I'm So Verklempt

Treklet just made my day..no, my month!

She was working independently on a writing assignment from school. I had not looked at the assignment yet, and didn't know what the topic was.

I was on my MacBook and saw a notification pop up that a document, mom.doc, was saved to our school dropbox, so I went to take a look at it. Here is what I found:

I think my mother is amazing because she is a multi-tasker. For example, she can teach me while doing the laundry, cooking, and talking on the phone. She is also very smart and is a great teacher. She can do almost all of my problems in her head and know the answer right away. She is always honest and can not tell a lie.

My mom is very talented. She can sing like an angel and can work a computer like a maniac! I have almost nothing to change about her but if I did, I would ask for her to be less busy. Her talents are what make her unique. My mom does not sing that often, but when she does it sounds super! What I love the most about my mom's talents is that she is fantastic at taking care of me. She says she will do anything for me. And I would do anything for her.

My mom teaches my lots of things including, be content with what you have and do not be greedy or jealous. She also teaches me to never lie. She says that lying will just lead to more lies. I try my best to follow that rule. She also says to be healthy! She goes on bike rides and finds fun ways to make things like healthy cakes.

My mom is the best because she loves me and because she takes care of me. She is very funny and hard working and I love her very much.

WOW! Can I possibly live up to that picture she just painted of me?! 

(she's obviously a very talented fiction writer)

Mad About Valentines

I have a twitter pal who shares a love for the show Mad Men with me (you know who you are, Sassy!). She had already seen most of it before me, as I have just marathoned five seasons in the past few months on Netflx. I have had so much fun discussing the episodes and characters with her as I get caught up! I'm one disc away from being up-to-date and dreading having to wait a week between episodes when Season Six begins in April.

I got a little silly and creative this afternoon and designed some Mad Men Valentines for her. I used photos of our favorite bad boy, Don Draper, and added references to some of the ad slogans from the show.

I simply couldn't wait to share them until Thursday, so I posted them to her on Twitter first. Here they are now for the rest of the world. You probably won't "get" them if you haven't seen the show.

Household Stuff

I'm pleased with this idea I got from Pinterest this week:

Salad-in-a-jar

 I've had a vacuum sealer for years, but have made little use of it, other than to seal bags of meat or leftovers for freezing. I have the jar sealing attachment and have probably never used it before.
Romaine lettuce is cheap at Costco, but the packages contain 6 large heads and by the time we get to the last 2 it's almost always turning brown.

This leads me to another subject: my garden. I built a couple of wooden raised planters last year and placed them just outside my fence. I extended some irrigation tubing from the risers out there and planned to grow larger plants that take up too much space in my other vegetable beds, like pumpkins and zucchini. Within days the squirrels had eaten my plants and I gave up. Squirrels aren't usually a problem inside the fence, as my schnauzers tend to murder, mutilate, and or eat any that get inside the yard in hope of grabbing a few bird seeds.

After our trip to New Zealand, I was inspired to get my garden into better shape. I hated seeing those wooden boxes that I spent money and sweat on go to waste, so I devised a squirrel-proofing plan. Here is what I came up with. It took me 2 afternoons to build, without a plan. Yup, I just improvised with a staple gun and some cable ties. CABLE TIES FTW!

I can lift the entire cover off in one piece, weed, fertilize or harvest, and then replace it.   I planted cool weather crops for now, lettuces, bok choy, kohlrabi, and chard. It's been a whole week and nothing has nibbled at my plants and the covers are staying put. Our guinea pig will have fresh leaves every day and when my lettuces grow big I can keep them fresh in vacuumed jars!

In order to keep track of all the various goodies I've planted, I simply took pictures of each bed and labeled them with Skitch. It's my first practical use of the service. If you don't know what Skitch is, you can check it out here: Skitch from Evernote
Skitch is a free app from Evernote (also free) which you can use with your iPad, Mac or PC to draw on your photos or annotate files. I can open the files from any device and they are synced into my Evernote notebook! Here is an example of one of my planters, after Skitching:

I can continue to annotate the file with fertilization, pests or harvest notes. I also took pictures of the informational signs at the nursery when I bought the plants. Into the Evernote Garden Notebook they go! Then I can refer back to this information later. This one is especially handy for me, because I'd never heard of this lettuce before!

So my outside-the-fence garden is doing well but inside my fence is another story! A couple of weeks ago I spent a day gardening in the rain. I weeded my planters. I turned the soil, I laid out new weedcloth. I gingerly planted tender young cauliflower, broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbages, kale, sweet peas, carrots and asparagus. It was HARD work.

Me and a couple of hoes in the rain.

It rained for 3 days. On the 4th day I went out to inspect my veggies, knowing they'd be happy after the long gentle soaking rain. WHAT? Something had been nibbling the leaves! I blamed slugs, even though I didn't see any. What else could it have been in the rain? So I treated the area with Sluggo for organic gardens. 

Just one week later, this was all that was left of my hard work. 

Mostly stems. :-(

 I've never had this kind of trouble inside the fence before. It's obviously not slugs. Today I found a couple of baby plants laying on the concrete outside the planter. Grrr... perhaps it's a raccoon, skunk or opossum. The dogs keep the yard patrolled during the day, and rabbits and gophers can't reach them. My next big project will be to devise some sort of mesh covering for these. Yeah, right, when I have time...(i never have time)

By the way, when I was digging in one of my vegetable beds I unearthed several of these. They are tomato hornworm pupae. Remind me to plant my tomatoes in a different bed this summer!

Finally, I'll just say a few words about hummingbird feeders. I have four of them. At certain times of the year they need refilling almost daily. I see many people filling their feeders with that red mixture that you can buy in stores. Please DO NOT use that stuff! It's more expensive, and the birds certainly don't need artificial dye. They will see the red on your feeder and investigate.

All you need to put in your hummingbird feeder is sugar water. Mix 1 part sugar with 4 parts water. That's all. Many people boil the water, dissolve the sugar, and let it cool. I just use hot tap water.  Stock up on regular granulated sugar when it goes on sale, usually just before holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter.

Clean your feeders EVERY time you refill them. Use a tiny brush to get the mold and dirt out of the little feeder holes, and use a bottle brush to clean inside. Use HOT water and a little vinegar or household bleach if you've accidentally left them to get moldy. Be sure to rinse very thoroughly.

With a regularly stocked supply of nectar, we get 5 species of hummers in our yard here in Southern California: Anna's Black-chinned, Costa's, Allen's and Rufous. The latter two are seen in migration, and the first three nest here. We've had tiny nests in our yard and they are amazing.

In Search Of....

I'm a winner!!

I commented on an post over at TrekMovie and won the In Search Of... boxed set! Click here to read about the prize and see my winning comment: Review: In Search Of… The Complete Collection & Your Chance to Win! [UPDATED: Winners announced for In Search of... box set!]

My prize arrived the very next day after the announcement of the winners. Although the list price of the set is $149.99, it is available on Amazon.com for $117.08.

The seven seasons set is attractively packaged in a fliptop box. Let's open it up.

Each Season is 3 discs, for a total of 21 discs. 

I began at the beginning: Season One, Disc One

The theme music VERY1970s.

There are 4 episodes on the disc. I click on the first episode, "Other Voices." The mystery is whether plants communicate and have feelings.

Plants have feelings. Marcel Vogel, a research chemist San Jose, CA is the first person we are introduced to. He is having children try to feel the plants' energy by hovering their hands above the plants. Vogel was known for his mainstream scientific work as well as some fringe science theories. He is best known for designing the Vogel Crystal Cut, which purportedly focuses the "Universal Life Force." Learn more here: Wikipedia Vogel Entry  and here: Legacy of Marcel Vogel

Next we see Nimoy in his signature turtleneck. I swear that's all he wore in the 70s. Turtlenecks. Did he get a lot of hickies? I digress...back to the DVD.

We are now at the Denver Botanical Garden. Music is being played for the plants.  Musician/Biologist Dorothy Retallack experimented with many different types of plants and music. While keeping water and light levels equal, she played hard rock in one chamber, soft, soothing music in another. Plants leaned toward speaker in the chamber where soothing music was played, but the hard rock plants shrank away & died. Time lapse photography over several days showed this dramatically.  However, my googling skills have turned up several experiments that got the opposite results, and much discussion about the many variables in these experiments. After reading several web pages devoted to the topic, I might conclude that music, or sound in general, may be an energy source that plants may be attracted to. Here's a good site that details her experiments more than the show did: Dorothy Retallack's Positive Music Experiments

Kendal Johnson and his  Kirlian photography is up next. He takes photographs of leaves exposed to electrical energy. My first impression is that he looks like a hippie with his shirt embroidered with flowers and laid back attitude. He is explaining photographing energy in the air. Yes, photographing the AIR. He says he asks people who have a "green thumb" to hold their hand over a wilted leaf and the photograph glows more. These people have more glow in Kirlian photographs of their fingers.  I looked up Kirlian photography and I just don't see how this proves anything about plants communicating. I think the photographs simply depict coronal discharge, and variations can be attributed to humidity levels around the object and perhaps chemical variances. I mean, they are sending voltage through the subjects, right? Here are some links if you're curious:

  Wikipedia entry on Kirlian Photography  

How Does Kirlian Photography Work?

It does produce pretty pictures, though:Kirlian Photography Images

The final wacko, um, I mean researcher in this episode is Cleve Baxter, polygraph expert for CIA who uses polygraphs to study plants. He cuts his own hand, to see if he gets a response from the plant. WTF? The experiment fails..perhaps he's performed it too many times? He tries again with an assistant. He cuts her hand (shouldn't he have gotten a fresh plant instead of a fresh victim?)  Oh wow, the plant reacts to her as he slices her hand! He concludes that it is a reaction to her apprehension and pain, pointing out the spike on the graph at the point when he is about to cut her.  

He also believes the bacteria in yogurt has "primary perception"  He puts yogurt in a test tube, inserts silver wires in the yogurt and hooks them to the lie detector. Next he stirs some antibiotic into some yogurt in another beaker. The yogurt in the test tube does not react.  New experiment: He pours milk into some yogurt in a separate beaker. After 20 seconds the bacteria finds nutrient in the milk. The other yogurt in the test tube reacts. It wants some milk, too. WHAT? 

So the conclusions are that plants and even bacteria can react to something that is happening to other life forms nearby. 

Nimoy asks, "Did you ever wake up with a feeling that something happened to someone you know? ...Plants may have carried the message to you." This reminds me of the blossoms in Narnia telling the Princes that Aslan was dead. He then says that plants can understand us and communicate, but for the time being we can only listen to them with our machines. One day those machines may be unnecessary.

Because I'm a curious person, I watched Episode 2 immediately after being astounded by my newly acquired knowledge that my plants are frustrated to no end in trying to talk to me. I'm so distraught, I'll just present my notes on the episode in bullet form.

Strange Visitors 

• The high-pitched electronic theme music is really awful.

Disclaimer over credits: this series presents information based in part on theory and conjecture. The producers purpose is to suggest some possible explanation, but not necessarily the only ones to the mysteries we will examine.

• Native American legends/origin stories. Man and Animals were the same. 
• stone ruins in Mystery Hill in New Hampshire. 
• Indians of this region did not build in stone. Where did these ruins come from?
• Wyoming: Medicine Wheel, another curiosity in stone. Covered in snow much of the year. Most investigators now agree the wheel was an indian calendar. Lack of settlement breaks it's ties with Mystery Hill. Why was this mentioned?
• Mystery hill's layout reminiscent of ancient european cities. walled streets ending at a type of temple. 
• Charcoal deposits between the rocks have been carbon dated at 3000 years old.
• Comparing now to Druids at Stonehenge. Were human sacrifices made on large flat slab with grooves in it? Did blood once run down those grooves?
• an inscription on a boulder is thought to be Phoenician, the style of masonry is the same. So the conclusion is that the Minoans crossed the seas from Crete to North America. Perhaps they saw no future here and left. 

Here is the Wikipedia entry on the site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America's_Stonehenge  

I'm skeptical of the explanation given on the show. Especially the sensationalism of the sacrificial stone. 

I like this explanation from the above link: "Artifacts found on the site lead archaeologists to the conclusion that the stones were actually assembled for a variety of reasons by local farmers in the 18th and 19th centuries. For example, a much-discussed "sacrificial stone" which contains grooves that some say channeled blood closely resembles "lye-leaching stones" found on many old farms that were used to extract lye from wood ashes, the first step in the manufacture of soap."

After watching the first two episodes, I am hypothesizing that most of the topics presented in the series are sensationalized and after 25 years of further study many of the theories presented have probably been disputed. It was probably a riveting show in the 1970s, before the instant-answers and collective knowledge of the internet, and I'm sure it sparked quite a bit of interest and imagination in its viewers. I can see how it would hold a nostalgic place in original viewers' hearts. 

To the Office of the Prime Minister of Japan

I am saddened and shocked that your government still allows the daily capture and slaughter of dolphins in Taiji cove.

 I am dismayed that the dolphin meat is sold to Japanese citizen and served to Japanese schoolchildren, despite it being contaminated with mercury.

 I am sickened that instead of preserving and protecting Japan's national resources, you allow the destruction and squandering of it. Why not consider promoting tourism to the area?
The slaughter of cetaceans in Japanese waters is not sustainable.

 Millions of people worldwide consider dolphins and whales to be intelligent social creatures and are appalled by the practices those that break up their families and keep them in captivity.

 I urge you to do the right thing, to protect your citizens, the environment, and your national heritage and stop the Taiji dolphin hunts.

 ********************

This took 5 minutes of my day. You can do it to. Here's the link:
http://www.kantei.go.jp/foreign/forms/comment_ssl.html

  Wanna know more? Click some of these:

Toxic Bureaucracy
Cetacean Kill
The Cove

  and follow this account: @CoveGuardians

Non-Antarctic Penguins at the Antarctic Centre

Our last day in NZ was spent at the International Antarctic Centre in Christchurch. I made a video of pics and vids.
International Antarctic Centre

more pics

We had a great day, learned a lot, and got to meet a Blue Penguin up close.

After a delayed flight from Christchurch to Auckland, we barely made our flight out of Middle Earth. I'm posting this on FREE wifi at a restaurant somewhere in Orange County, CA! Soon we'll be home and ready to crash in our own beds.

Reality is beckoning.......

This is our last full day in Aotearoa. We have left the beautiful farm at Paua Bay for Christchurch. I left my seasick patch on from yesterday, and put a meclazine tablet inside the kid in anticipation of the sharply curving road away from the Banks Peninsula.
While The Alien drives I will pass the time between incredible vistas by sharing some more interesting observations about NZ.

+ the emergency telephone number is 111 here, not 911
+ they call stands stalls here, for example: fruit stalls, not fruit stands.
+ I saw machines in the ladies' bathrooms here selling 'sanitary towels' instead of 'sanitary napkins'. Maybe they flow heavier down here @_@
+ every little town or settlement has at least one war memorial, usually from WWI. If there are more than one, they are for the Baal War and WWII. they almost alway say 'Our Glorious Dead' on them. The names of the fallen soldiers are listed, and the dates of the war, not the name of it, are also engraved on the memorials.
+ most every town we've passed through has a Salvation Army Store on the main drag.
+ Speights appears to be to NZ what Pabst is to Wisconsin. Every pub and tavern, even in the remotest areas, has a Speights sign out front, and several Speights advertising posters displayed inside. A noable difference between Speights and Pabst/Bud/Miller is that it is actually good beer. Technically, it's a light ale.
+ Dominion Bitter might be my new favorite brew. I hope BevMo or World Market imports it!
+ While Kiwis are generally friendly and offer hospitality, they give crappy and overly complicated driving directions.
+ Marlborough and Hawkes Bay generally grow white wine grapes, but Central Otago is 80% Pinot Noir.
+ there are some road signs that are different than ours. Instead of "passing lanes" on hilly roads they have "slow vehicle bays" A white circle with a black diagonal line in it is an "Open Road" sign, meaning the speed limit is 100 kph. There are pedestrian crossings marked with white stripes on the road and black & white poles on the sides. A blue circle with a red outline & red X in it means no parking. And my favorite sign is the Exclamation Point. It's usually got another sign with it to explain what the caution is for.

We realized, once we hit the main road to Christchurch, that the long and winding road we took to Paua Bay could have been avoided. We took the long, tourist drive but there was a more direct route! Fail.

In Christchurch, the weather was perfect! After a light lunch at the Boathouse Cafe we went punting on the Avon River. It was only 30 minutes, but so relaxing. After the boat ride, Treklet & rented kayaks and went there and back again on the Avon.
me in a kayak

We booked in to a motel that is close to the airport, and the International Antarctic Center, which we plan to visit tomorrow. They have screaming fast wifi! (For a price) they advertised a heated pool, but it felt like the Southern Ocean to us, so we merely sunbathed for an hour before dinner.
Speaking of dinner, this may be the best one we've had since Christmas!  Also, I must brag that I drank a delightful porter called Wobbly Boot. 

Christchurch Pics