Orval Appreciation Day – in the garden

More cold weather plantings – March 14th

Well, next to the bush peas (see the green trellis on the right? Where that ends is where I began…), I planted kale…

and then spinach (5 short rows of 8 seeds each)…

and snow peas in two places, near the edge of this small area…

and over by the developing tulips…

Here are two views of the growing garlic – 31/32 cloves are up!

We planted this strawberry last year, and it takes more than one season to produce. So we are optimistic that it will take off this year!

Here’s an overview of the long patch as it stands right now…

And finally, I feel good about getting stuff in the ground (obviously!)…

March 9th; first cold plantings!

I planted bush peas, about 40 plants, surrounding the little green trellis at the end of the long patch. We were very successful with these peas (Little Marvel) last year in the tiny garden but we didn’t plant nearly enough. Now we will…in successive plantings in the Spring and also later in the Fall.

You can see I started building a path out of salvaged bricks from around the yard..

Below is the garlic on March 9th. I think I counted 30/32 cloves up. Maybe they are more distinctive now, but maybe not!

The larger garden begins – March 4th, 2009

Garlic was planted late October, 2008 – 32 cloves all together. Two varieties were planted: Polish Jen and Asian Tempest, both hardneck. The Asian Tempest are notably smaller than the Polish Jen, less meaty, and I think they are very slightly hotter, more focused…but to get you oriented first, here is the “long patch,” running from the north (near you, where the garlic is fenced) to south (towards the carport). This garden is about 7.5 feet wide X 39 feet long:

OK, and here is the unfinished “small patch,” a rectangle about 8 feet X 9 feet.

I’m still trying to kill grass, mix and enrich the soil here.

And here is the garlic, up close and personal. There were 4 rows of 8 cloves planted, but I’m not sure how easily you can see them here. In addition, perhaps only 26 or so out of 32 were up on March 4th.

Submitted VSS abstract

Are Local Changes in Faces Really Local?

Michael D. Anes, Nicholas A. Del Grosso, Darcy Dubuc Department of Psychology, Wittenberg University

In Anes, Short & Storer (VSS08), brief face presentations with an inverted eye (but not eyebrow) in the LVF resulted in greater bizarreness ratings than RVF inverted eye presentations. In Experiment 1 of the present study, participants (n=15) viewed an unaltered target face, then a 120 ms exposure of a probe face, and indicated whether the probe was the same as the target. Same judgment RTs increased for LVF eye inversions (648 ms) relative to unaltered faces (604 ms, t[14]=3.49, p<.01) and RVF eye inversions (608 ms, t[14]=2.39, p<.05). Local and/or global relational information disrupted by Thatcherizing an eye appears to be more efficiently encoded by the right hemisphere, resulting in both elevated bizarreness ratings and same judgment RTs. We address recent work by Goffaux and colleagues in which independent manipulations of interocular distance and vertical eye position (∆=15 pixels) were made. In these studies, the RH is quite sensitive to vertical displacement of the eyes and the LH is sensitive to horizontal displacement and feature changes. In Experiment 2 here, stimuli with one eye moved out or down (∆ = 3 or 6 pixels, with the eyebrow position fixed) were presented in the same/different task. We hypothesized that RVF horizontal manipulations and LVF vertical manipulations would increase same judgment RTs over those for unaltered faces, but observed no visual field by manipulation interaction. Same judgment RT increases after 3 pixel displacements tended to be higher in the RVF than LVF. Conversely, 6 pixel displacements in the LVF resulted in greater same judgment RT increases than in the RVF. Are small vertical or horizontal changes more local and LH-mediated while slightly larger changes are local and global and RH-mediated? In another planned experiment we will move the eye and eyebrow together to maintain local relations while disrupting global configuration.