Again, you may not like the UFC thing at the White House, but the moment you hung a giant pride flag from the columns and had half-naked “trans” activists exposing themselves on the lawn, you lost all right to complain about desecration.
AMAZING: Chris Nikic, the first person with Down syndrome to complete an Ironman, just conquered Ironman 70.3 Massachusetts.
Every race he finishes sends the same message: your diagnosis, your circumstances, and your challenges do not determine your potential. 🙌🏾
On my way home this afternoon, I spotted an elderly white woman lying on the sidewalk at the corner of Peoria and 49th Street, while a young Asian woman was trying to talk to her.
I quickly turned around and parked in the Burger Street parking lot just as another car arrived. I got out of my car at the same time as a young Black man.
We both checked her condition and saw that she had fallen backwards while using a walker, hitting her head on the concrete.
I said I would call for help, and the young Black man went to his car to get a soft jacket and gently placed it under her head to protect her from the scorching heat of the pavement (it was 38°C today). Soon, other kind people arrived.
A young white woman took an umbrella from her car to protect the woman's face from the sun, while another brought towels to place under her bare arms.
A young Hispanic employee from Burger Street came out with a bucket of fresh water and a cloth for her forehead.
Together—Black, White, Asian, and Hispanic—we all worked to help an elderly white woman who had fallen. This is the America I believe in and love: an America filled with compassion, kindness, and love, regardless of race, age, or gender
Back when I was a kid, this is what I remember.
Summer didn’t just mean swimming holes, lightning bugs, and running barefoot till your feet got tougher than shoe leather. Summer meant the garden was coming in, and when the garden came in, everybody had work to do. Nobody asked if you felt like helping. Feelings were not invited to canning day, which was probably for the best since they’d just get in the way and sweat on the tomatoes.
The garden wasn’t there for decoration. It fed us. What we grew in the summer had to help carry us through the winter.
I remember baskets of green beans waiting to be snapped. Tomatoes sitting in piles, red and ripe, ready to be peeled and canned. Corn shucked on the porch with silks sticking to your arms. Cucumbers turned into pickles. Apples and peaches put up sweet. Every bit of it mattered.
And let me tell you, there weren’t many excuses that got you out of garden work or canning day. A headache didn’t do it. Being tired sure didn’t do it. A bad attitude mostly just got you handed another pan of beans.
But there was one thing folks believed back then. If a young girl was on her monthly time, she was usually kept away from the garden work and the canning. Old folks said she could make the food spoil, or keep the jars from sealing right. Now, whether that was truth, superstition, or just one of those old-timey beliefs passed down till nobody questioned it, I can’t say. Humans do love making rules and then handing them down like Moses brought them off the mountain. But I do remember it being taken serious.
The women didn’t always say much about it plain. They’d just know. A girl might be told to rest, stay out of the heat, or do something else away from the food. Back then, some things weren’t talked about out loud, but everybody understood what was meant.
The kitchen would get hotter than common sense. Big pots boiled on the stove, jars clinked together, and everybody moved around like they knew exactly what needed doing. Somebody was washing jars. Somebody was filling them. Somebody was wiping rims and tightening lids. And then came that sound every family listened for: the little **pop** of a jar sealing.
That pop meant winter food.
It meant green beans for supper when snow was on the ground. It meant tomatoes for soup, gravy, or poured over fried potatoes. It meant pickles beside beans and cornbread. It meant apple butter on biscuits on a cold morning.
By the end of summer, the shelves would be lined with jars, green, red, yellow, and brown, all shining like little promises. To some folks it may have looked like canned food. To us, it looked like security.
We didn’t call it “homesteading” or “preserving seasonal produce,” because apparently everything needs a fancy name now so folks can charge money for it. We just called it putting up food.
And that’s what I remember most.
A hot kitchen. Tired hands. A porch full of vegetables. Old beliefs nobody dared test. Family working together. Winter being made ready, one jar at a time.
And somewhere in all that work, without us even knowing it, we were making memories too.
The kind that stick with you longer than the jars on the shelf. The kind that come back when you smell tomatoes cooking or hear a jar lid pop. The kind that remind you where you came from, who loved you, and how much was done with plain hands and a willing heart.
Those were good memories.
And they’ve helped carry me through a lifetime.
~banjo~
An aphid doesn't wait around to start a family.
Many species clone themselves all summer, and some daughters are already carrying the next generation before they're even born. Under good conditions, populations can double every few days.
The ladybug eating those aphids is on a much slower clock. It takes weeks to go from egg to adult.
That's why pesticides backfire.
Broad-spectrum insecticides don't just kill aphids. They kill the lacewings, hoverflies, ladybugs, and tiny wasps that keep aphids in check. For a few days the leaves look clean.
Then the race starts again.
The aphids reproduce fast and recolonize quickly. Their predators recover more slowly. Sometimes that leaves plants with fewer defenders than they had before, and outbreaks can come back even worse.
Spider mites are notorious for this. They're often minor pests until spraying wipes out the predators that normally suppress them.
That's the trap. You're eliminating the slow-breeding cavalry to briefly inconvenience the fast-breeding enemy.
The better strategy is often patience. A few aphids are food for the predators you want. A perfectly spotless leaf with no natural enemies is only one aphid away from becoming a problem.
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