Thanks to sitting next to a Christmas-lover (Yuleophile?) in the newsroom, I've actually finished the practical part of my shopping this year -- it's my duty to keep the family warm and in underwear, a task best crossed off early.

But shopping -- even at its most mechanical -- is wearying. Waking at 2 after going to bed early, I shrug off politics and tech, and scroll to the right-brain blogs. The future warehouse of unwanted books at BLDGBLOG appeals. It begins as a story about storing all that is copyrighted and spins out into a riff on libraries, time capsules and the allure of unknown places.

And, from Air Brain there:

All houses should be greenhouses. Imagine going to work in a place like that – in an oxygen garden – bringing the tropics to an exurban office park near you. Creeper vines, and Pyrex-shelled ferns, and huge corridors lined with orange trees – groves and orchards spiraling above you up stairways and halls. The sheer terrestrial weirdness of flowering species.

What is it about plantlife that seems so inherently sci-fi?

In the course of finding out what kind of sci-fi plant I'm growing in the newsroom, I was searching areca palms on Google Images when it tossed up a tiny version of the cow below, linked at a Spanish garden forum. A green polka-dotted cow? I investigated, and found it at the site of Manchester, England sculptor and environmental artist Lorna Green.

Flower Cow-er, Lorna Green, Fibreglass, Astroturf, artificial flowers, paint. Commissioned by CowParade Manchester 2004 to promote the event.

 

Lorna Green's site-specific sculptures -- conceptual art with a budget -- seem more than fresh, even as the work spans decades.

"The Chain and the Wheel" 1994-2003. Spoil with grass, wildflowers, trees, shrubs, paths and designed wooden seating still to be completed. Adjacent to the final link of the Avon Ring Road, Bristol.

 

"Look, Reflect and Recover" 2005 Photo by John Noddings Roof garden: ...stainless steel rods threaded with varied sizes of specially made blue glass beads in "pools" of blue glass chippings in aluminium dishes surrounded by blue neon lights.

 

"The Flower of the Forest" 2001 Granite with painted wood.

For "From the Buds of Small Grass", 2001 Geum Gang International Nature Art Exhibition, Kongju, Korea

2003. "Doors of Perception"
Seven blue painted doors with glass windows, and five curved walls of peat blocks.
Commissioned for PeatPolis.nl, Barger Compascum, Emmen, The Netherlands.