October 15, 2017

A Day at Kew Gardens

Marian is spending the day at the Knitting and Stitching Show at the Alexandra Palace—aka Ally Pally, the People’s Palace. So what should I do all by myself today? While I was asleep, the Dodgers won. USC won. And Donald Trump didn’t start a war. Surely that calls for something celebratory?

Perhaps the Churchill war rooms, to prepare myself for when Trump does start a war? Hmmm. While I ponder this, here’s a selection of photos from our trip to Kew Gardens yesterday.

Crocuses on a field of fallen seed pods:

Mushrooms:

A green parrot, photographed from the treetop walkway:

Some kind of gray/black bird, ditto. UPDATE: It’s a western jackdaw.

A Gertrude Jekyll rose in its end-of-season final bloom in the rose garden:

A field of daisies and other flowers planted English-garden style:

An “October Surprise” maple tree:

Another mushroom:

Finally, a toddler beginning a lifelong fascination with flowers:

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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