when we restarted the garden, I stumbled onto the local rock garden group (NARGS is the national org)... and folks quickly pointed me in the direction of the annual seed exchange . It didnt take five minutes on the SeedEx page before I was lost like a kid in a candy store. I mean, read through the list! It's exhaustive! And someone collected those seeds and donated them to the SeedEx.  Seeds are magical. Every bit of hope and wonder are encapsulated in every single seed. When those seeds have even the tiniest pedigree, there's a story. The seeds came from somewhere. Someone grew them, collected them in the wild, shared them from a family member's garden... on and on. There's a story.  I was hooked. The first year I ordered seeds from NARGS, it was pri...