cabbage worm invasion

The heart of organic gardening goes beyond a desire for natural, pesticide- and chemical-free food. What it ultimately encompasses is the belief that all creatures have a purpose in this world and each is essential to the interdependent food web, and a loss of any single species of creature would throw the environment out of balance. Reaching the "end," which equates to a prosperous garden and wholesome food, should not justify an inhumane or destructive means. Each creature is precious, and no matter how annoying to our gardening activities, must be dealt with respectfully.

Last night when I checked on my lettuce plants, they were perfect. I woke-up this morning to sheared and holey leaves and a scene of destruction:

It amazes me how fast these sneaky creatures work!

Hidden in the leaf vein, this big guy was well-concealed.

The smallest larvae were found on the underside of the leaf. This is the first place you should look when searching for the culprits. It's a good hiding spot for them, and a common area for the adult female to lay the eggs.

I've found the method that best satisfies me in my quest for completely organic gardening is to manually remove the larvae from the plants and take them to the other side of my yard. I'm still a little squirmish about touching them, so I use a narrow popsicle stick to scoop them up, then drop them into a cup. For the past few years that I've done this, I have not found repeat offenders. Next year I may grow a special "veggie butterfly garden" just for them, far away from our food, since I know that by moving them to the other side of the yard, I am essentially sentencing them to death by starvation.

How do butterflies and moths find the correct place to lay their eggs? I have only three trial lettuce plants in my backyard. How on earth did they locate them within the sprawl of suburban grass in my neighborhood?

"Because each species of butterfly or moth is adapted to eat specific species of plants, females are very selective about where they lay their eggs. These plants are called “host plants.” The female butterfly instinctively recognizes the correct leaf shape, color, odor, taste, and appearance of this host plant. Once satisfied, she lays her eggs, coating them with an adhesive that fastens them to the leaf." (http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/education/guides/butterfly-guide.pdf)

But more specifically, the December 1985 issue of The Quarterly Review of Biology contains the essay "Communication of Insects," which goes into further detail on how larvae select suitable food for themselves, outside of the proper egg-laying site by the female moth:

"Insects recognize food and food plants by means of tactile stimuli (e.g. smooth and hairy surfaces vs. rough and hairy surfaces) and by nonvolatile chemical cues. The latter require for initial recognition some contact with the plant's surface by the antennae or by the chemosensory apparatus associated with the mouthparts. The initial contact is followed by sampling the chemicals by biting the plant."

Once the larva breaks the surface of the plant, amino acids, steroids, salts, sugars and other complex chemicals are released. The caterpillar has specific gustatory receptors to respond to them. This is how they know which food they should be eating. In addition to biting, simply tasting the plant food source can give feeding clues:

"Host-plant selection requires biting to release the soluble signals, whereas cuticular cues can be tasted directly from the surface. [Larvae and adult moths] can identify ovipositional stimulants, feeding stimulants, antifeedants, repellents, and toxins."


Just a little bit of research a day is all it takes to gain a greater appreciation of the common things in our lives that we see everyday but don't have any personal knowledge about.

Humans have sought to harness and control the wilderness since the beginning of time. But ruling over nature can have harmful, long-lasting, and irreversible effects. It's much better for everyone involved--meaning all of the creatures that live and breathe on this blue earth--for us to try and gain a greater understanding of other species, which will in turn bring about environmental harmony. To do otherwise will bring destruction for all, including us. We must learn to reconnect with our natural world.

Flood update

Just wanted to give a quick update to my blogger friends... I got into grad school! I will be working on my nurse practitioner degree starting in August! Yay!

I haven't visited blogs like I normally do because my new template won't allow me to post my favorite blogs on my page; either that, or I just haven't figured out how to do it yet. This has been a big hindrance for me because it was once so easy for me to see the new posts. I will get back to reading my favorite blogs, slowly but surely!

The Tennessee flood has kept me emotionally and mentally occupied, and soon physically occupied as well. I will be going out Saturday morning, and hopefully again next week if my schedule allows, to do some volunteer work in the community.

I'll admit, I was initially a little ambivalent about volunteering. I really didn't want to leave my kids behind to do it considering that I already work full-time. But I am inspired by the enormous response to this natural disaster and really want to take a role in helping! Churches have organized multitudes of food, clothing, and cleaning supply drives. Kids are getting involved by bringing food to school to donate to Second Harvest Food Bank. Businesses are donating lunches for the volunteer workers. Nashville had one water treatment plant that had not been damaged, so jail inmates and private citizens sandbagged it to within a foot of being engulfed by the Cumberland River, and the treatment plant was saved! Strangers are helping strangers, asking for nothing in return.

We were so fortunate not to have any sort-of damage to our house. Some of the neighbors down the street were hit hard, however. I feel like it is my responsibility to do something, if for no other reason, because we were spared the pain of losing everything we own. So many others around here have suffered. I can't just sit on my behind and go about life as if nothing has happened. I promise to post pictures soon, hopefully sometime this month. In the meantime, stay safe, and be thankful for all your blessings :-)

The 287(g) program and Arizona immigration law--a human rights issue

In light of the recent immigration bill passed in Arizona, which gives police the right to stop and verify the immigration status of anyone they suspect of being illegal, I was reminded of a federal program that was implemented in Nashville in 2007: the 287(g) program.

First of all, what exactly is the 287(g) program? Here's a basic primer from the U.S. Customs website at http://www.ice.gov/:

Delegation of Immigration Authority Section 287(g)Immigration and Nationality Act

"ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) developed the ACCESS program in response to the widespread interest from local law enforcement agencies who have requested ICE assistance through the 287(g) program, which trains local officers to enforce immigration law as authorized through section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
Terrorism and criminal activity are most effectively combated through a multi-agency/multi-authority approach that encompasses federal, state and local resources, skills and expertise. State and local law enforcement play a critical role in protecting our homeland because they are often the first responders on the scene when there is an incident or attack against the United States. During the course of daily duties, they will often encounter foreign-born criminals and immigration violators who pose a threat to national security or public safety."

"The cross-designation between ICE and state and local patrol officers, detectives, investigators and correctional officers working in conjunction with ICE allows these local and state officers: necessary resources and latitude to pursue investigations relating to violent crimes, human smuggling, gang/organized crime activity, sexual-related offenses, narcotics smuggling and money laundering; and increased resources and support in more remote geographical locations."

The Immigration and Customs website contains a section called "Success Stories." They failed to report the following:

"In July 2008, Berry Hill Police stopped a very pregnant Juana Villegas for apparently changing lanes without a turn signal. Instead of avoiding detention, Villegas was jailed, went into labor, was transported to Metro General Hospital (and reportedly shackled to a bed), gave birth and went hours without seeing her child and days without seeing her husband. The deportation process was begun for her before charges were dropped under the glare of local and national media exposure of the case."--The City Paper, October 26, 2009

What makes this situation much worse is that it is actually policy to lock-down in handcuffs any women who were in custody while in labor. This is a policy that treated human beings worse than animals. Criminal or not, a civilized nation should not tolerate such abuses.

So while 287 (g) may be a worthwhile program, in theory, at identifying people who enter the U.S. illegally and who are also criminals, is the risk of abuse to law-abiding citizens, and even law-abiding non-citizens, worth the cost?

The problem here is that the door has now been opened to unchecked racist actions by Metro police in Nashville, and the unfettered arrest and deportation of people based on activities that are not defined by what this proposal was originally meant to be used for. Small traffic offenses that would oftentimes be overlooked by patrolling police officers provide an excuse for profiling in order to possibly catch an illegal immigrant.

The similarities between 287(g) and the Arizona law SB 1070 are obvious. They both invite legalized racism, human rights abuses by police who are angry at the influx of illegals to their state, and the potential to overwork the police force more than they are already overworked.

It's a fact that illegal immigration is straining our resources as a nation, especially in the area that I'm most familiar with--medicine. Hundreds of hospitals and emergency departments, forced to give free care under EMTALA to people who don't pay, have had to close down due to the high percentage of unreimbursed care.

However, the old argument that illegals should be denied rights in this country does not hold up in this situation. Why? Because your rights are sure to be violated in Arizona if you are legal, but don't have the proper paperwork to prove your citizenship at the moment of your police encounter. Americans are not required to carry such identification. And once jailed, the possibility of enduring physical and emotional abuse is real. Therefore, the Arizona law has the potential to violate basic human rights, as well as current federal law.

If you are brown-skinned and live in Arizona, because of this law, you will no longer be free. You are now a potential target for unwarranted harassment. Some people are okay with that and say that this draconian measure is necessary in order to prevent our country from turning into a "Brave New World" situation. But we must remember that when the rights of one group are violated, especially based on ethnicity, we are all violated. How? By dangerous precedent. Have we already forgotten the plight of the innocent Japanese people who were interred during World War II, simply for the way they looked?

dyeing Easter eggs with food you find around the house

Somewhere in this pot a cracked egg lurks.

We carried out our secularized but very fun Easter tradition today--dyeing eggs. The egg symbolizes the beginning of life, renewal, and rebirth. I want to try and make these traditions meaningful and relate them to spring as well as the resurrection of Jesus. So instead of using the prepackaged Paas kit, which had also become a tradition, I decided to try doing it naturally, meaning no artificial colors or dyes. Back to the earth. Plus, I have three bottles of vinegar that I enthusiastically purchased for cleaning mirrors and stuff, only I don't get around to cleaning mirrors that often.

I found a chart online, which seemed too complicated for a first-time family project, at about.com http://chemistry.about.com/od/holidayhowtos/a/eastereggdyes.htm. Using wildflowers, especially dandelions, would be a problem, since a few days ago I yanked much of the rebirth out of my lawn with a shovel and weed puller. I ultimately decided to scrounge around the kitchen and use what we had on hand.

The final contenders: spinach, lemon juice, wine, grape juice, cinnamon spice tea, blackberry jam, and V-8 Splash.

First, I boiled every last vitamin out of the spinach leaves until they were surely devoid of nutrition. I've been meaning to make creamed spinach with this box--it has been in my freezer for over 6 months. I won't kid myself into thinking the little ones will eat it, and it is probably freezer-burned anyways. Justification. I feel much better now.

Attempting to hasten the coloring process

Lemon juice was a stretch, but it turns a pretty bright yellow when mixed with borax. Not so much with vinegar. It's more like...dirty lemonade. A pale yellow just like...lemon juice.

The 2-year-old housewarming bottle of Merlot from the neighborhood association that we never joined in order to avoid the $40/year fee, which seems to buy nothing for the joiners but mailbox neighborhood watch stickers. This egg is reserved for my husband, just as I'm positive that he will say the spinach egg is for me.

Grape juice (store bought--not fresh squeezed). I've actually heard this works--it's not one of my crazy concoctions!

Mango and peach V-8 Splash. A food item that refuses to exit this house and has taken up more than its allotted time in the fridge. It might be fermented at this point. Even better!

2 bags of cinnamon tea. If nothing else, it covered up the spinach smell that permeated the cracks in the kitchen floor.


2 varieties of blackberry jam--Walmart and All-fruit, a.k.a. the pauper and the prince of smashed fruit.

This is a sputtering egg as it drowns in jam.

all the dyes representin'

playing in the gooey jam is the funnest part

And here are the lovely products. Starting from the top left, we have two colored with grape juice, then spinach, Merlot, and V-8 Splash. The bottom row showcases two cinnamon tea specimens with a blackberry jam egg in the center.


I asked my 7-year-old son what we learned from this experiment of coloring eggs with food.

He unapologetically said "to never do it again."

Dear Son, you have not yet developed a deep understanding of the type of mother you inherited. If something doesn't work, go radical. Stay tuned for our next post-Easter egg-dyeing session!

how we spent our Earth Hour

I once thought there should be prorated levels of "earth hours" when it came to the real "Earth Hour." For example, if you have two young uneasily-occupied children, as I do, 50 minutes counts as a full hour. If you live in my neighborhood, you're most likely in bed by 8:30 p.m. (we have a lot of Ben Franklin types here), so you must forgo your mid-afternoon soaps that day--no TIVOing allowed. If you're single or married and without kids, you have to do 1 1/2 hours in order to help out the rest of us activity-challenged parents.

I thought all this until today's Earth Hour.

At 8:31 p.m., my kids and I ran frantically through the house to get the electricity off and dig up flashlights. It was like an early Easter egg hunt. The nays were: the refrigerator (it's old and crotchety), the alarm clocks (too much trouble to reset for one hour), and the fish tank (it would be the end of Earth Hour in this house if snail died during our little romp with energy savings).

We decided to head up to my room, far away from a TV set. The bed was made, so it felt cozy. (There is something about a neat bed that makes all the piles of clothes scattered around the perimeter of the room magically disappear.). I settled in and resolved to get through the hour, no matter how long it seemed to drag.

Starting at 8:32 p.m.:

1. We made circles on the ceiling with our flashlights.



2. We reassured our terrified dog, who is deathly afraid of wind and storms, that she was going to be okay.



3. We told ghost stories under the covers.


And even the newest member of the family, Mighty Bean, got the chance to tell a spooky tale.


4. We played Whac-A-Mole.



5. We played Don't Spill the Beans.

I think the pot was so happy for the attention that he started to drool.

At 9:25 p.m., the kids asked if Earth Hour was over. I could have easily said yes, and they would have been none the wiser for it. But in the darkness we had only eachother to focus on. No distractions from the usual background noises of a home, and the security of knowing that we weren't in a storm with the power out. It was nice. We had the fossil fuel/climate change discussion, and then I flicked on the lights so they could brush their teeth. At 9:37. It was one of the shortest hours that I remember having with them in quite awhile.

images of early spring

on the sales floor, part 1

I'm a natural floor model
and floor models have more fun
our bodies make thoroughfares that wind
like corn mazes in appliance stores
where aisle-weary kids come
to skip, laugh, hide
and play tag behind our doors
we never hear "close the fridge, you're letting the cold air out!"
to tell you the truth
I really like it warm

narthex confessions, or "The Church of I Suck"

I wish I was privy to all the random thoughts in people's minds during church service.

Here is a small sampling of mine:

I wonder if that guy is married. He's pretty cute. Oh good, his wife's here. A guy who looks like that should not be alone in church of all places. Wait, she's sitting down 2 seats away. Maybe they can get together.

The back-up singers always look like they're under 25. It's American Idol in here. They must've been short this week and pulled that one from the senior choir.

I think the pastor just saw me pass the collection plate without putting anything in it!

I hope the people behind me can't see my buttcrack when I sit down. The chairs have backs, stop worrying!

These socks look kind-of raggedy hanging out the back of my clogs. That woman next to me has much nicer socks. I like the pattern. I wonder where she got them from.

Haven't people ever heard of staying home when you're sick? They're hacking all around me. God's not going to be mad if you don't show up one week!

I confess that I purposely arrive late just to avoid "fellowship" time.

I once stood next to a woman who coughed up a bucket of phlegm and blew out last night's snot prior to shaking my hand. The entire service was ruined for me. I couldn't even touch my hair after that. I high-tailed it out of there and straight to the bathroom before the doxology was finished.

I was busy scrubbing up to my arms when I glanced in the mirror and saw the very same woman enter right behind me. Her face had this look of utter disbelief, like I was some sort-of germaphobe. As if!

I am consistently amazed by those who seem to "get into the spirit" by lifting their hands while singing. This is a foreign concept to me. I was raised in a church where you couldn't even suffer an involuntary tic without a glare from someone in the pew behind you. The whole scene is more distracting than anything. I spend much of the song trying to analyze the sincerity of the movement rather than worship God. I've tried to raise my hands, but it doesn't feel natural. And my arms get tired, so I'm not thinking about God then either, I'm thinking about my arms.

But I don't like stone-faced stoic people either. I'm not easily satisfied.

I belong in a monastery. My own.

I also don't want to clap to the rhythm (it's awkward when the clapping dies off and you don't know when to nonchalantly stop). I think to myself, are people just doing this for show to look good?

Basically, I belong in the Church of I Suck. I don't go to be seen. I don't go to make friends, because I know what those friendships would be all about. I go mostly for my kids' sake, so that someday they will take their kids, and so on, so on, and learn how to sing "Zacchaeus Was a Wee Little Man" like Claire did today.

The mystique and joy of church left me when I found out that two of the deacons in my childhood had drinking problems, and one decided to leave his wife and 5 kids for a girlfriend and a motorcycle when he was bald and 75 pounds overweight.

When my pastor was hospitalized for depression and his daughter tried to kill herself.

When there was more silence than support after my dad died.

I really lost interest in church when I gained a little wisdom and realized that everyone who goes there is human, but many of them want people to believe they're above humanity, which in turn makes me feel less than human. There seems to be a lack of authenticity that you don't see in real life.

I'm not blaming the people who go to church. Really. I'm blaming my disillusionment on my own misconceptions.

I find myself thinking about inane things during the service, forcing myself back to the present, only to start twitching and dozing off during the final prayer.

I love God, but I don't know. This just isn't God to me. And honestly, I don't think that God cares whether I go or not. But I do think he cares if my kids don't know about him. And I have good memories of church and Wednesday night Bible groups as a child. So I go. Because I'm a little on the lazy side when it comes to whipping out the Bible and drumming up worthy life lessons.

Luckily I'm living here in Franklin, the home of Steven Curtis Chapman and countless other "professional Christians," as I've heard them coined, so maybe their knowledge of all things biblical will rub off by osmosis or divine intervention. Because I'm certainly not going to guilt them into it.

In the long run, I hope that my kids will notice that I strove to be the best person I could be, despite my qualms and aversions and frequent failures. They'll see that I tried to be a godly woman, and they will want to be like me. But I sure have a long way to go. Lord, do I.

moonflowers 2010

I just finished scoring my moonflower seeds for this year. As I come within micrometers of cutting myself a sixth finger I think, geez, how on earth did these things manage to propagate themselves in the wild without human intervention?

I lost one under the refrigerator. When I finally dig it out someday, I'll try to see if it will still grow--although the dust and pieces of dog food under there may be a good medium for its survival right now.

The cat chased a rogue seed down as it slipped from my fingers and slid across the kitchen floor. I rushed down to grab it up before she took off with it and came back wearing sunglasses and a sun hat. Remember, these things can be hallucinogenic.

Below are directions to grow moonflowers straight from the package. I almost want to call the company and ask how many repeat customers they have, because to follow these recommendations is a recipe for seeds that stay seeds and subsequently rot in the ground.



For a detailed and humorous method on how to grow moonflowers, unlike the above directions, which will 1) leave you questioning why you didn't just go to the Home Depot garden center and pick out a few hanging geraniums, and 2) cause you to ponder why you were so cocky as to think you could actually grow something this complicated on your own, please visit this post:

http://yankeeeyes.blogspot.com/2009/01/growing-moonflowers-slow-and-tedious.html

Happy gardening! :-D