I have no flowers

Out in the world there are starting to be butterflies and I saw a white one fly through the garden today, but it didn't have anything to stop for. This time next year there will probably be blue columbines on the deck and honeysuckle on the wall. 

I bought a book on "deckscaping" but it was written all the way back in 2002 - so ancient - and thus I have to wait for an actual physical object to arrive before I can read it - how old-fashioned. 

Dmitri Muratov had a newspaper in Russia. The paper was founded in 1992 with funding from Mikhail Gorbachev and was known for being activist, but not pushing it so far that they got shut down. After the invasion, Russia passed laws punishing anyone who spread "false information" so he suspended operations. In October he won a Nobel Peace Prize and he felt badly about it because it thought it should have gone to Navalny, an opposition leader in prison. He donated the $500k in prize money to various charities. Now he is auctioning off the medal and giving the proceeds to UNICEF to help child refugees from Ukraine. He was inspired by the Danish physicist Niels Bohr who sold his medal to help the Finnish war effort after the Soviet Union invaded Finland in 1939. 

American conductor Gavriel Heine has been at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg for 15 years. He's been in Russia for three decades. He quit. 

He had been working for Valery Gergiev, a Putin ally, Gergieve was fired as Chief Conductor in Munich in late Feb. He was once one of the world's busiest conductors, but Carnegie Hall canceled a pair of his concerts. The Vienna Philharmonic dropped him. 

Cultural institutions in Europe and North America have severed ties with artists, orchestras, theaters, and ballet companies that are seen as supporting Putin. 

Many artists have canceled appearances in Russia. 

A source says 312 Russian tanks have been destroyed, 17 damaged, 49 abandoned, and 222 captured. The Russian tank manufacturer Uralvagonzavod has halted production and servicing due to a low supply of parts.