Baby Birds

Discovered a bird's next in a tall evergreen shrub next to the house. Think how many individual items it took to weave that nest! Looks like two have hatched and one to go:

You're Riding Along the Road in France . . .

Imagine the scene: You're in France to watch the Tour de France and (for fun) you're riding up one of the biggest mountains that the racers will climb during the race -- when you look up and there's Lance Armstrong coming up alongside. Armstrong was doing his normal thorough reconnaissance work, riding the mountain before the race to get familiar with it. Because he always has a car and video crew following him, he caught the surprised American cyclist on tape: (unfortunately, both videos begin playing automatically, so you'll need to stop one of them and play them separately)

(I later deleted the two videos because, annoyingly, they start playing automatically every time the blog is accessed, and slow the loading time for the blog, etc.)

3:20" Overview of Preventable Disease

I've blogged before about the annual invitation-only TED (originally stood for Technology, Education, Design) conference where the best ideas in education, technology, health, and related topics are presented by some of the world's most creative thinkers and researchers.

One of the speakers in 2006 was the famous Dr. Dean Ornish who was among the first to prove that cardiovascular disease was preventable and reversible by changes in diet (moving to a primarily plant-based diet) and lifestyle. This 3:20" video has an amazing graphic presentation on the rise in obesity in America, plus a ton of other salient facts -- along with a hilarious graphic picturing the ascent and descent of man. If your Internet connection will handle it, look below the video window for a link to a higher-res version of the talk for better viewing.

Reaping What We Sow

I am just now reading Silent Spring, the book by Rachel Carson that warned the world in 1962 about the dangers related to the toxic chemicals that were (and still are) so freely being administered to an oblivious world in her day. I am amazed at how thorough her research was then (she was a trained marine biologist) and how prescient and prophetic it appears now.

There is so much that could be quoted, but one particular section was particularly scary. She discusses the latency factor of carcinogenic chemicals—how effects (e.g., cancers) don't show up in many cases until years after a person has been exposed to carcinogens. She gives many examples from her own era (1950's - early 1960's), and then says this (remember, this book was published in 1962):

"The full maturing of whatever seeds of malignancy have been sown by these chemicals is yet to come."

Jump to 2009 -- I don't have time to look up today's exact predictions, but I have read in recent years that current estimates are that one in three Americans will die of cancer, approaching two in three in the not-to-distant future. Thirty-plus years after she wrote about the "seeds of malignancy" that were being sown in the soil, water, air, and food we consume, the malignant harvest appears to be coming in on schedule.

How anyone today can be casual about the consumption of foods treated with poisonous herbicides and pesticides, using toxic cleaning products, home pest-control poisons, and other toxic resources is easy to understand: we don't have the long view of life. Today's actions may not bear fruit for many years, but they will bear fruit (Galatians 6:7).

Chalkbot

AS I'M SURE EVERYONE KNOWS, the Tour de France begins this Saturday and runs for 23 days (tune in to Versus at 9:30 a.m. Saturday for live coverage of the Prologue in Monaco, preceded by an hour-long special on Lance Armstrong at 8:30).

One of the great traditions of the Tour de France is for the Tour "crazies" to "paint" (with chalk, usually) messages on the roads of France prior to the Tour rolling through: the names of favorite riders, "Viva la Tour!", etc. This year, technology has come to road painting. Lance Armstrong's Livestrong Foundation, in connection with some American software guys who developed an amazing machine, will be spreading messages on the Tour roads in memory of cancer fighters and survivors.

The machine they developed—the Chalkbot—is pulled behind a pickup truck and has the ability to spray a message onto a roadway with perfect lettering. The message is typed into the machine, then software controls the pneumatic pumps that spray the liquid (?) chalk onto the roadway. Sure, it takes a bit of the romance out of the hand-chalked messages of yore, but it allows cancer fighters and survivors from all over the world to text their messages in and have them appear on the roadways of France during the Tour. Leave it to the Americans to integrate technology with tradition!

Check out the Chalkbot in action (short video) here.

Problem (Hopefully) Solved

It appears that the problem at blogger.com has been solved. It apparently had to do with people who use HTML code to create a post template that automatically formats new posts, which I do. But I haven't changed the code since I first set it up so something must have changed on their end -- how they were reading the HTML. Just tweaked a few things and I'm now able to create new posts -- hopefully. :-)

PROBLEMS AT BLOGSPOT

I haven't been able to post anything to this blog for the last 4-5
days. The message boards at Blogger.com are filled with people
complaining about the exact same issue I am having. It seems to be
affecting only a small number of blogs. The tech people at Blogger.com
have responded slowly and say they're "working on it." Someone posted
this work-around, being able to make new posts via email directly to
the blog instead of posting from within the Blogspot system. It works,
but I'm not going to invest time in lengthy posts with pictures via
that method.

Hopefully they'll have this problem fixed soon.

News Feature on My CSA Farm

The Charlotte NBC affiliate did a video feature on the CSA movement and featured New Town Farms and farmer Sammy Koenigsberg, the CSA I belong to. You can watch the video here. Look for the title "Local Farmers Paid to Supply Fresh Veggies."

How to Fix the Economy

The St. Petersburg Times allegedly (this came as an email to me and I haven't tried to verify it) asked its readers, "How would you fix the economy?" One person offered the following plan. I thought it was creative if not workable. And it only costs $40 million instead of the billions already spent to stimulate the economy.

"There are about 40 million people over 50 in the work force. Pay them each $1 million severance for early retirement with the following stipulations:

1. They MUST retire, resulting in 40 million job openings. Unemployment fixed.

2. They MUST buy a new American car, resulting in 40 million new car orders. Auto industry fixed.

3. They MUST either buy a house of pay off their mortgage. Housing industry fixed.

If more money is needed, have all members of Congress pay all their taxes."

As they say, the best ideas are often the simplest. (Disclaimer: I'm not suggesting this is a good plan; just creative and humorous.)

Pretty Ballerinas

I went to Columbia last Sunday for Ellen's and Arianna's ballet recital. Ellen was in two numbers and Arianna in one, and they both danced flawlessly. Nicely done, girls!

Yard Food

A small morning pleasure -- found this nice chard leaf . . .



. . . in the chard "forest" this morning . . .



. . . bent over from the night's rain. So I clipped it, took it in, added some shredded broccoli and carrots, lentil sprouts, a sliced mushroom, chunks of polenta, some (oil-free) mustard-base dressing, laid the stalk (crunchy like celery) down the middle (should have clipped some of Priscilla's spinach leaves to add, but forgot), and finished it with some garlic and herbs. Rolled it up burrito/wrap style and ate it for breakfast. Admittedly, not all those ingredients came from my yard or kitchen (sprouts), but they could have. So nice to eat out of the yard:

Brussels Sprouts Sprouting

There's always something new to learn in a garden. A couple of Brussels sprouts that were buried in my garden soil along with my other vegetable scraps found their way near the surface of the soil — and took root and sprouted. I've had other veggie scraps do this (onions, garlic, tomatoes, etc.) but these are the first Brussels sprouts to do so. They appear to be growing into full-on Brussels sprouts plants. Only time will tell if they mature and bear sprouts of their own. I wonder if individual sprouts can be broken off the main trunk (I have bought the intact trunks filled with sprouts at EarthFare rather than buying loose sprouts) and rooted in transplant medium, getting a head start on creating seedlings for planting?

I'll update this post with progress shots to see what happens. But for now, they are looking like real-live Brussels sprouts plants:

CSA Bounty Keeps Getting Better

The CSA return just gets more bountiful every week—and this is still May! In today's box (L. to R.): two HUGE heads of broccoli, beautiful (18" tall) lacinato/dinosaur kale, bag of braising greens, head of cabbage, bag of spinach, HUGE head of red leaf lettuce, bunch of carrots, bunch of white and black radishes, another head of the BIGGEST-ROMAINE-I'VE-EVER-SEEN lettuce, and a large bunch of red beets. All picked fresh at New Town Farms this morning. Thanks for your hard work, Sammy!

I'll be fixing salads tonight for the guys in our small group -- this is way more than I can eat by myself in a week. (Each share of the CSA is for a family of four, thus the quantity. So stop by for a salad or "green meal!")

Farm Tour

Went to a Farm Tour this afternoon at (certified organic) New Town Farms in Waxhaw, NC -- the farm in whose CSA program I participate. Here are a few pics from the tour:

Sammy (standing on steps, facing toward camera) welcoming the group:



Sammy's glass greenhouse used for plant starts each spring:



Sammy demonstrating the soil blocker used to make soil squares for starting seeds:



Melon starts hardening off before being transplanted:



Small pig herd, a heritage breed descended from Spanish pigs left on the Georgia coast by Spanish explorers. Sammy's came from Mt. Vernon, descended from a herd owned by George Washington:



Most of the laying flock, about five different breeds producing different kinds of eggs:



One rooster rules the roost:



The fields -- between four and five acres under cultivation:



Nearly waist-deep in garlic:



HUGE heads of Romaine lettuce:





Celery coming up:



Broccoli crowning:



A funky Italian broccoli:



And some Italian beets:



White, sweet turnips and greens:



Ten different varieties of fingerling potatoes:



Courtyard of Sammy's late father's home, now The Inn at New Town Farms:





An amazing farm operation, the result of 20 years of learning and hard work. Sammy's foodstuffs are sold at the Matthews Farmers Market, a 40+ member CSA program, and 10 Charlotte-area restaurants.

CSA This Week

What a pleasure to receive my weekly box from the New Town Farms CSA! This week's offerings are baby carrots, turnips and greens, broccoli (barely visible on left edge of pic), rainbow chard, two kinds of beets w/ greens, two heads of baby bok choy, kohlrabi, mixed mustard greens, and two heads of lettuce (the largest head of Romaine I've ever seen in my life). Thanks, Sammy!

Kruidenier Coat-of-Arms

My neighbor, John, prepared a .jpg image for me of the Kruidenier coat-of-arms that I received from my father. (Thanks, John!) After posting it to the Kruidenier Family Group on Facebook, Sebes Kruidenier (Netherlands) wrote the following:

William - this is indeed the coat of arms of the Kruidenier family.

From a footnote from the "official" Kruidenier geneaology book:

"This is a 19th century wax print from a collection, that the Mayor of West- and East-Souburg (named Kruidenier) started using in 1941 as coat of arms for the Kruidenier family."

So unfortunately not an ancient registry, but claimed in Worldwar II.

Cheers. Sebes.

WolframAlpha

I was blown away by the new WolframAlpha search engine. It's totally different from any other -- it is taking all the world's knowledge and putting it in retrievable form in formats that have to be seen to be believed. Go to the home page and click on "Watch Overview Video" in the right-hand column -- and don't let your jaw hit the floor. Anyone who does research on ANY TOPIC will make this a go to engine.

For instance -- I've always wanted to know the complete nutritional breakdown of the smoothie I make for lunch most days. When I tried entering all the things I put in the smoothie (about a dozen) I exceeded the limit of the engine. So I just put three to try it out: 1/4 cup fresh orange juice, half a banana, and 1 tbsp. blueberries. Here's what it returned -- pretty amazing: (I only wish it would let me enter all the elements.)

Lizzie Originals

Lizzie in Chicago has begun exercising her inner artist -- I love these paintings (acrylics on canvas). They are roughly 2' x 3' in size. My advice? Buy now before the word gets out and they skyrocket in price. :-) It's no wonder that her company has her go around to the other Chicago-area stores to help with "dressing" the inside of the stores. Good eye!

Flowers (the upper right corner has a piece of ceiling light shade that crept into the picture):







Just got this picture today -- beautiful!



Keep it up, Lizzie!

You Know It's Spring When . . .

When I got home from picking up my CSA box today . . . (see what was in it below -- gets more full every week)



. . . I noticed a pair of White Cabbage Butterflies bouncing around some transplants sitting by the front bed. That's when you know spring has arrived. They pupate over the winter and hatch into butterflies in the spring when they mate. The female goes about looking for members of the mustard family of plants (Cruciferae or Brassicaceae) on which to lay her eggs (which hatch into bad news caterpillars that devour these plants -- especially broccoli and cabbage). I didn't get a clear picture of the butterfly, but you can see the tiny egg she laid on a kale leaf (kale is part of the mustard family) -- the tiny white dot at the bottom edge of the leaf. Needless to say, the egg is no longer there:

Prayers for Priscilla

My friend, Priscilla, lives in Santa Barbara, CA, in the heart of the Jesusita Fire that has raged this past week. Unfortunately, the fire has touched her personally as it has many others. She sent the following pix that were posted on a local news website identifying the properties/addresses in some of the hardest-hit areas.

The first picture shows the firemen attempting to quench the flames that were attacking her house (she rents a portion of a home from a friend). Here's her description: Barely visible on the right is a fireman setting up a ladder to reach the corner of her house that had just started to burn. The side of the house was "scorched" and the eaves were beginning to burn; the glass in the windows on that side had shattered from the heat. A wooden storage structure in the back, along with a good portion of her (antique) shop inventory, was burned. She thinks the burning storage facility is what attracted the firemen to the house. I haven't received a follow-up from her, but my understanding is that the house, while badly damaged, was not destroyed.

The second picture is of the house across the street from Priscilla's, apparently fully engulfed and destroyed.

Priscilla's faith will keep her close to God as she works through this. But for all who pray, please ask God for wisdom and patience for her as she assesses the damage and figures out how to move forward. Fortunately, she has family and lots of friends from church and her business in the area. But, as it would be for any of us, these kinds of disruptions are a major body-blow -- but always result in unexpected opportunities to make course corrections, which we all need at times.

The promise that God causes all things to work together for good for those who love God and are called according to His purpose (Rom. 8:28) becomes real at times like this.

P.S. Update late Sunday from Priscilla -- the house was spared. A lot of scorched exterior wood, broken windows, burned fence, and the loss of the storage building and contents -- but the house is still standing. Thank you, Lord. Still, they're without power and lots of cleanup and repairs are looming -- your prayers of thanksgiving and for guidance are still appreciated.