Flowery Latin Words

Chrysanthemum

Rudbeckia

Hemerocallis

What's In the Garden?

Marjorum and a Cabbage Butterfly.
(Moths only fly at night.)


Casa Blanca -- the Lily is much better than the movie.


White Swan Coneflower and the bees.




Russian Sage. Don't you love the shades of blue?

Bluestocking Monarda (and another bee).

Reaping the Wild Oats

Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. --Galatians 6:7-8

Yesterday, in the middle of the pastor's powerpoints about the price of sin, something he said triggered a chain of thoughts I hadn't connected before. I've heard it said many times that we reap what we sow, later than we sow, and more than we sow but yesterday that statement connected with the cliche about sowing wild oats.

We offer excuses for the young, or the old, or ourselves "just sowing a few wild oats" and then they/we will settle down. But the pastor made a very good point: God forgives us our sins but he does not remove the consequences of those sins.

Like a noxious weed seeding itself in our gardens our wild oats have a pernicious way of hanging about and causing trouble long after the deed is done.

The actual Wild Oat plant, Avena fatua (also known as oatgrass -- more info here), produces oat seeds with projections which when moistened (ie by humidity) turn the seed and drill it into the ground to ensure germination. In addition to the hygroscopic awn, wild oat seeds have another feature to ensure continuation. They can go dormant, waiting for better growing conditions before sprouting. One plant can produce 60 to 2,000 new oats.

When we sow one wild oat seed -- the consequences are 60 to 2000 new wild oats infesting our gardens. And, because that is how things work in this world, we often find ourselves dealing with the consequences of other peoples oats. Our wild oat seeds, our sins, will bury themselves in other people's gardens and be reaped not just by ourselves but by those around us as well.

We are forgiven our sins.
We still must endure the earthly consequences.
We sow and we reap the wild oats.

Things I Learned Recently

Four year old boys can be entertained for about an hour by the game of running two feet and then throwing themselves at the ground repeatedly.

The cost of a Subway turkey sub plus tax equals $6.66. It does occur to me that taxes could be a manifestation of the spirit of the antichrist.

The false god Baal was a fertility god, and according to a program I heard on the car radio yesterday his consort was AshTART. Probably somehow related to Ishtar but where’s an OED when you need one? Does anyone out there know the etymology of the word “tart” offhand?

There are people with bumper stickers that say “Women for Obama – Vote for the Change.” Really. The Change… Women… voting for The Change… ummmm, yeah…
Then again: Mood swings, headaches, anxiety, depression, disturbing memory lapses…. That does start to sound like politics as usual, doesn't it.

Can You Hear Me Now?

I always wondered about the other side of the conversation on those commercials. You know the ones I mean. The guy takes a step and says "Can you hear me now? Good." He keeps on doing that and we are given the impression that he has a cell phone signal everywhere from the bottom of the Grand Canyon to the top of Mount Katahdin.

What if this guy is just wandering around talking to himself? Does he realize that you have to wait for an answer from the other end of the phone? "Can you hear me now? Good. I'm stepping over here. Can you hear me now? Good. I'm stepping over there." In all reality the actor in that commercial probably is talking to himself. I don't think they would have bothered with making a real phone call for filming the commercial (even if they did have a cell signal in those locations).

And what if the other end of the conversation is "No... Are you there? You're breaking up. Hello? Hello? I'm losing you. Hello!?"

What if that's how we pray sometimes? We think we are making a phone call straight to God. The technology works, but we aren't listening to the other end of the conversation or we haven't bothered to dial the number. Perhaps we sometimes pretend to pray -- like an actor pretending to make a phone call.

What if sometimes we get so busy saying "Good. I'm stepping over there now..." that we don't stop to wait for God's end of the conversation. We don't pause. We forget to wait for the "Yes, my child." or the "No, I'm losing you, come back." Are we hearing, are we listening for His end of the conversation?

Our Father, who art in Heaven... Can you hear me now?





Good.

Classical Gravel Road

The road curves,
sinuous and sonorous
with the tones of oboe,
opening on whole string sections
of orchestrated views.

Rain,
a passing percussion,
has laid the dust
and washed the roadside to notes
of clear summer greens

and lingering
thunderheads compose the symphony
in C major coming up
after the news break.

Re-Knit

Remember those super-wash merino hand knit socks I made for my niece? They're her favorite. Sammy-Dog is also quite fond of them and chewed off the entire cuff of one sock. I was called in for repairs.

Fortunately I had extra of the yarn still, and as you can see both socks are whole again. As I was knitting the new cuff onto the damaged sock it occurred to me that we treat our lives like Lily's socks sometimes.

We leave ourselves where the dog can chew great big holes in us and we get damaged. The great thing is that if we go back to God, our Maker, He always has more yarn to fix us. God can knit our lives whole again. All we have to do is ask.

You clothed me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews. You have granted me life and steadfast love, and your care has preserved my spirit. -- Job 10:11-12

Vaguely Followed Recipe

Although I no longer have cable, or indeed television of any kind (those boxes don't actually work), when I did have cable I loved watching the Food Network. Alton Brown's Good Eats was one of my favorites -- because once you know the science behind why bits of stuff do what they do in a recipe -- you don't have to be so uptight about following the recipe.

I am all about not following the recipe.

Which explains my French Toast Recipe. For the people who still want to be uptight about it Alton Brown's original French toast recipe is here.

To begin with I doubled it. Who only makes eight slices of French toast at a time? The stuff freezes. Make as much as possible in one fell swoop and pretend the leftovers are pre-packaged, ready-made, 1-2 minutes in the microwave, frozen convenience from the store French toast.

My General Instructions for French Toast:

2 cups dairy -- this for me is usually organic skim milk, but I've been known to use up heavy whipping cream before it goes off, and once I didn't have quite enough milk so I whipped in some sour cream.

6 eggs -- this is pretty much going to be chicken eggs (but if I ever get a flock of quail...)

4 tablespoons of a sweetener -- I'm not a fan of artificial sweeteners, but I've used honey, granulated sugar, raw sugar, maple syrup, jelly that didn't jell properly (gives it a nice fruity flavor)

and I add a sploosh of vanilla usually.
That's the custard. Well, once it's all mixed together it's the custard.

The bread -- anything from the heel end of a store-bought pumpernickel loaf to leftover from-scratch dinner rolls -- gets dipped in and coated on both sides. The amount of bread needed changes based on the type of bread used. A stale scone simply doesn't suck up the custard the same way cheap wonder-loafs do.

Then "fry." I don't use butter (or oil, or cooking spray, or shortening, or margarine) on my skillet -- because I have a wonderfully old, properly seasoned, cast iron skillet that doesn't need to be greased-up. If you have non-stick pans you know how convenient this can be -- of course with non-stick pans you have to baby them or they might give you cancer. Cast iron simply keeps you from anemia if you scratch it. I believe I have recommended this before but if you haven't got cast iron cookware... get thee to a flea market and find some.

Serve warm French Toast with syrup and/or fresh fruit.
Just in case you were wondering, that's any fruit, and any syrup (including the liquid jelly that didn't jell).

My Life According to [Sting] Meme

Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions. Pass it on. You can't use the band I used. Try not to repeat a song title. It's a lot harder than you think! Repost as "my life according to (band name)"

Your Artist:
STING

Describe Yourself:
IT’S PROBABLY ME

How do you feel:
I CAN’T SAY

Describe where you currently live:
FIELDS OF GOLD

If you could go anywhere, where would you go:
ISLAND OF SOULS

You and your best friends are:
LIKE A BEAUTIFUL SMILE

What's the weather like:
HEAVY CLOUD, NO RAIN

If your life was a TV show, what would it be called:
BOOK OF MY LIFE. or
YOU KNOW I HAD THE STRANGEST DREAM

What is life to you?
SPIRITS IN THE MATERIAL WORLD

Your last/current relationship:
THIS WAS NEVER MEANT TO BE,
and DON’T STAND SO CLOSE TO ME

Your fear:
HISTORY WILL TEACH US NOTHING

How you would like to die:
SENDING OUT AN S.O.S.

Your soul's present condition:
ROCK STEADY

Your motto:
TOMORROW WE’LL SEE

A Lump of Coal, Part 3

Within a decade of Perkin's discovery of aniline Mauve, chemical dye production was in full swing and histoligists were using artificial dyes to stain samples. Although at the start of the nineteenth century doctors and scientists had no idea that bacteria caused illness, by the end of the 19th century researchers like Robert Koch were combining the work of Louis Pasteur and the work of William Perkin. Koch used synthetic dyes to stain and to see (under a microscope) previously invisible unknown germs and identified the germs for anthrax, tuberculosis, and cholera.

Another scientist, Gerhard Domagk, worked with coal tar dyes to create a pill which when swallowed would kill specific bacteria. Domagk discovered that the red dye Prontosil was effective against blood poisoning (Streptoccus) in mice. When his daughter developed blood poisoning Domagk gave her the treatment, as yet untested on humans. She recovered -- although her skin also turned an odd shade of red for a time. Domagk had based his experiments on the work of German bacteriologist Paul Ehrlich, who pioneered the "magic bullet" ideas of medicine now used in chemotherapy treatments.

Today synthetic (aniline) dyes still play a critical role in the discovery of new treatments and scientific discovery. The mapping of the human genome would have been inconceivable without colorfast synthetic dye. Modern medicine has brought Perkin's research full circle. Mauve, discovered in his search for an artificial quinine, opened the door to artificial dyes now employed in medical research on the malaria vaccine.

A Lump of Coal, Part 2

William Henry Perkin's research into coal tar derivatives, begun over his Easter holidays at the Royal College of Chemistry in London, also produced synthetic scents. Twisting the highly unstable molecules, Perkin developed perfumes for rose, violet, jasmine, musk, even the cancer causing coumarin, which smells like fresh-mown hay (previously used in cigarettes).

The volatility of Mauve also led to applications in explosives. The possibilities seemed endless, Perkin had opened the door to discoveries which changed the shape of our world. Other coal derivatives include:

Benzene:: a flammable solvent used perfume-making, dry cleaning, and gasoline production (de-greaser).

Creosote:: which is used to preserve wood exposed to the elements, and also as an ingredient in cough syrup.

Naphtha:: a flammable liquid spot remover and varnish solvent. Stoddard solvent, a special grade of Naphtha developed by Atlanta dry cleaner W.J. Stoddard in 1924, is used in laundry stain treatments and soaps such as Fels-Naphtha.

Paraffin:: which is not wax but an odorless wax-like substance derived from coal tar, solid at room temperature but easy to melt. It is molded into candles, poured atop jars of jam and jelly to seal them, and added to chocolate in candy making.

Toluene:: another flammable solvent used in seemingly everything: explosives [TNT is trinitrotoluene.], antiseptic, paints and stains, cosmetics, textile dye, even saccharine.

Unlocking the mysteries in a lump of coal brought science and industry to new levels and medical science would benefit too. ...

A Lump of Coal, Part 1

In 1856 William Perkin discovered aniline dyes, inventing the first color-fast (doesn't wash out, doesn't fade) form of that purple shade known famously by the name he gave it: MAUVE. Perkin, age 18, had been trying to create a synthetic quinine (cure for malaria) from coal tar derivatives, and instead invented the first mass market synthetic dye.

Even Queen Victoria wore gowns of mauve -- setting the fashion for purples as the third stage of Victorian mourning colors. Grieving widows wore unrelieved black, then black with gray/silver, and finally moving to mauve purples following the example of the Queen.

Perkin went on to produce green, violet, and a commercially viable synthetic madder red. But Perkin and the scientific community did not stop there. Aniline (coal tar) based colorings form the majority of modern textile dyes, wood stains, household and automotive paints -- even food coloring, both water soluble dyes and fat soluble lake colorings come from aniline colors.

Mauve was one of the first links between science and industry and William Henry Perkin retired at the age of 36 a wealthy man. But the story doesn't end there. The man who's wife was the model for the Statue of Liberty had opened a world of possibilities inside a lump of coal.

S is for Sockies

Sockies -- a sock style baby bootie. This is my attempt to re-create the pattern for "The best booties Granny ever knit for you..." as remembered by my Mum. My earliest memories, unfortunately, do not include patterns for the booties I wore as an infant.

The Opal self-striped sock yarn I used will also make a pair of matching "big sister socks" (half done already, as you can see in the above photo). If you are familiar with knitting and Opal's "Sock Philosophy" these baby sockies are an easy adaptation and knit up quick.

SOCKIES:

Use a size 3 (US) needle and Opal self-striping sock yarn.

Cast on 36 stitches -- 12 per needle on 3 needles. (12/12/12)

Rib knit (k2, p2) for about an inch and a half.

Knit 3 rounds in stocking knit.

In the next round begin buttonholes (by casting off) -- 6 total holes-- 2 per needle -- 3 stitches each at end of round each needle should look like this IIxxxIIxxxII (I = stitch x-cast off stitch)

In the next round finish the buttonholes by casting on the missing stitches as you knit the round.

You should have 36 stitches again.

Knit a couple more rounds as desired and split for heel flap. Two needles for instep should have 9 stitches each. Heel flap (all on one needle) should have 18. (9/9/18)

Work heel flap (roughly square).

Turn heel: k9, k2t, k1, turn, s1,p1, p2t, p1, turn, s1...and so on. End on knit row.

Pick up 10 on gussets.

Begin reduction: Reduce at heel as normal AND reduce at sides of instep also (-4 per reduction)

Alternate rounds plain knit, then reduction until you have reduced to 24 stitches remaining.

Knit 3 rounds plain stocking knit.

Split for toe -- keep 6 stitches on each top needle and 12 stitches on bottom. (6/6/12).

Reduce toe until only 8 stitches remain (2/2/4) -- last knit round put onto 2 needles (4/4).

Finish with the Kitchener stitch.

Run a narrow grosgrain ribbon through the button holes, turn down the cuff, and there you have it.

Note to beginning knitters: If you've never knit socks before, baby socks are a great place to start. But these Sockie instructions are incomplete, abbreviated for those familiar with sock knitting. For a first attempt at baby socks I recommend the very thoroughly explained North Country Baby Sock pattern.

Herbs

There is something uniquely appealing in the use of flowering herbs in the garden bed. The way the air changes, becomes exotic or energizing when you brush past the scented stems spilling over the walkways.

Chamomile and Hyssop bloom together in this photo.

Funny how spending time in a garden can shift your priorities.

The Red-headed Plum-pecker

Moon Gold and Sun Gold are the two varieties of Oriental plum in our orchard. You have to get more than one variety, for cross pollination, if you want fruit -- and we want fruit. The cherry trees, we understand, are the domain of the birds. We never expect to get more than one or two cherries for ourselves. The blueberry bushes we cover, otherwise all berries would be bird food before they ever turned from green to blue. We resign ourselves, each year, to a few beak-marked apples... but the plums...

The plums had gone unnoticed, we thought. Last year was the first year that the young trees really produced a good crop of plums, fruit large enough to be sweet and worth eating. The birds seemed not to notice, or were in some way unimpressed with the fruit. So this year we have been watching the trees, salivating.

This year we have noticed, however, that even while the fruit is still green the birds are pecking it from the limb. They are eating our plums! Then today the nameless feathered "they" took form. I sat in the orchard for a few minutes with the dogs and watched as a red-headed woodpecker drilled into a plum.

It chortled.
Pecked the fruit again.
"Quk. Quk. Quk."
Peck.
"One more hole."
Peck.
"One more ant."
Peck.

And then I noticed the smaller bird sitting on the branch just below my flashing red-headed plum-pecker. Dark in color it blended with the branch and alone I might never have seen it there. I noticed the smaller bird because the talkative woodpecker pecked at the green plum and then stretched out it's beak to the smaller bird. A parent feeding a child. Our plums have become a lesson, teaching the fledgling how to find food, showing the unique ways that God provides for all His Creation, and blessing me with the joy of sharing that moment and that fruit.

Automated Reply

Summertime -- and the internet is busy with the back and forth of automated response emails. "I am not in the office." and " I am on vacation please contact..." and "Thank you for your inquiry, let us know if we can help you in any other way." I got that last one today and it irked me. Help me in any OTHER way? Can't you help me in the way I asked? Evidently not.

Sometimes it seems like that's all the help that people are willing to offer -- an automated reply. We go through the motions, but with pre-programed responses ready and waiting.

"Hi. How'reyoudoin'?" It's automatic, we don't think before asking. We've said it so often we don't even separate the words any more. And the pre-programed response: "Fine, and you?" or "Can't complain." a few cheerleader-types out there are always "Terrific!"

In church we have automatic responders too: It's the woman saying "Is there anything we can do for your family?" with her mouth, while her mind is already busy deciding which (horrible) casserole dish she will inflict on the already well-fed family desperate for someone to offer to pick up the kids after school. It is the Sunday morning greeter asking the young mother who has been attending for over a year "Is this your first time here?" And it is the elder who says "I'll pray for you." and walks away.

We mean well. We just aren't thinking. My parents always told me -- yours probably told you too -- think before you speak. I think that's good advice -- let's leave the frustrating automated replies to email.

Dinner Conversation

"That reminds me, I had a dream about grubs... Or was it maggots?"

"Maggots seem more normal."

"I don't know. I think grubs would be more common. Which is more common every day?"

"Maggots are cool. I think maggots would be more common than grubs."

"No, I think grubs would be more common. We dig in soil with grubs in it more than we walk by carcasses with maggots in it."

"Maggots are very smart."

"Do maggots have brains?"

"I don't know. Do flies have brains?"

"Some insects don't have brains... all they have are neural tubes."

It never occurs to anyone that this is not a normal dinner conversation for most people.

The Battle

Canon fire shatters the peaceful morning. It is the battle of Gettysburg. Not the original, mind you, but a re-enactment fought in the fields of the farmer down the road from our house. Union soldiers in their blue wool frock coats with original Waterberry brass buttons swarm from their parked cars while Confederates in jean wool sack coats swig diet cola from authentically detailed canteens. Some woman in a hoop skirt twice as wide as she is tall and wearing a polyester dress with more flounces than taste mutters under her breath about the nerve of those "stitch-counters" in their cage crinolines and authentic underpinnings "...well, what's wrong with my dress anyway?" And someone rides a white horse. There's always a white horse.

It is a scene worth seeing -- once. After one look, most locals consider it a scene worth avoiding. It gets pretty crowded.

Among the faux dead of the day's battle, are some dozen or so cases of dehydration and heat stroke, a few of which will be serious enough to warrant an ambulance ride. EMTs also treat the burns and abrasions of those new to the period lifestyle and unfamiliar with campfires and chopping wood with an (invariably dull) axe. And occasionally, a tree gets shot by some untrained soldier who forgot to remove the ramrod from the barrel of his musket before firing.

For all the jumble of good and "farb" mixed together in this hobby it still attracts thousands of people. Reenactments flourish: Civ War, Rev War, Great War, Lost War, French and Indian, 1812... and in the midst of this I wonder. What battles do we fight in our daily lives that so many seek this outlet? Is there something to the idea of a time "when men were men" and women wore skirts? Is it all just romanticized honor and a longing for a simpler time?

What do you think?

Switzerland in Summer

Three new varieties of daisy are blooming n the garden right now. "Fluffy" is still in the bud stage, and "Crazy Daisy" is a little spent and fading round the edges -- it was the first to bloom. "Switzerland" the third variety is just coming into it's own right now though, as you can see. Deceptively simple, the daisy is a member of the composite family. Composite -- as in made up of many parts. Each "flower" is actually hundreds of tiny flowers. On the daisy the yellow centers are made of a type of flower known as Disk flowers and the white "petals" are actually a second kind of flower known as Ray flowers. Both types of flowers, held together by the scaly structure of modified leaves known as the Bract, form the total composite flower.

Shades of Confederate Gray

"Common sense should play more of a role in historical evaluation than it often does." -- Gary Gallagher

September 22, 1862: the first part of the Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves in states engaged in active rebellion against the Union. The slaves in the Confederacy -- unless the state returned to the Union by January 1, 1863.

January 1. 1863: the second part of the Emancipation Proclamation named 10 states in which slaves were now to be considered free, specifically exempting the Virginia counties (now West Virginia) which sided with the Union and various portions of Tennessee and Louisiana which were under Federal control. Those areas under the control of or loyal to the Union were allowed to keep their slaves.

December 6, 1865: the 13th amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude (except as punishment for crimes) in the entire United States.

Shouldn't those dates line up better? And why does the Emancipation Proclamation specifically not applied to Union slave owners?

Randall J. Holcombe has an excellent article (link) pointing out the differences between the North and the South. The majority of constitutional variations had to do with morally neutral measures like making the post office be self-sufficient. Most of the differences between the Union and Confederate Constitutions relate to innovative legislation closing loopholes -- each congressional bill could only be about one thing with no riders sneaking in, government contractors weren't to be given blank checks, tariffs were practically eliminated, and line-item veto was given to the president.

In the middle of his praise for all these anti-pork-barrel measures Holcombe also says: In broad outline, the Confederate Constitution is an amended U.S. Constitution. Even on slavery, there is little difference. Whereas the U.S. Constitution ended the importation of slaves after 1808, the Confederate Constitution simply forbade it. Both constitutions allowed slave ownership, of course.

You know me -- I had to look that up and see if it was true. The idea that the Constitution of the Confederate States imposed harsher restrictions on Slavery than the Northern States seemed a bit far fetched. I found multiple websites offering line by line comparisons of the two documents. (link)

And it's true, I mean the Confederacy clearly upholds the rights of slave owners -- but so does the US constitution. On top of which, the US Constitution never banned the importation of slaves while in Section 9 of the Constitution of the Confederate States of America it says:

(1) The importation of negroes of the African race from any foreign country other than the slaveholding States or Territories of the United States of America, is hereby forbidden; and Congress is required to pass such laws as shall effectually prevent the same.
(2) Congress shall also have power to prohibit the introduction of slaves from any State not a member of, or Territory not belonging to, this Confederacy.

Walter Williams (link) in an article (link) in the Washington Times says: Many [blacks] knew Lincoln had little love for enslaved blacks and didn't wage war against the South for their benefit. Lincoln made that plain, saying, "I will say, then, that I am not, nor have ever been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races ... I am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race." The very words of his 1863 Emancipation Proclamation revealed his deceit and cunning; it freed those slaves held "within any State or designated part of a State the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States." It didn't apply to slaves in West Virginia and areas and states not in rebellion. Like Gen. Ulysses Grant's slaves, they had to wait for the 13th Amendment, Grant explained why he didn't free his slaves earlier, saying, "Good help is so hard to come by these days."

You could have knocked me down with a feather. What does all this mean?

I think it means that we see history through the eyes of those who write history and too often we accept what we are told without looking for all the facts. As much as the Victorious Union would like to claim it's only role in slavery was as a liberator -- the facts do not bear out this conclusion. Not all the states joined the Confederacy over issues of slavery (link) and there were quite a few slaves in the North (link).

We should not be afraid to admit the truth of these facts. Denying history does not change the past, nor does it absolve the North of slavery to claim the Civil War was all about slavery when it wasn't. Our ENTIRE Country, like many other colonial countries was founded in a time of slavery. It was an accepted and legal (and completely reprehensible) practice on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line. The fact that we know better now does not change that historic reality.

One Year

I realized, as I thought about what to blog for the upcoming holiday, that I'd blogged over the Glorious Forth before. I'm not sure I can believe it but, this blog has been here a year already. Does it seem that long to you? I think this has been a short year. Time, which we know to be relative, simply sped past. Now June is over. July begun. Before we know it the pools will close the schools will open and Christmas will be coming.