Finally it’s the off-season and gardenbloggers can go off-topic with impunity (more or less). So here’s what’s on my mind a lot – how to get great content to my ears while I’m driving, working out, grocery-shopping, and of course gardening.
The good news is that I’ve gotten over (most of) my fear of iPod and iTunes, and it’s only taken me two years! Lots of frustration but I was determined to be able to listen to whatever I want, whenever and wherever. Like JUST the tracks I really like on all my CDs (plus many more I hope to borrow). All my favorite public radio shows, gardening podcasts, and Real Time with Bill Maher, too. Good lord, with MP3 players we’re our own deejays and have access to practically everything ever recorded, all brought to us on devices that don’t cost much. (I remember when the family “hi-fi” cost a lot and was a big old piece of furniture.)
Here’s the quick version of my Adventures with MP3 Players.
My Gotta-Have Features
Absolutely has to be a clip. Players that hang around your neck are annoying and get caught on things. The ones that guys just drop in their shirt pocket or attach to their belts are fine – for them. Last year’s iPod Nano had no way to carry the damn thing, and the offered “solution” was to buy one of those horrible armband holders. I’ve tried several; none came close to making it easy to carry and adjust the player. But clips are super-easy to attach anywhere, and just as easy to use the controls while multi-tasking.
A radio. So, why has Apple been so stingy with them on their entry-level iPods?
It has to show me what’s on it and let me choose easily what to play. Notice I said show, not tell me in computer-voice.
The rest is a matter of quantity – how many hours of battery play, and how much stuff they’ll hold. So you pay more for more, but the prices seem to stay the same as capacity jumps up with every new version.
The Players
I first tried a couple of iPods, but with each one I had trouble figuring something out so I sold them and started looking elsewhere. (Yes, I know I have a low tolerance for electronic frustrations and that’s not going to change.)
Next I tried the little Samsung I really liked, but because it’s not an Apple product, I couldn’t load it directly from iTunes. It actually required the use of another whole program as an intermediary (Windows Media Player). What a pain.
So I gave the iPod another try (do they leave us much choice?), and mysteriously find that I’m loving my little clippable Shuffle. So much so that I recently bought the newest version and now have two.
What’s New with the Shuffle
It’s smaller. Actually, too small. Now when I squeeze the clip I accidentally touch the controls.
It tells you what’s playing, and what else is on it. While that’s better than not knowing anything, that lady talking to me just makes me want the information in writing.
It comes in cool colors, so I have blue for music and silver for podcasts.
Lusting for the Newest Nano!
But I’d hardly loaded up that second Shuffle when I heard about the newest Nano – the 6th Gen! Below, hear Steve Jobs chatting it up at launch. Seems they learned from their mistakes (the quickly forgotten Nano 5th Generation).
Coming soon – my Nano 6th Generation Review. Could it be possible I’ve found everything I want in a music device? Hopes are high.
My research into XM Satellite Radio includes nine hours of driving over two days, plus a week or so around the home and garden, and I’m happy to report – no, make that ecstatic – that XM’s a WINNER. For example, on the highway I didn’t have to listen to my out-of-date CDs or the execrable local radio stations. Instead, I heard a long concert of Scottish folk music. A complete Beethoven symphony. The Al Franken Show. A talk show on NPR. Lots of bluegrass, which felt just right while driving through the mountains of Western Virginia. A station called Progressive Country, which I thought was an oxymoron but turned out to mean Willie Nelson. Even some excerpts from operas, something I haven’t willingly listened to in years. Lord only knows what I’ll discover I like by the time I’ve checked out all 65 music stations, commercial-free. Here at home I have the little XM receiver sitting in its cradle in the living room where it plays through the stereo speakers, and when I want to listen in the garden or during my neighborhood walks, it plays through headphones.
Before buying XM, I’d read an animated discussion of satellite radio on one of my favorite political blogs, dailyKos, and discovered that whether customers chose XM or Sirius, its only competitor, they’re an incredibly happy bunch. Some people choose Sirius in order to hear Howard Stern – puh-leez - while some choose between Sirius and XM according to which sports they carry. Again, not a concern of mine. But locally headquartered XM has just what I want – three channels of classical music and three of jazz, plenty of folk and bluegrass and Reggae, a huge selection of rock subgenres, several channels broadcasting in French, interesting stuff like “Latin jazz,” and lots, lots more.
Maybe my music research project is finally over and I can turn to the next item on my to-do list – getting used to my new CoolPix camera and doing some serious photo organizing and archiving. It feels kinda daunting and maybe lethargy has set in, it being winter and all. I have to remind myself how cool it is to have climbed a learning curve and created something new and exciting, this blog being yet another example. And it led to reading Sandy in B.C., who inspired me to try new things photographically.
Silly me, asking you what music you listen to in your gardens, only to be told that you’re all blissfully tuned into the sounds of nature. Naturally I wonder why it is I need something more to occupy my mind and I figure it’s all those drugs I took in the ’60s and ’70s. Allegedly.
So here’s how it works for me. Say it’s a cold December morning. When I’ve done lots of stuff I need to do and it’s finally warmed up enough to go outside, I want to immerse myself in the garden, slow down and get all in-the-moment like we’re try to do these days. So it’s just me, the birds, the squirrels and some far-off construction sounds. I slowly walk the whole garden, noticing whatever there is to notice and fantasizing about changes I’ll make when it warms up. I sit for a while and contemplate my favorite oak. I’m starting to feel pretty mellow about now, and really grateful to be in my favorite place in the world.
And here’s where apparently I’m unlike even other passionate gardeners, my people. Right about now I want more, more, more, like nature and beauty and music, all at once. Yeah, if I just add some Brahms or some jazz or whatever I’m in the mood for, I can really bliss out. Raking leaves becomes a musicalopportunity. After all, what better place to tune in to great music? So the high lasts longer, at least for me, speaking as a potential addict, I suppose. Do you think I need rehab? Don’t answer that.
So, readers, let me ask the question I probably should have asked in the first place. Do you have music in your life and if so, what, how and when? Tomorrow I’ll report on my experimentation with satellite radio – is it a dream come true?
Who is this crazy man, you ask? He’s aptly named himself the Renegade Gardener and is also known as Don Engebretson, a writer/designer in Minneapolis/St. Paul. I’ve been checking him out and I’m liking his brand of craziness. He opines on just about everything but let’s start with his declarations about music choices in the garden because it’s a subject I’ve been thinking about lately.
“Do not garden accompanied by an active Walkman, unless you happen to have secured a tape teaching you the Latin names of plants. In general, listening to most styles of music while gardening tends to lessen the beneficial elements gardening infuses into the soul. Playing rock music while gardening makes you ornery, while listening to modern country as you deadhead your Dianthus deltoides can lead to dizziness and gas. Classical music in the patio should be saved for after the watering is done and your guests have arrived; listening to classical while gardening makes you tire early. Only instrumental jazz, I have found, works pretty well alongside gardening, particularly pre-’65 Miles Davis.
“The sound nature makes in your yard is the most relaxing accompaniment to gardening, but if you must listen to something man-made, the best thing to listen to is baseball. Listening to baseball while you garden can be a smooth, sublime joy.”
Reminds me of Henry Mitchell, the much-loved and missed garden writer for the WashingtonPost, whose equally strong and quirky opinions have been published in two wonderful volumes. You couldn’t pay me to listen to sports announcers in the garden or anywhere else, but I agree wholeheartedly about the deleterious effects of (most) rock music and (almost all) country.
Which leads me a long-term project of mine – the quest to figure out what I really enjoy hearing in the garden and the logistics of delivering same to my ears. All options and technologies have been on the table. I’ve gone through books on tape, a portable CD player, a portable radio, a stationary radio in my tool shed, and most recently, an iPod. Yeah, I was going to be one of those people we see on the subway attached by skinny white wires to their own worlds. And all my attempts have failed because the local radio fare is so terrible and polluted with commercials, and I just don’t have enough music of my own to keep me interested.
Now I don’t have to tell my readers that hope springs eternal in the heart of a gardener. And any day now my new XM2Go will arrive in the mail. Translation: the hardware needed to listen to XM Satellite Radio, with its 160 channels, 60 of them all-music-no-commercials. YES! The service costs $10 a month, which is about what I was prepared to spend on iTunes, but thank god I don’t have to do all the work of finding and downloading the stuff. So I’ll let you know if this baby really makes all my dreams come true. In the meantime, what do you guys do listening-wise in the garden? Or are you all thinking such interesting thoughts that you don’t need a diversion? Go ahead; I can handle the truth.
What’s New with the Shuffle
