Plants in space! I’ve been waiting all week to write that headline. In case you’re new here, I work for the University of Arizona. Last week we had our annual faculty cookout (my first one, since I started my job during pandemic, and it’s hard to have a cookout over Zoom) at one of the university research facilities here in town. When we weren’t stuffing our overeducated faces with amazing Mexican food, we were offered tours of some of the research facilities. Long-Suffering Husband and I took a tour of a laboratory where scientists are studying how to grow plants to support a human mission to Mars or the moon. They’ve designed modular greenhouses that can be packed up and loaded on a space ship, then reassembled and buried beneath the surface of whatever inhospitable world humans are trying to occupy. The idea is to produce fresh food, water, and oxygen for the astronauts and recycle their waste. How cool is that? Here’s a poster with more information about this research project: And here’s me with Long-Suffering Husband in front of one of the greenhouses: Sometimes I really love being an academic. Plants not in space Since we’re talking about plants… My garden has nothing to do with NASA, which is a good thing, because if astronauts had to depend on my gardening skills for survival, we’d need to figure out how to do extraterrestrial body disposal. And now I really want someone to make CSI: Mars. Can’t you just picture the cast standing around in space suits arguing about the effect of the Martian atmosphere on decomposition rates? Anyway. Despite my less-than-NASA-worthy skills, my garden is starting to pretty up a bit. Spring is in full swing in Tucson, which means the weather doesn’t make any damn sense. On Tuesday night, we had our lowest low (31F, I think) for April 4 since the 1930s, and by Monday we’re supposed to have a high of 95F. Yeah, that’ll be fun. The cold didn’t kill my flowers, so I took a bunch of pictures in case the heat does them in. Here are a couple of shots of most of my back garden as of this morning (please ignore the weeds): Just for fun, I searched for a post with garden pictures from this time last year. The garden has come a long way! The tall monstrosities in the righthand pic are green onions. A couple of years ago, I planted the bottom three or so inches of some green onions from the supermarket. I cut the tops for cooking instead of harvesting the whole plant, and the clumps keep getting bigger–plus they bloom (as you can see in the pic) and seed all over the place. I’ve done this for years, and even in cold, snowy Flagstaff they’d come back every year. Here in not-cold Tucson, I have green onions for the kitchen year-round. Here are some closeups of what’s blooming: It’s citrus blooming season, so my yard and the entire neighborhood smell like heaven. It’s also the start of cactus blooming season. This one is in a front yard down the street from me: Random crap that has crossed my desk I spend way too much time on the internet and social media. Mostly I gather memes for my posts or immerse myself in the drama of the AITA subreddit. Every now and then, though, I find something great. Here’s what I’ve found recently that’s great: Now that you’re already laughing, let’s move on to: The Memery New dad joke just dropped: I’m trying to remember what grocery shopping was like before cell phones. Like, people had to tell you what they wanted beforehand and write it on little scraps of dead trees. And then just accept whatever brand/size/flavor/color the shopper picked out. How did we survive? Never have I felt so called out by a meme. Along those same lines: I actually do run.* * On a treadmill. * For about 5 minutes a week. So that’s the secret to finding a place to read where the family won’t find me. Not sure that would have worked as well with our greyhounds, but it would have been funny. Am old. Can confirm. Someday I’ll have to tell y’all about the time Long-Suffering Husband and I were chased down a trail by a guy with a gun and a chainsaw. No, I’m not kidding. And finally: Definitely. Where do you think I find all these memes? And… I’m outta here. Who has fun weekend plans? I’ll be cleaning my house and spreading compost. It’s party central around here, I’m telling you. This post is part of the Weekend Coffee Share, hosted by Natalie the Explorer.