"Cultivating boredom lengthens one life" paraphrase of Calvin or
Hobbes or Charlie Brown or one of the other great philosophers.

I love the classics too.


sigh..I just commited pepper and tomato murder. I friggin' hate to do
that, but the ground is full, the patio pots are full and the family
and neighbors have all they want....


Sounds like the land of milk and honey.

Gawd, what I wouldn't give for and avacado or six in the garden!!!!!

My neighbor is trying to grow avocados. We are a little far north for
them. 300 miles south I could get away with it and have figs too but
here it is normally too cold during the winter. My neighbor has his next
to a hot tub and I think he tents it on cold nights. Lilly, my shepard,
liberates them from the compost pile. She doesn't seem to care about the
brown spots.

Understood. I use hawthorn, valerian and purslane and a host of other
tings as well. Trying to stay off the pharms and away from the docs.
The purslane is native here and is kind of a pest, though I eat as
much as I can. Spreads like nothing you ever saw. Google it for a
description of it's survival tactics! It is an amazing plant.

Do you feel you are getting any results from the first three? Lower
tri-glycerides, cholesterol or, BP?

Does the jiaogulan have a postive effect on BP? I hope that is the
reason for your use. I might try it for the BP and vascular effects.

All I know is from
http://www.pfaf.org/database/plants....a+pentaphyllum . I
don't have a lot of faith but what the hell. I'll give it a go.

Bitter melon has a good history with lowering BG, as you know doubt
know.

Fringe Pink? A quick search didn't give me much...what is it?

http://www.pfaf.org/database/plants....nthus+superbus
and another one I didn't mention is passion flower
http://www.pfaf.org/database/plants....lora+incarnata


Ahhhh. Sounds like your soil is doing very well. Part of mine is
like that... the rest I still wrestle with, but am gaining the upper
hand. A friend just dropped off a couple cubic yard of grass
clippings and I am busy building a new compost heap,,,, adding alfalfa
and dry matter and whatever else looks healthy and isn't being guarded
too closely!

Sounds like your closer to sustainability than I am. I had to truck in a
yard of compost, a half yard of sand and, a yard of horse manure. to get
this effect and, if I don't stay on top of it, it will be back to
concrete in no time.

I really try to remember this everyday...what is *now*.... this exact
moment... is all that there is. I forget this often, but you know,
the garden does bring one back to center. That and music and family
and children, which I combine with the garden. It gets no better.

Here and now, bro'. Here and now. (If you want a good cry, "The Island"
by Aldous Huxley. Should have been called Paradise Lost but that name
was already taken.) Nice thing with the garden (besides the awesome
flavor of fresh food) is that the measuring and mixing is a great
education for anybody, especially kids. You get math and physics by
figuring surface area and volumes, learn some chemistry and botany, pick
up some Greek and Latin roots and prefixes which are used in all the
European languages. You get exercise and you learn cooperation, not only
with each other but with nature as well, ecology. Lord, I think
we've found the "Golden Brick Road":-)

I can only surmise about your health, but it sounds as if you are
taking "treatment" into your own hands, to some degree anyway.
Same here... HBP, elevated blood sugar (though not over the OLD
limits...funny how they change the numbers on BP and BG and gain
several million new customers for big pharma)

Oh, I still make my pilgrimages to Kaiser to talk to their seers but I
am looking for alternatives. Anything but giving up my "wee drop" in the
evening and, losing weight. At least our culture isn't so nuts over
over-weight men, as they are about over-weight women. It's just freakin'
amazing what the media does to us. If anything, I'm just trying to keep
"Big Pharma" honest. I didn't say I would succeed but, I gotta' try.


Life is good, despite all the s**t going down around the world. But I
will continue to bitch and rail and try and illuminate the
problems.... it is our duty.

Keep bangin' those pots.

Guess what? We have two more grands on the way.... both DILs are
pregnant....one due soon, the end of June and the other the end of
October! The first one is another grandson.....don't knwo about the
other yet. The Clan is growing (yep... scots-irish).

Good on you and congrats.

On my mothers side I'm Scot-English. The first we know of her ancestors
were that they were Dickersons and had a hardware store in Maryland
until the Revolution. Being good Tories, they moved to New Brunswick and
took up in the small town of Macadam, now best know for their aggregate
surfaces. Mom came to California in the 30's where she took up with a
terrible man (my dad) and made him the object of pity (at least in the
family). She would have been a Bush Republican. I apparently developed
anti-bodies to Republicanism (although I always did like Barry
Goldwater). But I digress . . .

Is this OT folks? Not really......families and gardens both need lots
of nurturing and love....there is a definite correlation 'tweenst the
two.

May your days be bright, may your soil be dark and may your gardens
flourish!

May the wind always be at your back and,
the road rise to meet your feet.

To the garden and them pepper plants.

- Bill

Coloribus gustibus non disputatum (mostly)