November 3rd, 2011 by Busy Mommy

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RsZoWmgPag[/youtube]

November 2nd, 2011 by Busy Mommy

We had such a great time on our trip in October just the two of us.  And it sounds like Nolan had a fabulous time hanging with Grammy and Papa all weekend too.  We’re going to try to get away for 2 or 3 days more often- Nolan is such a joy and so all encompassing of our time and attention that we forget about connecting with each other sometimes!
Our last day we visited Tierra Vegetable farm- the land is probably about 10 acres and had rows upon rows of crops- it was so delightful to walk along looking at all the growing food- it would literally feed hundreds of people. Pretending it’s our farm…… There was heirloom indian style corn dried on the stalk and then ground into cornmeal, and popcorn style corn drying on the stalk……….. I saw an the blossom on an okra plant for the first time ever… Sunflowers- these heads were huge!

There was a lunch with roasted veggies straight from the farm, and lamb tacos- wow that lamb was good!  The even taking place was a “barn-warming” party- yep- we went to a barn warming party.  We really don’t belong in the city.

November 2nd, 2011 by Busy Mommy

This is the Burbank rose- Luther Burbank lived from 1849 to 1926- among the estimated 800 new strains and varieties of plants he created by working with the genes of then current plants, is this rose- is was bred for what was valued in the victorian era- fragrant, small and delicate, and soft pink. We went to the Luther Burbank Home and Gardens and took a tour with a lady who told us about him and his life’s work.  Luther Burbank was a botanist who is pretty unique when it comes to what he did- the nature and scale of what he did was not matched in his day. I got his autobiography at the used book store in the downtown are of Santa Rosa just a little while later, called Harvest of the Years .  He has some very good insights on the universe and humans, and at the same time it’s dissapointing that as insightful and smart as he was and as much as he learned from his experimentation with plants, that he still felt evolution was responsible for everything in nature up until he stepped in.  Hmmm…  At one point in his book he states that to the outsider certain things in nature could look haphazard and by chance, but he states from all that he learned in his work with nature, that everything develops and works according to definite rules- he learned what those rules were and was able to use them purposefully to create permanent changes in the genes of plants that he worked with- he has it almost 100% except for the most important part- who made those rules to begin with.  He attributes all the glory to “Nature”- and ascribes all the intelligence to it as if it were a real being, instead of Jehovah.  But it still is a testament to Jehovah, because he describes the complexity and the work involved in creating just one new variety or changed plant- in order to produce say, a white blackberry (which he did by the way- it just didn’t catch on), he had to plant literally thousands and thousands of plants for each generation- sometimes 50,000 plants for just the first generation of the experiment.  Out of those thousands there might be one or two that shows a variation that he can then take and work further with- and this would take multiple generations of the plants, and perhaps hundreds of thousands of plants, most of which in the end are burned because they were not showing the characteristics he was looking for.  All that work, and yet, “nature”, even though it’s not an animated being in itself, did this for all creation without a mind behind it?  Hmmm….well that was a new and exciting thing to believe at the time, as Burbank appeared to quite revere Charles Darwin, and indeed did learn a lot and use the rules that Darwin discovered when it came to creating changes in the genes of plants and animals.Still it sounds like he was a pretty intelligent, capable man and it was interesting to learn and see all that he discovered in when it came to plant life.  He is the one responsible for the Paradox Walnut tree- although it didn’t end up working out for what he’d hoped and intended, it did end up having a terrific use, and that is that it’s used as a rootstock for other walnut tree species because of it’s excellent resistance to disease.

Also I saw Quinoa in crop form for the first time- it was just beautiful!  It really was this red.  Makes me want to find a way to like it.  Quinoa is just one of those grains I haven’t cared for yet.  I love millet though….