WHY in the hell do people spit on stuff and then hand it to people, or spit on someone else's books, papers, magazines, etc? The most irritating aspect of this digusting habit is the total nonchalance with which it is done:

"I'm feeling lazy today, so I'l just lick my fingers and get my slobber all over this money before I hand it to you. And since it's money, I know you'll take it."

Gag! Or, how about this little gem:

"Nice to look at your book (magazine, whatever). I don't feel like seperating the pages carefully, so I'll just spread my saliva onto each and every page I touch, ensuring that you'll catch any cold or bug I have the next time you touch it. And besides, the human bodily fluids adhered to the page are a nice touch, don't you think?".

This is incredibly, insufferably rude, and it gets even worse when the person writes in your book, magazine, whatever! If I wanted it defiled, I'd defile it myself, thank you. Handling someone's elses dried spit is not my idea of a good time.

(Yeah, I do feel crabby, atcually. And grossed out).

We went to the John A. Finch Aboretum. Manito Park (both places are in Spokane) is also nice, but they are two entirely different places, but I prefer the former....because it has the Stewartia (and many other really cool trees). I collected all sorts of seeds but now it seems that I have lost most of them. A Concolor Fir, Bird's Nest Spruce, and I think a Picea orientalis. The apple trees (crab apples) were in full bloom, but to be honest, I wasn't half as taken with them as I was with the conifers and of course, the Stewartia.

Next, the Lomatium Dilemna. Now that a month or two has gone by, I returned to the site where I collected the plant that I thought was Lomatium gormanii. It took some careful searching, but I found the same clump I'd picked from. I was in luck- there was a seedhead. After careful consideration, I have decided that it is not Lomatium gormanii, it is Lomatium geyeri, but it is still a close call. My reasons for changing my mind on this are that: geyeri is a taller plant, up to twice the height of gormanii. When I first saw this plant, it was in flower, and the height was consistent with gormanii. Now that the seedhead has matured, the scape has grown to 20 cm although it was about ten in flower. Similarly, the shape of the umbel altered considerably between flowering and fruiting...I would not have expected this, but now that I think about it, dill does that too, IIRC. Lastly, the seeds are not exactly like gormanii, but they are very much like geyeri. By the way....another thing I found that couldn't be detected for certain earlier: it has a carpophore! Therefore, it definitely is not Orogenia linearifolia. So, I was wrong, but I was right.

I have been really busy taking care of business, cleaning house and getting the garden in before the summer semester starts. There has been absolutely no time for art or even to read a new book...well, that isn't quite true. I read The Nanny Diaries, but this was light, easy reading. I had intended to read a classic like Lolita, Anna Karenina, or The Last of the Mohicans. Perhaps I should borrow audio books...but I like the physical act of reading sooo....

What I've been listening to: "Hey there Delilah", a song that resonates with me strongly.

There's too much pain in this world. Way too much. I don't know how people can function as though it doesn't exist. Worse than this, we all, every one of us, are perpetrators to some degree, creating pain in one way or another. It's possible to create less pain, but (until convinced otherwise at least) it is not possible to create no pain at all.

I'd like to console myself with the thought that pain is endemic in the natural world as well: rodents eat one another's babies, death is an integral part of life, pain is just part of the cycle, you know.... But when I look at the human world, our behavior can be so aberrant and so utterly pointless that it's horrifying.

And worse, what I am coming to understand is that almost every person who causes pain is in denial. Every blow, every theft, every murder, every broken heart and spirit is justified in one way or another. How else could former Nazis move to Argentina or wherever and settle down and raise a family, dandling children on their knees after shoving innocent people, children included, into crematoriums?

I'm trying to find a meaning here and coming up empty. If you think of anything, let me know.

I get to go the Fitch Arboretum and see my favorite Stewartia tree today! Woo hoo! I am so jazzed! :)

A Floral Dilemna:

For my systematic botany class, I've been collecting and pressing plants for a herbarium. Of course, they also have to be correctly identified via keying them out with a dichotomous key. Many of the specimens are easy to nail down right away...and the flora is used primarily to confirm the identity of the plant. For others, it can be exceptionally difficult unless you have as much information about the plant as possible, such as roots, seeds, flowers, leaves, habitat and visual access (dissecting scope) to minute structures such as the filaments of the stamens, or the placentation of ovaries that you can hardly see to begin with (let alone how the ovules within them are attached). You don't really notice it much until you try to do this, but it isn't terribly common to be able to see flowers and seeds development on a single species in a single day, especially wildflowers. Their whole program is one of blooming, setting and ripening the seed all as quickly as it can for optimum survival of the next generation of plants. That's the introduction to my problem. Here's the problem:

This plant is Lomatium gormanii


© Gerald D. Carr

And here is a picture of another plant, also in the apiaceae family, Orogenia linearifolia:

They look a lot alike, don't they? I have a plant that I'm pretty certain is Lomatium gormanii, but someone who knows more about plants than I do says it's Orogenia. He only glanced at my specimen, and it was pressed and dried, and he didn't see where it was growing, *and* these two are almost identical to the casual observer as far as I can tell, so I don't know how he can say that, unless he is seeing soemthing that I have overlooked in the flora and plant guides I've consulted, such as a dramatic size difference between the two. The roots are almost the same, the flowers are the same color, leaves very similar, even the minute detail of the flowers are very much alike.

Part of why I think it's Lomatium gormanii is that the Orogenia grows in damp soil, whereas L.gormanii grows on dry rocky slopes and rocks, which is exactly where I found it. That site will be dry as a bone within a month or so. Also, Orogenia apparently was collected for food and makes sizable roots, but this plant has only a small sub-globose tuber, about the size of a little pearl onion. And Orogenia linearifolia typically grows in large groups which flower all at once, and the umbels are only 1/4" across, whereas this plant has umbels which are slightly larger and there were only a few plants on the site, hardly the blanket of blooms described of the other species.

Lastly, I should mention that neither of the plants are present in most field guides for the area, either online or in text. Orogenia linearifolia is apparently a species of concern in Montana, and sightings of the Lomatium gormanii aren't terribly common either in this area, from the information I've found so far. So either way, It would seem I've found an interesting plant. I just wish I knew what it was. Of course, it doesn't help matters at all that the lomatiums exhibit quite a bit of morphological variation.

All my posts should be prefaced with:

"The following is my subjective opinion. Accuracy or truth relative to other's subjective opinions may vary. In fact, you might think I'm full of it."

On that note, then...I am unusually sensitive to scent, for a human. I find, upon reflection, that I have allowed scent, a sense which more or less bypasses the frontal lobes and goes straight to the limbic system, to be the decisive factor in many of the life changing decisions I've made in my time. Uh-oh, that isn't very rational, and it's oh-so important for me to entertain the notion that I, an aspie, am a logical, rational person who can put emotions aside and looks at a situation objectively. Sigh...it is what it is, and I am what I am.

As with many ideas which are known to be erroneous, it's easy to find examples and justifications to support the idea that scent=truth.
I'm not yet prepared to throw the validity of scent out the window, though...not yet. Scent means too much to me.

There was the time I took an immediate and strong aversion to a young man because he smelled aggressive and dangerous to me. Others said he was a nice young man...I knew better. I gave him a wide berth and avoided him as much as possible. Within a month or two, he was dead, apparently due to overdosing on drugs. Did I smell the drugs, on some subconcious level? I'll never know. I'm sort of glad I never had to find out more about him.

There was another guy I avoided due to scent. His scent made me feel almost ill. I don't know why he smelled that way, but he really smelled bad to me. It was an extremely unusual odor..not like B.O. or anything, just..odd, very strong, and very unnatural. A chemical smell.

Young men tend to have a distinctive musky odor, particularly teenagers. It raises all my panic buttons. I don't know why. I avoided them. They smelled too...potent.

People who just aren't taking care of themselves at all usually have that sort of an odor about them. It's a combination of cat spray, decay, not washing often enough, stale urine and dirty house. At first, it seems cruel to avoid someone for smelling like that, but serious neglect of personal needs and cleanliness is a sign of mental instability, so....again, makes sense.

Cheap cigarettes: good tobacco smells bad enough. Cheap ones? Ew.

Boozy + unwashed: dangerous. Potential violence, rape, or worse. Avoid if possible, placate and escape ASAP if avoidance is not an option.

Female perfumes really, really bug me. I encountered a person like this a day or two ago. Her scent got all over me. I couldn't avoid that. As soon as I could, I tried to wash it off. I scrubbed all the way up to my elbows, four times, and the smell was still there. Then it was time for lunch, and every time I brought the food to my mouth, I felt like gagging. I was finally, thank goodness, able to get it off completely by the next day.

Candy sweet female perfumes are just sticky and icky. But they're not as bad as the ones that smell like bedroom. You know, the ones that nearly shout "Screw ME!"? Uh, girls? I don't want to smell that. Not really. Save it for your partner. In your bedroom. Keep it in your bedroom. Please, please, please.

Thankfully, most people don't provoke such marked reactions from me. I don't know if I could endure social interaction if they did. It brings to mind some interesting questions about whether some autistics have an even better sense of smell, and whether that is why they don't want to be touched or approached by most people. For me though, 80% of people are merely interesting and intriguing to smell. I'm glad for that.

Spring is finally here! About bleepin' time!
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I've come to the conclusion that I don't express myself well enough to other people. I always feel as though my feelings or thoughts are being worn right on the surface of my skin, so to speak. It's one of the reasons I don't make much eye contact, I'm afraid for people to read everything my eyes hold. And I don't think it's really working out for me to relate to other people in the way I would like to be related to. Now, I don't exactly know what to do about this...because....I have no idea what they want, in terms of being related to, and whether it woudl be offensive to make a display in that direction. It woudl feel extremely artificial and phony for me to do so, and to me, offensive, but I'm not sure if it would offensive to them...if I could figure it out in the first place.

Why can't I just tell people what I'm really thinking or feeling? Well, because. They never seem to want to know, which is a lot of why I write here. And as you can see from my huge, huge following and overabundance of comments (sarcasm), people are SO interested in what I write here, haha. Occasionally I meet people who bring me out and I start talking, and I invariably say a lot more than I mean to, and wonder later on if saying that was wise. Or I blurt out what I'm thinking without meaning to, and the reactions can be varied.

I'm often very critical, maybe because I think a lot and mentally evaluate and comapare and analyze stuff all the time. People frequently assume that if I'm this critical, I must think I'm so great, fantastic, etc. Nothing could be further from the truth. I excoriate myself more than anyone else...I just do it in silence, for the most part...so nobody hears it. Or, they think that because I speak from my point of view all the time, that all I think about is myself. That isn't true either. I actually forget i have a body sometimes because I'm lost in thoughts, or in my surroundings, or taking in what's in front of me. As I get older and have aches and pains, it's less of a problem than it used to be (humor). No, what it is, is that I don't know what other people are thinking, and then, when they tell me, I often feel that inquiring further into their thought process might be intrusive. I know what I think about other people, how I feel or think of them, but I can't see things from their point of view, and I really think anyone who claims they can is fooling themselves.

Sorry for the bad grammar and inevitable typos...I'm sort of thinking out loud here.

I care about people a lot, a LOT. I just don't express it well enough. Also, it embarrasses me to care about other people. And I'm afraid they'll hurt my feelings. Maybe they don't run every hurtful thing said to them over and over a hundred or more times in their mind, but I do, and it hurts me every, single time it gets replayed, and it just keeps playing, over and over, and over. It isn't that I have a grudge, it's that it continues to hurt. When I ask "normal" people about this, they say they don't experience it. I don't know. Ugh.

Writing about stuff like this makes me feel really lonely. :-/
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But it was actually a good day, a really nice day. I got a lot done. And other than being tired and feeling abnormally cold on such a sunny day, I have no complaints about today. The tomato seedlings are up. Yeah, yeah, I know....I didn't start them early enough. But frankly, with the spring being so late, I'm willing to take the gamble that this timing was appropriate for the year. I saw a lot of birds today and had no idea what most of them were. I think one might have been a mountain chickadee.

I had a dream the other night that I was keeping a goat in my backyard...in town. I realized that if I hid her well and she was quiet, I could get away with it. Ah, dreams..... I think it's extremely irrational and unfair that certain animal species are allowed in town while others are not. Why is it acceptable for people to have animals that are fairly large, carnivorous, and are known to chase cars or bite people or to bark all night long, and which (on average) serve no practical use, but it's not Ok to have a few laying hens or a single, well contained doe goat, which would not smell (only bucks smell), bark at night, chase cars, or bite people?

I know of a couple people in town who have rabbits, and I'm not sure if that's legal or not, but it should be. Rabbits are absolutely silent. If one happened to get loose, it would be snatched up by a predator in short order. I would keep rabbits myself, just for the manure (we're vegetarian, so the meat is not an incentive) but I'm allergic to them. If you have an acre of land in town, you may keep a horse; however, you may not have a sheep. Or 6 quiet, rooster-less laying hens. Where is the logic in this?

The next thing we know, they'll pull up in front of our house and tell us we can't convert our useless, wasteful lawn into vegetable and perennial beds.

And please don't write me telling me I can go out and buy organic eggs. I can tell that those hens aren't living as they should be. The organic store eggs don't taste much different from any other store egg. Besides, I don't get the manure. You know, for the garden.

Living in town isn't what it's cracked up to be. Unfortunately the land here seems to have more value as "investment!" and "view!" (frankly, the place is so darned pretty that almost every area has a nice view in some direction) and "development potential!" (groan) and "nice second home!" or "build your dream house here, a short half hour to town" (they forget to mention that the short half hour is on winding country roads or that town is Priest River, population of 1500 or less. The bottom line is that the land is good only as a status symbol, with the result that it doesn't get used for anything but landing pads for McMansions and lawns.

I really want to move.

Food: We tried tamarind for the first time today. Initially, I bought the tamarind pods to draw, but since tomatillos are perishable, I have to finish drawing them first, and my gaze kept sliding over to those weird, lumpy brown pods. The more I looked at them, the more curious I became, so I selected the plainest of the bunch (I meant to draw the others) and broke it in half. When I pulled the two halves apart, the interior, which was slimy, lumpy, brown and very reminiscent of waste rather than food. I was a little hesitant to put that in my mouth, but am so glad I did! It has a wonderfully sour, sweet, flavor, bettter than the sour candy. I talked the kids into trying it (they were also quite reluctant) and before long, only a couple of the pods were left...oops! I guess I'll have to buy more. There are large seeds embedded in the brown pulp, so we planted several pots of those, to see if we can get it to grow as a houseplant. The next food we'll be trying: mochi.

Movie Review: Twilight

I generally don't watch wildly popular movies, but my son and I have been devouring the book series by Stephanie Meyers (more on that later, after we finish the fourth book). I liked the first book well enough that watching the movie seemed worthwhile.
Predictably enough, I didn't like the movie half as well as the book.

The girl, Bella, is portrayed as intelligent and hardworking in the book series. In the movie, she seems pretty dippy. Her vocabulary is limited, and where she could have been bright and shy, she comes across as shy and dumb. Even though she's madly in love with Edward in the book, she comes across as merely needy in the movie; there was no fire, no passion. Edward was definitely creepy, but his hair, UGH!! I mean, does it have to stand up on end like that? His eyebrows were drawn in too heavily, making him look artificial. If his hair had been styled in a less alarming, attention grabbing (hardly what a closet vampire would want) style and his eyebrows had a more nearly natural thickness, he would have looked so much more convincing.

I'm not sure that these are faults of the actors, either. Many aspects of the movie were quite convincing- Bella's convulsions, for instance, and Edward's overly formal manner. James, Alice, and Jacob were all much as I had imagined, as were Carlisle, Esme, and Billy.

For all the hype and attention this movie got, I think a little more TLC on the presentation of the main characters would have made such a difference. As it was, it came across as less interesting and more sappy than the book was. Oh, one last comment- the music was absolutely perfect. I just think they needed to fire the makeup artist and whoever told Bella to act so dumb.

Synesthaesia

As promised: I certainly don't experience synesthaesia the way Daniel Tammet does, but I think I have traces of it. Examples:

When I was a child, I saw numbers as though they were arranged like a deck of cards extending infinitely into space. The positive numbers ascended slightly while the negative numbers descended. In other words, try to picture a number line where instead of a line with dots, you have numbers written on cards, the cards overlap, and they are on a continuous, infinite incline. The cards were transparent, I couldn't really see the card, just the numbers, which, by the way, were all transparent black. To add, I had to mentally move up the line, and the number that was the answer would be larger, bigger, sort of like a card pulled up out of a deck or from a hand of cards. The multiples of ten were bigger. When I counted aloud, my voice would build in expectation every time I neared a multiple of ten, like kids do when they're playing hide and seek and are nearing the count of twenty, only for me, it was every multiple of ten, not just twenty.

Time to me is a circle graph. Each year is a circle, and it is joined to the year before it on January first, so that all the years together are like a continuous spiral extending back to the time when I was born, at which point the spiral tapers down and becomes tiny before it vanishes. The end of it, where I will die, will be torn off roughly rather than tapering smoothly as the beginning did. Each circle or year progresses in a counter clockwise fashion. The seasons are deliniated by an X. The top quarter is winter, composed of December, January, and February. The left quarter is spring: March, April, and May. The bottom quarter is summer; June, July, August, while the right hand quarter is fall; September, October, November. Holidays and birthdays flash like little lights in the months as I visualize them. The spiral is compressed most of the time, except when I am thinking of a time or trying to remember when some event happened. Then the spiral stretches out and I work back progressively until I find the circle I need.

Time as in daily time is also a circle graph, but not what you might expect. I will have to draw it and post an image of it here for it to make sense. All 24 hours are in one circle, and they aren't evenly divided. This may be why I allocate time differently than other people. Some parts of the day feel much longer and more expansive to me than others even though I know that they are really all the same length.

I sometimes visualize scent.

And textures often have sounds to me, especially squeaky, disagreeable sounds. For example, cotton balls, frosted glass, and certain fabrics all feel horrible and sound excruciating to me.

In order to do math, I more or less have to visualize the numbers moving around, and I think this is why I have so much trouble with algebra, especially if I don't understand *why* the numbers are moving or when they can or can't move.

Drifting off the topic of synesthaesia now, certain sensory experiences are simply heavenly to me. Smelling a certain scent, seeing a certain shade of a color, feeling the wind blow against my face, hair, or body, the sound of the wind. I love wind. And I can't explain it at all, but the people who smell the best to me, smell like wind feels or looks.

I'm over it now. After explaining that I had PTSD to my teacher, he was more careful with me and I am coping much better with the class. It really wasn't his fault that being pinned to the ground by a large, strong man caused me to freak out and have flashbacks.

I just finished reading Born on a BLue Day by Daniel Tammet and found it pretty interesting. It was impossible for me not to compare my own experiences with his. I think that some of his traits/quirks/abilities/differences may have been caused by the epilepsy rather than the Asperger's....not that I am in any way qualified to say so one way or the other, but he more or less says so too.

In the context of synesthaesia, I have more to say, but not tonight.

I am still upset over that. Honestly, my entire week has been stained and distorted by it. I do want to clarify that I'm not upset over the physical pain, which was very temporary. I think it had more to do with the fact that a rather large, muscular man was physically restraining me.

And see, this is why I don't like big muscular guys. They're scary to me.

I don't know what to do about this yet. I can't simply drop the class. I don't know.

When people say that rape, molestation, physical abuse, neglect, etc, don't really have any long term effect, they don't know what the hell they're talking about. Or they're in denial. Or they're a perpetrator. Or all of the above. It seems really unfair sometimes that I have to spend so much time and exert so much effort to repair the damage done by truly rotten people while they just keep living like they always have, finding someone else to wreck. They get away with it. I have to clean up the mess they left behind. And then tolerate attitudes from clueless types who tell me to magically get over it in a single day (or minute).

I suppose the main consolation is knowing that I appreciate life more deeply because I know how lousy it could be.

Current mood: seriously pissed off. I just got out of self defense class. The instructor was teaching us moves to take down and subdue an attacker. He demonstrated these moves on each of us. Instinct took over and naturally, I struggled, tried to escape, resisted, etc. We were supposed to indicate submission by tapping the mat. Well, admitting pain to a person attacking me isn't my strong point. I tend to either try to get away, to conceal any demonstration of pain (bullies and abusers feed on the high of causing pain) or to zone out of my body and go numb to the pain entirely. In other words, I kept trying to get away, and when I couldn't, went to refuse pain-go numb mode, which usually mollifies an attacker, only the point here was to keep trying to subdue me until I begged for mercy. By the time it felt like my wrist would be injured, I followed orders and tapped, but by this time, serious amounts of adrenaline were coursing through me and I felt seriously pissed off. Need I say that this occurred several times? It took most of my remaining self control not to flip out.

I am shaking and I don't feel very good.

These little houses are incredibly cool! They look like something out of Tolkein's books.

I realized tonight that I have a greater affinity for scents than I do tastes. In a way, this is great, because you can smell all sorts of things that you can't taste, and can enjoy the scent of tastable things without having to buy, procure, or otherwise arrange to be able to taste them. On the other hand, smell is very ephermal, scent memories are haunting, and food is more convenient because you can carry it with you and *store* it.

The greyness is creeping like tendrils into my consciousness. But stealthily, steadily. And at the edge of my soul, I feel a nagging, a discomfort somehow.

I'm not happy with the pears. In fact, I hate them. Another student (who is an artist) gave me some tips on how to fix them, but I'm not optimistic.

I think that's the hardest thing about life. You go on your way, making mistakes, and you never get to erase them or to tear up the paper or shatter the badly formed pottery and make a new one. People talk about second chances, but this is an illusion, because it isn't a new canvas, it's the same one smeared with layers of old, despicable mistakes, and you can't paint something new and fresh, you can only add to what's already there. It's supremely frustrating.

People who know me well always say that I don't talk enough. I think I talk entirely too much. I think out loud. I don't censor my thoughts before I say them. They're disjointed. Or sometimes, I substitute entire words, unintentionally. Spoken language is a very difficult media.

Hope. People talk a lot about hope, as though it's some panacea for mankind. Frankly, I'm skeptical. I think hope is like the promise of a new beginning, more or less the same thing. Which is to say, it doesn't really exist. Hopeful promising things don't fall out of the sky and save our ass or bring new meaning to life and help evrything to make sense. What happens is that occasionally we get a slightly different color for our palette and we're so godawful excited about it that we feel liberated, until reality sets in again.

I think I need to cut my hair.

I did another colored pencil drawing...two pears. Will post it in a few days. I have a tremendously intimidating chemistry test coming up so don't expect it until after then.

I've been thinking about the coming spring and garden, and cold frames. I might post a rough sketch of the idea I have for that, too. Basically, I want to find a way to make a temporary cold frame that will enrich the soil where it's been, so that after the frame is moved, there is more or less a raised bed where it was, requirign no tilling. I've come to the conclusion, over the years, that double digging isn't all it's been cracked up to be. I think it disrupts the soil, the layers of organisms in the soil, and kills earthworms, which to me is a major issue. I hate killing earthworms. There isn't room in the house to start all the brassica and other cool crops indoors, so if I can put them outside and have only the nightshades (tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, etc) and basil (can't forget the basil!) inside, that will really help.

Other than that, I don't have a lot to say. I've been dieting and have lost 7-9 # in the past two weeks, despite eating regularly, merely by counting calories, eschewing fat and excess carbs, and eating lots of fresh foods or low calorie soups, which are very filling. Exercise would be good, but my bicycle broke...badly. Will probably have to get another.

Wild ideas

An assortment and sampling of the ideas that run through my head:

• Cashmere goats. They are so much less work than dairy goats. I can't drink the milk anyway. Also, Cashmeres have no breed registry in the U.S., as they are not technically a breed, so the field is A. wide open and B. probably freer of the petty snobbery which is so rife in the dairy goat world and C. a good opportunity for developing my own breed standards and priorities , as opposed to doggedly following those which are laid out in the ADGA handbook.  I think the thing to do would be to buy a few does from imported (NZ) bloodlines and then use (also imported) semen to A.I. them. Why imported? Because, I've done some homework into this subject and am so far unimpressed by the quality of American stock. Most American stock is strongly influenced by Spanish, Boer, or Pygmy strains, because people want dual purpose (meat and fiber) animals as opposed to just high qaulity fiber, which is what I want. 
• Or, how about this: Cashmere dairy goats. In other words, fiber goats that also produce milk. Why not have one fiber and one dairy goat? Well, for one thing, non dairy breeds typically have much higher butterfat and protein percentages than dairy goats. Also, most people don't need gallons and gallons of milk per day, unless they're raising calves or pigs or are making cheese. They just want a little high quality milk, thus the popularity of the Nigerian Dwarf, a breed that makes my back ache when I think of working with them (they are tiny...and though I am short, I don't want animals I have to bend over to work with).  So...with this plan, get  a few nice very high quality dairy goats and A.I. them with imported Cashmere semen, and cross the lines, breed the F1s to more Cashmere semen, evaluate and cull, until a goat with nice fiber and decent milk production (1-2 quarts a day would be fine) is obtained. 
• Spotted knapweed. Why in the hell doesn't Monsanto genetically engineer a strain of spotted knapweed which has the Terminator technology? Areas with knapweed problems could then sow (yes, plant) this improved knapweed and it would cross with the existing (non-native invasive noxious weed) strains and when the two pollinated, the seed would all be sterile. Thus, over a series of years, no viable seed would be left, voila, no more knapweed. I think it must be because Monsanta would rather posion the country with 2,4D, round-up, and other poisons. Temporary and not-entirely effective solutions are a better money maker. 
• Pinus edulis and Pinus monophylla are two extremely slow growing trees which both produce delicious and edible seeds. I ordered some from this site and they are delicious. I decided I'd like to grow some of these wonderful trees. Well, guess what. It can take 60 years for them to reach 6 feet in height! In other words, mature productive trees are ancient and venerable. Now get this: aside from pine nuts, the other major uses for these two species are Christmas tree, timber (including rialroad ties) and pulp! Yeah, like paper pulp, something which could easily be produced with hemp (not the THC kind), or even better, recycled paper. But noooo....they have to cut down a beautiful pinon pine that took 300 years to grow so that people can have soft cushy toilet paper, even though that tree can make *food* year after year. Idiotic. Worse, the Xmas trees! The trees take a hundred years to attain the right height for Xmas trees, so yeah, whack'em down so that some spoiled family can have a nice tree for what, all of a month? Grrrrr...... I probably sound draconian, but this ought to be illegal. 
• Therefore, I have yet another idea. There are many species of trees, including a pine, which can be coppiced. Coppicing means that when you ct down a tree, it regrows from the sump, usually several shoots, and they grow a lot faster than the first growth, because they've got a mature and extensive root system feeding them. You can then cut down one of the second growths, and the other tops will be bigger, and you can continue to harvest them this way for centuries without ever killing the tree. I think this should be the only (or at least the primary) source of timber and cellulose. 

At school everyone calls me by my actual name. At first this felt really weird. Now it seems strange to be called Rebekah. Actually, the long form of my name feels excessively formal. Not sure I like that but don't quite know what to do about it. 

The sysbot test was today. I studied all three days of the weekend, even went on a field trip to see the trees in more detail and in different situations, etc, to get a solid feel for the big picture...studied notes, rewrote them and was quizzed, and read and reread the flora (Hitchcock's Flora of the Pacific Northwest). It seemed a little like overkill, but I had a feeling that the test would be challenging. Ah. It was. I am soooo glad I studied. I know I got several questions wrong, but it would have been quite the nightmare had I not gone all out. And next time, I will study even harder. The class is *fun*, but it is not  a cake walk. I can't gripe, though. Fact of the matter is that since I love the subject, studying for it is no pain at all. 

Next week: Math test. I think I am finally catching up on the math. 

Socially, am making more acquaintances. I am still not very good at small talk, despite a conscious effort in this direction. I don't have a lot of small things to talk about. For me, nearly any subject can lead into more depth or perspective or tangents, and people don't seem to like that. A lot of them want the small talk comments to be short little sound bites, but then what do you say? Another little sound bite? How do you know when to switch from one trivial topic to another? People get bored so easily. They have no attention span. 

Finally figured out how to post images. Hmmm. Also just noticed that blogger has a lot more options easily accesible than when I started this blog. I used to use html for everything from bulleted lists to italics (still do, actually), but it appears I don't really have to anymore...not that's it's been any great effort to use html. 

At any rate, the two pictures below are of some of my art from 2007; an artichoke and a cherry turnover. I'll have to ferret out some more and post that too. The orchids are blooming wildly and tempting me to take an hour or two to draw them...but, I have to finish my Pseudotsuga menziesii page in my botany notebook. I drew only half of the pinecone. This isn't making much sense. I suppose I'll have to post a page from that notebook in order to articulate what I mean. 

Oh, and I saw a male black-backed woodpecker while XX skiing yesterday! Also, a single Taxus brevifolia, Acer glabrum and a lot of diverse pseudotsuga (and other trees) under different conditions, which highlighted how variable the trees can look depending on their situation. Phenotypes and all that jazz.