Season changing ...

Daffodils, tulips, hyacinth, forsythia ... all are in bloom now or nearly blooming, in my neighborhood. Signs of spring, we say.

But these are foreign transplants, truth be told. The peoples who called this area home, before the boats of the Europeans ever dropped anchor, would not have recognized them.

No, for a Powhatan or a Monacan, the changing of the season from winter to spring would have been seen in the budding of puccoon (bloodroot); and what we now call Spring Beauty, Virginia bluebells, Mayapple and other ephemereals -- long gone by the arrival of summer.

In a corner of the woods near my home, I have reintroduced a few of those native flowers and every spring, I cherish the sight of them far more than spindly forsythia and home improvement store daffodils.

The first sign of Virginia bluebell, photographed yesterday, is not much, a few green leaves above the brown litter of autumn's detritus -- but just you wait until she blooms!

Do the right thing for the Iroquois, Britain!

"An American Indian lacrosse team that refuses to accept U.S. passports will not be allowed entry into England for the world championship of the sport the Iroquois helped invent, the British government said yesterday," according to the Associated Press.

The Iroquois' own passports have not yet been fulled upgraded to a new, higher-security version, the explanation goes.

The chances of these lacrosse players turning out to be secret terrorists hoping to blow up Albion seem quite remote to me.

Change your mind, Great Britain. Do the right thing. The Iroquois (Haudenosaunee)have been a nation since long before there was a United States or a Canada.

In forest gardens ...

From mygardenguide.com:

Botanists have discovered that the origin of Tahitian vanilla (Vanilla tahitensis), an orchid that when pollinated yields the most delectable vanilla bean on the planet, actually had its origins in the Mayan forests of Mexico and Guatemala. What’s interesting about this finding is that the Tahitian vanilla orchid is found only in cultivation and not in the wild.

Using DNA and ethno-historic analysis, Pesach Lubinsky, a postdoctoral researcher and Norman Ellstrand, a professor of genetics in UC Riverside's Department of Botany and Plant Sciences, appear to have traced Tahitian vanilla back to its evolutionary beginning as a pre-Columbian Maya cultivar. Modern day Tahitian vanilla appears to be a hybrid between V. planifolia, a species cultivated for commercial vanilla that is primarily grown in Madagascar and Indonesia, and the never cultivated V. odorata both of which grow in the tropical forests of Central America.

The research team theorized that the Mayan people created forest gardens and introduced different types of species including wild cacao and vanilla from the surrounding region. Species that had previously been geographically separated were then able to hybridize simply because they were in the same location. Eventually French sailors introduced vanilla to Tahiti from cuttings of plants growing in the Philippines that had arrived there via the Spanish trading ships that sailed between Manila and Acapulco, Mexico.

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Once again, we are reminded that much of the pre-Columbus American continent was not the empty savage, howling wilderness that European settlers imagined it to be, but a rich, productive environment, indeed shaped by the hand of man but in which both man and wild things could co-exist -- a vast garden.

What have we done in our paltry 500 years of ownership?

Amazon Mystery and Soil Appreciation

Today is Soil Appreciation Day, with a focus on one very special type:

Deep in the Amazon jungle lie layers of thick, rich soil, dubbed "terra preta," and they abound in mystery.

They are not a natural phenomena. The natural Amazon soil is poor and quickly stripped of nutrients when farmers cultivate it.

The experts are quite sure that terra preta is man-made -- and it is amazing stuff. A thousand years after first being laid down, five hundred years after its creators were exterminated by European weapons and disease, taking the secret of its formulation with them to the grave, this soil is still incredibly rich.

Some people believe that terra preta once enabled a population of millions to inhabit the jungle region, living far more in harmony with the environment than the settlers who replaced them.

Their destruction disgusts me. What a holocaust of humanity and wanton obliteration of wisdom it was! I wonder what other secrets of knowledge perished with them. But careful research is underway to unlock the terra preta formula, which could be a blessing all over the world, just as are the Native American gifts of corn, tomatoes, chocolate, avocadoes, chili peppers, allspice, vanilla, sunflowers, turkeys, chinchilla, quinine, llamas and potatoes.

Eating June Bugs

So I watched last night perhaps the best two "Bizzare Foods" episodes I have ever seen. Was an incredible reminder that one does not have to hike into the Burmese rain forest to encounter fascinating cultures and foods.

First in Maine, then in the Appalachians -- practically my back yard -- the narrator, Andrew Zimmern, cruised through lands of stunning beauty and antiquity. I really appreciated how he sought out and spent time in Cherokee country, talking about and sampling America's "original cuisine" -- such things as trout seasoned with sumac berries.

Ever craved eating a roasted June bug? I didn't before last night. Now I am very curious. They are described as having a rich, sweet,walnutty taste.

In doing a little more research on the subject, I found another great blog to enjoy:

http://intotheborderlands.blogspot.com/2008/06/eating-brown.html

Five things wrong ...

Five things wrong with the U.S.of A. today:

1. A society based on the rule of law is a Roman innovation, and a brilliant one, a bulwark against tyranny of the minority or the majority. Thus, in history, law codes gradually supplanted tribal justice and the use of community shaming in order to maintain a sense of morality. However, relying wholly on the rule of law can cause a problem: No one fears to offend, or feels shame in violating, mere ink and paper scribblings. If the law is not "written in our hearts," we have a problem. Rule of law also spawns legions of lawyers making their fortunes trying to outwit it, and keeps legislators in a constant battle to keep up with the latest outrages, from cell phones while driving to the plague of underage "s$xting." Basic shame is so very old-fashioned.

2. Education. I sound like some wheezy old grandfather, but there are countries in the world in which children walk for miles each day to sit in some hovel of a building with the barest rudiments of educational materials, so hungry are they to learn. By contrast, most American children consider "school" akin to prison and being devoted to learning horribly "uncool." Also, far from being the respected sage he/she once was, today's teacher must constantly walk on eggshells lest he/she be sued, and runs the risk of poisoning if he/she leaves a coffee cup unguarded in the classroom.

3. Economy. It's based on an ever expanding cycle of exploitation, a sort of pyramid scheme with Earth as collateral and all of us as eventual suckers. This is certainly not solely an American problem. And world socialism proved no better, even much worse, than capitalism, at resolving this dillema. There is a problem when prosperity depends on wringing more and more crops out of more and more exhausted soil, on building more and more gas stations and shopping malls where forests once grew, on constantly taking, taking, taking. That problem is that eventually, the soil is dead, the forests are gone and the minerals are all extracted and shipped away. You can only eat so many potato chips out of a bag before it becomes empty and useless.

4. Two-party system. These days, it's becoming more like one and a half. I am quite aware of the flaws of parliamentary rule in other lands, where coalitions constantly form and break up, and centrist parties can be at the mercy of wacky loons and fringe parties. But I am emphatically neither a Democrat nor a strong Republican so I am in essence left out of the political process, forced each election to choose one or the other of people I more and more like less and less.

5. Losing touch. We are losing touch with history. Go to Mt. Vernon and you will find out how long it has been since a sitting U.S. president bothered to visit our first president's estate, a stone's throw from Washington D.C. We are also losing touch with nature. And we are losing touch with the values taught in our mostly agrarian past: Love for the land, self-reliance, a sense of the seasons, hard work, love for hard work, patience in adversity and even delayed gratification -- corn doesn't grow in a week unless you are playing Farmtown on Facebook.

Honoring Native American history and culture on coinage

Were you aware that the U.S.Mint is releasing beautiful dollar coins into circulation, celebrating the history and culture of Native Americans? Sacagawea adorns the front and various themes will be depicted on the back.

Chances are, you had no idea. I know I didn't, not until I stumbled upon a website about it just the other day. I've had enough trouble keeping up with the Presidential Dollar Coins, which are barely available.

The U.S. Mint has about the worst, most lack-luster public relations operation that I have ever seen. When was the last time you saw a commercial about these beautiful new coins? Most banks barely carry them -- and good luck finding them anywhere else or in your change.

Using dollar coins saves the government money over the far more fragile paper bills. But apparently the government doesn't care enough to do much of anything about it.

Thoughts domestic and political

My Sweetie found a couple of nice tops at Kohl's yesterday and I was happy for Her. She's very picky about outfits and doesn't buy for Herself very often.

Of course, any man truly in love enjoys nothing more than indulging his Lady.

I'm baking bread again this morning. It will be a treat to smell that as the rain comes down again outside. Hope the garden isn't drowned.

She's in watching the Seventh Heaven dvd I gave Her for Her birthday.

I am contemplating a column that I cut from the paper the other day, by a member of the Occoneechee-Saponi tribe of Virginia. The writer's point: that only when Europeans invaded the New World, did political boundaries become imposed on the landscape, lines which it was forbidden for certain peoples, most especially Native Americans, to cross. The majority of illegal immigrants across these new borders are actually Native Americans of varying degree. An injustice.

I agree with him to a point, and the European impact upon the Natives was indeed a disgrace and a horror, even genocide.

But as for political boundaries? Those were here before. Capt. John Smith of Jamestown learned early on that an invisible line just west of the present-day city of Richmond, Virginia, marked where Powhatan's domain ended and Monacan rule began. A trespasser across those lines would not have a happy fate.