The father of one of my kids took down this tree at my house. So the back yard is going from this:
Practical Matters for Physically Challanged Gardeners #7
To this:
He will be back later in the week to remove the remaining chunks and finish digging out the stump. I am sad because I loved the funkiness of the tree. Used to string a clothes line between two of the trunks until one of the grandkids playing on it caused it to crack at the base and drop too low to keep sheets out of the dirt. The littlest dog liked to climb it, too. :-) And I am also excited because it took up a LOT of room. When I first moved into the house, there were five Rose of Sharons along the front driveway. Moved one to the side yard and it has never been really happy there. We are going to move it to the back little more than midway along the fence toward the right where you can see that hunk of concrete (recycled, thank you very much! LOL). Then I am thinking of putting a redbud tree in along the fence where all the chunks are now. That would leave the corner and strip alongside the garage for a raised vegetable bed. Would get direct sun from about 10:00am to 3:30pm. Bet I could grow SOMETHING there. Whatcha think?
Carrie, Amargia’s walking encyclopedia of not-quite-useless information tells me plants sweeten up in the fall and winter sun because the plant’s photosynthesis process is still going at the usual rate, turning sunlight to sugar to feed the plant, but the plant isn’t using all the sugar. It doesn’t need it all because the cool air temperature has slowed down its life processes. (Actually, MK said “its respiration”, but I think most people will have as much trouble thinking of plants breathing as I do. I’m more comfortable with “life processes”.) The plant doesn’t need all the glucose it is taking in to survive so the extra sugar is stored in its leaves, fruit or roots making them taste sweeter. Sort of the way many people fatten up in the winter because they are eating well but not active enough in cool weather to burn off the calories they are taking in.
Yours sounds like a “normal” American family to me. :-) You might want to consider something like a Boston Boiled Dinner while she/he is staying with you. It’s regional fare, it’s healthy and it is simple to prepare.
Debra, the package you sent came in yesterday morning. Thanks very much. The soil in my little corner of Amargia is lean and sandy. Still in the reclamation process. I’m still using the tough beauties MK calls “pioneer plants’ while the soil is slowly being improved. I think coreopsis can survive with just a little help. I discovered mulch makes a huge difference with sandy soil. The soil would be bone dry only a few hours after I watered before I started using mulch. I’m using paper fed through a micro-fine shredder. It doesn’t look as bad as I was afraid it would. It doesn’t look much different from crushed seashell which is often used here. And wow, that WAS a funky-looking tree.
Nadine, thank Kay VERY MUCH for me! That answers a question I've wondered about for a looooong time, and of course plants respire!!! You KNOW they take in CO2 and give off O2, and we do the reverse, right? Don't think of it as "breathing," think of it as "respiration;" that might be easier for your unfinished brain.
Debra, I wish I didn't have an "able-bodied" husband who's really not. People look at me and they don't see a 'poor single lady with MS and two kids," they see an apparently intact family where the stunningly beautiful wife/mother is (for some mysterious unknown reason) in a W/C and the healthy, normal (~) kids and husband are LAZY and USELESS, They don't see that half (well, ok, a quarter) of the pills in the bathroom are THEIRS and that DH has crippling arthritis and depression and DD#1 has crippling ADD and DEPRESSION and DD#2 has depression and ASTHMA bad enough to need a whole pharmacy's worth of pills, etc.
Why am I and everyone around me suffering from depression????
Carrie,
Too much social pressure, too much employment pressure, too much environmental pressure, too much biological breakdown from all the pressure. It's all just too much. Plus lots of people are inconsiderate, thoughtless asses who don't know--yet--what it is like to have chronic illness of any sort. Spit in their eyes. If you have never watched Addams Family Values, do that. Check out Wednesday's "We're not shy, we're contagious." I much prefer arrant defiance to sweetly forgiving as a tool to help me deal with these kind of people. Unless, of course, you use a sweetly forgiving front as a tactic to make the ignorant offender feel horrible. I'm all for that!!!! There's an axiom in the South. You can get away with saying anything tp anybody as long as you end it with "Bless your heart." "Oh, I know you can't help being so rude, you were just raised that way. Bless your heart." You get the idea. Makes one feel tons and tons better. :-)
Debra
LOL!!! YES, and don't forget to call them "honey", "sugar", "sweetie", "darlin'" or "cher" while you are cutting them so low they have to look up to see a snake's belly. :-)Kay*
My “unfinished brain”. I like that, Carrie. What a perfect way to describe it. So often I don’t follow trains of thought all the way through to the end. A word or phrase calls up some strange visual image and distracts me. I hear about plants “slowing their respiration” and see the leaves outside turning their fall yellow. The image of plants donned in saffron robes like Buddhist monks practicing their yoga breathing exercises seizes my mind and I start thinking of ways I could draw it.
The plants giving off oxygen and freshening the air is how MK soothes PJ’s ruffled feathers when he complains about the “winter jungle” inside the house. It isn’t quite as bad this year as it has been in former years since MK is simplifying by giving away plants that need a lot of special care. PJ doesn’t dare complain this year since most of the tropicals are his foliage plants. A slow growing bottle palm (ponytail palm, Beaucarnea recurvata) he grew from a tiny seedling is beginning to develop a true trunk (above ground bulb? Bottle?). Anyway, whatever it is supposed to be called, he is excited about it.
I agree with everything Debra says about the sources of Depression. The only things I would add is I believe that media sets us up with unrealistic expectations about life and that makes people feel unsatisfied with their lives. Also, I wonder if diet is a factor. Growing up with a diabetic I’ve seen how much blood sugar levels control mental function and mental outlook. It seems logical that the way most of us eat puts us on a blood sugar roller coaster. I know diabetes is on the rise and wonder if that goes hand-in-hand with the rise in the number of people battling Depression. It could be that the psychological symptoms show up long before problems can be diagnosed with a glucose tolerance test. Every diabetic I have ever known battled Depression. What we eat has changed dramatically in the last 100 years and our bodies just can’t adapt that quickly to the changes. I’m considering going back to school and getting a degree in Nutritional Science. Can you tell? :-) I love the kitchen chemistry of cooking, but don’t like the stresses of working in restaurants. ~Nadine~
I feel a deep sympathy for those with “invisible” problems. I can’t count the times I’ve heard people say “Oh, I’m sorry. I just forget you can’t see sometimes” whenever they make a verbal faux pa. My eyes are filmed over by mature cataracts. The pupils are silvered and the color is distorted to an odd shade of green. My left and right eyes look different from each other. I use a white cane or a sighted guide, if I’m not on the property. I don’t understand how they can FORGET I’m blind with all the visual reminders. .
How much harder must it be for those who don’t show any obvious physical manifestation of the limitation they are trying to cope with. (Physical depression IS a physical limitation. Too many people think of it as some sort of purely emotional issue.)
People made simple task like shopping difficult for Jim before his back problems were apparent. He took an emotional battering in addition to the pain he was trying to deal with. Strangers would express their displeasure because he stood by and let me handle the heavy things when we went shopping together. Implying he was lazy or some kind of tyrant because I lifted the 40 lb. bag of dog food in the cart or he asked me to get something off the bottom shelf. I’m sorry, but I think people who do that NEED to be brought down a notch or two. I figure God would not have given me such a sharp tongue if I wasn’t intended EVER to use it. Knowing when to use it and when to keep my mouth shut is the challenge. :-) Kay*
This thread is getting long, especially for anyone using dial-up. Let's continue at:
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1135073/
I think I might have even spelled everything right this time! lol. Come and check. (Jim)