Just a Bite 6-1-10

Quote to ponder under the apple tree

The Earth laughs in flowers.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson


Resources to bite into

1. Celebrate Perennial Garden Month

I am a great garden appreciator, but a pathetic gardener, so Perennial Garden Month – which means you don’t have to till the soil and plant the seeds each year – holds high appeal for me. What I hadn’t thought about, but which is highlighted in the current UBrain Aerobics WeeklyU, is the fact that almost all our fruits and nuts and many of our herbs and spices are perennials. What a bounty we have in apple, plum, peach, and cherry trees for delicious fruits, and almond, pecan, and walnut trees to keep us all a little nutty. As for the vines, many thanks for the wine. And flowers? Their diversity is divine.

2. Get outside!

The current Brain Aerobics Weekly notes that June is Great Outdoors Month and that there is nothing as easy and effective for lifting moods and improving one’s sense of well being as a simple walk outdoors. It is good for our physical health:
• Brief sunlight contributes to calcium’s conversion into strong bones and the body’s use of vitamin D. It also boosts our immune system.
And it’s good for our mental health:
• It reduces depression and decreases stress.
And it’s good for communities, because people who enjoy the outdoors tend to better stewards of those spaces. Think about all the things you enjoy outdoors, all the places you enjoy doing them, and get yourself outside!

3. Odd solutions

Although I am writing this a week before you’ll see it, the BP oil leak is very much on my mind and it is likely to be an even bigger disaster as time goes on. The evening news noted that over 20,000 suggestions for what to do have been submitted from scientists, engineers and ordinary citizens. Surely among them are workable ideas. Human ingenuity is amazing. The current Brain Aerobics Weekly highlights other outside-the-box ideas that are having impact, such as rats trained to detect buried land mines where war has ended and peanut butter as an ideal food for malnourished African children.
Another idea – putting low methane microbes from kangaroo stomachs into high methane cow stomachs – provides amusement. In a time of crisis, keeping our sense of humor can be an essential weapon.

Tips/ideas/insights to savor

To keep us focused on oil, the current Brain Aerobics Weekly has a word quiz related to coming up with words that contain the letters O-I-L. One part has the letters out of order. Here’s a sampling:

1. Singers on this TV show compete to become the next American _______.

2. For the big dance at school, a group of us rented a __________ to take us there.

3. Could the lamb ever lie down with the __________ , and not get eaten?

4. He wanted a steak but couldn’t decide between __________ and __________.

5. To save money on paper, the newspaper went from standard size to __________ format.

6. Next to the barn were two huge __________ for storing the grain.

Here’s hoping “Oil won’t be seeing you in every lovely summer's day.”

Answers: 1. idol 2. limo 3. lion 4. sirloin and tenderloin 5. tabloid 6. silos

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