Saturday, December 29, 2012

July in December

 Maltese Cross is a lychnis.  My mom had this fine old fashioned perennial growing in her garden.  I need to get it to spread around a bit more in my garden.  The flowers are very good in boquets, also.
 The montebretia is a good cut flower too.  In the garden it needs to be staked to keep it from flopping over everything.  The humming birds love it.
 The red currant bush was loaded with fruit this year.  I still have currant jelly from a couple of years ago, so did not harvest the crop this year.
The sumac trees in the woodland.  I like these trees for a number of reasons... the foliage and the autumn color.  They sucker and are producing a small sumac grove in the corner of my woodland garden.  They do not live very long or grow too tall.  They are easily removed if  needed.

As you can see these are plants from July with Christmas colors.  I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and is looking forward to an equally excellent year in 2013.

My new year's resolution is to get more of the albums for my web page finished.  I only managed to get the June Gardening album finished in 2012.  This is a start on the July album.  My travel page is getting further and further behind.  It was nice to have the Malta trip done up for show and tell to friends who were traveling there a few months ago. 

I have been spending far too much time chasing low lifes who have been stealing my photos from this blog and using them on their commercial web pages, and otherwise.  This is copy right infringement.  Anyone know a good lawyer who might work on a contingency basis?    In searching for help in this war I ran across this blog:  http://www.blogher.com/bloggers-beware-you-can-get-sued-using-photos-your-blog-my-story   It is very informative, but as you can see from the comments,  these  thieves are everywhere and need more photographers to rally to the cause.  Why should we have our work stolen with no credit or compensation.  Why should the onus be on the photographer to find the law breakers and go to great expense and hours of time to get some justice?  The social media places like pininterest, facebook, and etc., seem to encourage this 'sharing' and make anyone using their sites have to 'opt out' of their sharing.  And this only after a class action suit.  Instagram is owned by Facebook and is, I believe the photo upload engine for the site.  They have recently been in the news for their terms of use that were set to give them the rights to use any photos loaded to FaceBook.  Who knew they even existed?  http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/business/companies/121218/instagram-no-intention-sell-your-photos
With regards to this blog, it is owned by Google and is free.  You get what you pay for.  I have found many of my garden photos taken from this blog and used all over the net.   I think most of the photos are from older posts.  Since Google changed the format for publishing to our blogspot blogs I have not been using as many tags, labels, or keywords.  I think this makes it harder for the google bots to find the images and therefore I am getting fewer hits from the search bots.  I find it inconvenient to add labels to my posts in this new format.  This may well be a blessing in disguise.  I don't need the low lifes stealing my photos, nor am I in need of hits and views on my blog, as there is no advertising here.  My web page never has photos stolen.  It is old fashioned and not built for being searched by the google bots and so is probably the safest place to keep my stuff.  I know where it is, and I can send anyone there when I have something to show them.  I own my own domain and Godaddy provides ample hosting space at very reasonable rates.  I am thinking of getting another domain to use to build a wordpress blog.. perhaps in 2013.  Where will I ever find the time?

Saturday, December 15, 2012

December in the Garden

 the white floribunda rose, Iceberg, that is next to our front door, still has some blossoms hanging on. 
 The last of the Autumn leaves have left the trees.  I have not been out for about 3 weeks.  But it won't take long to clean things up when I do get out there.  We have been having quite a lot of rain.  Our river is not over full, so we obviously needed all this rain.
This is an old photo of buffalo that I have been playing with and trying to make it into the 'Impressionist Painting' kind of a photo.  If you see it large and stand well back from the photo it looks suitably sharp.  I doubt that the impressionist painters ever had buffalo in their paintings though.  Monet would astounded, to say the least.

The apocalypse is upon us -- be sure you have some clean underwear on hand.

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

November in the Kitchen

This fennel grows in the back garden with the fig tree.  Swallowtail butterflies like this plant.  I wanted to try some seeds or leaves of this plant in the meatloaf to get that anise flavour... but I did not really get that taste from this fennel plant.  I might need to get the Florence Fennel that grows bulbs and has that flavour.  It is said to grow easily from seed, and is treated as an annual.  This will have to go on my wish list for plants next year. 
I made some scrumptious cornmeal muffins.  So good hot out of the oven with too much butter, of course.  And then I had to find a recipe for cornmeal bread or muffins with fennel.  .  . and found one for cornmeal muffins with bacon and fennel seeds.  I can't wait to try this one too.  Both of these recipes use buttermilk.  There goes my weight loss program.  But it is using 'less' wheat!
I managed to finally finish my June album for the gardening page, of my old web site.  It has 16 pages with 10 photos per page.  I seem to be getting more and more albums to do, that I do not seem to have time to get done.  Especially on the travel page. 
A couple of days ago I found another garden center using one of my rose photos on their website.
I complained on my FaceBook page, and on their facebook page.  I sent them a contact form from on their website, emailing them to forward $250 to my PayPal account.  They deleted the photo from their website, and deleted my comments off of their FaceBook page.  And what a co-incidence!  The same day they deleted the photo off their website, I received a PHISHING email regarding my PayPal account.  This garden center is in England, Rhinegold Garden Center.  They were using my photo of a rose that was grown in Canada to advertise their roses.  Not only are they thieves, but liars too.  I guess I shouldn't expect any compensation for the use of my photo... the one they stole off of this blog, from people with such shoddy businesses practices. 

Friday, November 16, 2012

November Gardening

This decorative kale is in a pot on the deck.  I can see it from my computer desk.  I added it and a couple other Fall transplants last month.  I have a Mum, and a Viola, in pots that are doing fine.
 This is the golden delicious apple tree before we picked the apples.  We have 36+ lbs of applees stored in a couple of bins in the lower level.  I have moved my frozen soups, etc., from the gridge down there into my new deepfreeze that I keep in my computer room.  I need a cover for this appliance as it is glaring white.  Something in green would be nice.  I made a heaping apple pie 2 days ago.  It is pretty good.  I also have a few packages (593 ml) of apple sauce made and frozen.  We are eating the apples fresh every day and they are very good.
 One of the many pumpkins that have a second life as they appear along Cordova Bay Road where it goes through Mount Doug. park, all along the roadside.  Some of the designs are truly intricate.
A row of the jack o'lanterns on display along Cordova Bay Road in Mount Doug Park.

November gardening has been all about preserving the fruit from the plum and apple trees; and making and freezing soups.  We are trying to stay away from the salty store bought versions of soup.  I use mushroom soup and tomatoe soup in casseroles.  Otherwise, our soups are now homemade using chicken stock , beef stock, or fish stock..all homemade too.  The soups are so very tasty and nutritious made from fresh vegetables, dried beans, peas, grains and other good things to eat.

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Have your children teach you well

 This is a photo from Sept.  As you can see the view is from on the Model T on our Can-Am meet in September.  I am still processing these photos for upload to my account at Megashot, where I will link the Can-Am participants when finished the album.  Still have lots of photos to process.
 This is the 'foxy' frame that I learned how to take from any one I saw on the net, and so, make it my own frame to add to photos that I could process through Paintshop Pro.  There is also a way to create your own frames for PSP.  Tutorials are available on the internet.  Choose any one you like.  This matter of frames came up in a discussion on a photo on Megashot.  I could make the frame on that photo my own, if I had the time.  It is not a very exciting frame, so I did not play with it.
Here is a Scaboisia flower, from June.  I am currently working on the June album of the Gardening page on my old web page.  I have 4 more pages to code and then I can upload the album to the page.  Slowly getting the Gardening page finished... but getting more and more behind in the Travel page.  
 With regard to the Travel page... This is a photo of the Parrot  in the Nazca lines in Peru.  We flew over these ancient displays when on our trip to Ecuador and Peru a few years ago.  I was looking over some of the photos and discovered that I had this Parrot depiction photographed, after all.  I have the Hands and the also the Whale.  I was so pleased to find that I had these three.  I thought I only had the Hands previously.
 The Whale from our fly over the Nazca lines.   Apparently, these ancient lines and graphics are now in danger of being destroyed by feral pigs.   Any wind would be equally destructive.  I am so glad I had the opportunity to get the photos I have.  They will eventually be appearing on my old web page on the Travel page.
I received this cute .jpeg in email recently.  It is about how I feel, too.  With all the changes and constant updates, I get just a little bit disgusted with my desktop PC and its updates and logins, etc.  My Ipad does not seem to give me this bother, but I cannot accesses things I may want to, on the Ipad, either... like ABE books... at least, I have not found their AP yet.   And on and on it goes...

YOUR CHILDREN SHOULD TEACH YOU WELL...

Can I borrow your 12 year old grand child to help me out with my computer?

Thursday, November 01, 2012

Teach your children well . . . Part III

 Some of our B.C. forest in the mist.  We appear to have plenty of of forest to counter act the production of carbon dioxide parts pumped into the atmosphere, but bio-engineering states that we need to reforest in the tropical rain forests as well as keep what we now have.  On a more personal scale, I think everyone should plant trees in their city gardens to help 'clean' the air.
Mount St. Helens seen from the window of an airplane in March of 2010.
More Mount St. Helens.. you can see a bit of Spirit Lake in the photo.
From Wikipedia ==
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_eruption_of_Mount_St._Helens

The 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, a stratovolcano located in Washington, in the United States, was a major volcanic eruption. The eruption (which was a VEI 5 event) was the only significant one to occur in the contiguous 48 US states since the 1915 eruption of Lassen Peak in California.[1] The eruption was preceded by a two-month series of earthquakes and steam-venting episodes, caused by an injection of magma at shallow depth below the volcano that created a huge bulge and a fracture system on Mount St. Helens' north slope.

Prior to the eruption, USGS scientists convinced local authorities to close Mount St. Helens to the general public and to maintain the closure in spite of pressure to re-open it; their work saved thousands of lives. An earthquake at 8:32:17 a.m. PDT (UTC-7) on Sunday, May 18, 1980, caused the entire weakened north face to slide away, suddenly exposing the partly molten, gas- and steam-rich rock in the volcano to lower pressure. The rock responded by exploding a hot mix of lava and pulverized older rock toward Spirit Lake so fast that it overtook the avalanching north face.

An eruption column rose 80,000 feet (24,400 m) into the atmosphere and deposited ash in 11 U.S. states.[2] At the same time, snow, ice and several entire glaciers on the volcano melted, forming a series of large lahars (volcanic mudslides) that reached as far as the Columbia River, nearly 50 miles (80 km) to the southwest. Less severe outbursts continued into the next day only to be followed by other large but not as destructive eruptions later in 1980.

Fifty-seven people[3] (including innkeeper Harry R. Truman, photographer Reid Blackburn and geologist David A. Johnston) perished. Hundreds of square miles were reduced to wasteland causing over a billion U.S. dollars in damage ($2.74 billion in 2011 dollars[4]), thousands of game animals killed, and Mount St. Helens was left with a crater on its north side. At the time of the eruption, the summit of the volcano was owned by the Burlington Northern Railroad, but afterward the land passed to the United States Forest Service.[5] The area was later preserved, as it was, in the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument.

 About Geo-engineering - this term seems to mean any way to take carbon dioxide out of the air, or block some of the heat from the sun, as the forests and volcanos do, naturally.   The book also speaks of seeding parts of the ocean with primarily iron to encourage plankton to grow, which is another natural air cleaner, and feeds the marine life, as well. 
 Quote from page 196 of Gwynne Dyer's book, Climate Wars:
Paul Crutzen is a Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist who risked his entire reputation by suggesting, in the now famous article originally  published in Climatic Change in 2006, that it might become desirable or even necessary to put sulpher dioxide into the atmosphere in order to raise the planet's albedo (ability to reflect sunlight) and thus avoid runaway climate change.  In doing so, he quite deliberately re-opened the public debate on the taboo subject of geo-engineering.
.....
Page 198...
Geo-engineering must not be discussed in front of the children, because if they know about it they will behave badly.
... Quote from an interview with James Hansen, Director, NASA Goddard Space Studies Center, with the Author (Gwynne Dyer) June 28, 2008....
The human burning of fossil fuels is geo-engineering.  The suggestions that we encourage re-forestation and the use of bio-char and the storing of carbon in the soil -- they're bio-engineering, but they're of a fairly natural order, and they have multiple benefits, so nobody would object to those.  There are other, more extreme geo-engineering things that we could do -- and I say we should of course do all the other things first -- but you may get to a point where you see the ice-sheets are on the verge of collapsing.  Then you have to consider these other possibilities.
I think the one that Paul Crutzen and others suggested -- putting sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere so it forms sulphuric acid droplets, a human-made volcano, in effect -- is an interesting idea.  You might say that's dangerous, because we don't know what's going to happen, and to some extent that's true even for Crutzen's suggestion, but nature has performed that experiment.  The Mount Pinatubo eruption in 1991 is interesting because it was large enough that for one year -- that one year after the eruption -- it was reflecting back to space about four watts of energy per square metre.
That's cancelling out the equivalent of doubled carbon dioxide, the equivalent of 560 parts per million of carbon dioxide.  It's a big negative forcing.
One interesting point about it is that if you look at the melting in Greenland for the period when we have data, which began with satellite measurements in 1978 - 79, until the present, so thirty years, the year with the least melting was 1992, when those aerosols had maximum optical thickness.  The sunlight has to go through them at a slant angle to hit this high-latitude ice-sheet, and it reflected enough sunlight away that it minimised the melting.  So if the concern becomes especially these ice-sheets and their impact on sea-level, then you may have to seriously consider that.  But frankly, it makes more sense to reduce the forcing that's causing the problem.
...end of quote.
Teach your children well....

Saturday, October 27, 2012

Teach your children well... part II

 the old and the new - the very busy, industrial traffic on the Yangtze River
 The Venice of China - Tongli - some of the older living conditions
 Condo - newer living conditions
 Multi-stories of wash day in the condos
 The newest - glitz hotels for tourists, the rich and those in charge
 The new - industrial China.  I believe that is sulfur on the carrier ships
The old farmstead.  There appeared to be this yellow crop (Canola perhaps?) all along the Yangtze where ever there was space for a bit of it to grow.
Above photos from April 2012
I am up to page 142 of Gwynne Dyer's book CLIMATE WAR$ @ Copyright 2008.  This is an extremely scarey book...  Page 142 Quote:
      Three things need to be borne in mind about the negotiations in Kyoto in 1997.  At that time, it was not clear that global warming would move as fast as subsequent models have predicted (let alone as fast as some recent events suggest).  Neither did most of the participants realize in 1997 that the recent ten-year growth spurt in China and the even more recent acceleration in India's growth rate were not transient events, but would both continue into the future at an even faster pace.  Both countries were actually on course to become major emitters of greenhouse gases in their own right, but this was a very new and contentious idea in 1997, so leaving them without obligations to curb their emissions in the first round of negotiations was seen as relatively cost-free.  And finally, there was already concern that the United States, the biggest emitter by far, producing one-quarter of the world's man-made greenhouse gases with only one-twentieth of the world's population, would not ratify the treaty if it demanded significant sacrifices from the US.  The Clinton White House might be in favour, and Vice-President Al Gore put a lot of effort into the negotiations, but the Senate would probably kill any treaty that placed serious obligations on the United States.
      So the treaty that emerged in Kyoto was an unambitious little thing, requiring the industrialized countries to cut their emissions by a very modest 5 - 7 percent by 2012 (from a 1990 baseline) and imposing no constraints on the emissions of developing countries, including China and India.  But it was far from a waste of time, and until the end of the twentieth century, there was still reason to believe that the response would match the scale of the problem.
.....from the Glynne Dyer's interview with James Hansen... June 28, 2008 ....
It was actually a quite remarkable rate of progress, given the fact that you really couldn't see many effects of this global warming.  It was a theory that we had some confirmation for, and we knew what we were talking about, but it was quite impressive.  Already within four years (after the creation of the IPCC in 1988) we had the Framework Convention on Climate Change, and then the Kyoto Protocol (in 1988).  But what happened, as we all know, was that the U.S. sabotaged the effectiveness of the Kyoto Protocol by not signing on.  Without the biggest polluter by far, and without the biggest economy, Kyoto could not be very effective.
     It would have been much more effective in reducing the developing country emissions because of the Clean Development Mechanism that was part of it . . . There would have been a lot more incentive to get moving on the renewable energies and clean energies.  But why did the U.S. take that position?
      Well, it was because the industries had more influence on our government than the public good.  The interest of a small number of people, the influence of money in Washington, and the fact that so many congressmen and administration are influenced by the fossil-fuel industry, which is huge.  That's why we need to try to draw attention to the activities of that lobby, because otherwise they may continue to muddle the story enough that we fail to get the strong and rapid actions that we now need.  Beause now we've used up the time -- we're at the hairy edge right now.  We have to make rapid changes.
--- James Hansen, director, NASA Goddard Space Studies Center, in an interview with the author (Gynne Dyer), June 28, 2008.
      U.S. President Bill Clinton never sent the Kyoto treaty to Congress for ratification, because he knew that it had zero chance of ratification: by now the fossil-fuel lobby had bought up enough members of Congress to ensure that.  Shortly after President George W. Bush entered office in 2001, he declared that the United States was withdrawing from the treaty entirely -- and the next eight years of international negotiations on climate change were characterized by official American obstructionism that often verged on wrecking tactics.  Somehow or other, the issue of climate change had got caught up in the 'cultural wars' in the United States, and the Bush administration was on the side that denied it was happening.
      It is not immediately obvious why the reality or otherwide of climate change, essentially a scientific question, should have become such an intensely emotional issue in the United States.  It did not become a left-right struggle elsewhere (except in Australia and Canada, which were carried along in the cultural wake of the United States), and conservatives like former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher and German's Chancellor Angela Merkel could be found in the front rank of climate activists.  Even allowing for unusually ideological character of American politics, why did this particular issue become a badge of ideological allegiance in the United States?
      The fact that there was a campaign of denial funded by the usual suspects in the American oil, coal and automobile industries (and partly run by the same people wo had previously conducted the tobacco industry's campaign to cast doubt on the evidence that smoking causes fatal diseases) does not explain the emotion that Americans invested in the issue.  After all, smoking never became a pure left-right issue in the same way.  The passionate commitment to the cause that is evident in American blogs on climate issues, especially on the part of the deniers, is quite disproportionate to the impact that the topic has on the real lives of the participants.  
......  on to page 146 ....
     In less ideological societies, climate change could be treated as a more or less neutral fact.  Given the ferocity of the culture was in the United States during the Clinton and Bush administrations, global warming was bound to become a highly contentious 'values' issue in the United States, rather than a scientific one.  This was a major misfortune, since the Bush administraion, whose international position on climate change was shaped by its role as a partisan in those domestic ideological struggles, certainly bore a large share of the responsibility for the lost decade in international action on the global warming agenda.  However, it is also the case that some other countries used American foot-dragging as an excuse not to pursue a more ambitious policy themselves.  We have yet to know how they will act if they lose that political cover due to to a change in American climate policy.
      We may find out quite soon, however, since the period of time covered by the Kyoto Protocol is now drawing to an end, and the parties to the treaty have until late 2009 to decide on a follow-on deal that determines what further cuts will be needed in the period after 2012.  Membership in the post-Kyoto negotiating group is now almost universal, with even Australia having signed up after the 2007 election removed prime minister John Howard, an inveterate climate change denier, from office.  Under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Canada has hinted at leaving the treaty and has ceased to work towards fulfilling its existing commitments, but it will probably be forced back into line after the inauguration of the next U.S. president in January 2009 (since the presidential candidates of both major parties in the U.S. are committed to action on climate change). It is even possible that the United States itself will sign up to the Kyoto Protocol or its successor in the next few years, although that is by no means guaranteed.  But will the next round of negotiations really yield a dramatically different result?
 ..... interview with Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber with the author Gwynne Dyer, March 15, 2008.
  HANS-JOACHIM SCELLNHUBER:  I don't want to be pessimistic, but there are two possibilities.  We might get a good post-Kyoto agreement by 2010 or so, which would mean that developed countries would have a road map that would include  a commitment to 40 percent emission reductions by 2030.  That's still a possibility.  China, India and so on would have soft targets, but only for the commitment period until 2020 ... Then we would revise the whole thing in 2015, 2016, so that they could enter in the third commitment period fter 2020 to crisp numerical targets.  In a sense, it would be a training camp for developing countries between 2012 and 2020.  It would not ensure that we would get this 40 percent reduction by 2030, but at least we would be on track.
      If that does not happen, there is still the possibility that you would have a coalition of the willing, in the sense that just the most advanced countries -- say Germany, U.K., Netherlands, Sweden, United States, hopefully Australia, where we had this sea change already, Japan --- (my insert - sea change refers to the recent rain in UK and drought in eastern US due to the change in the  traditional direction of the trade winds - you will have to read the book to see where this is a documented fact) would just form a club of countries who want to become extremely energy- efficient, extremely energy-independent, decarbonizing their societies, and do it through a patchy but ever evolving global-emissions trading system.  Then market forces as well as political willpower would drive the whole thing.  So we wouldn't get global targets, but they would simply emerge from the bottom, if you like.  That would be the alternative.  I think either way we will see something.
 Gwynne Dyer:  Does that alternative approach keep us clear of the 450 parts per million threshold?
Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber:  Only if this is just a training camp.  After 2020, clearly, you need to engage all the major industires in the world.  I still think that if we are able, for a certain period of time, to demonstrate in a credible way that the most developed countries are on track, are willing and able to do this decarbonization, then this will become something like an infectious disease.  If you see that you can lead a good life and nevertheless decarbonize your society, I'm sure the Chinese would be happy to copy that.  But it would all depend on the success, on the shining demonstration of that period.  Then I still think the 450 line could be held.
      We might have a little bit of help from our dirty friends, namely the aerosols in the atmosphere.  You know that they have this global dimming, masking effect.  The Aerosols might just help us over that period of time.  It's almost ironic:  without these aerosols we probably would have already much higher global warming.  So it may turn out that if we would do a very subtle management of aerosols by SULPHUR filtering in China, India and so on, in line with CARBON DIOXIDE REDUCTION, we might still save the day, but it may become a very tricky game, actually.  So, the answer to your question is a definite maybe.
--- Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber, director, Potsdam Institute for Climate Change Research, in an interview with the author (Glynne Dyer), March 25, 2008.
--- unquote ---
This was the book published in 2009, but the information is all based on far earlier scientific research due to the fact that all theories have to be tested and agreed to before publication.  So the information that Dyer could draw on was prior to 2005, perhaps 2003 information if we are lucky.  I say, if we are lucky, because, the more recent information that is available is illustrating the fears of the scientists researching in this climate change field.  The droughts, the forest fires, the floods, the glacier melts, the depletion of the underground water supplies, the fierce tropical storms, the dessertification of more and more land, not to mention out of control population increases,  all point to what I think is the fact that the world is going into a hot period, whether it be due to human intervention or be it due to natural cycle of our world, which has happened before -- granted -- but it is too soon for the cycle to be happening.. we need a couple of million years yet if the natural cycles happen rather regularly.
Hang on to your hat and head for cover and colder climates.. and teach your children well...
     

Saturday, October 20, 2012

Teach your children well...

 This is a photo from our trip to the Southwest US in 2007, somewhere in California, I believe.
 This photo was from the same 2007 trip at a rest stop not far from Los Banos, California.  The water hydrant appeared to be out of order, or not in use.  The grass at the rest stop looks lush and green.  In the washrooms there were signs about using as little water as possible.  Perhaps they had a system where the gray water was recycled for the upkeep of the grounds.
 This is the Santa Fe River in downtown (old town) Santa Fe, N.M.  There is very little water in the River and it has ice on it.  Since taking this photo I have read that there is a project underway for the  reclamation of this river.  I cannot easily find photos of this spot of the River to show how the restoration project has worked out for the area. 
 This photo shows the area of California food production system fed by the Dos Amicos pumping Plant into the canals.
 here is a closer look at one of the canals.. photos from 2011.
 This is a 2011 photo of the once mighty Rio Grande River
 Another photo from the same time.  I could have waded across this Grande River.
And the sign at the side of the highway explaining what has happened to the Rio Grande.

This post has nothing to do with home gardening, but everything to do with global gardening and management of our resources... not just in the US, but world wide.

I recently started to re-read Gwynne Dyer's book "Climate Wars" that I read a couple of years ago.  It was a scary book then and it has become even more so as time goes on. 

Quote from Gwynne Dyer's book, Climate Wars, page 23: Climate Wars Review

:: Leon Fuerth, professor international affairs, George Washington University, one of the lead authors of The Age of Consequences, in an interview with the author, February 5, 2008:

"GD:  What you're saying, essentially, is that we're looking at potential system collapse, politically as well as physically.
LEON FUERTH:  This whole thing is an interaction between human beings as a highly organized industrial civilization, and the world's physics and chemistry and so on, and the consequences of things that we already have done, and set in motion, before we were smart enough to recognize the patterns."

     Among the non-linear political events Fuerth forsees in the event of severe climate change are class warfare "as the wealthiest members of every society pull away from the rest of the population;" an end to globalization and the onset of rapid economic decline owing to the collapse of financial and production systems that depend on integrated worldwide systems; and the collapse of alliance systems and multilateral institutions, including the United Nations.  He suggests that massive social upheavals will be accompanied by intense religious and ideological turmoil, in which the principal winners will be authoritarian ideologies and brands of religion that reject scientific rationalism.  Even more disturbing (and persuasive) is his observation that "governments with resources will be forced to engage in long, nightmarish episodes of triage:  deciding what and who can be salvaged from engulfment by a disordered environment. The choices will need to be made primarily among the poorest, not just abroad but at home.  We have already previewed the images, in the course of the organizational and spiritual unravelling that was Hurrican Katrina
.--- end of quote.

Some of the things I have read about before page 23 are the depletion of our sources of water, the rise of the ocean levels due to glacier melt from the increase of the earth temperature, the over heating and desertification of much of the equatorial countries, and much more.  It is all happening, as we can see by the violent storms, and the political situations that are reported daily in the news, as well as the many people world wide going without enough food, from the climate changes.
3 days ago I downloaded the movie 2012.   Compared to that movie this scientific prognosis for our future is by far a more long drawn out horrifying life for our children.  Teach your children well!

October has been busy

 The Autumn colors are spectacular this year.  In looking back at last year's October in the garden, I find I have many similar photos, though. 
 This is the last clematis that climbs up the deck posts and sometimes surrounds the tub garden in blooms. 
The leaves are beginning to fall and I will need to do some more skimming of debris off the pond.  I will soon need to clean the leaves off the rock plants and put them on the grass to run over them with the lawn mower.  This worked really very well last Autumn to get some mulch to lay over the veggie garden space.  I will add bone meal again and lime and maybe greensand and other nutrients.  I will let this work naturally into the soil over the winter.  We are finished eating the purple plums.  We had more than 30 lbs.  We ate quite a few right off the tree, and I have about 20 pints preserved. 
It is the season for soups and I have been making extra large batches of different kinds of soup.  We are trying to stay away from the canned stuff in the stores as it is generally full of salt and these unrecognizable stuff.  I have also been making ratatouille, a few extra cabbage rolls, lasagne, and other things that I will have ready for when I do not feel like cooking.  I have a few more things that I want to make, yet, so the remainder of the month is going to be busy, too.
We have finally been getting some rain.  The temperatures have been a bit cooler . . . its a beautiful Autumn this year.  The michaelmas daisies, heathers, autumn crocus and heathers have been looking good in the garden too.  I should bring in the heliotrope as its fragrance is heavenly, and it should survive in the house.... maybe I can even carry it over to next year. 
I finally caught another snapshot of a drop on a flower.  This is not set up, but just a natural raindrop on a flower.  I found it while out taking snapshots while waiting to board the Coho to go to the crabfest in Port Angeles last weekend.
 This is shooting from the deck of the Coho while on our way to Port Angeles.  It was fairly cool out there.  The sailors must have been a bit chilly.
This is at the crab fest where there were a few kiosks with interesting things to see or buy.  This was a demonstration by the rescue team in their helicopter.  Thanks Irene and Dan for the wonderful hospitality at your home.  Was so much fun!

Aside from this, I have been learning a bit more about my Ipad.  I bought the movie 2012 from itunes on my pc and then managed to transfer it to my ipad by tethering the ipad to the pc and syncing them.  I learn how to do this stuff and them have to relearn it all if I ever go to do it again.  Once I transferred a photo, without the tethering, this time I transferred a photo with the sync method.  Well... its not as complicated as I like to make it.    Amazing stuff, really.  I have also been reading voraciously on my ipad too.  And so the garden goes without attention, as there is so many other things I want to do.
I have finished the Island Challenge photos and loaded them to my megashot account for the car stuff, and have let the people who were at the meet know of the gallery.  I am now working on the Can Am tour, and have also done a few more for the 2011 Pincher Creek Model T meet... there are some terrific photos in that one... but lots of them!  And so it goes...  I have finished processing the June photos for my album of that month on the gardening page of my old web page.  I need to now create that album with photoshop and them add titles, etc in notepad, before I can load it to the page.  I really like doing this stuff, but seem to have too little time to do it.  ..  So this is retirement?  Time seems to fly by.

Wednesday, October 03, 2012

On the 30 of Sept. we took the 1912 Model T out and road tested it's speedometer.  We clocked the fastest speed at 50 miles per hour, but that did not include the fast downhill runs we sometimes do in order to get a good run at the hill we must climb next.  In the evening, we packed our prepared supper into the Dodge Lodge and went out near the airport to try to catch the sunset.  With a little help from photoshop, this one turned out not too bad.  It helps to shoot in RAW.
 I am adding photos from our trip to Sask to an account at Megashot, where I have shared the link with family members.  This is somewhere in the Merritt area.  You can see the damage from the forest fire of some years ago, is now growing in green again. 
 This is one of the photos from our Island Challenge meet of the Antique Chapter of the VCCC.  Our meet hotel was at Campbell River Lodge that is located right next to the river.  Its a marvelous location.  I am uploading photos from this meet to a gallery on Megashot.  I will be linking all the participants in the meet to the gallery, as soon as I am finished adding all the photos, which should be soon. 
This is Pat's car at the "I blew it" Glass blowing studio on Quadra Island.  It was a challenging road to arrive at this, our final destination on the Island Challenge.  More photos in my Megashot gallery for the Island  Challenge

I have been making soups and freezing them.  Last one was the Classic Pea Soup with ham made from split peas, carrots, celery, onion, ham and the meat stock from cooking some smoked turkey legs.  We tested it for lunch today and it was pronounced good.  Today I made cabbage rolls, but only have one meal of them to freeze.    I must make more.  I found a very nice recipe for clam chowder that I will be making up next week.  I will be making lasagne also. 

We have had no rain for a month.  The soil is very dry.  Perhaps I should be out watering. 

Friday, September 28, 2012

The Heron is back

 While making the salad and looking out the kitchen window, I saw this very big heron land on the deck railing.  It noticed me while I was backing away and going for my camera.  It flew to the garage roof where I managed to get a quick shot of it.  It then flew down to the edge of the pond, and as I was trying to sneak up to take a shot over the deck railing, it saw me and ran to the neighbors yard, where it has room to spread its wings and fly away.  It is a huge heron.
 This is the tomatoe that grew from the plant on the deck.  There are 2 more.  The one that grew on the garden tomato was full of flavour.  I really must try to keep them watered next year.
These are some of the ingredients that go into the mulligatawny soup.  Basically, it is a chicken, rice and vegetable soup.  I made a double recipe and have 10 of the 590 ml containers to add to my frozen soups.  I have made minestrone soup, and a squash with quinoa soup, also.  I have about 18 pints of the purple plums preserved and frozen.  I will be making a few more soups to freeze, for the convenience of having prepared lunch items.  We are trying to stay away from the high sodium canned soups available at the stores.  In this regard, Campbells Soups are shutting down several of their plants, due to the slowing down of their soup sales.  This is probably partly due to the economy and perhaps partly due to people wanting to eat more 'healthy'. I must say, the soups I have made so far are delicious.  I make my own chicken stock, and have now started to make my own beef stock, also.  I have made fish stock, also, but have none on hand right now.  These stocks add so much flavour and goodness to the soups.  I use them when I prepare rice or quinoa, also. 
Oh yes, we had a fig from our tree for dessert this evening also.  The green apples you see in the photo are from our backyard tree.  They are golden delicious, but not yet ripe.  The recipe called for green apples. 

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

June... errr September in the Garden

 I am working on the June album for my old web page on the Gardening page.  This is one of my favourite photos of the west coast planter that sits in the front garden.  In September it looks quite nice also, with the mounding alpines and no blooms.This photo was from 2010, June.  Now the mounding plants have covered the pea gravel mulch and need to be pruned to keep them from growing over each other.
In this bed and to the left of these plants I have some David Austin roses.  I had montebretias in front of the roses, but they were flopping over the stone path.  I dug them out last week and gave them away by putting them into plastic bags at the street with a FREE sign on them.  When Derek came to get his black bamboo shoots, there was one bagful left for him.  Today, I transplanted the Japanese quince that I have had on the deck, into the spot in front of the roses.  Hopefully, it will have its red blossoms that will be equally attractive to the humming birds as the crocosomias were.  I have too many pots on my deck and shall move more off and into the garden as soon as I find spots for them.  I have two small willows that are doing well in the pots, but they like lots of water, so they will need to be in a place where I can easily water them. 
This is another June photo from 2010. It is a good shot of the back garden... well part of the back garden.  The stone path is about a year old.  The grass surrounds the apple tree.  The yarrow that is looking so good in the photo, has died, and I really must replace it.  Maybe I could put the very nice delphinium I have on the deck, into this spot.   In September, that is today..the apple tree is loaded with apples and is dragging the branches to the ground.  The michaelmas daisies are in bloom.  The stone path is looking good as it has the lovely Corsican mint growing between the stepping stones.  I replaced the field stones you see in the path with round stepping stones over part of this path, and it is much easier to navigate.  The field stones are too uneven unless I have managed to find a good flat side to them.

I have these June photos because I have been working on the June album for my old web page.  I have finished the resizing and tweaking of the photos for this album.  I should have 17 pages of 10 thumbnails per page.  There are some really good plants and photos in this album and I must get them finished and loaded to my old web page.
I was amazed to find that I could get the music on my ipad, on this old page.  It has a bit of javascript I found on the internet to make the music play... and I did that years ago.  I was much younger then.  :-)))
I mowed the lawn also today.  I have been busy!  In the morning I finished preserving the 25 lbs of purple plums.  I have 22 pints of the fruit.  I pit the plums, quarter them, and bring them to a boil for about a minute to get rid of any bacteria.  I add a tiny bit of sugar, a bit of water  and a splash of brandy to help preserve them, .. of course.  :-)).  I have a few dozen left over for enjoying fresh.  They are so good.  In the afternoon, I made 8 quarts of minestrone soup.  We tested it for supper tonight and it is very good too.  So, I have 10 of the 580 ml plastic containers to label and freeze.  The rest we will have for lunch in the next few days.    Since I am not eating wheat, I did not add the broken spaghetti.  I boil some up for Pat's soup, each time I make it.  It needs to have parmasean cheese and basil added to it just before serving.  I will be making ratatouille, muligatawny and a few other soups soon, also. We are trying to stay away from the prepared, salty soups, we get in the grocery stores.  So, since I like to have something on hand these homemade soups should fill the bill for convenience.  The apple tree is loaded with fruit, so I may be making a lot of apple sauce, too.  Maybe even a pie or two for himself.

Since my doctor told me about this Wheat Belly book I am back to losing weight again.  This book is very very scarey.  Wheat causes all sorts of problems for our physical and even mental systems.  It seems that the genetic changes to the wheat in the last 50 years have caused us to become obese and have all sorts of other diseases.  You really must get a copy of the book and read it.  It is hard to get 'off wheat" but you will notice a difference in just the first few days.  I notice my energy level return to normal.  I thought I was just getting old and slowing down... well ... now I know that a lot of this tiredness was  due to the effects of wheat.