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| | May 5, 2008
April showers, May flowers, snow bushes!
If there was any doubt that spring is in full swing, it would have been dispelled last week when I looked in my planter boxes. The week before, they were nothing but green leaves and stems; today, they’re a raucous symphony for the eyes. Tulips, daffodils, grape hyacinths, even two early purple irises are blooming as if they’re determined to fill the world with color. | |
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I’m going to go off on a bit of a tangent here, so please just skip ahead if you’d rather read about games than gardening. But the weather was magnificent over the weekend, and I took a long walk around my neighborhood just to look at all the flowers. I live in one of the older sections of Seattle. It’s a neighborhood of mixed apartments and houses; some of the homes date back to the late 1800s, and many of them are from the 1920s. At some point over the past century, there must have been a trend for landscaping with a type of huge puffy bush that looks fairly ordinary for most of the year, then turns into a giant floral snow bank every spring. They’re amazing! The entire bush is covered in so many small white flowers that you can barely see any green. And there must be thousands of these bushes just in our neighborhood!
This leads me to wondering: why did a plant this incredible ever fall out of favor? I’ve certainly never seen them in the garden center at Lowe’s or Home Depot when I go to buy flowers for my planter boxes. Are they difficult to grow? Are they just passé’? I have the same question about the lovely, fragrant climbing roses that wind through trees in some of the older yards around here; all I ever see in the store are hybrid tea roses and a few new-ish floribundas. It seems so wrong, particularly when the hybrid teas come down with black spot the instant you plant them in this climate, but the old climbers thrive, fairly fungus-free and without any care. Then there’s a broad, oval-leaved plant with pink flower stalks that grows in full sun – never seen it in the store – and a yellow-flowered cascading plant that you’ll frequently find blooming between the snow bushes – never seen it in the store – and pale blue English hyacinths with sparse stems that can actually stand up under their own weight – never seen them in the store – and so on.
Certainly, it’s not a question that I expect anyone to answer; the truth is probably just that people like new, shiny things – in their yards as much as anywhere else – and the puffy white bushes are considered old-fashioned. But it does mean that if I ever buy a house, I’m going to have to look further than my local garden departments for the spring beauties I’ve come to love here in this old neighborhood!
And virtual flowers as well
In the spirit of the season – and because I really needed a break from my recent hidden-picture game obsession – I thought I’d check out a new garden management game, Magic Farm. Now, at first this game seems like just a clone of Grimm’s Hatchery, with plants instead of pets. (Not like I’d ever complain about that, since I loved Grimm’s Hatchery.) But once you start playing, two very important differences become obvious: first, when you sell your goods in Magic Farm, you can either sell each flower individually, or hold on to some of them and make specific bouquets for more money (of course, this takes precious inventory space, so it’s a trade-off). Second – and I can’t stress this enough – flowers stay where you plant them. It’s amazing how much less frantic a game like this can be when you’re not chasing fifteen wayward creatures around the screen. You stick a plant somewhere, you harvest the flower or fruit as it appears, you water as necessary, you try to do everything as quickly as possible for the best bonus, and voila: a basket full of marketable produce.
Of course, being a fantasy game, it allows you to upgrade your plants through diligent care; given how much attention I pay to my real-world miniature roses, I only wish that they eventually turned into prettier colors or even into gemstones like the flowers in Magic Farm. Maybe if I water them within five seconds of dawn on a warm day, my little roses will “level up” and start budding diamonds…
Do you need a break?
If you’re looking for a bit less stress and a bit more fun, we’ve got you covered. We’ve been serving up stress relief in short, easy-to-manage doses for more than a decade: just play a round or two of your favorite game whenever you need a break! It’s like a micro-vacation for your brain. In fact, about the only type of stress that a nice game of Text Twist can’t solve for me is the frustration when my home Internet connection goes out. For obvious reasons.
Of course, if you’d like a somewhat longer vacation, complete with pampering, relaxation, and probably a loofah – whatever that is – you could always try a couple of days at the spa. On us, even! We’re running the Take a Break Sweepstakes right now, with two days and nights of glorious self-indulgence on the line. Oh, and the winner even gets five free download games, for purposes of future relaxation. If that winner is you, I highly recommend choosing Text Twist! And when you get back, could you please let me know what the heck a loofah turns out to be?
I’m worth 2,070 points!
Heehee! Okay, one extra section in this week’s Coffee Break. I got a letter this morning from MSN Games player Ginasue, which read, “I was just playing Bookworm on the site, and this five letter word came up. I thought I would share with you what I got.”
And on a golden tile, no less! Thanks for the giggle, Ginasue: may all your words be long ones… unless they’re the three-letter bonus word!
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| Tech Talk
It was actually hard to scrounge up a good tech tip this week, since there aren’t any widespread issues on the site or in any new games. So I’ll tackle one of the perennial issues that we see on a regular basis: audio trouble. It’s amazing how many different things can go wrong with sound on a computer! Fortunately, we have a list of simple troubleshooting steps to take if you can’t hear music or sound effects in your favorite game. And if all else fails, and you have powered speakers, try plugging them into a different outlet. I’m almost embarrassed to say that this pearl of wisdom is from one of my own misadventures, and I am embarrassed to say that it took me the better part of a week to finally think, gee, I wonder if the outlet itself stopped working. Sometimes the most obvious answer really is the best one.
See you next time!
Ask Moxie!
Do you have a question or comment? I’d love to hear from you. Just email me at zmaster@microsoft.com and I’ll do my best to answer in one of these Coffee Breaks! Oh, please make sure to include your MSN Games nickname, so I know who to list here if I quote you!
(And if you have technical questions or problems with a game, we’ll cheerfully answer those as well. Just submit them through the support section of this site!)
More Moxie!
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