Adventures in Gardening 2013 part 2 - Insects read blogger!

The day after I posted about how I was getting a great bean crop, with no fertilizers and no pesticides, I went out to inspect my beans and found oodles of grasshoppers, and a couple grundles of little stubby yellow and orange caterpillar-like bugs (don't suppose anybody recognizes them and could tell me what they are?) all over the beans. Apparently bugs follow blogger.

I decided to hold off on spraying though, and the bugs seem to have mostly gone away, ant the beans are still fine. Maybe the spiders, bats and birds are blog readers too. We do have a garden snake, which appears to have made a home under our driveway, so maybe he/she gets the credit. I've done my best to leave the snake alone, hoping I can keep it around. We'll see...

Either no farmers read my blog, or those that do were too nice to make fun of me for bragging about my four pound harvest. Thus far I have done three more harvests, and have put away about 20 pounds of beans.

The mysterious sunflower bloomed. It is a big one! We might be able to harvest seeds from it. Still no idea where it came from.

This is the first year I have planted the tomatoes in regular garden space. In the past I have always had a separate garden for them, usually a big truck tire or the like, to help keep the soil warmer, since tomatoes like it hot. As a result, the tomatoes are getting more water than I usually give them. As a result, my tomato plants look like a jungle...

They seem to be doing okay for tomato production in spite of this. I have to say, I have never really loved the tomatoes I grow though. Not for just straight eating. They are fine in sauces, but for some reason the tomatoes I grow always seem to have a very tough skin, with a sort of unpleasant taste. I don't know if it is the breed I am growing or what. Perhaps I will have to do a a little research on that. Not a high priority though, since I am the only person in the house who will eat tomatoes.

Oh, I forgot to mention, I decided to try propagating our Ardennes hibiscus this year...

Pretty thing isn't it? I saw a couple you-tube videos on propagating from cuttings, and thought I'd give it a try.

Okay, I will confess, I didn't follow the instructions entirely. I selected 10 new branches that I was going to have to prune, and cut the tips off. I put those in a window box filled with leftover paving sand. I didn't use any rooting compound. I haven't spent a dime on this little experiment. It is looking like three of them might actually make it.

Oh (again), I also decided to try growing an avocado tree from a seed I kept. Well, two actually. I had tried one before, and got nuttin'. I set up two more a few months back - Suspended the seed in a glass of water using toothpicks. It took about 2 months before anything happened, but one of them has sprouted. I transplanted it to a pot about a month ago...

Not sure how the petunia marker wound up in there. apparently it is too much work for me to fish it out. Hopefully it doesn't give the avocado an identity crisis...

Adventures in gardening 2013

I figured it was time for a little gardening news...

First, I read somewhere that you could deter ants and aphids naturally by planting marigold around the base of your trees. So I gave it a shot. I cleared a circle out to the drip line of my fruit trees...

and planted marigold seed about half-way out, spacing the seed 1" apart. This picture is three weeks after planting.

The more gardening oriented among you may be thinking "Those look more like dandelions than marigolds.". Well, your observation would be entirely accurate. Out of the few hundred seeds I planted, only one came up. The dandelions did very well though *sigh*. I have heard that marigolds are really easy to grow from seed, that it is pretty hard to fail, so kudo's to me and accomplishing such a difficult task

We had a late cold snap again this year, so only one apricot made it again (on the plus side, the apricot tree has faithfully produced one apricot every year for the past 4 years.

We started an official garden this year for the first time as well. The first row has tomatoes, bell peppers and Brussels sprouts. I had some leftover black plastic which I put down. For veggies that like warmer climes this works well It keeps the soil warmer. It also keeps it more moist, with less water, and blocks weeds, so win win win.

The next two rows were pole beans and peas. I used some left over fence to give them something to climb. The Pole beans in my three sisters garden didn't get over four feet tall, and I have had a few people in the valley tell me that is about as tall as theirs ever got.

After the ple beans hit the top of the fence, I use PVC pipe to create a 7' high frame, and ran string from the fence to the pvc cross bars. It has a tendency to come apart in strong-ish winds (I didn't glue any of it. The cross bars sag a bit under the weight of the beans. Also, the PVC is held upright by being slipped onto 18" rebar, which I hammered into the ground about half-way. I overwatered one eveing during a strong wind, and that did my anchors in, so I had to tie guy wires to keep the frame upright.

At any rate, some of the bean plants are over 8' tall now. Our first harvest weighed in at four pounds. I did not amend the soil. It was not high quality soil. I used no fertilizers and no pesticides. Pretty happy with the results.

(I did use pesticide on the Brussels sprouts though. Those things are aphid magnets. You can't see the plastic under them now for all the aphid poop. I may try surrounding them with marigolds and garlic next year, to see if that helps).

This last row is lettuce and beets.

You may be thinking the beet crop looks a little sparse. You may be right. we had a serious pest problem in this row. A couple of neighbor kids tramped from one end to the other. destructive little critters.

That is it for the official garden this year. There is still room to add tow more rows. Hopefully next year time will permit that.

On the other side of the yard, I put in six grapevines (two red, two green, two black. They are off to a good start. I am using cheap metal fence posts and vinyl clothesline for my vine guides, you can just  make them out.

Oh yeah, somehow we wound up with a random sunflower growing next to the oldest of our Cherry trees. Not sure how it got there, but I figured it wouldn't hurt anything to let it grow. The marigolds you see here are plants we purchased later, since my attempt to grow from seed was so spectacularly unsuccessful.

And that is that for this year. Mostly successful with no chemicals, other than pesticide on the Brussels sprouts. And 1 round of dormant oil on the trees in the spring. Oh, and just s couple weeks ago I had to spray the apple tree for fire blight. Fingers crossed that we don't lose it. It is our oldest fruit tree.

How old is old enough?

A couple days ago, a group of young women (12' ish in age) from our Church came to our house (my wife is an adviser) for a meeting. I was out working in the yard. They all waved and said high to me. I waved back, and was thinking about what exceptional young women they are; Smart, Kind, Modest,... just plain good people.

And then for some reason I had a random thought about how those poor girls are hearing - every time they pick up a magazine, or turn on the TV - about how inadequate they are. That's how a good deal of marketing works after all. I mean, at some point everyone knows about your product, so what is the point of further marketing? To get said people to buy your product (or more of your product). And one proven method for doing that is to convince people that they are somehow incomplete without said product.

So these girls are constantly being told they aren't skinny enough, tall enough, athletic enough, tan enough, pretty enough. Wrong hair, wrong eyes, wrong complexion, wrong shape...

And as I went through this train of thought, I suddenly wanted to be a voice in opposition to that deluge. I wanted to say say something like," how are you lovely ladies doing?".

I didn't.

See, when you are a teenage boy, you can say stuff like that. It is called flirting, it is the natural order of things. Little old men can as well, because they are cute and sweet. They are adorable little grandpas.

But then there is that space in between, when it is creepy. When the girls (and most everyone else) goes quiet, and disengages the safety on their pepper spray. And justifiably so. It seems there is no dearth of creepy at present.

But where does that threshold fall? At what age do you go from creepy to sweet?

Well, that was stupid...

So, after my little 1 month fever and cough, I have been having this thing where I have numbness centered around my top front teeth. Well, in the gum above them really. I mainly notice it when I am drinking from a glass.

I checked in with the dentist, who sent me to an endodontist for an evaluation. He said the teeth are fine, so he isn't sure what is going on. He and the dentist and I discussed it and decided to give it a month, see what happens, and then re-evaluate whether to send me to an oral surgeon.

So, I left feeling depressed that I am an ongoing medical mystery. Weird stuff, no answers. I hadn't had lunch yet, so I picked up a subway sandwich, bag of potato chips (on the danger list for me), and three chocolate chip cookies (also not recommended). Then I went back to work, and had a massive Chocolate brownie loaded with Chocolate and white chocolate chips.

Yeah, not feeling so hot now. Moderately miserable in fact.


A bit of advice for others who suffer from Crohn's, or probably any chronic illness...

Days like this are going to happen. It is going to suck sometimes. And your not going to be able to 'chin-up' readily. So a little 'disaster preparedness' might be in order.

One good idea might be to keep an mp3 or video player on your person, loaded with some material from each of the following categories (examples from each category included, these are to my taste though, so you will obviously need to pick your onw, from your own collection as appropriate):

1. Comedy - Stuff that makes you laugh. Bill Cosby, Bill Engvall, Brian Regan... Whatever tickles your funny bone.

2. Light, uplifting music - Stuff that just makes you feel light and happy, like you can fly.

3. Butt Kicking music - Something intense, not angry or rebellious, more like hero swings into action stuff.

(Actually, that one is a bit of a cross between light and happy and butt kicking)...

4. Slightly Sad, but reflective music - Sounds weird, I know, but sometimes, what you need is to... just ... breathe...

Now make playlists for each of these categories, make them extremely easy to get to. (This was where I went wrong, I have stuff form most of these categories on my Android Gadget (A Samsung Galaxy player, I am too cheap to pay for a phone contract). But I don't have it organized, or playlisted).

When you feel discouragement setting in, or you feel the urge to binge on stuff that is going to lead to regret, or any other tendency toward a destructive behavior. Pick a playlist, and turn the volume up. Not dangerously high, but loud enough to distract your mind. this will give you a chance to reset your thoughts, clear your head. If the playlist you picked isn't working, try one of the others. With a little practice, you will probably be able to recognize which one is going to help best for a given mood.

I'll be ready next time...

Buy this book!

I just finished reading "Janitors". I started on Tuesday,  and finished on Friday. It is youth fiction, in the same family of stories as Harry Potter - young "normal" kids who have a run-in with a hidden, magical world. Only in this case it is magical critters that inhabit schools, and Janitors are a secret society that combat them. I don't dare say much, for fear of giving story away, but I will say that I am greatly looking forward to reading it with my kids when we are done with the current book we are reading (we read a chapter from a book almost every night).

I had seen a random ad for the book somewhere, and thought it looked interesting, and perhaps I would grab a copy if the opportunity presented.

Then a few weeks ago, I met the author, who is house sitting in our neighborhood. I met him at church. and had the chance to chat with him a bit (It took me three weeks of these brief interactions to learn that he was the author of Janitors, from which you can conclude he is not one to "toot his own horn"). He was a very pleasant, humble, and insightful individual, and I greatly enjoyed the brief conversations we had. Of course having met the author, I had to read the book.

So, I had my wife pick up a copy. What a great book!! It is exceptionally well written, fun, full of plot twist, subterfuge, conspiracy and magic. It is an easy read (of course it was written for 8-10 years, and I'm a forty year old so...), and the story moves along nicely. The characters are fun, colorful, and quirky.

What I love most about it is that it actually adheres to positive values. I love the Harry Potter series, but I have always been a bit bothered by the fact the Harry seems a bit of a chronic liar. he is constantly lying to his friends and teachers, and sneaking about This is not a quality unique to Harry Potter, It is a story element that commonly shows up in the youth/young adult fiction. I suppose the books try to appeal to the "Nobody understands me" feeling of that age. Janitors, on the other hand, take the high road.

In Janitors, the hero tries his hand at deceit, but quickly discovers honesty to be more effective. The story also includes adults who are trustworthy, who listen, and who help and seek to protect the young heroes of the story. A refreshing change from Harry and friends being constantly thrown in harm's way them against the world. Or like the Lemony Snicket series, where adults all seem to be either evil, or incompetent, and completely unable or unwilling to listen to children. The relationship aspect of Janitors is much more positive, more grounded in reality.

I won't say more than that, as I don't want to ruin the experience for you, should you decide to read it (and you should.... Just sayin...).

It is a fun, fast, read, with refreshingly positive morals. I can't wait to read book two.

Fundamental Flaws of Science - Part 3

This is Part three. You should really read Part 1, and Part 2 First...

And now back to known data for a look at the Third Flaw - insufficient means to acquire, store, recall and analyze necessary data. 

We simply lack the data processing power and resources to capture enough information about what is going on. In even a relatively small event, say a thunderstorm, there are trillions of data points associated with it; variances in temperature, wind speed and direction, pressure, particulate, etc… scattered over a wide, three dimensional area. 

There are millions of “events”  (storms, tornadoes, tremors, tidal waves, rain, snow, fog…) occurring on the earth at any given time. We collect only a very small sampling of the data associated with a relatively small number of these events. This means the picture we have is incomplete.

As an example, look at the chart below, let’s assume this is a plot of speed over time, would you assume from this that the object being observed is accelerating?

Now look at this chart. In this case, the object was accelerating, but is now slowing down.

Both charts use the exact same data. The difference is I left out the even values in the first chart. Two of the omitted values (8 and 10) drastically changed the observed result. Even the rate at which samples are taken can drastically impact the resulting conclusion.

But does this kind of stuff really impact real science?

For nearly one hundred years the scientific community embraced the idea of a mass-less substance called caloric, which was the means by which heat transfer occurred. This incorrect idea was the result of an incorrect theory, and resulting incorrect interpretation of data. It took nearly 50 years to change the community’s mind.

When I was in first or second grade, I remember hearing all kinds of talk about how human pollution was causing global cooling, and we were going to enter an ice age in the very near future unless things changed. Today, science has a better understanding of our environment, and now says human pollution is causing global warming, and we are in equally dire straits very soon unless things change…

In reality these three flaws are not failings of scientific method or scientific process. The method is sound, the process is practical. The failing is in the humans performing the science. We are very bad at establishing and maintaining a valid metric of the "truthiness" of a given statement or idea. We draw conclusions based on weak similarities between unrelated systems; we overstate the certainty of our conclusions… We lack the means to collect and sift through enough data to see the big picture. And who knows what we don’t even know we don’t know?

The problem comes when science forgets these imperfections, loses its humility. Well, the information gathering/sorting/storing problem is a technical problem.  It continues to improve over time. But the human factor in that is in remembering that the data is incomplete, and accounting for that in our truthiness measure.

Good science must be free of pride, free of 'high-priests', free of secrets, and free of special-interest. Good science is humble, inquisitive, open, accessible. It is passionate, but unemotional. It is not afraid of theory, but clearly labels it as such.

I have had this post muddling about in my brain for years now. I still haven't come up with a nice, prose-y conclusion. But rather than sit on it any longer, I will just close with "San Dimas Highschool football rules!".

Fundamental Flaws of Science - Part 2

 This is Part two of three. Find Part one Here.

I’ll call this second flaw “Observational limitation”. It is a kind of "truthiness" problem, but instead of being due to intentional simplification, or known deficiencies in the model, it is due to factors that we simply aren’t even aware of. I will try to illustrate this concept by borrowing from the book “Flatland”.

Take a look at the object below. What is it?

A line, you say?

It certainly looks like a line in this picture, but you are looking at it from the side. From the top it looks completely different.

You are thinking it is a circle now?

Now what if I told you that what you are looking at is in fact a 2 dimensional slice of a three dimensional Object? Now what is your guess? It could be a sphere. It might also be a cylinder, or a cone. 

You can’t really know without more information. But if you could only see two dimensionally, would you even be able to perceive the existence of a third dimension?

That is one concept presented in the book Flatland, when a Sphere attempts to convince a square of the existence of a third dimension. The square sees the Sphere as a circle. And refuses to accept the possibility of a third dimension. Ultimately, The square comes to realize the existence of the their dimension, and then begins to wonder about the possibility of more dimensions. The sphere, who helped the square to this new state of enlightenment, finds this preposterous, silly. He knows there are only three dimensions (just as the square was once convinced there were only two).

 

So, how much information are we missing? What don’t we know? What are we not seeing when we are watching light not come from a black hole? 

Andnow back to known data for a look at the Third Flaw -->