Weekend Wisdom Debut

I've wanted to start doing this for some time now, and in light of my coming across several interesting tidbits of information lately and it being winter and all, when I'll do just about anything to liven things up around me (including seeing just how long I can go on with a sentence before taking a breath and having it still make sense), I figured now was as good a time as any to start my "Weekend Wisdom" feature.

Sydney J. Harris
1917-1986

As a young(er) girl, I can remember reading syndicated newspaper columnist Sydney J. Harris' column, "Strictly Personal."  About once a week or so, he had a feature called, "Things I Learned While Looking Up Other Things."  I LOVED THAT.

With the internet giving us so much information at our fingertips and the ever-present temptation of going off on tangents (How did I end up here and what was it I was looking for again?), I'm always coming across interesting things that I either didn't know before or have long forgotten.  Being a lover of trivia, I know exactly why Mr. Harris felt compelled to share those things he encountered.

When I was in Little Rock, Arkansas, last May, I had a conversation with the charming Genevieve Schmidt of North Coast Gardening about doing this.  She thought it was a great idea and urged me to "Do it!!"  Your voice has been nagging me at the back of my brain all these months, so here you go, Gen - the first "Weekend Wisdom" post is in your honor.

You may read something you already knew.  You may read something that I already knew too, but found interesting enough to share.  It won't always be about gardening either and that's okay, because we gardeners are the sum of our parts and those parts don't always have dirt under their nails. My intent is to make Weekend Wisdom a weekly feature, appearing on either Saturday or Sunday, by definition. I hope you enjoy it.

 

Every Garden(er) Needs a Cat - and Here's Why

Baby

As if you needed yet another reason to love cats other than they're sweet and loveable, yet fiercely independent (or want you to think so), it seems that their purr is precisely the frequency to aid in the healing of bone injury and increase bone density.  It may even be a means for them to speed up their own healing when they've been injured.

You know we have several cats here, right?  My DEXA Scan shows that I have very good bone density for a 55-year-old woman.  Thanks, Baby.

Read more.

WEEKEND WISDOM: A "Tendon"cy for Uniqueness

A few years ago, I decided to do a fun bloggy thing in that I would share quirky and interesting information I came across while looking for other things. It may or may not have anything to do with gardening. I called this feature "Weekend Wisdom." I got distracted (a normal occurrence in my life) and I didn't do this on a very regular basis. Now it's the weekend and I just found something I want to tell you about.

Photo credit: Unknown

The human body is an amazing thing and I'm always thrilled to learn new and wonderful things about it that I didn't know before. The untapped potential alone for new and wonderful things is enough to make my mind explode. Here's the latest...

It seems that there is yet another thing that some of us have and some of us don't. There are supertasters - those people who have taste receptors that other people are missing. There are supersniffers too. (Lucky me, I'm both.) And now, it seems that some of us are missing some other body parts.

In your forearm, there is (or isn't) a particular muscle/tendon - the Palmarus longus. You can see if you have it or don't have it by touching you thumb to your pinky finger and then flexing your wrist. If you see a cord of tissue sticking up, that's your Palmarus longus. If the inside of your forearm remains pretty smooth and flat, you're in the approximately 15% of the population that doesn't have it.

I've got it...

My husband does not.

I wonder if either of our two girls are missing theirs. It can be missing on one arm and present on the other, and its general shape can vary as well.

The cool thing about this muscle, which is largely considered to be vestigial, is that it can be used to replace tendons in other parts of the body.

My husband now thinks he's more highly evolved than I am.

Weekend Wisdom: Or Should That Be Weekend "Whizdom?"

As nice as some people can be - and humble, too - in reality we're a self-centered lot. Well, except for when we think we're the only one in the world who does this or thinks that, but even that is a bit egotistical at times. We all like to think we're normal, but as Erma Bombeck says, "Normal is just a setting on the dryer."

Making our way through life, we have experiences that seem normal to us, in that we think everyone does things the way we do.  I mean, we've always done it that way or we've always been that way, so it must be the same for everyone else, right?  Not necessarily.

When I was in college, studying dental hygiene, I learned about the protruberance (something that sticks out) that I'd had in the roof of my mouth for as long as I could remember.  In fact, I never really gave it much thought until then.  It seems that not everyone has this, even though I assumed they did.

An example of mandibular tori
(Wikimedia/DRosenbach)

I learned it's called a maxillary torus (although technically mine is a mid-sagittal protruberance because of its shape) and it's simply extra bone.  No one really knows why some people have them and some people don't, but there is a hereditary factor.  I also have tori on my lower jaw (called mandibular tori), on both the tongue side and cheek side, as well as on the cheek side of my upper jaw.

There's nothing to be done about it and it's not harmful, unless I ever find the need to get dentures (please NO).  It creates a problem whenever I have to have impressions taken because the impression trays are not made to accommodate that extra bone. (Can't someone invent a flexible tray???) It also is a problem when I'm eating certain things like taco chips or very firm apples, because as I bite down, these things can scrape the tissue covering the bone and it gets sore.

About 7-10% of the U.S. population has mandibular tori.  It's more common in the Asian and Inuit population, and it can continue to form as a person ages, apparently stimulated by bruxism (grinding your teeth).  What does this say about me? That I'm highly stressed??

Well, anyway, it turns out that I'm "special" in yet another way.  We're going to get very personal here.  I've known for a long time that whenever I eat a lot of red beets that I'm going to have a "phenomenal" bathroom experience.  Plainly put, it turns my pee pink.  Sometimes I forget and for a moment I wonder if I've got a bladder or kidney infection.  Then I remember the beets.

I've talked to other family members and I was skeptical when they said they'd never had that happen to them, because gee...this was normal, right?  I mean, it happens to me just about every time I eat them.  I was sure they just weren't taking notice of their own pee.

Turns out that only one in eight people experience what's called "beeturia." It's caused in certain humans by oxalic acid in the digestive system not allowing the betalaine in the beets to be absorbed, so it's excreted.  Furthermore, they found that people that ate pickled beets experienced beeturia more often than those who ate boiled beets, due to the acidic nature of vinegar in the pickled beets.

Studies in the 1950s concluded that there was a genetic factor associated with beeturia, but later studies disproved this.

So now you know more about me than you ever wanted to and maybe yourself. If there's anything normal about any of us, it's that we're all unique.

__________________________________________________
*Thanks to Chris Tidrick for the "whizdom" pun.

Weekend Wisdom: Coriander vs. Cilantro

This isn't news to many cooks and gardeners, but on occasion I encounter one or the other that isn't aware of the relationship between the spice coriander and the herb cilantro. While very distinctive in taste, they both come from the same plant - Coriandrum sativum.

   Coriandrum sativum                          Wikimedia

Simply put, the fresh green leaves of the plant are known as cilantro, which is used in many Mexican dishes. In fact, cilantro is the Spanish word for coriander.

Cilantro                               Wikipedia

To some, the leaves have a soapy taste and is undesirable.  It has been determined that there is a genetic factor that causes cilantro to taste this way to some people, but not to everyone.  Personally, I don't care for cilantro, because yes, it tastes a bit soapy to me.  I can handle it in very small amounts in food, but prefer that it not be used.

So what is coriander?  If the plant is allowed to go to seed, those seeds are what we know as coriander.

Coriander seed                            Wikimedia

Weekend Wisdom: What Color Are Your Eggs?

Having chickens now, I've learned some very interesting facts about them and their eggs.  For example, did you know that there are only two colors of eggs?  Knowing that, what colors would you guess they are?

Most people say brown and white, but most people would be wrong.  When a chicken  makes eggs, they come in white or blue.  Those brown eggs are "painted" by the hen just before they're laid. Only the white eggs and the blue eggs are white or blue all the way through.

Don't believe me?  Look at the inside of that brown eggshell the next time you crack it open.

Weekend Wisdom: Tomato Tidbit

As one who dislikes raw tomatoes, I pick up on anything that reinforces my choice to not eat them.  I have extolled their nastiness here, so I won't go into that again, but thanks to my friend Charlotte, over at Dirt du Jour, chalk one up on the side of eating them cooked, not raw.

She brought to my attention a news article reporting on studies that state the virtues of lycopene.  No surprise there.  We all know that lycopene is a valuable anti-oxidant that is beneficial to our skin, and helps protect us against certain types of cancer as well as osteoporosis. Lycopene also provides some protection from the sun's UV rays.

But did you know that cooking those tomatoes greatly increases the body's ability to absorb that lycopene?  Just like carrots, cooking them makes them better, healthwise. Yeah, I don't like raw carrots either.  Maybe my body just senses what is good for it. (Not sure why I crave English toffee, however.)

Not only that, but when eaten with a small amount of oil or fat (such as cheese on pizza), the ability of lycopene to be absorbed by the intestines is enhanced.¹

Let me say that again:  Cooked tomatoes are better for you than raw ones. That means you should eat more ketchup, tomato soup, chili soup, pizza, spaghetti sauce, and drink more tomato juice.

Lucky me, I like all those things.

_________________________________
¹Elaine Magee, MPH, RD, "Health properties of tomatoes," WebMD, date accessed March 24, 2013.

Weekend Wisdom: The Tiger Bee Fly vs. Carpenter Bees

Carpenter bee / Wikimedia Commons

We've had carpenter bees by the bazillions around here for years.  Every summer, they launch an attack on our gazebo and just standing near it causes you to be on alert, just in case you get in the way of a lumbering 747 of a bee.  I've never been on the bad side of a carpenter bee, but as one who is allergic to bee stings, I tend to give them a wide berth.

Carpenter bees (Xylocopa spp.) are solitary bees, meaning they don't live in hives, but rather by themselves, in holes they chew in wood.  Some will make nests near a fellow bee and some females even share a nest with another female, however.  These bees are not bumblebees, in spite of their looking much like them.  Most have a shiny black abdomen, whereas bumblebees have furry ones.

We have split rail fencing along two sides of our property and they've riddled several rails
with their nests. Note the praying mantis underneath the rail!

Male carpenter bees don't have stingers, so even if I happened to run into one, there's no danger of being stung.  The females do sting, but are not aggressive and will only do so if physically threatened by direct contact.  They are important pollinators of open-faced flowers, especially the Passiflora genus (Passion flower or maypop).

I'm always interested in the insects, spiders, and other creatures of nature that I come across as I tend to the gardens here at Our Little Acre and yesterday I noticed a big fly hanging around the compost bins.  I had my camera with me at the time, so I snapped a photo or two so that I could study it and identify it later.

Tiger bee fly
(Xenox tigrinus)

It turns out that the fly is a tiger bee fly (Xenox tigrinus).  Well, guess what the tiger bee fly does?  It lays eggs at the opening of the holes made by carpenter bees.  And when those eggs hatch, the larvae feed on the larvae of the carpenter bees.  Synergy at work.

Oh, and tiger bee flies don't bite or sting.  They don't have biting mouth parts and being a fly, no stinger either.

Carry on, guys.

Weekend Wisdom: Transfiguration and the Flamingo

This being Transfiguration Sunday in the calendar of many Christian churches, the children's sermon in church this morning was an attempt at explaining transfiguration to the kids.  Big word for them! The analogy used by our pastor was that of the flamingo. 

Merriam-Webster defines transfiguration as "a change in form or appearance" and gives metamorphosis as a synonym.

Adult and juvenile flamingo (Wikipedia)

He showed a photo of a pink flamingo and the kids knew what it was. Then  he showed them a picture of a baby flamingo and it was a greenish-white color. He explained that flamingos didn't turn their characteristic pink color until they were about three years old and then it was due to their diet of algae and shrimp.

That got me thinking and wondering if there were any other animals whose colors are a result of what they eat. The answer is yes!

For example, our state bird, the cardinal, is red due to its diet.  Berries are one of the main staples of their diet, and the carotenoids in those berries are manifested in its feather follicles.  Some pigments in the diets of birds are converted to different colors, depending on the species.

Northern Cardinal

If you kept a cardinal in captivity and fed it one kind of seed that didn't contain these carotenoids, its plumage would get progressively duller with each molt.

Weekend Wisdom: I Like the Way the Greeks Do It

Having been the guest in homes outside the U.S., I know that different locations and cultures have what they consider to be proper guest etiquette. I try to take my cues from my hosts, but sometimes you just don't know what to give your host as a thank you gift for having you in their home, whether it be for a meal or for a few days.

Huffington Post to the rescue!

Photo of Aglaonema from my book, Indoor Plant Décor: The Design
Stylebook for Houseplants

A cut flower bouquet is always in good taste for your host, now matter where you live, but in Greece, a potted plant is a common gift.

Despina Trivoli, HuffPost Greece's Head of Life and Culture says, "The most usual gifts include alcohol, dessert (cake is very popular) or plants." Flowers in general are welcome, but usually potted plants are preferable -- something that will be able to grow in a balcony or garden.

I like that.

Weekend Wisdom: Spring Officially Started Three Weeks Ago

You thought spring started on Friday, didn't you? Well, you would be right, IF you're talking about spring based on the tilt of the earth on its axis. Astronomically, spring began on Friday, March 20th this year, when the earth was halfway between its extremes of tilt towards and away from the sun.

This is what we've all been taught as soon as we were old enough to understand the seasons. Never mind that it doesn't always occur on the same calendar date; it's usually within a couple of days of each other no matter which year we're talking about.

Some years (most years, if we're honest), that date rolls around on the calendar and we're frustrated because even though it's technically spring, it many times doesn't feel much like it. There's often snow still on the ground and the temperatures are anything but springlike.

The red-winged blackbird is a true harbinger of spring
for us here in Ohio.

But then there are the years when we notice signs that spring just might come a little early. The crocuses emerge from ground that is seemingly frozen solid and birds that take a hike for points south during winter are once again munching at the feeders and advertising that they're on the market for a mate.

So what gives?

It's called meteorologic spring and it began on March 1st. It's not based on the earth's tilt and only a little bit on the calendar for convenience's sake, though it is three months long, just like astronomical spring. Average temperature is the biggest determining factor and it also makes it easier to compare seasonal forecasts and trends for people who depend on the weather for their business or pleasure, such as agriculture (that's us!), travel and tourism, etc.

Though it seems like spring didn't come a bit early this year, there were signs in nature that it was well on its way before it felt like it got here. And I like the idea of celebrating all the goodness that is spring as early as possible.

Weekend Wisdom: What's the Story Behind Jarlsberg Cheese?

Huffington Post recently posted an article entitled "What Your Favorite Cheese Says About You."  These personality analyses are apparently designed to help you know who you really are.  When we read them, we secretly hope that we're shown to be only good with a smidgeon of spunk, snark, and silly. I don't think we really give much credence to these pseudo-Freudian exercises, but it's all in good fun.

In the latest cheesy edition, by virtue of my favorite cheese being Swiss, I am deemed to be a liar.  Well.  It's said that even a liar tells the truth sometimes and I would imagine the inverse is true too, but lying is something I just don't do, save for those little white ones that don't really matter to anyone except the person you're lying to.  ("No, it does not make you look fat.")  So much for that.

But let's talk about my favorite cheese.  Swiss.  The cheese that doesn't taste a thing like it smells.  The sense of smell is closely affiliated with our sense of taste, so why on earth do we like cheese so much?  Even Swiss cheese doesn't come close to being the stinkiest cheese of all, but clearly, there are millions who don't let the strong odor bother us and we chow down.

Swiss cheese originated in Switzerland (hence, the common name) and my nearly lifelong penpal from there told me years ago that what most of us think of as Swiss cheese is properly called Emmenthaler, coming from the Emmental region of Switzerland. But Swiss cheese is also made elsewhere and a number of varieties exist.

Ohio plays a major part in the cheese world, in spite of most people thinking of Wisconsin as the cheese capital in the U.S. The biggest producer of all-natural Swiss cheese in the U.S. is located in Brewster, Ohio.  And Baby Swiss was invented here.  The characteristic holes are the result of bacteria (one is Streptococcus!) producing gases as one bacteria consumes the lactic acid produced by the others, and the bigger the holes, the longer the cheese has been aged.  However, hole size is regulated because it becomes a problem for mechanical slicers when they're too large.

I like all kinds of Swiss cheese, but my favorite is Jarlsberg (pronounced yarlz'-berg), which doesn't come from Switzerland at all, but Norway.  It seems that the formula for producing Jarlsberg cheese is closely guarded and it is only made in Norway, except for two other places in all the world.  One is in Ireland and guess where the other one is.  Go on, guess.

That's right - Ohio.  The cultures used to make my favorite cheese are imported by Alpine Cheese in Winesburg, Ohio, and they do their part in satisfying the country's taste for the Number One most imported cheese in the country - over $125 million worth each year.

All I really care is that this sweet, nutty cheese is sitting in my refrigerator right now and I can partake of its deliciousness when the mood strikes.  Which is often.

Weekend Wisdom: Little Strokes Fell Great Oaks

We have several large oak trees here at Our Little Acre.  I love them and I hate them. They're 200+ years old and majestic.  They provide most of the shade in our yard in the summer and are home to bird nests of all sorts. Squirrel nests, too.

But I hate those acorns. Especially when we've had a bumper crop of them. It makes walking in the yard difficult - forget going barefoot - and they aren't that easy to rake up.

Then there are the leaves.  Oaks don't lose their leaves all at once.  They shed them over a period of months, as in most of the year. Only in late winter are they truly devoid of leaves.

You have to take the bad with the good, and in the end, love wins out over hate.

Did you know?

• Oaks can produce acorns at age 20, but many won't produce until they're 50 years old.
  
  
• A mature oak tree will give off 167 tons of water in a year through their leaves. (from USGS data)


• Acorns are edible, some more so than others.  Tannins in the acorns produce a bitter taste, but some have less tannins than others (white oak) and tannins can be pretty much removed by chopping the nuts and soaking in water until the water no longer turns brown. Red oaks have high levels of tannins.


• Only one in 10,000 acorns will go on to become a tree.


• In 1936, at the Berlin Olympics, medal winners were given an oak sapling (Quercus pedunculata).  As few as four of these trees may exist today.

This oak tree stands in Connellsville, PA, an
Olympic gift to runner John Woodruff for winning a
medal during the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

Weekend Wisdom: Is a Plant Virus Ever a Good Thing?

Looking up the skirt of an Abutilon bloom

I've grown abutilons, commonly known as parlor maples or flowering maples, for many years now.  I love their bright bell-shaped blooms and they're easy.  They're a houseplant for me, since I live in the north, but they go outside in summer.

Most of the ones I've grown have the typical solid green maple-shaped leaves (in spite of not being maples), but my favorite one is Abutilon pictum 'Gold Dust' or Abutilon pictum 'Thompsonii'.  I don't know which of these I have, and frankly, don't know what the difference is between the two. (Can someone enlighten me?)

Instead of the usual solid green foliage, this one has leaves mottled with yellow.

This mottling is actually caused by a virus - the Abutilon mosaic geminivirus (AbMV).  Usually, you think of a virus as being a bad thing and harmful to the plant.  Not in this case.  For this Abutilon, it simply creates a beautiful plant with interesting foliage.

The virus can be transmitted from one Abutilon to another, but only through grafting, seed, or specifically the Brazilian white fly.  Other white fly species are not vectors for transmission.

The yellow coloring on the foliage is caused by the virus-infected cells; the cells in the green parts of the leaves are not infected with the virus. If the Abutilon is grown in low light conditions, the plant may lose its mottling, in spite of the virus still being present, and once the plant starts growing solid green leaves, it may continue to do so, even if the plant is returned to a location of high light.

Weekend Wisdom: Does Lightning Make the Grass Greener?

You may have heard it said that following a thunderstorm, which by literal definition contains lightning, the grass will be greener.  It's not the rain, mind you, but the lightning that has been credited with greening up the grass.  Is it true?

Wikimedia Commons/Axel Rouvin

I trust scientists that know a whole lot more about this stuff than I do, but I have to say I'm a believer, no matter what they tell me.  I've seen it.  Simple rain has failed to green it up to the extent that I've seen a good thunderstorm with an abundance of lightning do.

This is a topic that has been in debate for longer than I've been alive, I imagine, but here's what I found out, put in as simple of terms as I can come up with:

Nitrogen in fertilizers is responsible for greening up the grass. The atmosphere contains 78% nitrogen, but in order for plants to  make use of it, the nitrogen bonds have to be broken so they can combine with oxygen to form nitrates, the form of nitrogen that plants can use to form more chlorophyll. The lightning provides enough energy to do this, causing the nitrogen to combine with oxygen in the air, which is then taken to the grass in the raindrops.  The grass drinks it up and is greener.

The debate over this is whether there are enough nitrates formed during a storm to make a difference. Those of us who have seen it happen are convinced there are.  Others will disagree and you can find just as many opinions on one side of the issue as the other.

As a dental hygiene student in college, I was taught that a teething baby's diaper rash has nothing whatsoever to do with the teething.  I believed that too, until I had my own kids and saw it happen. Over and over, that rash would appear at exactly the time a new tooth did.  So what about that?

I'm rather surprised at the number of people I encounter that have never heard of this lightning/green grass thing.  It's something I remember hearing many times from an early age. That, of course, doesn't make it correct, but years of personal experience have helped to form my own opinion on the issue.

This spring, we've had rain and we've had warm temperatures, but it was only after a thunderstorm with plenty of lightning one night this past week did I notice the extreme green that lay before me the next morning when I looked out the window.  The difference was dramatic enough for me to think about this lightning connection again.

You may say I'm wrong, but that's okay. We'll just agree to disagree.