Fruit Farming, Thrift Store Shopping, and Greenwashing.

The peach trees we'd planted last fall fruited this Spring and FINALLY, just this week, the fruit ripened enough to eat.

Only one of the two trees fruited. I don't know why. It doesn't look like it takes two trees to make peaches, but if the Eastern tree wants to pretend to be the dad, I'm not gonna argue.

11 peaches showed up one day on the Western tree, not very big by peach standards, but these trees are only 3-4' tall.



Realizing that I'd have competition for peaches from insects, funguses, and critters, I made some little "coats" from some knee-highs on sale at Walgreens for close to nothing.



Trying to close with twist-ties resulted in the loss of two peaches, so I just accepted that I couldn't close the coats at the stem.

As they changed color from green to "peach", we wondered how we'd know when they were ripe. Southern peaches tend to ripen by end of June, early July, I read on the internet, but this week the first peach fell off the branch to the ground. It was undamaged, so I checked the others and picked one that looked just as ripe. We ate both mid-day and they tasted just like peaches ... GOOD! The NEXT day, however, birds found the peaches. I found one on the ground with peck-marks and two on the tree with peck-marks, so picked the two, picked UP the one on the ground, and set out bird-chasers in the form of CDs hung to the tree:

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The CDs catch the light of the sun and mirror all kinds of bright lights and reflections at the birds, scaring them away. I noticed yesterday, though, that the neighborhood squirrel was in the yard snooping around. I'd not seen him/her venture off the top of the back fence previously, and I DO NOT want him in my yard messing with my gardening, so I'll be looking for ideas on cheap, sticky stuff to keep him/her away from my treasures.

After I'd hung the CDs, I noticed black insects apparently trying to mate on the bark of the trees. Who knew peaches had peach borers? I checked the trunk and neither tree had been affected by the larva, so these adults had come from other trees in the neighborhood, kindof like the other insects that somehow find my plants in their travels.

My other fruit choices have had problems of a different magnitude. The strawberries had simply dried out too much by the time I planted them, so I'll need to replace them. The raspberries are off to a VERY slow start on the West side of the house, not suffering from any apparent insect damage, but a nitrogen deficiency which I just this week resolved by pouring my pee on them. (I'm really trying to go "organic" in my growing experience.) The blackberries looked to suffer from spider mites, but never recovered through my organic "cure", so I cut them down to the ground and they came back. The blueberries looked to suffer from red spot fungus, calcium deficiency, and maybe spider mites, but they're looking better this week, too after spraying with dish soap, milk, and cornmeal juice. Both the crepe myrtle and rose bush out front suffered from either powdery mildew or black spot funguses from all the rain we had in Spring, so I made a cornmeal juice concoction that seems to be helping.

In other news, some people are taking advantage of people who want to live more environmentally friendly by greenwashing them.

The thrift store had a 30% off sale yesterday, so I asked Em to take me before he went to work and after I had him take me to our local groceries for the weekly shopping/stockpiling. I spent $47.00, but got the most FUN clothing! Two pair of capris (one with all those pockets up the legs), 3 short-sleeved shirts, 2 long-sleeved shirts, a most delightful pair of soft pjs, two hats and another glass pantry container. With 30% off, I headed for the "better clothing" aisle, elitist that I am. No. 1 stopped by yesterday for a boggle and tried to go home with my "pocket" capris.

For those of you (family members) who have participated in forwarding the smear Emails about Barack Obama, there's a new website to address your fears.

6 ways mushrooms can save the world.

TOO COOL!

I haven't been keeping up with environmental news. This is already a month old.

Our SummerSpring Vacation.

It was almost time for Em to go back to work at the Race Track in early April when the annual Tunica, MS golf trip convened. Em likes to golf with his son there, but for the 2nd year in a row we made the trip and circumstances prevented his son from attending. Circumstance THIS year was weather. Similar to 3 years ago, golf got rained out most every day. Unlike last year, however, we drove through lots of rain, too.

Maybe adding an annual aside, we stopped to visit with my oldest brother, his wife, their oldest daughter, and her fiancee on our way to Tunica, meeting them at PearlRiverResorts. They go there once/week to game and had a coupon to get us a hotel room for lots of money off the regular rate.

Had a good time with them, but didn't get pictures. We got to talking, gaming, and having fun together and the thought of taking photos got lost in the shuffle. Having learned our lesson from that, we'd barely given oldest brother's youngest daughter and HER beau a greeting before we whipped out the camera to get a remembrance. They're living in Biloxi currently and Biloxi was our stop after Tunica and before New Orleans. Hi, girl!







From Biloxi, we went on to N'awlins. We'd been there once or twice before Katrina (in our younger days). I don't think Katrina had anything to do with it, but the town didn't seem to offer us the same excitement it once did. Might be due to us being a little tighter with our money these days, but Bourbon Street looked pretty boring to us and we found ourselves enjoying more the “off-the-beaten-path” attractions.

We stayed at The Lamothe House, which is less one house and more several houses in the French Quarter of New Orleans.

Lamothe House was kindof a cross between hostel and motel. We had a private room with bath, TV, etc. (although the furnishings were antique and kindof smelled like OLD) off this gangway:



Breakfast was offered in a community setting similar to a hostel:



We had interesting conversations at breakfast with people from Europe, Canada, and South America before going off to see the sites each day. Of course we talked politics, as they were excited about the possibility of Obama.

Several movies were being filmed during the few days we were there. This guy was starring in one of them:

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Of course, we spent a little time at the downtown Harrah Casino; we pretty much gambled our way through this whole one-week or so vacation ... an hour here, an hour there at various casinos on the way, meeting Lou and family at a casino, moving on to Tunica casinos, going from there to Biloxi and MORE casinos, and then the Harrah and even Shreveport on our drive home from N'Awlins.

We got so “gambled out” that it took us until this past week to head for Oklahoma for a day again. With the cost of gasoline as high as it is, we decided to try the blue-hair bus that takes folks to Winstar each Wednesday morning from maybe 10 minutes from our home. It takes twice as long on the bus, but there's a certain entertainment aspect to it and it's both more cost-effective and environmentally friendly.

Haven't yet gotten into too much gardening yet this year, but the time's drawing near. For some reason, spring cleaning seemed more important after vacation and I found myself washing windows and blinds, reorganizing cupboards, pantries, closets, etc. Will get to garden blogging next.

WOW! This is really good and more important than our vacation or how my peach trees are doing. It's an interview with Reverend Wright by Bill Moyer.

I've only listened to the first 30 minutes (Part I) and will now listen to the second part (Part II), but WHO KNEW this was who Reverend Wright was based on media's representations of the man?

Journalism has really sucked in the last decade and I offer kudos to Bill Moyers for giving us an example of what journalism SHOULD be.

Earth Day, the lazies, our Spring Vacation, and nuking Iran.

Just a reminder that today is Earth Day. The media seems to want to make this whole week Earth Week, which doesn't hurt my feelings AT ALL.

I'm WAY behind in blogging. I've got some stuff from our Spring vacation and some stuff regarding our peach trees, but haven't had the urge to get everything coordinated into posts because I've been distracted by Politics. It's looking like if Obama doesn't win the Democratic primary I won't be voting at all in November and that thought just rankles me. I take voting very seriously; just ask my kids.

The last Democratic Debate had Hillary mentioning how if she's POTUS she'll nuke Iran if they decide to attack any country in the Middle East. Keith Olbermann asked her about that in his interview with her last evening:



Here we go again with a warmonger vying for the White House.

We need sanity in the WhiteHouse! Nutballs at the head of governments lead people to believe that the entire populace consists of nutballs, and that's just not true.

Chile's Clutter Challenge - Cognition!

If anyone has been keeping up with Chile's Clutter Challenge a lot of people have been trying to clean up their lives. This is probably part of what inspired a recent Ureka moment for me.

I'm a perpetual hopper, going from one idea to another. While this allows for massive breadth in knowledge, it normally fills the everyday mind with WAY too much to focus on. I lack focus. Well, focus is really just a function of the mind, and the mind is what you train it to be/do.

Meditation is nothing new for me. I've discussed it with quite a few different people who follow the practice and am amazed at the variety of styles people use. I've mostly followed the "no mind" philosophy and tried to eliminate though by letting ideas drift away. A friend of mine seemed appalled at that fashion. She was sure that meditation must be towards a goal or purpose. Other friends visualize different things, which seem to affect the body via suggestion or metaphore.

If meditation can manipulate the brain's ability to perform certain functions, why can't it improve focus? What about other brain functions? To test this, I'm changing my meditation to a meditation on a single object. Today was the number 1. Try to keep the word/image/concept of one in your consiousness for 5-10 minutes.

Having Trouble? I sure did.

Endless War ... On The Installment Plan.

First day back from vacation (which I'll blog about later this week), but going through Email I couldn't help noticing:



Our tax dollars at work.

I know ... I know ... Obama's speech from today on race IS here (just like you thought it would be!).

I've become SO predictable!



And, Diane, it's not what you think. It's worse!

Here's how JFK handled HIS religion problems in 1960.>

March 4, 2008.

It's time, Texas!



March 9 update: It looks like Obama won the caucus portion of the Texas Democratic Primary, so our efforts on March 4th were not for nought. It was a REALLY exciting evening of caucusing as you can see:



Totals can be seen HERE.