The Lily-Lovers’ Guide to Computer Resources

© 2006 by Kathleen Mingl

What is it that we all love about lilies? Beauty of course, to enjoy and to share with others. Lilies offer such a wide range of forms of leaf and flower and so many possibilities for propagation, I know of no other flower so giving, and so grateful for a little understanding and care. The essential generosity of lilies also provides us with endless opportunities to give of ourselves and receive in kind: bulbs, knowledge, friendship – a game for all levels of skill to play, from new admirers with a bag of bulbs from Wal-Mart, to lifelong students with priceless collections to maintain. Lily-lovers naturally go looking for resources (answers to questions - more lilies - more lily-lovers!) and that’s where computers can provide entirely new dimensions to our enjoyment of our favorite flowers.

Sources and Resources

Like lily-beds, computers can require a huge investment in money and preparation or be essentially free, depending on what you have on hand, and who and what you know. I inherited my computer from Jason when he “upgraded” to a newer system (which is a thing that people who love computers more than anything are always doing, leaving plenty of  “last-years’ models” for those of us who like other things better!)  Jason works (with computers, naturally) from home, so it’s easy enough to bother him for help if I run into a problem - though even he will admit that I do it much less often than I used to!

If you’ve never owned a computer before, you'd do well to find a friend or neighbor who (maybe in exchange for some lily bulbs?) can “show you around” their set-up, sort out your questions, and just give you unpressured moral support while you try this and that. Check out the electronics department at Wal-Mart or Fred Meyer; take a computer class at your local community college, try the ones at the library. If you're thinking of buying, Jason recommends a company like “Dell,” which offers 24-hour tech support.*

Young relatives who have grown up using digital technology the way we of an older generation grew up using telephones are your most valuable “computer resource”; knowing more about it than their puzzled parents and grandparents is such a thrill to them, we should encourage it, bless their helpful little hearts! Children have few enough ways to contribute on an equal basis with adults - what better way to inspire them to learn more about lilies themselves, than by having them show Mom or Grandma how to find her way through a few Lily Society websites?   

Even more to the point, once you have a computer of any sort, husbands and wives, children and grandchildren will never again have trouble thinking up presents to buy you for your birthday, Christmas, Father’s or Mother’s Day, etc. - I’ve lost track of how many times in the last few years I’ve asked for lily bulbs and gotten computer stuff instead. (Not that I’m complaining; I bought the bulbs anyway.) But now I also have a computer and monitor - second or third upgrade; I lose track - a printer, scanner for film-photos and negatives, all sorts of “peripherals” and things like hard-drives and extra memory, a CD/DVD “burner,” and my very favorite Mother’s Day present, a digital camera! In my opinion, computer technology was worth inventing just for that.

Cameras/Photo-Manipulation Programs:

A digital camera is a sort of roving visual extension of your computer, and though I loved my film-camera dearly, the great advantage of digital photography for any flower-grower is that you can record every phase of a plant’s growth from week-to-week or day-to-day, deleting or compiling as you like. With a good camera and photo-manipulation program like Adobe Photoshop, you can even “zoom in” on tiny bugs for identification by experts (located anywhere in the world), or on details of leaves, seeds and embryos for your records or to e-mail to others. You can add text and comments to your image-records, or (for those long, dark “lily-less” months of winter!) use your photos to make beautiful greeting cards for your family, artistic effects and illustrations with your photo-graphics program. You can e-mail lily images to your friends or to Internet discussion groups like the “Lilium” Listserve (lots of friends!), or compile them on CD’s for sharing and backups. (Send copies to the PNWLS and NALS, for website posting and publishing in the Society Bulletins!). If you’re ambitious, you can even make your very own website to show them off. There are books, programs (commercial or free), help-websites and tutorials for everything.

Photo Resources:

Camera/scanner comparisons: www.cnet.com – Jason just told me about this; I hadn’t known it before. Basically a   “network” of technical websites, with reviews of all sorts of stuff, including free software. Photoshop, etc (free trial downloads) from www.adobe.com :free software and  try-before-you-buy “shareware” of all sorts - (including Paint Shop Pro, much cheaper than Photoshop): www.download.com .

Books: there are plenty, and I’ve looked through quite a few. One I liked well enough to buy for myself is “Adobe Photoshop CS 2.0: Photographers’ Guide,” by David D. Busch. Good data on photography in general, and the author actually wants to make the subject understandable, which not all professionals seem to do.

Amazon.com – search “Books” for “Digital Photography,” “Photoshop,” etc; they also sell the equipment and software themselves. Amazon has a new offer now, whereby for a set yearly fee you can get free second-day shipping on anything you buy, with no minimum order.

EBay – the Great Online Marketplace (Bazaar, I’d say!) - books, cameras, lilies, and everything else you can think of new and used, sold at set-price and online-auction by businesses and individuals.

The Internet:

You need a “browser.” Microsoft “Windows” comes already installed on PC’s, but it’s notoriously vulnerable to outside meddling, either malicious “virus” programs (just what it sounds like it does, only to your computer instead of to you or your lilies), or information-gathering “spyware.” Some websites can download these things to your computer when you open them. (Hey, it’s the world; like your hometown, only more of it – most people are friendly and helpful, but there a few who aren’t, so you take your keys out of your car and put locks on your doors.)

Mozilla Firefox - www.mozilla.com - free! More secure and reliable; blocks the horrible “pop-up” ads that can otherwise make turning on your computer such an adventure.

Search Engines:

Google.com (the most popular); more-or-less instantly searches through millions of websites for data. AltaVista.com (the one Jason uses, so I mostly do, too), provides fewer but more useful suggestions. These are “free” - meaning that advertising pays for it - programs that let you do keyword searches for information on the Internet. Type in key words and hit “Enter”; the more words you use in the search-field the    fewer and more specific the results (if your search doesn't bring up enough possibilities, you can remove words and get more).

Lily Bulbs/Seeds:

(Just what I have “bookmarked,” grouped by area but in no particular order, with some of my notes attached.)

Northwest:

The Lily Garden (Vancouver, WA) - www.thelilygarden.com  - CP Lilies, Judith Freeman & Catherine Van der Salm; order from current catalog (including web-only specials) online.

The Lily Pad (Olympia, WA) - www.lilypadbulbs.com  – A family company; booth at the Olympia Farmer's Market on weekends in October, and an end-of-season lily bulb and daylily surplus clearance event in early November.

B&D Lilies (Port Townsend, WA) - www.lilybulb.com  - gorgeous printed catalog/lily reference; carries Strahm Orientals. Recently, they have begun to feature upfacing trumpets of their own breeding.

Buggycrazy Bulbs and Native Plants (Lebanon, OR) - http://buggycrazy.vstore.ca  - Linda Hunt; source for OT’s ‘King Kong’ & ‘Godzilla’

US:

The Bulb Crate (Riverwoods, IL) –  www.thebulbcrate.com :gorgeous stuff, not just lilies.

Brent and Becky's Bulbs (Gloucester, VA) - www.brentandbeckysbulbs.com – award-winning outfit

Canada:

The Lily Nook Neepawa, MB, Canada) - www.lilynook.mb.ca  - Barrie & Nigel Strohman; informative site, with reference photos & articles, including “Species Grown on the Prairies”

Valley K Greenhouses (Alberta, Canada) - www.plantlilies.com

UK:

Rare Plants Co.UK. - www.rareplants.co.uk  – over 30 years experience in export trade, select $ for payment calculated in U.S. Dollar amounts

Seeds:

David Sims Lilyseeds.Com (Bonners Ferry, Idaho) - www.lilyseeds.com  – Species, Asiatics, Trumpets, Orienpets

Rainbow Francom - Rainbow Lily Seed (Middletown, CA) - www.lilyseed.com  – Western American Species

Calvin Helsley (Mansfield, MO) - ozarkmountainlilies@hotmail.com  – mainly seeds of trumpets and Aurelian crosses, my favorites!

The NALS Seed Exchange - www.lilies.org/seedexchange.html : the new list will be on the website in spring, 2007; you can pay by credit-card or PayPal, and donors get first choice and up to three seed-packets, free! For info on donating seed, contact Maureen Janson (2114 East 5th St.,Washington, MO, USA 63090-3610), seedchair@lilies.org  .

EBay – search for “Lily Bulbs”

Google Search – “Lilium Bulb Nurseries” gave 41,600 results!

E-Mail:

I can’t imagine not being able to “beam” a note to a friend in Missouri or New Zealand whenever I need an answer to a question, or have a photo of my “lily-babies” to share. Even if you have a high-speed (cable) internet connection, others may still be on dial-up (working through the telephone line, only one thing at a time), so you do need to know how to reduce images so they don’t take a long time to receive – which would cost them more money. There’s a way to do this with any image program, but I only know how to do it with Photoshop. I’ve made my own “Pictorial Tutorial” of it, which I can e-mail to anyone who would like to see it.

Just as the word sounds, “e-mail” works like an Internet Post Office, with a “server” (an actual physical computer somewhere, always on), saving your message up in a queue to send to the server of your recipient. (“Instant Messaging,” which Jason uses for work – and I sometimes use to send him an SOS when I need help, or to tell him it’s time for supper - is like a text “phone call,” going directly to your recipient’s address – but he has to be there right then to answer you.) E-mail is fast enough for me; I like to be able to think how to phrase my questions, reports, etc. (I have Microsoft Outlook because that’s what came with my computer, but most e-mail programs have the same sorts of features.) Anti-Virus programs, which scan attachments for viruses and alert you before you open them, can be compared and gotten from www.download.com

Mozilla “Thunderbird” www.mozilla.com – (free); probably has the safest e-mail program because it can show you who the message is from before downloading it to your computer.

Discussion Groups:

There are all sorts of these on the Internet, relating to just about anything you can think of. Some people belong to many and some to a few or only one; it all depends on how much time you want to spend at it. (You “subscribe” to it for free, and advertisers pay to have you look at their “commercials” on the website. Having the messages e-mailed to you directly allows you to avoid the ads.)

Lilium Listserve: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Lilium/  - originally a NALS online forum, now with a worldwide membership. In the past, photos sent with e-mail messages to post on the website were saved in the “Archives,” which can be searched to locate specific data. At some point Yahoo became so successful that the attachments took up too much “room” on the website and were all deleted, so now if you want to receive the photos you have to choose the “Individual Email Message Delivery” option so that everything comes right to your Inbox. (Outlook has a “Rules Wizard” in the “Tools” menu - other programs have similar options - that allows you to automatically re-route group messages to a separate folder.)

You can create a “Photo Album” in your name in a special section of the Lilium Website. I’ve posted my “Pictorial Tutorial” of reducing images with Photoshop, some “how-to” photos for embryo rescue, and an article about “Getting Started in TC” (published originally in the PNWLS Bulletin Vol.24 N0.1, Spring 2005), in the “Files” section. Others have posted things like, “Lilies from my Garden,” ”Pests and Diseases” and “NALS Top Ten.”

Right now, as our lily-season winds down here in the Northern Hemisphere, Lilium-List members in Australia and Tasmania and New Zealand are counting their lily-buds! In the last few days, one grower who sprayed for aphids reported in dismay that the buds had blackened, and wondered what she did wrong. Last week an Australian member showed a bed of lily shoots that had a tree fall on them during a storm, and wondered what effect that would have on the bulbs in future seasons. On this end of things, the pros and cons of cow manure as a top-dressing for fall lily-beds was discussed, I posted some photos of the embryo-rescue projects I’ve been doing, and a member in the Midwest asked the best way to dig her lily-bulbs out of the cold, soggy soil and take them with her when she moves. 

The “Lily Discussion and Information Site” (LDIS): www.lilyregister.com/ldis - since running out of attachment-room on the Yahoo site, there has been no permanent place to archive lily photos (and nowhere for large images, not reduced for e-mail), and general data. Gerry Danen of the new Online Lily Registry and David Sims of the NALS website have discussed making it an interactive feature of the Lily Registry (for instance, for adding photos and data about unregistered clones) – sort of a “hybrid of a Yahoo group, Computer Bulletin Board and a ‘Wiki’” (see “Wikipedia,” above), says Gerry. Volunteers are needed to help as “panel members,” to help answer questions and act as “moderators” (which dictionary.com defines as “a person who presides over a panel discussion” - as on radio or TV, or at a public forum.)

Lily Photo Website Galleries (just a sampling; there are many more!):

Gerry Danen, Alberta Canada: www.lily-gallery.com  –  great photos, including John Lykkegaard’s “tangos.”
Ray McNamara, Tasmania: www.liliums.org , click on The Lilium Gallery – a section of Joe Hoell’s hybrids, as well!
David Hercbergs/Andris Krumins/IvarsZilgalvis, Latvia: http://foto.inbox.lv/da-vids - hybrids, wonderful Martagon.
Mike Jones, Caerphilly, Wales, UK: www.caercath.co.uk/the_lily_patch - amazing results with lilies in containers.

Lily Photo CD’s:

Mark Wood (Roseland House, Tilbury Road, Great Yeldham, Halstead, Essex CO9 4JG U.K.( markwwood@btconnect.com  or mark@markwoodwheels.co.uk -“Lily Species: Working notes on Cardiocrinum, Lilium, Nomocharis and Notholirion” – a wonderful resource and work-in-progress in a simple HTML (pictures linked to text, like a website) format; ask for latest version or CD of Large Images. In exchange, send your species lily-photos and data to Mark or to me to add to a CD for our NALS Photo-CD project (of which Mark is a member), to make it even more complete!

NALS/SLPG Photo-CD project – same idea as Mark’s, only ours! Dick Bayerl (rjbayerl@ameritech.net) and Vijay Chandhok (vc2m@mac.com) are joint chairpersons of the SLPG one. (I’m the general chair for all the rest, like the NALS Popularity Poll/Hall of Fame CD, nearly ready!) Take lots of photos of your lilies at all stages, starting with the bulbs before you plant them, and send them to me at kcmingl@comcast.net, or a CD to me at K. Mingl, 126 S. Jefferson, Box 69, Lafayette, OR 97127. Contributors get copies of all of the CD’s we have available.

Darm Crook’s “Lilium Species in Hay River, NT, Canada - Zone 1.5” – formatted in HTML and nicely packaged by Dick Bayerl; with photos and meticulous notes on the species that Darm has successfully grown in the Northwest Territory of Canada, for the NALS/SLPG Photo-CD Project. (Contact Dick - rjbayerl@ameritech.net - for shipping-costs). Frans Officer’s Martagon CD - articles are in PDF format, giving it a slick “magazine-look” with photos embedded right in the text. Order from: Martagons!” CD, 8920 Southwood Drive, Bloomington, Minnesota 55437 - $10 US/$11 Canada/$13 outside US & Canada (checks marked “US Funds). www.northstarlilysociety.com

Good Data Sites:

These are just a few that I like to keep “shortcut” icons to click on, right on my screen “desktop” –

www.ext.colostate.edu  - a really good photo section on insect pests; my local county extension-office contact gave it to me (along with a lot of other data), when I e-mailed her pictures of a web-spinning caterpillar that was eating my greenhouse seedlings. There are lots of these, as well as technical articles and research reports, often in PDF format.

 The North American Lily Society - www.lilies.org : the NALS site, maintained by David Sims, and getting better all the time! An amazing central           resource for photos, data and links to other sites all over the world; I couldn’t begin to mention them all, but           maybe just a few…click on “Resources” and “Lily Societies” for lots more!

PNWLS - www.pnwls.org – ours, of course! Donna Hathaway maintains it faithfully and well, and is always looking for good new photos and data to keep it fresh and interesting. We’ve gotten many compliments on it from people who keep it on their own desktops, all over the world!

Canadian Prairie Lily Society  - www.prairielily.ca –  activities of the society, and under “Lily Culture,” many newsletter articles about planting, care and propagation of lilies.

Manitoba Regional Lily Society  - www.manitobalilies.ca – an extremely interesting section of articles, and past newsletters in PDF format.

Royal Horticultural Society -  www.rhslilygroup.org

Europäische Liliengesellschaft e.V. - www.liliengesellschaft.org : in German, but great pictures speak for themselves! You can use a translation program like “Babel Fish” for the comments.

Lilium Information Page - www.liliumbreeding.nl - Lilium research at “The Center for Plant Breeding and Reproductive Research” in Holland, with links to lily companies in the Netherlands.

www.lilyregister.com – the RHS Lily Registry, originally put online by Michael Homick, now expanded and maintained by Gerry Danen. Adding photos is a neat new option, and the question of how to include all of the many, many unregistered clones in commerce is being addressed.

Reference Sites:

Online Dictionary: www.dictionary.reference.com  - in case I need instant enlightenment on a word, acronym or scientific lily-term; also has a thesaurus feature that I couldn’t do without. Lately they’ve added a nifty “cut-and-paste” reference-feature for citing their definitions in your work.

Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - www.wikipedia.org :  the most amazing resource; hard to describe; you either understand the principle intuitively, or you don’t. You might say it’s the next step in the evolution of encyclopedias, covering just about everything – but being written (and corrected) constantly in “real time” by people all over the world contributing data. (Just think – you could add to the world’s total knowledge of lilies, with the click of a “send” button!) It's so easy to follow the trail of fascinating facts, one link after another, that you can forget what you're looking for and suddenly notice that several hours have gone by! If you see any terms in this list you don't understand, one or the other of these useful sites will likely have the answer to your question.

Writing/Record-Keeping:

Nothing fancy for me - I like to make “folders” of images of all of my seedlings as they bloom each season, with a simple text-file of notes saved along with the pictures. If I keep them up faithfully, I can copy them all onto a CD at the end of the season, and send them to NALS Publications Editor/Webmaster David Sims, for use in the QB, etc. (The current photo on the homepage of the NALS website is one of my Asiatic-cross seedlings!) “Notepad” is for the simplest text writing (like a typewriter, only easier to correct!) The well-known Microsoft “Word” is a writing/editing program with more complicated options, like adjustable margins, highlighting, footnotes, etc., good for printed labels, letters, articles and reports.  “Excel” is a fill-in-the blank “spreadsheet” program for keeping totally organized records of crosses, results and comments. “PowerPoint” is for presentations like slideshows, and “Front Page” is for making websites. The “Open Office” suite - www.openoffice.org  - is designed to do everything these expensive Microsoft Office programs can do and more, only free. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org).

 (For an intriguing discussion of the philosophy and origins of the “Open Source Movement,” also see  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_software . Free is good – after all, lily-people know that the point is to have more money to spend on lilies!)

I do hope you realize that it never was my ambition to take up computer technology in any form – it was my “guys” who were into that from the start; I had plenty of other things to keep me busy! The whole world seems to be spinning faster these days, always demanding our attention and time, old comfortable certainties disappearing like wildflowers under the backhoe of progress, the only “value” being the commercial sort. Yet there are new wonders “blooming” in the world every day, marvelous, exciting things that can make us happy if we leave ourselves open to learning and joy.

It's still a wonderful old world, filled with lilies and people who love them – computers just bring it closer.