You will love this one...

It is a Kaleidoscope!  Interactive and Fabulous!   Here is the link if that linkie doesn't work. The cursor will make it bloom, too. It's amazing I tell you!

http://inoyan.narod.ru/kaleidoskop.swf


Thank you to B!

I will also put it in Funstuff at Some of My Favorite Blogs

To market to market, and to the dentist, too

Frizzie on the left and water cress on the right. 
I tried to put a happy face on the water drop but failed miserably.
Actually, it looks like a little dragon is hidden in the cress.  

Tiny patty pan, just right to eat.  I love them little like this

Pepino melons.  Aren't they tempting?

The goodies are nice but look at how they are packaged. 

Thursday I went to the dentist for a cleaning, and they gave me the little bag of goodies.  I've emptied it and put it into my knitting stufffff!

I took Sis to the Grocery Store yesterday, and while she shopped for her stuff, I window shopped the fresh produce and flowers.

There are so many colors of miniature roses at this store that I was agog at them. Also, there's a wonderfully full variety of vegetables on offer. It was not quite the same as a farmer's market but some of the items were organic.

After an hour and a half I was worn completely OUT but I did score an amazing water bottle. It's one that has a tube thingy that goes into the freezer so that it helps keep the water in the bottle nice and cold. It's got a flip spout, too.

You can accomplish about the same thing by filling any old water bottle half full, capping it, laying it on it's side in the freezer over night to make ice, and filling the rest of it the next day with water. The frozen side of ice keeps the water cold a long time. But this was pink and purple and just fits my style more. I almost bought the purple lunch box but thought better of it. DH is generous to me about bags, but one was coming from a friend. I'll show you my new bag tomorrow. It's pink with brown paisley, and absolutely gorgeous!

And, of course, on the reaaaaally FLIP side of the Coin, there is the Onion.

Yes B.  You gotta love the Onion.  R rated warning here..


Social Security Reform Bill Encourages Americans To Live Faster, Die Younger

And for those who are wondering, I did cast on that damn second sock.  Pictures at 11.  That's only 15 minutes!  wooo Hooo!

The American People are angry..

What the cuts are all about... Bernie Sanders



What is left to be said?   The servants of the people better start listening to the majority of us who are speaking and not just the mouthpieces for shadowy monied brigands intent on robbing the treasuries. 

Tiny "Blue eyed Grass" Make it BIG to see the darling flowers...

The tiny bluish belly flower I found in the verges of a public-space type lawn turned out to be some sort of grass.  The one with roots I am going to plant to see if it will grow for me.  Those small black dots on DH's hand are the seeds from the pods, which are perfectly round and sweet.  I so LOVE nature!

This is a LINKIE to the Illinois Wildflowers - Prairie  site where you can see a white one that is not as small.  This one is teeny tiny!   I can't find this particular one on the web but I'm still looking.

For the rest of the day, I'm going to read my books, and knit the ribbing on the second sock. Somehow, I do not know how, I managed to RESIST buying a new set of size OT needles. I'm sure it's really only a matter of time but for now I'm reveling in my sales resistance! YayMe! But, stay tuned.

The newest book, The Flickering Mind, is partly an exposé on how the computer industry sucked off major ducats from all levels of US Education - all the way to the DOE - during the time when the messiahs of technology use in schools were proclaiming that kids would all benefit from having classroom computers and would end up flipping burgers if they didn't have them.

Well, the biggest beneficiary turned out to be the industry itself, and guess who ended up holding the bags of instantly obsolescent software and CPUs over the years? That's right! You got it on the first try, too! It was the Starry eyed parents (read taxpaying public) who believed them and never raised a peep. It hasn't worked yet and it's had over 25 years to make our children immune from having to scrub toilets or flip burgers for McDonald's.

This is a scholarly book, and the author is not a muckraker though anyone who goes up against such firepower is always thrown into that poke bag, as we've learned.

I'm such a scourge, I know. I should get a hobby.

Sorry...

The Real Beginning of Irish Dancing Video post blew away the whole side bar.  If you want to watch it, you have to go to YouTube to do it.

THIS    <<<<<  is the hyperlink provided by YouTube.

Thank you Pina for the fun!

To Tell the Truth..

I'm sick and tired of reading all the bad stuff that American Business has done to the American semi-democracy, but it's not half as bad as what it's done to Central and South American Democracies.  So, I guess the American people aren't really so badly off at that.

But I think I'll go hole up somewhere with my knitting, my gardening and some Donna Leon books and take a little break from wishing fire from heaven to fall on the Lovers of Money and Power.  Frankly, those people really suck at being Human Beings.

Oh, I did find some lovely flowers in a neighboring garden plot when we went to see our daughters' allotments.  Here's some close ups.  Make them really BIG!  You will bask in wonderfulness I tell you!

Where would our poor hearts and heads be without the flowers to love and a good Mother Nature who lets us tinker with her production line?  She lets us do this just as long as she gets to fight back, something we forget at our peril.  We must remember to be nice to Mother Nature.  Remember that commercial a long time ago?  I do.



Chiffon?  That chockful of trans fat hydrolyzed axle grease?  That Chiffon?

These tiny tots are going to be planted tomorrow

Isn't Nature amazing?  That is one leaf of the Mother plant, and look at all the little plants queuing up for Life, Stardom, The Big Pot!

No wonder Monsanto can't keep ahead of Mother Nature.  They didn't listen very well in Botany 101, did they??

Tosh Sock Knitting report.

The sock is not as big around, and it's shorter ; I thought the toe was going to be too short, though it actually might be a little too long.  I'm going to take out some rows and graft it off.   The pair under it is my smallest pair that I can wear.  This six is going to fit right I hope.  My foot is not a six, hehe.

A little bowl of color and a mud stone from along the California Coast that I see a face in.  Sort of a Maori God face I think.  The other rocks in there are some citrine - a color of quartz crystal, and some Bruneau Jasper, and a little piece of seam turquoise.  Some things just seem to be too beautiful,in their own right, to change.

The Flickering Mind, by Todd Oppenheimer

I know I've wondered about this, and I have a flickering mind of my own. ;o)

Recently a friend was also wondering how students she talked to did not know something so fundamental as why Washington DC is the Capitol.

If you, as an older adult, would like to know why so many upper grade students don't know many of the fundamental facts that you, yourself, know about US or World history, or other basic things - like where Borneo is, for instance - this book, The Flickering Mind, might help explain it.

You may also like to watch the Frontline documentary, "Digital Nation". This link goes to a video that's 90 minutes long.

The interview, by NPR of the author of The Flickering Mind is also interesting and instructive. NPR interview of Todd Oppenheimer

Today, and a little bit of yesterday

I saw these at the market today. Amazing little vegetables. They looked like an artist painted them!

I took my sister grocery shopping today, and when I do that, it's about the only time I'm ever in a grocery store. These beautiful little - and they are quite small - Thai eggplants caught my eye. They made up for the dead battery and the empty gas tank that started things off when I went to get her.

I'm eating a strict amount of calories so was very hungry when we got to the Grocery store. That made me start to read labels on lots and lots of things as I wandered the aisles. I don't like to follow my sister because I don't want her to feel rushed or that I'm hovering. But, I degress. I started reading labels. So many things that aren't fresh have milk protein in them! And the cans of beans and tomatoes where so expensive. Dried beans and Fresh tomatoes can't really cost that much can they? You can tell that I don't shop for food anymore. The prices for diced tomatoes with a little bit of seasonings in them was actually quite a shock. The can you'd need for making anything much was over $3.50! The canned beans were just ridiculous.

My hunger pangs finally drove me to cave in and buy some mangos and a tiny loaf of sourdough bread, just for the tactility of actually handling something edible. This tiny loaf was called a mini sourdough boule. I'm always squeezing bread to see how fresh it is, and it may seem odd but it's very enjoyable! I don't squeeze peaches or fruits because that always seem rude, but I do smell them. Anyway, this little bread loaf was really nice! DH made a sandwich for me tonight from part of it. Yum! He calls it, "your loaf of bread." I said, "But, it's not 'mine' you can eat some too!" It's the sort of bread that you make into "boats" for hardy thick soups in the cold weather. Delicious stuff!

My sister came over yesterday and she told me that she's learned to cut her own hair, and it looks fabulous! It really does. She is learning to do things that she never thought she could do. I was going to offer to cut it for her but she's learned how. We both have shortish hair. After our usual big chin wag, we watched "Sequins", a French film which is one of the most beautiful ones ever made, imho, and DH fixed dinner (and learned to make a reduced sauce, or learned about HOW to make one), and later we all watched, "The Bucket List", which was very good.

The sock is almost finished. Now, since I lost one of the needles of the 6 inch DPNs I am going to go out and buy a new set to start the second sock. It seems silly to buy a whole other set but at least I'll have plenty of replacements if one drops off the planet like the last one apparently did. I wish there was a bamboo magnet out there on the market.

I'm going to go finish that sock toe. I've also read two Donna Leon mysteries - those about Commissario Brunetti. I just HAD to take a break from the Experts book. All I wanted to do was throw thunderbolts at BP, Monsanto, those evil corporations, as well as others who may as well not know what I have planned for them. It involves a lot of boiling oil, not for stir fry but worse.

Good night! Look for beauty! And remember,"Noli nothis permittere te terere" or in other words "Non illigitamus carborundum", which most of us understand best. I'm going to take up Latin. There are so many fun things that can be said.

"De minimus non curat lex". That's what you can say to officious people who totally piss you off. And then you just walk away,sending a little "meh!" up in your wake.

Every Teardrop is a Waterfall.

If you want to understand the words, which are amazingly gorgeous, try this one, though it does turn into a promo. Sorry! I didn't know that.

What I use for potting stuff + knitting report

k asked about my potting mix.

This is what I use for succulents, and a little less of the compost (like 1/4 in the mix) for actual cactus.

So here 'tis k, and yes, I make my own, usually. Whatever I have on hand, compost, ready mix for any flowering plant, even this African violet one, that is actually for all flowering potted plants. It's really not the most important part of the mix since it forms less than half, more like a third.

Then there is pumice which makes up the rest. So, two thirds crushed pumice, one third potting soil, compost or mix. I used to use sand but it's not very good, and actually not recommended anymore. You can use vermiculite which I once did, but it breaks down too fast- meaning within a couple of years. The red crushed lava rock is just a top dressing.

I mix enough to fit into this old stainless steel bowl, re-purposed from silver casting, dampening the mix enough to give a little moisture to the new roots. You don't want those thin little red (or white) exploritory roots to be set in soggy soils.

These babies are so forgiving. The trick is to not over water, nor to let them stress from too little. I mist them, in our hot dry summers, about every third day, deep water about twice a month. They're pretty hardy.

Knitting Report:

I am to the toe on the Tosh sock. It's hard going from here because you do NOT want the toe to come out too short. Thinking of this, I looked up the measurements for shoe sizes on Zappos.com. I think that if I just make the foot a little shorter and the toe the same length, this all may work out very well. Fingers, and toes, crossed on this thing.

Baby Plants and Curious Dove

These four are still waiting patiently for new and bigger pots

More Babies discovered in the underbrush on the table.  Yay!

Tiny sedum plants in back of other baby plants-make big to see

Yet more babies but these I knew about

Repotted and ready to go

Curious mother dove wants to know what I, human and noisy, am doing in HER nesting area.  She has claimed it for years now.

What I'll do, once a baby is established, with it's own root system etc, is transfer it with some of it's mates into a larger pot to make a full plant. That frees pots for other plantlets.

My original donkey tail sedum, from which the tiniest new plants have come, used to hang in the shade from a nail. The hungry birds (mostly house and chipping sparrows and finch) came in and denuded the long, beautiful stems. I'm still dealing with that, though the sparrows have mostly gone away because my neighbor no longer has big aviaries. I'm not sorry to see most of the sparrows gone but I miss the chippies and the Finch.

Flowers and flowering plants from the Holy Land

Two of my daughters took a trip to Palestine and Jordan several years ago, and I wanted to share some of the flower pictures that they took. The first is likely some sort of tulip (or crocus) because there are tulip like plants in another picture that hadn't bloomed yet. The girls went in Spring, I believe.

This pink crocus (?) or tulip is from Qawawis, a Palestinian settlement.  The girls saw all the countries in that area that were open to travelers at the time.  But there were not many flower pictures in their sets.  All the cities there are very lovely with plantings, old quarters and markets.

The pictures of Petra are just so heartrendingly beautiful.


Crocus or Tulip flower

This is a little desert plant that must hang around the watered areas there.  A succulent that may be a browse plant for wee goats.

The rest of these are from Jordan.


Trumpet vine with very small trumpet flowers.

Another vine that might be some sort of edible gourd. 

A vine that is used for shade and beauty both.  I wish I had such vines because my garden needs them!

This plant was growing sort of all over the place and has a succulent look to the flowers but is more of a bush, with very heavy green stems, very long, and shows at least some big chomps out of the big oval leaves, like an animal took a bite.

                                                         

Hope you enjoyed a little Tour of Flowers in the desert.

What I think about a lot

Ellen wondered why GE should keep getting tax breaks while, say, her own mother should have to try to live on even less than she already does.

I think about the downward spiral of our recent history, and who got us here and why we can't seem to do anything about it.

I suppose that since the People( who pay the bills incurred by the government as well as the salaries in Washington) have been gotten by the throat a long time ago and didn't notice that these same government stooges- and the corporations who run them (not all elected officials are stooges of the corporations but enough of them are)- are robbing public treasuries.  They think we will not notice what they, as servants of ALL, are actually doing, like selling out to GE, et al, and the war contractors via the pentagon, etc, because we haven't raised much of a fuss before.  Only Radicals and Anarchists do that sort of stuff.  We nice middle class people just keep paying the bills.

GE is still one of the biggest government war materials contractors at anytime, Peacetime - what is that?- or war time.  I did a search for GE as an arms dealer on line.

Anyway, the power elites are still on the road to rob us of everything WE think is a good idea, i.e. taking care of people in their old age (or in their disability), or those younger people who find themselves robbed by the now infamous Gamblers on Wall Street, or, as children who are helpless and homeless, along with their parents who used to be able to provide for them and no longer can because big corporations have moved so many jobs off shore.

I suppose those who love money and power more than anything else -including their own good names- heavens, what is that worth on the open market?- don't care as long as the people keep supplying a robust 75 to 80% of the economy supported with their domestic purchasing power; the people are expected to willingly do this, along with producing  the next generation of people for resource expeditions to foreign lands, as well as bleating, sheep-like, while voting an impossible ticket!  That would be a ticket that changed nothing because of the entrenched permanent bureaucracy that keeps moving through the revolving doors of the Capitol, as well as the look alike parties who all want the MONEY floating around like MANNA in the Alpine, rarefied atmosphere of Washington DC and the Pentagon.

Now it's probably time to post more pictures of flowers, so that we will know where they have all gone to.  Yes?

A walk in the parks on Tuesday

This is the tiniest daisy like flower I've ever seen. 
 UPDATE:  This is a Blue eyed grass, and it's in the Iris family.  So tiny and sweet!

  

White variety of Crepe Myrtle tree

Jacaranda Tree

The Pink Variety of Crepe Myrtle tree.

Jared Diamond, on why societies collapse.

This was a TED talk, delivered in 2003.

PJ from Golden Oasis mentioned that she was reading his book of the same title.  I think it's a good idea for us to give some thought to how close to the wall we actually are in many ways.  

Mr. President, Keep your word!

-------------------------------------------------------------

Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, the White House at the eleventh hour injected Social Security into the deficit negotiations. "Where does this come from?" Sanders asked in a Senate speech. The president understands that Social Security hasn't contributed a dime to the deficit. It has a $2.6 trillion surplus. It can pay every benefit owed to every eligible American for the next 25 years. Then there's this fact: Obama promised in 2008 that he would not cut Social Security. "Keep your word," the senator thundered.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

I copied and pasted this from Bernie Sanders' email sent to supporters who signed his petition.   The Bold Italics are my own. 

You can see the whole statement HERE at Senator Sanders' Web Page.

And, please, how can it be that less than 200,000 people signed this petition when there is so much at stake, notwithstanding that Social Security pays it's own way and this is because every working adult (or child for that matter if they make enough) pays into it?  Less than 200,000 signatures is, well, it's just pathetic for America's democracy.

Heart shapes, collected In June

My eye picks out heart shapes in a, forgive me, heart beat. I might have gotten this from my mother. She could see things in so many odd places, not just in clouds and rocks. I don't think she ever saw the face of Jesus in a Cheese pizza though.

Today is a ceramics day and I get to see if the dragon heads stayed glued on or not. I'm hoping they did. Next, the horns. and some wing tips. I hate these dragons.

Definite Heart Shape to this Glorious Poppy

This one is just a little stretch, but still. 

This heart shape is a perfect petal off of a vine behind me.
There I was, walking along in a funk, and I looked down at just the right moment.
Life can be sort of Magical at times, can't it?

Food For Thought

I couldn't sleep because of all the angst in my soul about the sorry state of just about anything environmental in this world.

This is an excerpt from the book that I'm now reading:

" 'The minute you begin to view the public as something that doesn't operate rationally, your job as a publicist or journalist changes,"  Stewart Ewen observes.  'The Pivotal moment was when those who provided the public with it's intelligence no longer believed the public had any intelligence.'   It is disturbing to see how frequently this ideology, which corrodes the democratic values in an acid bath of cynicism, surfaces today among the political insiders who claim to govern in the name of democracy and popular sovereignty.   On issue after issue, the public is belittled as self indulgent and misinformed, incapable of grasping the larger complexities known to the policy makers and the circles of experts surrounding them,' observed author William Greider in, Who Will Tell the People, his 1992 study of the Washington political establishment.' "


It really is time for us all to start talking to each other, mending fences and getting some of the people who are ruining our dreams out of that lobby at the white house.   We need to start thinking about the horrible future they have planned for "commoners", which is what they think of us as being.  If we stay isolated from each other, we can't do very much.  That's why things have gotten into the state they are in.  We have been divided against each other with labels slapped on us by corporate media for decades now.    But United, we can do this!  We can have more responsive representatives in our government, ones who aren't continually out of touch with our realities and our wishes.  We pay their salaries and they treat us as if we are imbeciles who need talked down to?


As to becoming re-united with one another, if we were to start right at the local level and take back our own Agriculture,  planning what our families are going to be eating around what can be grown locally, we start supporting local farmers who need our markets.  Both we and the farmers will find ourselves with more power to do other things that will benefit every region of this country.

The Slow Foods movement started back in the 50's, at least.  It's been working to keep food unprocessed, fresh and local throughout the consolidation of Agriculture into Agribusiness, which, incidentally,  is not a consolidation that is good  for the Earth, nor is it good for people.   There is a documentary entitled, "Ingredients", that shows how our food distribution system can be changed for the better.

Let's start with the small things close to home.  We don't have to become isolated regionally but we can learn how to keep the small farmers on their land!  And we can stop the huge and  wasteful corporate multi-nationals from sucking the life out of our little cities, and giving us absolute crap to eat and feed to our children.

It's obviously not going to be easy.  We have to talk to each other and work together to do it.  But, this is America!  It's ours!  We can do this thing! I believe in you, and your "smarts".  Don't let them tell you that you can't understand anything you set out to understand.  Go for it! 


Now for something beautiful for you to look at.  Local flowers at local farmers markets.  And some other little local plants.

Cosmos at Santa Cruz Farmer's Market

Tiny succulent "wall" at the Succulent Nursery in Elk-horn Slough area.. make it BIG!

Amazing Blue Poppy in the San Francisco Arboretum

May you walk with Beauty all around you!  I love you all!

Down by the Bay: Thunderstorm over the Lagunas

We spent the whole day at Shelter Island, one of the only really cool spots in the city.  It was deliciously cool there.  I made a collage of almost the whole length of a very wide storm over the Lagunas and part of North County.

The DDs, the ones that I knit for, and I went to their LYS recently and came away with this beautiful yarn:

It's for a new pair of short fingered gloves for B.  Her sister, L,  would like to have a vest but we now have to find a yarn that she can wear.   She likes linen and silks, and even some mohair yarns she has tried on her skin don't break it out, so I'm hopeful of finding something really lovely in a blend.

This is the 'Tosh socks progress.  Since I'm making these in a bitty size and one that is new to me, I tried it on my hand to see how it fits.   I think it will fit well.  This is Yukon Leaves and is a gusset-less sock heel.  I'm really chuffed about how it's come out, too.  The colors in this beautiful yarn are perfect for leaves, and perfect for autumn, which is probably when the socks will be finished and on their way!  GAH!  It has been so HOT here.

Opps forgot to upload that piccy...Here it is.

Tosh sock progress, and the African Violets

Also, please take note that the butchered blue African Violet top is about to bloom, as is the rescue violet in the back of the picture.



And finally, the cleaned up yarn storage in the bedroom.

I had to do something with that corner, and this turned out nicely.  All the baskets, including the ones in the left lower front are full of yarns.  There's another basket that didn't make it into the picture because, well, I forgot about it.  These baskets used to be sold all over the farmer's markets and some of the stores in Santa Cruz, quite inexpensively, and now they must have found a better market for them.  They are fair traded so I am happy for the women who make them!  They are truly lovely things.  What is that saying?  "A thing of beauty is a joy forever"?  Well, these are.

I am a basket lover, having been known to rescue them from the jaws of trash trucks.  I worked for a time for a basket seller, and talk about HOG HEAVEN!  *cough*

And, back to the trashing of baskets, just  WHO on EARTH, in their right mind, would throw out a basket?  The very thought of it sends shivers through me.  I know that DH will have them all up on Craig's List before my body is cold.  I think he secretly loathes them.  They mean more yarn to him, I think.  Useless lumps of yarn storage is what he thinks of them.  hehe

Moon shots were imperative!

Stormy skies over the Lagunas.

Sorry I'm not very good at stitching together panoramas. But it was basically an awe inspiring sight, those huge clouds out there.  If you make it as big as possible the totality of the "Awe" will flow over you like a wave.