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?

By the dark of night ...

Through the gloom of the evening I plodded along, pushing my wheelbarrow loaded high with black plastic bags.

I passed two neighbors out for a walk. I bid them a cheery good evening. They mumbled some response and kept going.

I can't blame them. Who pushes a wheelbarrow around the neighborhood in the middle of the night -- well, at least, late in the evening?

It was the only time I had available, to retrieve the sacks of lawn clippings and shredded leaves from my father-in-law's yard that will make fine mulch for my garden.

If I ever get a moment to pull up the weeds, that is. Might have to start doing that by moonlight as well.

Fifteen more years til I can retire.

Taking my name in vain?

If you miss a keystroke when attempting to visit Isis, if you type eastcoastdweller.blogpot.com, you reach some kind of Christian merchandising site. Weird. Well, at least it's not porn.

I guess I should be flattered. Well, there are a few delightful people who visit here regularly but I highly doubt that enough folk are beating down my blog-door, eagerly whacking out the keystrokes and missing that little "s," to make that sneaky trick profitable.

Cosmic consummation

I read in the paper the other day that scientists have actually found definite traces of one of the basic amino acids of life on a comet, bolstering the theory that those celestial bodies could be carriers of life through the cosmos.

Does anybody else find it fascinating to think of a comet, long tail trailing behind it, colliding in space with the great beautiful sphere of a planet and the combination of the two bringing forth new life?

Does anybody else see the connection with how life begins in our own understanding?

Update

Still hooked on Facebook -- Blogger gets neglected.

Updates ... made fig jam this month, from the fruit on our tree .. and an apple pie last night, from our McIntosh apples ... still reading good books, planning a trip out West ... not much else to write.

No place is safe

No place is safe anymore, not a school, not an office building, not even a fitness center in Pennsylvania, from the ravages of people with diseased souls.

There is nowhere to go,nowhere to hide, no way to predict whether your building will be the next one targeted.

Miserable people killing only themselves has gone out of vogue; now people must kill complete strangers along the way, to inflict upon others the pain that tortured them.

Seems that all we can do is to make sure that each day when we leave our homes, we kiss and hug our loved ones and tell them that we love them; that we savor each day and never take a moment for granted; that we live without regrets and hide nothing in our closets that we might not have time to come back and clean up.