During earlier times of Internet usage I discovered sites that had little pictures and symbols attached to the URL's in the address line of my web browser. "How cool," I thought, being immediately impressed and wondered what they were and how were they associated with a web page. Some sleuthing revealed them to be Favicons, short for Favorite icon.
A good source for learning how to change the appearance and functionality of a web page, especially in Blogger, is Anniebluesky at BlogU. Annie has an excellent tutorial for favicons on this page. She includes a link to a web site that will convert a user-supplied image into a favicon-ready icon. It's a pretty slick trick and you should try it with a favorite photo or picture.
I, as usual, wanted a unique symbol for my blog. I found a perfect image of a plant leaf but soon saw it on several sites and knew that I would never be happy sharing it, no matter how appropriate it would be. Favicons are fairly small images, 16x16 pixels, which eliminated anything complex or too busy. It took a bit of fat chewing before I came up with this image:
It's the logo used by the first nursery I worked at, Sunnyside Nuseries. It was owned by a Japanese family and was one of the first nurseries to grow and market potted plants to large retailing chains and big box stores. I started there as a "water boy" during the tail end of the House Plant Revolution of the '70s, when the plant world seemed endlessly open, and eventually worked my way into plant breeding. I was introduced to Japanese culture during my time with them and treasure the afternoon I spent pollinating Cyclamen with the owner while he told me some of his life story, including being in an internment camp during World War II. Sunnyside is no longer an entity, retiring from the business years ago, but I wanted to pay my respect and use it as a homage to the Yoshida family.
