Choosing Flowering Plants For An Organic Garden

There is a simple and fool-proof way to select flowering plants that will enhance the beauty of an organic garden year around. Rather than poring over books with pictures of flowering plants; struggling with unpronounceable Latin names of the plants; and making numerous trips to the nursery to determine if the plants you select are available, let your local nursery do the work for you. Nurseries make money by selling attractive plants; more significantly, to stay in business, they must feature plants that flower at all times of the year, not continuously but seasonably. Thus, if you visit your local nursery periodically throughout the year, in a year or so, you will be able to purchase seasonable plants that will provide color to your garden the entire year unless, of course, you are living in the frozen tundra of Alaska or the Midwest. If that is the case you, unfortunately, you will be stuck with the color white for six or more months of the year, great for making snowmen but not so good for enhancing the beauty of your frozen garden. A significant advantage of this methodology for selecting flowering garden plants results from the fact that nurseries, with few exceptions, only stock plants that will do well in the climate in which you live. Thus, you do not have be too concerned about whether or not the plants you select will thrive in your garden. Not only is nursery shopping a wise way to select plants for the garden it also is a lot of fun. I look forward to my periodic visits to our local nurseries in my never-ending search for new plants that will increase the beauty of my organic garden, I know you will too!

What Does It Mean To Have Faith?

I was raised in a Seventh Day Adventist colony in rural Humboldt County in Northern California. Except for my parents and my Uncle Frank's family, the members of the colony were elderly retired people who had moved to Eel Rock to escape the sins of the large cities and, more importantly, to await the second coming of Christ. Despite the false prophesies of the churches founder, Sister Ellen G. White, these God fearing people believed with every fiber of their frail bodies that the second coming was imminent. All of these true believers have been dead for 50 years or more and, to my knowledge, there still has been no sighting of the savior. Nonetheless, there undoubtedly are many Seventh Day Adventists alive today who cling to the belief that the second coming is at hand, just as they did in the days of my grandfather. As far back as I can remember, I struggled with the concept of faith which, of course, is the basis of all Christian religions. Now, in my 78th, I believe I have the answer. This is a bitter pill to swallow because without faith one must face the fact that at the time of death life ends and there is no tomorrow, here or anywhere else and certainly not in Heaven. So what is the definition of faith? What does it mean to have faith? Faith is the willingness to believe in something that in unbelievable, its really as simple as that. There are many examples of misguided faith in everyday life as well as religious lore. In today's world there are members of religious cults who forgo medical treatment for themselves and their children because they believe, to their dying breath, that their faith alone will be enough to cure them of the cancer that is literally eating them alive as they sit by and do nothing. Millions, if not billions, believe that their prayers will be answered despite clear evident to the contrary. If prayers were answered no none would became seriously ill, let alone die, and everyone undoubtedly would be rich. If only that were the case! The Bible, of course, is rife with examples of misguided faith. In this respect, absent blind faith, could any sane person believe that a man could walk on water; turn water into wine; be born of a virgin; or come back from the dead? Along the same vein, could any rational being believe that holy water has some magical quality or that lighting candles for the dead could possibly be of the slightest significance to the deceased? I think not! I see no harm in having faith except for the fact that to allow one's self to believe in the unbelievable is somewhat irrational and demeaning to the human spirit.

Saving America- Step 1

This is the first of a series of blogs designed to provide solutions to some of the most significant financial and social problems we face in the United States today. The problems are obvious and the suggested solution are, for the most part, simple and could easily be achieved if our political leaders had the will to implement them. In my soon to be published book, America In Decline, I point out the high price Americans are paying for illegal immigration, especially the immigration of low IQ illegal aliens from Mexico. Mexican illegal's are responsible for much of the crime in our large cities in the South and Southwest and the presence of their children in our schools is contributing significantly to the demise of our system of public education. The illegal's, 30 percent of whom are on welfare, also are significant drain of the countries' financial resources. In this respect we are paying a high price for the lettuce we buy at Walmart. Illegal immigration could be stopped in its tracks without building a single foot of new fence and without hireling an additional boarder agent! All that would have to be done to curb illegal immigration is to institute a National Identification Card (NIC) which clearly states that a person is a citizen of the United States and includes a picture of the card holder and their social security number. Without a NIC a person would not be allowed to work and would not be allowed to vote! To ensure the law is obeyed, employers who hire illegal's without an NIC should be fined or imprisoned. The size of the fines would reflect the size of the employers business enterprise. Repeat offenders, without exception, should be sent to prison. Similarly, counterfeiter's of NIC cards would receive equally severe punishment. Persons without a NIC should not be ineligible for any form of welfare including food stamps, housing aids, non emergency medical care and federal educational grants. Without such welfare it is highly likely that the vast majority of the illegal's in the United States would return to the country of their origin, in this case Mexico. Liberals will scream bloody murder while claiming that it would be discriminatory, and a violation of the equal rights amendment, to require blacks, especially those who are poor, illiterate or elderly, to obtain and show an NIC before they can vote. Have no doubt about it, we not talking about discrimination here! Rather, we are talking about the facilitation of voting fraud by the Al Sharpton's, Jessie Jackson's and Louis Farrakhan's of the world, nothing more, nothing less. The claim that a NIC card would impede blacks from voting, is a specious argument at best in twenty-first century America and brings to mind a encounter I witnessed recently at our local Sears department store in Concord California. I was in the checkout line behind an elderly black man who was in the process of purchasing a small item which cost around $15.00. This gentleman wanted to pay with his credit card and the clerk said that he would have to see an identification card before he could complete the transaction. Without the slightest hesitation the customer pulled out his wallet and showed the clerk his driver's license which had his picture on it. This took me somewhat by surprise because it appeared that this elderly person would have been too old to drive. Nonetheless, he had a drivers license with his picture on it, an NIC if you will, and the $15 transaction went off without a hitch. Now I ask you, if a person has to show a pictured identification card to make a $15 credit card purchase at Sears, is it unreasonable to ask him, or her, to do the same before they are allowed to vote or apply for a job? No, the specious arguments made by the liberals against a NIC is simply another of their endless attempts to facilitate illegal immigration and undermine the sanctity of the vote. In summary, the implementation of a NIC solves two of our most significant problems, illegal immigration and voting fraud. Unfortunately, this suggest will not see the light of day anytime soon because the liberals see illegal's as future members of the Democrat party and big business, especially agribusiness, views the illegal's as a cheap form of labor. In the next blog I will discuss ways to decrease the rate of crime in America.