Teresa Robeson's Blog, page 16

The evil life of plants

Having tree folks in the family (some of the Spousal Unit’s climate research involve trees so he’s very knowledgeable about them and Kid1’s a grad student in evolutionary botany as well as a tree expert) and recently doing a lot of my own writerly research on the topic, I have some opinions on the notion that trees are cooperative and altruistic entities. To quote my family: evolution doesn’t work that way, bro.

Many plants seem to be living their own lives, blissfully ignoring other plants. But there are some that appear to be downright dastardly.

Remember this guy?

Take the invasive autumn olive for instance.

Sure, they’re kind of pretty in that mistletoe-y kind of way. And the ripe berries are moderately tasty (some people make jellies with it). But they are allelopathic, killing or inhibiting the growth of any other plants that try to grow too close to them. As they spread quickly and effectively thanks to birds that eat the berries, they soon form monoculture swaths edging out native species. That’s why we have been trying to eradicate them on our property for a number of years.

Equally unpleasant is the native black walnut.

If I had a dollar for every fruit tree all the black walnut trees have killed on our property… But I can’t be too annoyed at them (well, yes, I can be; you might wonder just what doesn’t annoy me–the SU will tell you the answer is “not much”) because they are native and they are useful for food and making ink, among other things.

Cooperative though? Hah! Forget it.

Re-think the recycle

“Ce sac n’est pas un jouet.” So the bag is not a plaything…it’s also not recyclable either in most parts of the world despite what that nifty recycling symbol might indicate.

While many plastic things, like various packing and bags, have that symbol, truth is a lot of recycling facilities won’t accept them. And even when they do, there’s no guarantee that the items will be recycled. I swear manufacturers put the symbol there to lull us into a false sense of complacency, making us feel like we’re not ruining the planet by our consumerism because hey! we’re recycling the packaging, aren’t we?

Take a quick, fun, and eye-opening test at this Washington Post article (I’ve gifted this link so you won’t need a subscription) to see if you really know just what is generally recycled.

An important blog post with an important message

Especially for Educators: “Recentering Diversity and Decentering White/Eurocentric Culture” by Zeena M. Pliska

Please do check it out!

Who doesn’t love butterflies?

There might be a small number of people who have irrational fears of butterflies but, on the whole, people are enchanted by these faerie-like creatures with colorful wings and flight patterns that are a cross between whimsy and magic.

Because our property is full of different types of native wildflowers (and some non-native ones, too, alas), we get a lot of butterflies. Here are some of the ones I took photos of recently on a walk around the property.

The Eastern Tiger Swallowtail is always a magnificent sight, whether the yellow version…

or the black version…

But smaller butterflies are also delightful and less flitty. Here’s a sweet little Pearl Crescent…

a Peck’s Skipper…

and an Eastern Comma…

I swear the names are as fun as the insects themselves. Just look at all the happy butterflies in one little patch of wild bergamot!

Do you have a favorite butterfly?

How to ward off vampires

We know people who avoid aromatics in their foods and we can’t begin to fathom that. Garlic (and onions) make most dishes, as far as I’m concerned. Without garlic, many savory dishes would be positively bland. Luckily, the Spousal Unit is as big a fan…perhaps bigger. He is the gardener and grows his own after all.

This is the current year’s harvest which he and Kid2 pulled on June 23rd.

Another view:

And a close-up of the star of the show:

These beauties would make a vampire have unrequited love!

Even better, garlic has antiseptic, antibacterial, and antifungal properties. What’s not to like about them?

Do you hear what I hear?

In a recent Funds for Writers newsletter (a terrific and free resource offered by author C. Hope Clark), there was an article about How To Succeed In Interviewing by Viney Kirpal. One point in there struck a nerve for me:

Ask open questions and listen well. [. . .] Never interrupt the interviewee. You can decide on what to glean out later, but getting a flow is important.

I feel like this is not just good advice for a journalist or author but for everyone in general. A lot of us are so eager to put in our two cents that we don’t actually listen to others when we’re talking to them. People talk over each other all the time–which is okay if they’re concurring with each other but not if they’re trying to rebut or one-up someone.

I don’t tend to talk too much (except with my sister or the Spousal Unit), so when I do talk, I really would like to not be interrupted.

Then, too, there are those who don’t even realize they talk too much, using their words and voice to fill what would otherwise be a pleasant and comfortable silence with their incessant chatter, nattering on about nothing. Part of the issue is that they’re not self-aware. They’re often not trying to be rude, and they can be the nicest people, but they just don’t know when to shut up.

Anyone have good advice for how to gently and kindly tell these chatterboxes to keep quiet? (Hmmm, I can’t seem to find where to set comments to open; it’s not where it used to be. If you want to tell you your advice, please pop over to my Contact Me form.)

The Spousal Unit’s German roots

A couple of weeks ago, the Spousal Unit harvested most of our spring cabbage crop and made sauerkraut. Making kraut is a fine and long standing tradition in the Fike and Weitzel side of his family. My FIL (the oldest of 9 kids) was the family kraut maker for decades after his father stopped doing so. He would buy over 100 heads of cabbage in late fall and make ginormous batches which he then distributed to his siblings, and they to their kids.

We don’t live near those extended family anymore so when SU makes kraut, it’s mostly just for us and the small handful of in-town friends who like it…emphasis on small. We don’t consistently get good cabbage crops so we don’t make kraut every year. Most years, the SU grows them in the when falling temperatures make for sweeter heads.

This year, though, for whatever reason, the SU grew them in the spring, and to our surprise, they did very well! This is what he harvested for the kraut, but we had already eaten many heads as cole slaw and also roasted.

Because the SU’s oldest brother has no time or inclination to make sauerkraut, the SU inherited the equipment from their father. This includes two pieces that belonged to SU’s great-grandfather–the slicer:

(pardon our very messy garage)

and the stomper:

The crock belonged to my FIL so it’s only about 70 or so years old instead of about 150.

After slightly over 2 weeks of letting bacteria have their way with it*, we are now the proud parents of approximately 5-6 gallons of the best tasting kraut money can’t buy.

True story: I tried sauerkraut (FIL’s homemade stuff) for the first time in my life when I was dating the SU and knew right then and there that I had to marry into this family!

Have you ever had kraut? How about the homemade stuff? And do you have a good recipe to use it in? My FIL’s specialty was kraut and pork chops, but we tend to make faux/vegetarian reubens with it…in addition to eating it raw, of course.

* There’s a couple more steps in between, but really not that much more. The SU sprinkles salt liberally between shredding and mixes it a bit more by hand before stomping. After stomping, he places a plate with a weight over the top. It really is that simple to make!

Educator guides for my books!

I’m really excited to share that I now have teacher guides for all three of my books. The latest one is created by Debbie Gonzalez, the genius behind the Pin Lit program and a long time teacher and author.

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Doesn’t it look awesome? Head on over to my website to download a free copy to use in your classroom. If you do use it, please give me any feedback you have!

Noted!

Chinese words are discrete logographs so when we’re learning to write, we use grids. The older you get, the smaller the grids get…but I think at some point, the notebook isn’t for writing words anymore? I’m thinking that the tiny one may be for math and graphing? I should ask my dad…but what do you think?

Also, there are 2 generations of notebooks here. The top (blue) notebook is mine from first or second grade where I attended a school that my mom was a teacher at. It was weird, but interesting, too, because I got to hang out with mom and her teacher friends (my dad had immigrated to Canada first at this time so I hung out with mom a lot).

The other (brown) notebook is from a high school my mom attended!

Obviously, I’m hoarding too many old, sentimental things. Do you do that? Or are you a better minimalist than I am?

A PSA on UTIs

A month ago, I got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and fainted. Because the Spousal Unit had trouble getting me to revive and also because I just didn’t feel right (my heart rate was low–in the mid-50s–and I had trouble breathing), he called 911 to have me taken to the emergency room.

They took X-rays and an EKG, and ran blood tests, and couldn’t find anything wrong with me. In fact, the emergency responders didn’t seem too concerned after measuring my pulse and blood pressure and gave us the option of taking me to the hospital or not.

At the hospital, almost as an aside since I had to go to the bathroom, they tested my urine, too, and found that I had a UTI. Because of that, they prescribed an antibiotic.

Thanks to the antibiotic, the UTI has been wiped out. Despite my thinking/hoping I would bounce back once the antibiotic does its magic (or, really, its science), I’ve been recovering very slowly. This is not surprising given that I had allowed an infection to wreak havoc on my body for at least a month, if not bordering on three.

One of the things I noticed when I checked my Fitbit stats after getting home from the hospital stay was that my resting heart rate had plunged from the normal range of around the mid 60s to the mid 50s within the span of a month. Here’s a look at the one year average data:

And a close-up of the 3 month period.

I kept telling medical professionals that I am not an athlete and that my resting pulse should not be in the 50s, but that didn’t set off any alarms for them. Because my blood pressure and EKG readings seemed normal, and I wasn’t running a fever, they assumed there was nothing really wrong with me. But, let me tell you, those readings don’t tell the whole story. I also had lowered body temperature and couldn’t get warm. For the next couple of weeks, even though the weather was borderline hot and it was in the high 70s F in the house, I wore sweaters and was swaddled in blankets.

Since the hospitalization, I’ve spoken with many friends who have horror stories about UTIs. Joana first alerted me to how UTIs can have truly bizarre symptoms in older people. Then Carol and David told me a bunch of helpful info and anecdotes from their own brushes with UTIs. Our aunt told me that she once had a UTI that put her in the hospital for 4 weeks during which time she felt so bad, she didn’t care if she lived or died.

WHAT IN THE HECK???

How is it that something so prevalent and dangerous can be shrugged off by the ER staff? If we hadn’t insisted to the emergency workers that I should go to the hospital for a check-up, and hadn’t off-handedly had my urine tested, who knows if I would have ended up with kidney damage (or, worse) at this point?

So, my PSA is that you should keep an eye out for the possibility of having a UTI, especially if you’re biologically female and older. The Mayo Clinic has a page of info on it but I can tell you from first hand experience that those aren’t the only symptoms. I first noticed a strange odor a couple of months back. It wasn’t from the urine, and I completely ignored the smell even when it became really strong (BIG MISTAKE) because I never had the classic symptoms of trouble urinating or abdominal pain/blood.

A few things to keep in mind:
1) Never ignore any symptoms, even if they don’t conform to an official list of things to look for.
2) Go to the doctor and insist on getting tested for a UTI just to rule it out if nothing else.
3) Don’t let medical professionals downplay the urgency of the situation if you feel deep down that something is just not right.
4) Talk to friends! I swear I learned way more from my friends’ experiences than I did from any medical professional on the topic. I’m not suggesting randomly taking advice from people, but you’re going to be so much better informed about the problem from having an aggregate data set. I understand wanting to be private about one’s life; I certainly don’t share as much publicly as some of my friends do. But as the Beetles sang, “I get by with a little help from my friends.” I certainly do!

Bottom line: UTIs are serious. Ignore them to your detriment.