By Jenny Peterson Many of us like to take our houseplants or tropicals outside during the warmer months for a bit of a vacation — after all, everybody likes fresh air and warm sun, don’t they? But taking these tender plants back in for the cooler months is a bit of an art form in itself. In order to protect them and get them ready for this change in their environment, here are a few [...]
The Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker By Gary Kline Probably everyone has been bullied at some point in their life. Usually the physical stuff is preceded by some kind of name-calling meant to make you seem wimpy or freakish. Imagine being called a sap; someone dull and easily duped. Then imagine being called a sucker on top of that; someone duped more than once. Now imagine being called yellow-bellied, which adds scared, cowardly or “chicken”. This is the [...]
The Pain of Rain by Gary Kline The pain of rain is mainly in the soil, but its effects are much further reaching. Any place that gets more than 25 inches annually of precipitation suffers loss of soil fertility, unless there is an accompanying amount of summer heat to evaporate much of the precipitation. The amount, kind and seasonal growth of the vegetation also figures into this. Here in Olympia, we get around 50 inches, mostly in [...]
Soil Loss - Stupidity Reigns! by Gary Kline Erosion of the land, coupled with exhaustion of soil’s fertility, has been the rule from millennia, almost everywhere around the world; wherever humans (that’s us) have cultivated (or attempted to cultivate) the ground for the production of food and fiber. Over and over, it happens with devastating consequences on whole regions and civilizations. We never learn. http://gsoil.wordpress.com/2012/10/02/images-of-soil-erosion/ In the absence of agricultural man (who’s been around for [...]
The Pain of Rain by Gary Kline The pain of rain is mainly in the soil, but its effects are much further reaching. Any place that gets more than 25 inches annually of precipitation suffers loss of soil fertility, unless there is an accompanying amount of summer heat to evaporate much of the precipitation. The amount, kind and seasonal growth of the vegetation also figures into this. Here in Olympia, we get around 50 inches, [...]
Here's another unconventional article on nutritional health by Gary Kline that will cause you to rethink what you've always been told about supplements. Supplements, The Wrong Road? by Gary Kline Don’t take vitamins! That’s the advice of Certified Clinical Nutritionist, Judith De Cava. What De Cava is referring to is synthetic vitamins, the kind that come out of bottles, generally as pills, and fall under the classification of supplements, but which are legally (and actually) [...]
Improving the Fertility, Condition and Tilth of Soils* by Gary Kline How does one improve the workability or tilth of a soil while also building its fertility? What do you do to a fairly compact soil which, shortly after spading-up or tilling, slumps back to where it was and, as a result, grows plants poorly? There are some definite steps you can take to remedy these and improve most farm and garden soils. Basically [...]
The fountain of youth turns out to be good eating. The following short article by Gary Kline provides food for thought. The Story of Khfaf Lasuria of Russian Georgia By: Gary Kline There are thousands of incredible stories to know about and reflect upon. I should say astonishing because incredible means, literally, not to be believed, whereas I’m talking about believable stories or occurrences which verge on the mind-boggling. Such is one story about 130 [...]
What is it that’s so magical about 4:30 in the morning? I don’t sleep well. I’m awake or up a number of times during the night for a variety of reasons. Lately I’ve been awake at 4:30 and I hear the robins and other birds start to sing loudly at that time, and it goes on for perhaps half an hour. They do this every morning, rain or shine, except probably not in winter. I [...]
BIRDER ALERT Going Home Again Red Headed Woodpecker - Melanerpes erythrocephalus This is a story about birds, mostly. It’s about Iowa kids and about going back to Iowa - - - this time to attend the funeral of my younger brother, John. It was a time to see the physical transformation of old haunts (mostly for the worst); and a time to see old friends and relatives, also transformed physically, and sometimes barely [...]
