Smarter Every Day, THIS IS A BUTTERFLY!

Eric Toensmeier - Regenerative Farming

I had the pleasure to meet Eric Toensmeier earlier this year when he did a talk at the Mt. Cuba Center on native plants that doubled as being food crops as well. I found it to be a little lacking honestly, and it wasn't anything I hadn't already heard from his youtube channels. Basically growing Ramps and Trout Lily and Ground Nut together and such; one leafs out while the other goes dormant or they grow well together. He talked more about turning his home into a productive example of permaculture at work and even started a home business. His true passion though lies when he's not restricted to native plants. There are so many more options out there to grow when we consider food and I'm all for growing nonnative food plants. It's the boring flowers for the sake of flowers sort of gardens I hate. Food plants though have a purpose and people should always grow more of them; and if they're native, then all the better.

Mother Arrested For Letting Her Children Play Outside

I can believe that maybe this women stepped away for her kids a moment but the fact that she was outside when the officer arrived on scene makes this irrelevant. The fact that her neighbor thought the kids were playing outside unsupervised negates this being any sort of crime because the neighbor was clearly watching the kids. It shouldn't be a crime for kids to play outside. Their neighborhood looks like one of those fake communities where they cut the shape of a house into the sod and build a copy of the same house that next door has. Such homes just bring out how mundane and lacking in choice local plant nurseries are as all of your neighbors are forced to pick from the same dozen or so trees, shrubs, and perennials. The only wildlife that exists are birds at the bird feeder and little else. 

Phoenix dactylifera Back From Extinction

Wow 2,000 year old seeds still viable.
Extinct tree grows anew from ancient jar of seeds unearthed by archaeologists.
Something for the religious minded to read up on. Apparently the Roman Empire tried destroying this plant before they'd accepted Christianity as the one true religion of the empire. 

This is actually a cultivar of the true species which still exists today. But the real headline here is that the seeds are still viable after 2,000 years! This reminds me of the school down in Texas where a professor burred seeds in jars with instructions to dig them up at certain intervals. The findings thus far show that seeds to many plants can still be viable 50 or even 200 years later but I'd never heard of anything 2,000 years old before. Neat.

Ghosts of Evolution (Video)

I've started reading a new book titled "Ghosts of Evolution" and found this creative way of promoting it. I'll report back once I've read it more thoroughly.