It's become clear to me through posts and PMs that there are some gardeners here just waiting for the chance to discuss gardening!
So, I was thinking... how do you use gardening, or how does it affect you if you need a break, need some respite, need to relax, need inspiration....how do you use it as a therapy tool in caregiving?
What are your activities: Do you go out and pull weeds, read a magazine, design new beds? Look through garden catalogues? Go to garden stores?
And what interests have you added to your gardening? Visit estate or garden displays? Do you go to garden shows?
Does anyone design and plant Knot Gardens? Raised bed planters? Assistive gardens? Pollinator gardens (and have you thought of ways to help the bees and butterflies?)
Are your gardens primarily for pleasure or food, or a mix of both? Do you grow plants for medicinal purposes? Which ones, how do you harvest and process them? Any suggestions?
Do you grow plants that can be used in crafts, such as grapevines for wreaths and lavender for lavender wands? Do you make herbal products such as creams, lotions, chapstick?
What else can you share about gardening and the means in which it nurtures your soul?
After that I put them in a bucket and took them down to the river, but evidently rumours that ducks and geese love them are groundless, sigh.
"Suitors come out of their shell for the lovelorn snail.
It was thought to be condemned to a loveless existence after being born with a one-in-a-million anatomical abnormality.
But now Cupid's arrow has found Jeremy the garden snail after a global campaign to find it a mate elicited two suitors.
To mate, snails - all of which are hermaphrodites - slide past each other while facing the same direction so that their genitalia meet.
However, due to a rare genetic mutation that means its shell spirals anticlockwise, and therefore everything was on the wrong side, it was never going to happen for [Jeremy]. Angus Davison, at the University of Nottingham, wanted to learn about the genetics of left-sidedness, or 'sinistral mutation', and appealed for a partner for Jeremy so the offspring could be studied.
Two snail enthusiasts responded to say they had found fellow sinistral mutants, and now Jeremy is in Ipswich with one suitor, "Lefty," while he awaits the arrival of another from Mallorca. Ms Melton, snail enthusiast and Lefty's keeper, reported "flirting of the snail kind."
Next in line is Tomeu, found by snail farmer and [gulp! - Ed.] restaurateur Miguel Angel Salom in Mallorca. Rescued from the kitchen, Tomeu is now on its way to Britain."
Half of me thinks not more flaming snails! And the other half goes awwwwwwww
I am excited about my orchid. I know this is an indoor plant or a greenhouse plant...but I am excited that it is growing a blooming stem.
I would never rely on hybrid seed for vegetables that I absolutely have to have.
Sharyn, research natural methods to control white flies. Organic neem oil might be one way. If you're planting the cosmos in the same area and they repeatedly are attacked by white flies, try another area. That's one thing that organic gardeners do is rotate their crops.
Of course, that doesn't help if you can't take marigolds at any price. I know people are always yakking on about how useful they are but I must admit I can live without them.
I've tried cosmos before without success. This year I saw an especially pretty variety and decided to give it a go. Double flowered frilly white jobs, supposed to be eighteen inches tall. Well! They're currently four feet tall, they've taken over half the bed, they're not only still flowering they're still budding, and although they are indeed just as pretty as the packet said they would be, and the dill-like foliage is lovely, they've been at it for nearly three months and I have discovered that you can get quite tired of even the loveliest flowers. Especially when you are anxious to start digging in compost and dividing your perennials and rearranging your borders and they're in the WAY...
GMO's causes much concerns about it affecting our own DNA, leading to the wide spread problems we see now such as dementia, cancer, birth defects. I admit I am not educated or knowledgeable enough to understand it in the full context, but...I am concerned enough that when I can find organic, I buy it.
*Could* being the operative word. But the idea of assuming that the plant technology companies have done as much due diligence as you'd expect makes me for one very uneasy.
There's a level above this analysis, and that's that we in fact are also genetically modified, but it's "natural selection". Other than Dolly the Sheep, or Frankenstein, we aren't (yet?) test tube babies (other than by in vitro). But fetus genes aren't modified to produce blondes, brunettes, etc.
And, w/o getting deeply into the issue of how humans evolved, that would be a basic genetic mutation.
We've been modified as we've adapted over thousands of years. Humans certainly weren't the first species on earth. And I would guess that speaking rather than grunting has something to do with basic changes that affected vocal chords.
I am going to keep it though, because when talking to hubs, I could be at the sink
and he asks a question-thought we were talking-and then he is gone-just disappears-so often and so quickly. But now, when "Budgie" starts to sing, I know hubs went to the back porch. Somehow, that is less frustrating to me to know where he went in the middle of the conversation. Tweet tweet.
"GMO plants, on the other hand, are the result of genetic engineering. This is a process during which the plant’s DNA is altered in a way that cannot occur naturally, and sometimes includes the insertion of genes from other species."
Fortunately I cannot even read the labels on seed packets, that excuse could hold up in a court of law-"I didn't read it." Which is why I have yet to find seeds for growing alfalfa sprouts-hubs had to look for me! Got to get my eyes checked.
Cwillie, It now appears that Organic farmers would disagree-nothing sinister there-but your words were comforting to me anyway. I don't know what to believe anymore.
But when it comes to retailing to the average amateur gardener, they're being rather naive - ironically enough. What on earth makes them think we necessarily read the care labels???
Naomi Klein's book Shock Doctrine addresses the method by which companies like Monsanto and other powerful companies get a foothold in what at one time were referred to as Third World Countries, with the help of the US government's aid programs after disasters.
Google "Monsanto, Iraq" and read the blurb that's the first hit. It and others address how Monsanto wormed its way into being a literal sole source supplier of seeds to Iraqi farmers. Gives new meaning to American actions in Iraq.
I would bet dollars to donuts any twig you tried to root from a Monsanto plant wouldn't be anything like the original plant. I''m sure Monsanto's scientists are devoted to ensuring that doesn't happen.
That's one of the reasons gardeners are adamant about using heirloom varieties and seeds from their own stock, not to mention the whole controversy about GMOs.