Deep dives.   Gardeners love to fall in love with particular plants.   We can fall so hard, that we tune out other possibilities for our gardens.   Then, in a fascinating twist, our deep dives can suddenly stop.   As is often the case, those deep dives can be followed by a pivot.   I started out as a shrub gardener. Then, I made a pivot to annuals and ornamentals and had nary a shrub in my garden.   Then I was anti-annual.   Then I moved into herbs and edibles.   Now I'm a little bit of everything.   Deep dives and pivots. Part of the process of growing a gardener.       Brevities   #OTD  It's the birthday of the Dutch botanist Gerard van Swieten, born on this day in 1700. In 1740, Maria Theresa inherited the Habsburg Empire. When it came to medicine, Austria was about 200 years behind its European neighbors. Maria Theresa acted quickly, recruiting the best available medical experts to her court. Gerard van Swieten was one of the most important people she brought to Vienna.  By May 1745, the Van Swieten family had sold all their belongings in the Netherlands and traveled to Vienna. Van Swieten laid the foundation for Austria's medical institutions. He totally reorganized the medical faculty of the University of Vienna; adding a botanical garden and a chemical laboratory, each headed by a professor.  Swieten published, in Latin, five volumes on the writings of Boerhaave; the work influenced medical practice throughout Europe. It also contained the first description of episodic cluster headache. Swieten exchanged letters with Linnaeus on botanical matters for over a decade. He named his youngest daughter, Maria Theresia after the Empress, who was also her godmother. His son Godfried would become famous in his own right as Austrian ambassador and patron of great classical composers such as Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. One fascinating story about Swieten was his role in fighting superstition during the enlightenment, specifically with regard to vampires.  In 1755 the Empress sent Swieten to Serbia to investigate. Swieten viewed the vampire myth as a "barbarism of ignorance" and his aim was to completely crush it.    In 1768 "that all the fuss .... [comes from] vain fear, a superstitious credulity, a dark and eventful imagination, simplicity and ignorance among the people."   Based on Swieten's report, Maria Theresa issue a decree that banned all traditional defences to vampires being put to the stakes, beheaded and burned.   The genus of mahogany, Swietenia,was named after Swieten.       #OTD in 1888, the first organizational meeting of the Rochester Parks Commission was held in Rochester, New York.  They decided to invite the great American landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted to design a park system for the city. In fact, Rochester was the last municipal park system designed by the renowned Olmsted. Charles Sprague Sargent, the first director of Harvard University's Arnold Arboretum, called Rochester "a city in a forest." Trees have been a vital part of Rochester since the city's founding. It was essentially an impenetrable forest when the first settlers arrived. In early Rochester, trees were so plentiful that early settlers built roads from them. Rochester's Plank Road, now paved, is a nod to the road's original construction.     #OTD  On this day in 1901, the Fruit and Vegetable Committee reviewed 16 stocks of radish in Drill Hall as part of the Royal Horticultural Society's trial of salad plants at Chiswick. All of the radish were sown in a cold frame on March 7. Except on cold nights the lights were not put on the frames.  1. Early Gem ''. Veitch).-Ready for use April 29. Roots longish oval, scarlet, tipped with white. Foliage moderate. A very crisp and pleasant-flavored variety. 2. Ever Tender (R. Veitch).-Same as No. 3. 3. Gem (Barr).-Distinct from No. 1, being rounder, paler scarlet, but ready for use at the same time, and similar in foliage and flavor. 4. Krewson's Oblong Black (Masters).-Not true. R