"The pollen piece looks like a yellow painting... but it’s much, much more."

"It’s not a yellow pigment, which is very important for me. It’s the potential beginning of millions of plants. It’s the semen for the plants. And this I was interested in. It has an appearance, maybe, like a painting, but the sun is not a round ball. It’s much, much more. The sky is not a blue painting. For me, these things were somehow very important. I would have stayed as a doctor, if art was only about this color or that color."

At the Sunroom Café...

... we can wait out the winter.

At the Elephant Ear Café...

... bring it all in here.

At the Autumn Café...

... it seems like chaos, but there's opportunity for those who know how to take it.

***

"Café" = open thread. And if you happen to have any shopping you need to do, entering Amazon through this link is a way to send me some love... for what I've done for you. Have you noticed? You've noticed! Haven't you?

At the Alpine Café...

... we notice the small things too.

Really weird seaweed.

Here. Presented to Reddit for identification:

Yes! This is my time to shine: I know what this is. Your seaweed is carrying a colony of Botryllus schlosseri, a small tunicate that lives in colder waters.

I had a feeling a random redditor would know what this seaweed was.

When everyone in the world is in a room together, all known answers to all solved questions can be given without pause.

That's beautiful, man.

Does catnip affect squirrels?

We have catnip in the yard — for purely ornamental reasons. Not trying to drive any animals crazy. But we have a very crazy squirrel.

Correlation or causation?
	Correlation.
	Causation.
pollcode.com free polls

The average rent in Manhattan is $3,778, up 9% in a year.

And for a studio, it's $2,569 — up 18.8% in the past year.

Real-estate agent Josh Lichy, 27, appreciated the rental crunch first-hand when he and his girlfriend were hit with a $300 increase, from $3,000 to $3,300 for their 750-square-foot, one-bedroom apartment at 160 Riverside Drive. “It’s too much. We want to have money to spend so we’re not rent-poor,” he said.

Rent-poor. That's derived from house poor, but quite different. If you're house poor, you're building wealth in the form of equity (unless prices fall). But a rented apartment isn't a repository of money set aside for the future. It's as gone as if you'd blown it on a European vacation.

As for small apartments in NYC, we've been talking about Mayor Bloomberg's competition for designing tiny apartments called "micro-units." Well, here's a NYT article about furnishing your micro-unit. It's bizarrely — mockingly — unhelpful, suggesting a chewable toothbrush, a very small dog, and growing plants on your wall in some doodad that hangs over the fireplace. Hello? Get a normal toothbrush. Don't keep any pets. And you won't even have a fireplace. But I love the idea — in the photo at the NYT link — of putting your handgun right there next to your objets on one of the étagères that flank the fireplace that you won't have in your micro-unit.

But if you have a micro-unit, you may want to compensate by getting a gun.

At the Licorice Café...

... things are velvety soft.

At the Pink Leaf Café...

... You have a sly, equivocating vein.

Weed Searing.

It's Meade versus weed in this searing story of a man and his blowtorch:

"The government spent at least $205,075 in 2010 to 'translocate' a single bush..."

"... in San Francisco that stood in the path of a $1.045-billion highway-renovation project that was partially funded by the economic stimulus legislation President Barack Obama signed in 2009."

Obama? Clearly, it's bush's fault!

At the Springtime Café...

... time to get started.

Meade saves the planet.

No, he just saved the plants. We had a frost here in Madison, after much warm weather, and he was out hosing down everything before the first sun hit. Did you know that was the trick?

"Nice work, squirrels."

"Oh, and scientists."

At the Roundleaf Café...

... drop in for a while.

Cattails.

This evening on Lake Wingra.

At the Golden Café...

... enjoy an open thread!

At the Water Lily Café...

... let the conversation flow.

At the Meadhouse Harvest Café...

... have you gathered anything yet?