I was outside today with the very sweet child whom I often refer to in my head, as Dumbest-Child-In the World (or d.c.w.)
“ A white, furry spider is flying at me!” she screamed in a high C that shattered all the glass in the nearby buildings.
There are no white furry spiders,” I said.
“There!!” she pointed, in dulcet tones, which caused a mini-sonic boom.
It was the milkweed seeds which proliferate like bunnies along our garden. She has seen them daily for at least 3 years. I have given lessons on them…
With her knowledge really does lesson from day to day!
While gardening with kids today a woman stopped by.
“I love what you are doing with this garden,” she said.
“I own the big brick building at the end of the street, the street being the corner of Bonsallo and whatever runs parallel to 23rd,
“I would like it if you would plant outside my building. I will pay for plants, and if you want to try to install a dip I’ll pay for it.”
“Can we mosaic too?” I asked.
“Yes,: she said, I give you permission to get as creative as you like.”
There is a long stretch of land on the mystery street. On Bonsallo there is another long stretch broken by cement cobbling. We could faux marble these.
I will, of course give her an estimate and not purchase without a check or cash in hand.
But it’s a lovely offer.
It’s nice to know that all our neighbors aren’t like the “environmentalist” next door, who wants to pave their stretch of parkway.
More lovely neighbors! Our lovely neighbor and master Gardener, Vanessa has planted agapanthus in our garden a purple surprise!
Agapanthus is known as “Lily of the Nile”, because it is not a lily. All species of Agapanthus are native to South Africa
And some of my kids planted Mirabilis jalapa (The four o’clock flower or marvel of Peru)
Nice, as I feared the garden might be dead!
Mirabilis in Latin means wonderful and Jalapa is a town in Mexico. Mirabilis jalapa is said to have been exported from the Peruvian Andes in 1540.
This plant is “wonderful,” because there are flowers of different colors on the same plant.
Different color variation in the flower and different color flowers in same plant.
Variegated flower on a four o’clock plant.
Naturally occurring color variation on four o’clock flowers.
Additionally, an individual flower can be splashed with different colors. Another interesting point is a color-changing phenomenon. For example, in the yellow variety, as the plant matures, it can display flowers that gradually change to a dark pink color. Similarly white flowers can change to light violet.
The flowers usually open from late afternoon onwards, hence the common name, 4 O’clock, then producing a strong, sweet-smelling fragrance.
Despite their appearance, the flowers are not formed from petals – rather they are a pigmented modification of the calyx. (A calyx is the plural of sepal. A sepal is a part of the flower, usually green, that are under (or around) the more conspicuous petals. )Both sepals and petals are modified leaves.
4 O’clocks, like most night fragrance plants are pollinated by long-tongued moths of the Sphingidae family, such as the sphinx moths or hawk moths and other nocturnal pollinators.
Dianthus “Flower of the Gods” harbors kinky slugs. More weird sexual antics from our slimy brethren and sisteren
Went slug hunting today… mild mannered student Carmen turns into a massacre minded murderer. The kids collected the slugs and experimented with cutting them in ½ (the head section lives for between one-two minuets) letting them burn on the pavement, and grinding them underfoot.
I used the opportunity to teach about simultaneous hermaphrodites. (Each slug is both male and female.) Although slugs are hermaphroditic, they mate with themselves only if no other slugs are around. Given a choice, they seek partners with whom to trade genetic material. More fun than baseball cards!
The exchange of sperm is preceded by elaborate courtship rituals, which are species specific. This prevents interspecies breeding; it’s bad enough that they are hermaphrodites with making them cross breeds too!
Great grey garden slugs, copulate in midair, suspended by stretchy strands of mucus up to 17 3/4 inches long. Slugs have disproportionately large sex organs. The great grey garden slug’s penis is nearly half its total body length.
For a fabulous video see the always marvelous David Attenborough on the leopard slug. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKPBCXdR6yo
The scientific name of one banana slug species: dolichophallus — Latin for “long penis.”
Too bad the market for slug porn is soft…and slimy.
Banana slugs stimulate each other for several hours. Their already enormous genital areas swell, penetration takes place and each slug releases and receives sperm.
Now the slugs must disengage — a challenge for two animals so amply endowed and covered in sticky mucus. After long bouts of writhing and pulling, the pair may resort to … apophallation…. this means that one slug gnaws off the penis of the other.
Make that S & M slug porn.
The apophallated slug, cannot regrow his penis and thus becomes 100% female. And so the list of what separates humans from other animals keeps shrinking…. now it turns out we didn’t even invent sex change operations
The slugs reside neath the Dianthus. The name Dianthus is from the Greek words dios (“god”) and anthos (“flower”). Dianthus is a genus which includes carnations (D. caryophyllus), sweet williams (D. barbatus) and pinks (D. plumarius and related species.)
In the 14th century,the word pink meant “to decorate with a perforated or punched pattern” (maybe from German “pinken” = to peck). (As in pinking shears:) Pinks Dianthus plumarius was named “pink”because it has a ruffled edge. And… it happens to be pink. So that is how the color pink got it’s name.
A helpful mnemonic for biology students, Kings Play Chess On Fine Grained Sand
Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species.
Inserted pictures
i. nigella or love in a mist
ii. Dianthus
iii. an amazing transparent green snail I found in Puerto Rico it’s black stalk eyes vanish when retracted
iv. and…for no particular reason, Taking cell samples to determine if chytrid fungus is present in Coquies (frogs) in the upper altitude of Las Casas in Puerto Rico
The Amphibian Chytrid Fungus was discovered in the late 1990’s and is the primary cause of amphibian population decline and extinction in Latin America, Australia and North America. Chytrid fungus invades the thin, permeable skin of amphibians, interrupting their ability to regulate the movement of water and oxygen through their skin.
I just got 12 new kids in the program, 3 of whom I have wanted for a long time. They live in Alegria. They have been watching me for years, with shy, wistful eyes. Their father is an alcoholic who beats them and their mother, who in turn beats them. Now they are in my class and happy children for at least a small time. They confess to me that they found a rotting pumpkin and secretly carried it to the garden to see if it would grow. We wondered where that pumpkin had come from! Now it is sprouting everywhere. The redemptive power of gardens, art and growth, that’s what I should be thinking of.
Today I was planting in the gardens with my kids. The kids are so excited to see their pumpkins growing!
Jesus (names have been mostly changed to protect the guilty) and I were weeding and watering and disturbed an ant’s nest. We watched as the ants began rescuing their milky, clear eggs from a watery grave. I described the life of the ant. How ants milk aphids, (sometimes called ant cows) how they grow mushrooms underground and how they live as a society, queen, workers, nursemaids and soldiers.
Jesus’s eyes grew wide, “Weird.”
Sometimes the trust and belief in a child’s eyes makes my breath catch. We looked for aphids and I repeated the oft told tale of these parthenogenetic insects. Female that reproduce females, that reproduce females. Then at summer’s end some grow wings and morph into males.
“Weird.” We went looking for aphids. We discovered small flies of unknown species and a lady bug larva. Lady bug larval bear no resemblance to lady bugs. They look rather like a black and orange creepy, rubber Halloween bugs.
These kids love to plant and even like weeding!
I wanted to pull up some of the very, very, very large deep rooted grain plants that had grown from bird seed. They are OK, but now our garden is crowded with sprouting corn, pumpkins, squash and myriad wildflowers.
Jesus got into it. (I had heard that either he or his older brother had an “anger problem.” Well who could blame them?) At any rate he beat the chlorophyll out of that plant! He was an inspiration to a small army of children who took to the grains with a single minded ferocity. He and his older sister Azalea set upon the weeds with a fierce cry of “Team work!” They were so enthusiastic I set them lose on the uncleared parkways, dry and woven with crab grass. “Team work!”
There was a party at the apartment across the way. “Miss Elizabeth!” I recognized a father from Villa Esperanza where I had taught years before, but I did not recognize Daisy. She had been an adorable 5 year old. Now she was a delicate, long 19. She was starting Junior College with plans to transfer to Northridge.
They gave us large plates of food, cake and some muti-colored jello dish that would have been the envy of Salt Lake City. (Mormons are very fond of jello.)
It was about 8:40, time to go home. But where were my car keys? They had been hooked onto my belt loop…. The entire neighborhood turned out with key ring lights, flashlights that you had to turn just so and shake gently while humming a soothing “please light up.” House lamps on super, super double plus long connections of extension cords snaked in patterns of black and white down the street and into houses, nesting in outlets and flooding the parkway.
I finally called AAA and told them to come rescue me. I’d need a new key. It was going to cost a lot.
“What will you do Miss?” Jesus asked.
“Well, I’ll get the key. I have to” I said, but it’s very expensive.”
“Don’t they pay you to teach art Miss?”
“Well yes, but not very much…”
“You could make some stuff and sell it…. We’ll help you.” The love was palpable.
Finally on a final hopeless 3rd time ‘round the basement search I saw the key, floating on a shallow sea of garbage. Earlier in the day I had wrestled a mattress into the garbage can. The key must have been knocked in. We all cheered and every one got a chocolate marshmallow bunny. Tomorrow we Easter egg hunt!
“I can’t pick up the eggs.” said Genesis. She is a smart, funny spunky child without legs and only one thumb. “You and mom can be my egg retrieval team, pick up the eggs, when I call them.”
“I’ll help!” chimed in Madelia, a dirty, wild 5 year old.
Very sweet, although I doubt that Genesis will get to eat many from that collection. Those eggs don’t have a chance!
Art, Science and the meaning of the Universe 