I've been a gardener most of my life, I figure. My dad always had a garden, so I was introduced to gardening at an early age.
I can't honestly say I enjoyed working in my dad's garden as a youth because my major responsibility at that time was to remove weeds and rocks -- we lived in Southwest Missouri on the edge of the Ozark Mountains where rocks are born and grow. Being in the garden, however, allowed me the privilege of getting to be first to eat a tomato fresh off the vine, to savor the young peas in a not-fully-developed pea pod, or to yank a tender young carrot from the ground, wipe off the dirt on my overalls and eat it right there.
I still love fresh vegetables. When I got my own place after college, I immediately cleared an area for my vegetable garden.
In recent years I could not maintain the garden I previously did because I was gone during a big part of the summer. I gradually replaced seasonal crops with annual ones: rhubarb, horseradish, raspberries, and green onions. The rest of the garden was covered with black plastic to keep the weeds at bay.
We are sticking closer to home this season due to an upcoming wedding involving our oldest granddaughter, so I had the opportunity to plant more seasonal vegetables. When I brought in my first red tomato the other day I was reminded of the several summers we enjoyed the delicious, huge Big Boy tomatoes that came from no less a place than my dad's compost pile.
Dad taught me the value of maintaining a compost pile. Grass clippings, pulled weeds, hedge clippings, and even the valuable stuff we now flush down the drain via our garbage disposals. All of these items decompose and all have valuable nutrients that can be returned to the garden soil to enrich it for next season's garden. Dad was doing organic gardening before the term became popular.
Well, early one summer before dad had turned the compost pile over he noticed a tomato plant coming up in one corner. It had clearly come up from a seed that had survived the winter and he decided to let it grow. It produced some of the biggest, meatiest tomatoes we had ever seen, tomatoes of the Big Boy variety that he had grown the previous season. Big Boy tomatoes are a hybrid tomato and hybrids don't usually reproduce well from seed. This one did, however, and dad decided to save some of the seeds that fall. He shared some of those with me and I started my own tomato plants the following spring.
We were pleased to have the seedlings develop into healthy tomato vines, even though they have been transplanted from their "native" Ozark region to the Zone 5 region in upstate New York. The vines grew big and strong and produced for us the same robust tomatoes they had for my dad. We were now working with the fourth generation of seeds from the original plant, so we were not only pleased but a little surprised.
Those tomatoes were delicious! We had more tomatoes than we could eat that summer, which is unusual since everyone in the family likes fresh tomatoes.
I saved some of the seeds from one of the healthiest tomatoes in mid-summer to use the follow spring. Seedlings from those seeds grew as expected and the resulting tomato plants once again grew healthy and strong. But!
We noticed one little problem with our tomatoes that summer. They were big and red and solid throughout, but some of the solidness came from a hard green core that had developed and they were more misshapen than round. After cutting out the core and slicing, we had a big odd shaped slice of tomato with a big hole in the middle. They were still delicious but a pain to prepare.
When I checked with my dad back in Missouri I learned that he was experiencing the same thing. The tomatoes were apparently beginning to revert to some of the original stock from which the Big Boy hybrid had been developed.
We gave up on the strain after that summer, but I always remember those two seasons when we had some of the tastiest tomatoes you could ever want -- and they came from the compost pile.
And get this, the other day after turning my compost pile I noticed a young tomato plant coming up next to the wall. You know, I just had to let it grow. We'll see what develops later in the summer. It may be another tomato surprise.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
FINDING OUR LEADER
Much has been said and written lately about our president. The comments run along the lines of, "Who is this guy in the White House?," or "Will the real Obama please stand up."
He is not delivering on what he promised. He promised to get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and hasn't. He promised to improve the economy, and hasn't. He promised to do something about the jobs situation, and hasn't. He promised to do something about the deficit, and hasn't. The complaints list goes on and on.
We forget what he has done or, in some instances, had to do just to get the nation to a point where something could be done about the list of complaints above. I'll use a football analogy. We forget that sometimes in a football game the coach has to sacrifice a play or two, maybe even an entire quarter, to test the strength of the opponents and determine what his team can do against that strength. Obama may still be in the first quarter of the game while some of us on the sidelines are acting like the game is over.
Aside from that (i.e., it's easier to call the shots when you don't have a stake in the game), we all, Democrats, Republicans and especially, Independents, have to stop chasing the promise.
THE PROMISE is what politicians tell you to get elected. They know that they can accomplish nothing on your behalf (their constituents) unless they get elected. So that is their first priority. And to get elected, they have to tell you what you want to hear. Never tell the truth and never answer a question directly if you can avoid it. The truth will not set you free (except, maybe, to seek another line of work) and direct answers will only get you in trouble with someone or some group. Hence, the campaign promise. Promise what you must, never mind later.
And we keep falling for it. We keep voting for the person who promises a new deal better than the old deal. We believe the candidate who promises to fix the mistakes of the last administration. We fawn over the charismatic poll who may not have a thought of any value but speaks well or looks good. We love heroes: we'll take a man with experience in a war 40 years ago over a younger, possibly more knowledgeable man. We do not ask the hard questions of candidates ourselves and do not tune into or read the comments of those media people who do ask such questions. We just want to hear the promise.
The second priority of every politician, the one upper most in his or her mind 30 seconds after taking the oath of office is: "What must I do now to get reelected?" Forget the campaign promises, reality takes precedence now. Everything that you say or do from this point forward will be used for or against your bid for reelection. The next campaign has started.
Independent voters determine most elections. But so long as independent voters are swayed by the magic of THE PROMISE, they will continue to vote for the wrong person. The wrong person in this case being the person who makes the biggest promises or presents them in the most attractive package. Sometimes that person is capable of leadership, sometimes not.
We voters have the power, but with it comes the responsibility to use our heads rather than our ideological hearts to determine who to vote for. It is shameful enough that there are straight party-line votes in Congress. That not one congressperson has the strength of conviction to vote for something presented by a member of the opposite party because (a) it actually makes sense, or (b) because no one from his/her party has proposed anything better. Just as bad, however, is the sad state of affairs in which roughly one-third of the voting public can be counted on to do the same thing: that is, vote the party line regardless of the issues, the candidate, any proposed solutions or lack thereof.
When candidates can count on the "party faithful" to sweep them into office and need only direct their efforts toward pleasing their "base," we can count on there never being intelligent attention given to national economic matters, national jobs or welfare issues, or national security interests here and abroad. Remember your base, remember your large contributors. Those are the people who put you in office. Ignore them at your political peril.
Isn't it time we start accepting our responsibility before we demand any more from the politicians in Washington or the state house? "Vote them all out of office," is the battle cry of some break-away groups. And replace them with whom? Will replacing all the Democrats with Republicans AND vice versa really change things, you think?
He is not delivering on what he promised. He promised to get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and hasn't. He promised to improve the economy, and hasn't. He promised to do something about the jobs situation, and hasn't. He promised to do something about the deficit, and hasn't. The complaints list goes on and on.
We forget what he has done or, in some instances, had to do just to get the nation to a point where something could be done about the list of complaints above. I'll use a football analogy. We forget that sometimes in a football game the coach has to sacrifice a play or two, maybe even an entire quarter, to test the strength of the opponents and determine what his team can do against that strength. Obama may still be in the first quarter of the game while some of us on the sidelines are acting like the game is over.
Aside from that (i.e., it's easier to call the shots when you don't have a stake in the game), we all, Democrats, Republicans and especially, Independents, have to stop chasing the promise.
THE PROMISE is what politicians tell you to get elected. They know that they can accomplish nothing on your behalf (their constituents) unless they get elected. So that is their first priority. And to get elected, they have to tell you what you want to hear. Never tell the truth and never answer a question directly if you can avoid it. The truth will not set you free (except, maybe, to seek another line of work) and direct answers will only get you in trouble with someone or some group. Hence, the campaign promise. Promise what you must, never mind later.
And we keep falling for it. We keep voting for the person who promises a new deal better than the old deal. We believe the candidate who promises to fix the mistakes of the last administration. We fawn over the charismatic poll who may not have a thought of any value but speaks well or looks good. We love heroes: we'll take a man with experience in a war 40 years ago over a younger, possibly more knowledgeable man. We do not ask the hard questions of candidates ourselves and do not tune into or read the comments of those media people who do ask such questions. We just want to hear the promise.
The second priority of every politician, the one upper most in his or her mind 30 seconds after taking the oath of office is: "What must I do now to get reelected?" Forget the campaign promises, reality takes precedence now. Everything that you say or do from this point forward will be used for or against your bid for reelection. The next campaign has started.
Independent voters determine most elections. But so long as independent voters are swayed by the magic of THE PROMISE, they will continue to vote for the wrong person. The wrong person in this case being the person who makes the biggest promises or presents them in the most attractive package. Sometimes that person is capable of leadership, sometimes not.
We voters have the power, but with it comes the responsibility to use our heads rather than our ideological hearts to determine who to vote for. It is shameful enough that there are straight party-line votes in Congress. That not one congressperson has the strength of conviction to vote for something presented by a member of the opposite party because (a) it actually makes sense, or (b) because no one from his/her party has proposed anything better. Just as bad, however, is the sad state of affairs in which roughly one-third of the voting public can be counted on to do the same thing: that is, vote the party line regardless of the issues, the candidate, any proposed solutions or lack thereof.
When candidates can count on the "party faithful" to sweep them into office and need only direct their efforts toward pleasing their "base," we can count on there never being intelligent attention given to national economic matters, national jobs or welfare issues, or national security interests here and abroad. Remember your base, remember your large contributors. Those are the people who put you in office. Ignore them at your political peril.
Isn't it time we start accepting our responsibility before we demand any more from the politicians in Washington or the state house? "Vote them all out of office," is the battle cry of some break-away groups. And replace them with whom? Will replacing all the Democrats with Republicans AND vice versa really change things, you think?
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
CAN WE PLEASE LEARN TO SAY IT CORRECTLY?
When are we going to stop saying "two thousand AND ten" for the current year?
Everyone does it, including news casters -- even those on the national news -- who should know better. We put the word "and" after the decimal designation on all figures over two digits these days. Hence, 193 become one hundred and ninety three. The figure 27 is spoken as twenty seven, but I half expect any day to hear someone say, "twenty and seven."
When you add the digit four in the hundreds position, i.e., 427, many of us will say "four hundred and twenty seven." That is wrong!
A three-digit figure such as 427 is correctly read as "four hundred twenty-seven." The figure 8,427 is correctly read as "eight thousand four hundred twenty-seven." No "and."
Any "and" in reading a figure comes when there is a decimal point. If your luncheon bill is $26.78, the cashier should say, "Your bill is twenty-six dollars AND seventy-eight cents." If you bought a car for $23,800.52 (tax and fees included), you would say, "My new car cost me twenty-three thousand eight hundred dollars and fifty-two cents." If you say, "My car cast me twenty-three thousand and eight hundred dollars and fifty-two cents," you are displaying your ignorance.
I do not remember educated adults using "and" in our dates or other large numbers before the year 2,000. Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December seventh, nineteen forty-one, not December seventh, nineteen hundred and forty-one. For some reason after the year 2,000 we started adding the word "and" to large numbers. Thus, the year 2001 became two thousand and one -- and we were off on the wrong track, never to return to speaking correctly, I fear.
In 1960 we spoke of that year as nineteen sixty, not nineteen and sixty. Why do we feel obligated to speak of this current year as two thousand and ten?
Isn't it time to try and remember a little of what our math teacher in school taught us and start talking about numbers larger than two digits like we had at least a fourth-grade education?
Everyone does it, including news casters -- even those on the national news -- who should know better. We put the word "and" after the decimal designation on all figures over two digits these days. Hence, 193 become one hundred and ninety three. The figure 27 is spoken as twenty seven, but I half expect any day to hear someone say, "twenty and seven."
When you add the digit four in the hundreds position, i.e., 427, many of us will say "four hundred and twenty seven." That is wrong!
A three-digit figure such as 427 is correctly read as "four hundred twenty-seven." The figure 8,427 is correctly read as "eight thousand four hundred twenty-seven." No "and."
Any "and" in reading a figure comes when there is a decimal point. If your luncheon bill is $26.78, the cashier should say, "Your bill is twenty-six dollars AND seventy-eight cents." If you bought a car for $23,800.52 (tax and fees included), you would say, "My new car cost me twenty-three thousand eight hundred dollars and fifty-two cents." If you say, "My car cast me twenty-three thousand and eight hundred dollars and fifty-two cents," you are displaying your ignorance.
I do not remember educated adults using "and" in our dates or other large numbers before the year 2,000. Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December seventh, nineteen forty-one, not December seventh, nineteen hundred and forty-one. For some reason after the year 2,000 we started adding the word "and" to large numbers. Thus, the year 2001 became two thousand and one -- and we were off on the wrong track, never to return to speaking correctly, I fear.
In 1960 we spoke of that year as nineteen sixty, not nineteen and sixty. Why do we feel obligated to speak of this current year as two thousand and ten?
Isn't it time to try and remember a little of what our math teacher in school taught us and start talking about numbers larger than two digits like we had at least a fourth-grade education?
Monday, July 12, 2010
DO ME A FAVOR, PLEASE
Please do me a favor and stop sending me stuff that someone else wrote. We're friends, aren't we? I like you and respect you or else we probably would have never become friends. That means I value what you have to say on a particular subject and I trust you to occasionally find some value in my thoughts.
We can discuss religion or politics or the price of tea in China all you want. The key part of that sentence is, "We can discuss." When you send me something written by someone else, something that is often inaccurate or marginally misleading in the hopes -- What? -- that it will cause me to change my views on religion or my political stance on something, I always ignore it and usually delete it before opening it. As soon as I see that it went to several hundred people before you got it and forwarded it, I delete it.
Tell me how YOU feel about the oil crisis in the Gulf of Mexico. Tell me YOUR thoughts on the Kagan nomination to the Supreme Court. Tell me how YOU feel about the local school bond issue. I will gladly discuss anything with you. I'll share my views and give you my reasons. But to have a discussion, I need to know your thoughts, your feelings and your reasoning. Otherwise, there is nothing to discuss. I have you assume that for whatever reason you are just jerking my chain.
There can be no discussion with some nameless person who wrote something in 24-point type, in blue yet, and sent it around the world to ten thousand others before you received it. Let those people sound off all they want. Let them share their propaganda, their bigotry, their wild accusations. Let them make whatever ridiculous claims they want. You and I do not have to participate in the charade. Their tirade of misstatements, misquotes or political spin will have a life without you and I participating.
And PLEASE do not urge me to SEND THIS TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW. I do not participate in any of those chain-letter type programs. If you have something to say (or want to paraphrase someone whose opinion you value) and think it is of sufficient value, send it to me along with your thoughts. I don't need your encouragement to share it if I think it worth sharing. And whether I do or not is no reflection on my patriotism, my support for our armed forces, my politics, my religion or my respect for motherhood.
If you must send me something you received in your inbox, at least have the courtesy to attach a note at the beginning explaining why you are sending it and include some of your own thoughts or disclaimers.
As I said in the beginning, we are friends. I value and respect YOUR opinion. That doesn't mean I always agree you. Friends don't have to agree on everything, they just have to have some things in common, some things on which they do agree. Friends can just enjoy each other's company.
You may hold some beliefs that I find a little short of stupid -- and vice versa. You may do some things I would never do. But I am always interested in learning why you have the beliefs you have, why you behave the way you do, and I can still like you even though you can sometimes be such a jerk. You fascinate me at times, but you always make me happy to call you friend.
So, please stop sending me the propaganda generated by email friends who lack your taste. Some of it is funny, but seldom is it interesting or worthy of comment, much less the time needed to forward it to others in my contact list.
HOWEVER, if you have the insatiable urge to forward material to people in your contact list, highlight and copy this article and send it to them. They may think you are a first-class jerk, but then again, they may just thank you.
We can discuss religion or politics or the price of tea in China all you want. The key part of that sentence is, "We can discuss." When you send me something written by someone else, something that is often inaccurate or marginally misleading in the hopes -- What? -- that it will cause me to change my views on religion or my political stance on something, I always ignore it and usually delete it before opening it. As soon as I see that it went to several hundred people before you got it and forwarded it, I delete it.
Tell me how YOU feel about the oil crisis in the Gulf of Mexico. Tell me YOUR thoughts on the Kagan nomination to the Supreme Court. Tell me how YOU feel about the local school bond issue. I will gladly discuss anything with you. I'll share my views and give you my reasons. But to have a discussion, I need to know your thoughts, your feelings and your reasoning. Otherwise, there is nothing to discuss. I have you assume that for whatever reason you are just jerking my chain.
There can be no discussion with some nameless person who wrote something in 24-point type, in blue yet, and sent it around the world to ten thousand others before you received it. Let those people sound off all they want. Let them share their propaganda, their bigotry, their wild accusations. Let them make whatever ridiculous claims they want. You and I do not have to participate in the charade. Their tirade of misstatements, misquotes or political spin will have a life without you and I participating.
And PLEASE do not urge me to SEND THIS TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW. I do not participate in any of those chain-letter type programs. If you have something to say (or want to paraphrase someone whose opinion you value) and think it is of sufficient value, send it to me along with your thoughts. I don't need your encouragement to share it if I think it worth sharing. And whether I do or not is no reflection on my patriotism, my support for our armed forces, my politics, my religion or my respect for motherhood.
If you must send me something you received in your inbox, at least have the courtesy to attach a note at the beginning explaining why you are sending it and include some of your own thoughts or disclaimers.
As I said in the beginning, we are friends. I value and respect YOUR opinion. That doesn't mean I always agree you. Friends don't have to agree on everything, they just have to have some things in common, some things on which they do agree. Friends can just enjoy each other's company.
You may hold some beliefs that I find a little short of stupid -- and vice versa. You may do some things I would never do. But I am always interested in learning why you have the beliefs you have, why you behave the way you do, and I can still like you even though you can sometimes be such a jerk. You fascinate me at times, but you always make me happy to call you friend.
So, please stop sending me the propaganda generated by email friends who lack your taste. Some of it is funny, but seldom is it interesting or worthy of comment, much less the time needed to forward it to others in my contact list.
HOWEVER, if you have the insatiable urge to forward material to people in your contact list, highlight and copy this article and send it to them. They may think you are a first-class jerk, but then again, they may just thank you.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
