First Days of Autumn

Leaves have begun to color --



and to fall on our garden.



Kids have started school. The temperature has been reasonable and the humidity low (for Arkansas). It's fall, folks. If where you life is anything like Little Rock, get out there now because our autumn usually lasts four days to two weeks. Maybe this year we'll get all four seasons for a change.



There are butterflies flitting around our pineapple sage and zinnnias.



and one, poor, confused wistaria bloomed last week. It's probably the ratio of day to night and the fact that things around here aren't used to having all four seasons. Maybe our crocus will begin to poke their noses out of the ground next.



You may notice that an enterprising bumble bee is buzzily visiting the blossoms.

We chopped the lorupetalum off our creek. It should have been a dwarf variety, but we planted the regular instead. The years we did not prune it back, it topped the roof. Alas, the blooms in spring were lovely. But we did want that space for some smaller flowers.

Sweating in the garden is a welcome break from politics, murder and football. Those are the only things on the minds of local news teams. Very sad. The fall flowers are beginning, but late summer bloomers aren't finished yet. Next month, I'm going to start planting pansies and violas.

Billions, Trillions, Zillions???

The recent news about the US government buying 80% of Lehman Brothers' Bank found me confused. The confusion stemmed, not from the buy out/bail out, but the number of dollars involved.




I have no trouble with thousands and can just about get my head around a million. After all, there are about 32 million seconds in a year and my heart beats an average of 39 million times in that time. Being trained as an engineer gave me a comfort zone with really large numbers, like the number of atoms in a "gram mole" of an element: 6.022 times ten raised to the 23rd power. A "gram mole" or mole is the atomic weight of an element in grams. That is more of a convenience when it comes to figuring out chemistry problems than a reality. Atoms are very small, too small to be seen through even the most powerful optical microscope. Scientists have to use an electron microscope to image atoms. Light is easy too. It travels about 186,000 miles per second. So in one tick of a stop watch, a ray of light will go (assuming you can get it to go around in a circle... it tends to go in a straight line) about seven times around the equator. By the way, light can travel a little less than 6 times ten to the twelfth power (trillion in the US; in Europe, a trillion is ten to the 18th).

Another by the way, there is more than one kind of second. There is the solar second, the one we use in our clocks. But some people in Europe decided that they needed a standard second based on the metric system, the System International (SI) second which is a little more than 99% of a solar second. Astronomers got into the act with the sidereal second. A sidereal second is more than 20 solar seconds. Go figure. I had to. But then I figured that we can't even use the same voltage as they do and there are three or four different kinds of plugs and outlets for electricity. Which one depends on which country you visit.

Very small things seem to make sense... to a point. A centimeter is about four tenths (0.4) of an inch. A millimeter is about four hundredths (0.04) of an inch. A mil is one thousandth of an inch when you're talking paint (my former specialty). When you get down to micrometers (0.001) meters, it gets a little harder. The nanometer is something I can't visualize. Wavelengths of light are measured in nanometers. A nanometer is smaller than an atom. I just can't get my head around that.

So when the media talk about 300 billion dollars a day for the war in Iraq or 400 billion dollars for this and that, my little brain seizes up and refuses to comprehend. When we're talking about something too small to see, there is no problem. But dollars? Not only can I see them and spend them, but when I'm lucky, I have a couple in my wallet. I guess someone like Bill Gates or Warren Buffet can understand a billion. They have several in their bank accounts. But to me, it doesn't make as much sense as the number of atoms in a mole.

Any good physics book will tell you all the prefixes (centi milli, kilo etcetera) in the metric system. You'll probably be able to find things like the mass of the Earth in kilograms or the average distance from the Earth to the moon. But for me, there is a vast difference between being able to spout those huge numbers and actually wrapping my mind around them.

Ocean reefs

In March of this year, it was announced that the World Bank had inaugurated the Year of the Reef. It is a partnership among governments, scientists and other associations. I think it fitting that this post discusses reefs and their current status... THREATENED!!!

I have no thrilling photos of ocean reefs to post with this essay. But I am adding some pictures taken of the Atlantic during my last trip to Scotland.



The health of all oceans is a major concern to the human race. Much of our food comes from them. Some economies are exclusively dependent on the sea. Ocean plants, mostly plankton generate a large part of the oxygen we breathe. To use an overused phrase, reefs are to oceans like the proverbial canary in a coal mine. The way they grow, or do not grow, is a major indicator of the state of water world wide.

At this time, it is estimated that a quarter of those reefs have been destroyed. The reef provides shelter and food for something in the neighborhood of a million different species. To put that number in perspective, it about a quarter of all forms of life in the sea. Many of these are important foods and much of the reef life provides income in the billions of dollars. Additionally, like the rain forest, there are species there which may provide us with life saving medicines. This is just now being investigated.

The major threats to reef life are careless fishing, fishing with explosives, over fishing, pollution, introduced exotic species, acidification of ocean waters and climate change. We humans can do something now to ameliorate the first four of these factors. Most of the acidification is caused by carbon dioxide uptake of sea water. It is theorized that the reduction of CO2 emissions can eliminate this threat. Climate change may or may not be a problem within the ability of the human race to solve. But seeing that corral has survived almost as long as any other life form, it may be the one we do not have to solve.



Corral reefs cover about 200,000 square miles of ocean floor. These amazing structures are built about a millimeter (about an eight of an inch) at a time by tiny animals called polyps. They reproduce a couple of times each year in the same manner as many clams and oysters. That is, the polyps release sperm and eggs into the sea water and some of them combine to form new polyps. These look like tiny jellyfish. They settle on the reef and begin the process of building their "houses" of calcium carbonate.





These photos are of a real jellyfish in an Atlantic harbor and of barnacles that cling to some of the tidal stones on the Scottish isle of Staffa.

It is mostly the developing nations in the Pacific and Caribbean which are the primary causes of bad fishing. Some of the rich nation's fishers use corral damaging drag nets and add to the damage. The sad thing about the developing nations is that the fishermen who kill the reef are destroying their only means of subsistence. We're talking about perhaps one hundred million people who are at risk due to their own ignorance. A few of these nations have begun to use their reefs as tourist attractions. While that helps, over viewing the reef can be as damaging to its environment as can overfishing.

It is essential that we begin speaking to our lawmakers and policy makers and diplomats about the severity of this problem. Polluting nations need to be educated, and in many cases, assisted in reducing the pollution they add to the sea. These nations are not only developing, but some of the richest, including the United States. While China pours raw sewage into their ocean, we dump tons of fertilizer and other agricultural chemicals into ours. Our friends in Europe and Latin America have the same problems.

Reducing pollution is costly. But the saving and reclamation of many of the materials that are dumped can be financially rewarding. What is needed is the political will to put out the initial cost. That can only be done if those in power are convinced they can do something about the problem without causing financial ruin to their countries.

Butterflies

Right, I said that I was going to deal with other subjects in my next posts. But I found a neat caterpillar on one of the fennel plants in our garden. I think that it will become a black swallowtail butterfly next spring.

I learned something that anyone who wants a butterfly garden should know. Having plants that attract butterflies for nectar is not enough to insure you will have lots of them next year. You also have to have food plants for their larvae nearby. Monarchs prefer milkweed. Swallowtails like fennel. Most of them will not lay eggs on plants that their caterpillars can not use for food.

One butterfly expert suggested taking the food plants in pots and placing them near the nectar plants... having your bar and restaurant next to each other. If you do it that way, you may also want to build a little butterfly house around the food plant. Then when the caterpillar forms its chrysalis and mutates into the winged form, you can watch and the butterfly will be able to dry its wings without the danger of being picked off by a passing bird. You will also have the experience of releasing those lovely things into your garden again.

Problems

In the past few weeks, a variety of national problems have been shown me. Since I was not altogether aware of these, I suspect that my readers may not be either.

I hope to publish articles on the current state of reefs, education for the deaf and hard of hearing, agricultural roads and bridges, and treatment of people with inflammatory bowel disease.


The flower above is a passion flower. It smells good. You can make jelly from the fruit. Turtles like it and certain butterflies lay their eggs on the undersides of its leaves since their caterpillars like to eat the vine. Nice plant.

Stay tuned.