Monthly Archives: March 2022

Are you anxious to get back out in your garden again? I know I am!

Gardening, Outdoor Fun, , , , , , , , , , , ,

It’s been awhile since I updated the Schnarr’s blog calendar with gardening events. For the last couple of years most events have been cancelled or online. But a few in person events are starting to happen again, along with a lot of webinars and online sessions.

I’ve put some St. Louis based events, be they in person or virtual, on the Schnarr’s Blog calendar here:
http://schnarrsblog.com/calendar/

I’ve also added some pins to a couple of sections of the Schnarr’s Pinterest site to help people find gardening related webinars and on-demand content from all over the country.

Gardening Webinars and Online Courses

Garden Educational Videos, eBooks, Slide Shows and Podcasts On Demand

In the St. Louis area where I am, it’s a bit rainy and cold right at the moment and it’s possible that tasks you were looking forward to doing in the garden might be postponed for a few days. If you’re forced to be more indoors than you’d like, maybe some online gardening content will help you maintain a healthy state of mind. Enjoy!

Dad is on the left, Rosie Willis on the right. 03-26-2022

This past Saturday my Dad and I blew some of the winter dust out of our bodies and minds by volunteering at Fresh Starts Community Garden. It was Dad’s first time here while I’ve been to this garden a couple of times before. It was uplifting as always to spend a little time with the inspiring and kind leader Rosie Willis and the other volunteers. I get praised a lot when I volunteer, but it’s likely I get more out of it than I give – gardening makes me happy wherever I do it! And it’s always uplifting to be in the company of people who are working hard to help their neighbors.

This week those of us who are St. Louis Master Gardeners got some nice validation by getting the Master Gardener 2021 Impact Statement PDF document in our email. If you would like to see what we did in 2020 and 2021, check out these links:

2021 St. Louis Master Gardener Impact Statement

2020 St. Louis Master Gardener Impact Statement

I’ve been reading in the last year or two about biophilia – in so many words it is the human tendency to feel a sense of well being while exposed to nature. As I’ve learned from reading horticultural therapy books, in addition to spending time in or around actual nature, pictures, video and sounds from gardens can make people feel better mentally and physically. I hope the resources I’ve linked to can help give you some good feelings immediately whether you have to be inside or outside.

Here is a link to my photo album on Facebook of some of the past master gardener activities I’ve enjoyed since completing my training in 2016.

Master Gardener Activities

Here is a link to Fresh Starts Community Garden on Facebook.

Fresh Starts Community Garden

Happy Spring!

QR Codes are handy for promotions that require a fast turnaround

Events, Graphic Design, Marketing, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

When I was Creative Director for my former employer Webinar Resources, we built QR codes, that is Quick Response codes, into many of our campaigns. I liked them so much I made a header graphic for our Facebook page meant to celebrate their functionality and their high-tech look. They appealed to me for design reasons as well.

We put QR codes on any surface we could think of – door knockers, cards, posters, electronic slides, buttons, t-shirts, holiday wrapping… I’m probably forgetting some. Eventually I even had a rubber stamp made of a QR code for my online store! I also made some graphics at my boss Mark Rice’s direction along the way to try to show how they work.

A selection of a few past QR code projects I worked on, 2010-2021

I thought for awhile that it was difficult to get people to adopt QR codes and that they might die out. That possibility was disappointing to me because they are useful and a lot of fun. But while working on Marketing and Communications homework for my classes at Webster University recently, I’ve snapped some pictures while doing research that make it look like QR codes are here to stay after all. It’s possible that the COVID-19 pandemic may have helped speed up the adoption of QR codes a bit because they provide a quick way to disseminate information without people having to touch anything. QR codes are also easier to access now because in many cases you don’t need to install a special app – on my newest iPhone the QR code reader is built right into the camera.

QR code sightings within the last two years, from left to right: downtown St. Louis in the City Garden, a mobile police camera in Dutchtown, a store front in Dutchtown, and a WalMart promotional free sample bag with QR code on the bag and on the enclosed advertising piece.

I have a client who is appearing in a live performance in two days in Scottsdale, Arizona. This morning I took some graphics off of some of the existing promotional and ticketing web pages and made a collage of some of them with a QR code on it. My intention was to make something fast and easy for people to share if they are inclined to, with the link built in by way of the QR code so that people who are interested can get to the ticketing page easily no matter how the graphic is shared.

The Unapologetically American Comedy Tour
The Unapologetically American Comedy Tour
I made a graphic of just the ticket for instances when the code is too small on the screen to be read.

There is a lot you can do with QR codes if you build them into campaign planning at an early stage. Even when you are under a time crunch, incorporating a QR code into a shareable graphic for social media is a very convenient way to spread information.

Fit and Healthy on Route 66: Robertsville State Park

Architecture, Conservation, Events, Historic Sites, Outdoor Fun, Route 66, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

On Saturday, March 19, 2022 my Dad and I drove from St. Louis County to Sullivan, Missouri to attend a neon sign re-lighting ceremony at the historic Shamrock Court. The Shamrock Court is being restored and plans are to re-open it as a motel in the not too distant future. Members of the Route 66 of Missouri and many other volunteers are helping to restore the property, with labor, fundraising, and other opportunities.

The Route 66 Assocation of Missouri Neon Heritage Preservation Committee (“NHPC”) has assisted a lot of historic property owners in various ways to get their neon signs restored. Here is a web page with a list of some of their neon sign success stories. It’s customary for Route 66 Association of Missouri members and allies to get together for a celebratory re-lighting ceremony whenever a historic Route 66 property in the region lights up the newly restored signs for the public to enjoy. March 19 was the Shamrock Court’s turn to shine.

Left: Dad (in red hat) and roadie friend Fred Zander. Center: A big, beautiful party! Right: “It’s so comfortable on the ground here!”

Route 66 events often incorporate car shows, and this night was no exception. Cool cars and trucks filled the parking area in front of the Motel and spilled over into the adjacent street, appropriately named Shamrock St. In keeping with the motel’s theme and proximity to St. Patrick’s Day, it was also a St. Patrick’s Day party complete with Leprechaun, Lucky Charms, wearin’ o’ the green, and lots of Irish luck bestowing fine weather upon us.

On a day so beautiful, my Dad and I left early so that we could go for a hike on the way there. There are lots of choices of places to hike between our homes and Sullivan – we are very blessed to live in Missouri which has abundant parks and trails. We considered several locations then decided on Robertsville State Park. It’s one of the closest State Parks to where we live, but since when we drive by it we are usually on our way to somewhere farther away, believe or not neither of us had ever been there! The one previous time in all my years of 66-ing (23!) that I tried to take a short detour off of historic Route 66 to check it out, I had to turn back because of a flood. So we decided now was the time to try something new and go finally go there. We drove around to see what the park contained and chose two short trails to hike on.

Left: beautiful blue sky and trees not yet leafed out. Center: frog or toad eggs in an ephemeral forest pool. Right: ornate cast iron post in the Roberts family cemetery.

The park was perhaps not in it’s full glory two days before the start of spring, when there is almost no green vegetation to see yet and the ground is saturated from late winter and early spring rains. Nevertheless, we found plenty to appreciate. I have not lost my childhood fascination with ephemeral spring pools. I’m intrigued mostly because I like to look for frog eggs and tadpoles, but they also have quiet beauty in their own right. They are usually clear and still and any vegetation or critters in the water look especially beautiful in such water bodies. As a special treat for me, one of the pools we saw did contain many masses of frog or toad eggs, and some free-swimming tadpoles! I looked at one mass up close to see the different stages of development of the tadpoles. They ranged from little dots to almost ready to emerge, with feathery gills developing and eyes looking right at me! I returned the egg mass to the water and prayed that they would all get a chance to hatch while the pool is still wet.

There is something to enjoy in every season in the magical Missouri Ozarks!

For more information about the re-lighting event and the Shamrock Court project:

Saving The Shamrock Court! Facebook group

Shamrock Court web page

Historic Preservation Weekend in Sullivan, MO A previous blog post of mine about volunteering at the Shamrock Court