Monthly Archives: October 2013

Elephant Ear Flowers

Garden

DSC00661 DSC00662Did you know that elephant ears have flowers?  I just saw them for the first time today.  There are three flowers on the left from the front of the open one in the middle, a spent one to the right of that, and an emerging on to the left across the bottom of the left photo.  The open flower has a vertical spike going up the middle, protected by its pale yellow-green surround.  The right photo shows the same flowers from another direction.  The fact that I saw them for the first time today probably reflects the fact that they have not been disturbed for several years, and the fact that we have had enough rain this year.

Much of elephant ear reproduction is vegetative by way of  subsurface tubors.   You can see lots of little plantlets in the background that will become big next year.

Recycling Day, A Trip to the Recycling Center

Environment

DSC00665 Loaded up with

recyclablesDSC00666

After wanting to recycle for many years,  (I would even like to recycle the ink on the paper) we are finally recycling, and have found it to be quite convenient.  We just load up our vehicle with the paper, cardboard, plastic, metal, and glass which we have been collecting, largely separating as we go, and drive it to the user-friendly recycling center, where they help us unload, continuing to sort into their  categories .

It eases my mind that as we go along, I do not feel so guilty about getting rid of the packaging and plastic that comes along with our purchases, or disposing of broken items like old phones and radios that no longer work.   I am not really discarding them.  I am sending them for recycling.

The earth has yielded these items all to us, the plastics from fossil fuels, the metals from ores, the glass from common sand, but with the input of energy, cardboard and paper from trees, and other living materials, grown, transported, and processed with considerable environmental costs, so we are good to the earth when we recycle.  Furthermore, we are good to ourselves, not only in having a better conscience, but because we will prolong the livability of our good earth.

 

Health Is Something Everybody Needs

Health, Needs (Human)

 

One thing we can all agree on is that we each need as good health as possible, no matter the demographics to which we belong to individually.   We, who live in the United States today, have emerged from populations, which have lived in different places, and brought to this nation many different traditions for maintaining ourselves and our healths.  On top of this, modern living has imposed some new changes, so we have diversity of practices from different times and places.  As time goes on, we can evaluate how healthy they are.  For instance, many of us buy antimicrobial soaps, to the extent that some are now saying that we live in too clean an environment for the proper growth of our immune systems.  Many of us consider health every day in everything we do, because it is so important.  Many venues make comments on this topic.