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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Each week brings amazing and amusing mind stimulation!

Quote to ponder under the apple tree
More grows in the garden than the gardener sows.
~ Old Spanish Proverb

Resources to bite into
1. It’s Wildflower Week
The current Brain Aerobics Weekly celebrates wild growing things,

noting that 80 percent of all medicinal drugs originate from wild plants.

Most, however, remain unstudied. Consider the pink Madagascar
periwinkle, (shown here) from which vincristine is derived.
Vincristine has increased the survival rate of children with leukemia
from 20 percent to 80 percent. What else remains to be
discovered? The beauty of flowers is more than skin deep. (Learn more at
http://www.nps.gov/plants/cw/variety.htm.)

2. Today is International Respect for Chickens Day
The slogan is "Give a Cluck! Stick Up For Chickens!" May 4th is
International Respect for Chickens Day in a month of activities
sponsored by United Poultry Concerns (UPC). The organization
promotes a vegan diet and compassionate treatment of chickens.
I am unlikely to become a vegan soon, but I certainly support the
humane treatment of poultry and all things edible. And I like their
sense of humor. They have put 100 king-size posters on
Washington, D.C. Metro buses with their slogan. Learn more at http://www.thepoultrysite.com/poultrynews/20064/campaigners-to-honourrespect- for-chickens-day

3. Celebrate gnomes, too
The current Brain Aerobics Weekly also celebrates garden gnomes which are, sad to say, not fully appreciated by all, but dearly loved by many. Here is a sample paragraph from the discussion page:
The small town of Strasburg in southern Illinois, adopted garden gnomes as its mascot two years ago, and since then they have been arriving in increasing numbers. They even have their own newspaper with the motto, “Gnome News is Good News.” As this is a census year in the U.S., the town council did not want the gnomes to feel neglected and conducted a gnome census, with volunteers going door to door among the town’s 600
residents to ask for the number of bearded figures per household, plus their sex, age and place of origin. Source: http://www.sott.net/articles/show/207003-Gnome-Census-Illinoistown- plans-first-garden-gnome-count

Tips/ideas/insights to savor
A few people have been known to have the same phobia toward gnomes that some people have toward clowns, but the current Brain Aerobics Weekly features a trivia quiz on movie monsters
that are more universally feared. Here is a sampling:
1. Attack of the Killer Tomatoes ___
2. The Blob ___
3. The Mummy ___
4. The Fly ___
5. Wolfman ___
a. The 1941 version of this classic starred Lon Chaney Jr. in the tragic tale of an ordinary man who unwillingly turns into a feared animal when the moon is full.
b. An eccentric scientist experimenting with teleportation accidentally turns
himself into an oversized insect in a love story gone horribly wrong.
c. In the original 1932 version, Boris Karloff starred as an Egyptian creature returning to
life to stalk the reincarnation of his lost love.
d. This spoof of monster movies featured vegetables that revolted against humanity.
e. A meteorite crashes to earth, leaving a crater in the ground and a gelatinous substance. An
old farmer picks it up with a stick to get a closer look and is eaten; with each victim devoured the substance grows larger. . .

Answers: 1. d 2. e 3. c 4. b 5. a

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Each week brings amazing and amusing mind stimulation!

Let us become the apple of your eye.