Idle Thoughts and Other Comments
Random ramblings from a curmudgeon spanning two millenia.
I know many of you have been asking why I haven’t written anything lately. Well you know that old saying about life getting in the way? Life didn’t just get in the way, it took a hard left turn and then hit me in the face. […]
A neighbor stopped by the other day to take a garden tour. While we were walking through the trails she asked the secret to our gardening. I told her It’s easy to grow stuff, the challenge comes down to managing the dead stuff, not just weeds but the flowers and garden plants too.
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Sometimes my wife Snowball’s projects don’t even sneak up and build slowly, they explode fully grown from the start. An example of this is the hobby greenhouse that we have. Pearl Harbor could not have surprised me more than what happened on a late spring day many years ago. We were sitting on the front porch enjoying a refreshing beverage. As the UPS truck pulls up Snowball says, “Oh that must be the greenhouse I ordered.” This being the first I had heard of any plans for a greenhouse, my mouth opened but no words came out. I just walked over to the truck and helped the somewhat overwhelmed delivery guy haul four 200-pound boxes to the garage.
[…]A wedding is just a funeral where you can smell your own flowers.
The loss of honey bees has been one of my major causes for many years. It has always been on my list of probable causes adding to the coming apocalypse. Now finally the government is creating a task force to study what is causing bees to die out.
The White House announced Friday its commitment to saving the mysteriously declining honeybee population, putting a task force of federally-backed scientists on the case.
I first learned about the loss of honey bees in 2007 and created a design based on those milk cartons showing lost children except with pictures and descriptions of honey bees and Colony Collapse Disorder(CCD). That is what they were calling the unknown cause of death for these insects.
This is a world-wide problem and in the intervening years, while European scientists have boiled the major issue down to the use of insecticides, specifically neonicotinoids, and mite infestations, research in the U.S. has been falling behind. Finally funds are being loosened up to allow some research.
Biodiversity is one thing that will help the pollinators of the world survive. For that we need many different plants for bees and other similar insects to pollinate in the wild. So one of the things that anyone with room for some dirt can do to help is grow some flowering plants outside. Even if its just posies on the porch in a pot, bees and other pollinators will find them and be able to pick up some nutrients. Get any flowering plants native for your area, set aside some space in your garden for them, and never use any herbicides or pesticides, ever. Besides, weeding by hand is great exercise.