growLively

Diorama-O-Rama: Leslie of the Amazon!

So I agreed, last minute and under persuasion of some friends, to do a Diorama to donate to today's Diorama-O-Rama Event benefiting Cafe Momentum. The event is in Dallas today from 4pm-8pm. It's a great cause and you'll get to bid on some very fun art.

This would be me in the Amazon in Peru, with some of my photographs and my insect/flower illustrations. And my pink locust tending his own little garden, lol. It's some silly fun...Swing by the event if you can. It's a $5 donation to get in the door, then you can bid on a plethora if dioramas, both in silent auction and live auction. Good times!

Travelin'

So I just got back from OFA in Columbus Ohio this week and now am off to PPA (Perennial Plant Association) conference in Portland Oregon. Whew! So, by the time I get back, I should have lots of photos from both of cool plants, places, products, etc. to share...see you on the flip side!

Naked Gardening Day, 2010

Ok folks, I know you DO NOT want to be missing out on this one! World Naked Gardening Day is coming up...May 8th 2010. I'm thinking I'll have some hedges to prune in the front yard that day...LOL. (And yes, if you click that link, you are going to see naked gardeners...I warned you! lol)

Frogs, Foam and Fuel: UC Researchers Convert Solar Energy to Sugars

Frogs, Foam and Fuel: UC Researchers Convert Solar Energy to Sugars Engineers from the University of Cincinnati devise a foam that captures energy and removes excess carbon dioxide from the air — thanks to semi-tropical frogs. Date: 3/15/2010 12:00:00 AM By: Wendy Beckman Phone: (513) 556-1826 Photos By: Illustration by Megan Gundrum, fifth-year DAAP student   For decades, farmers have been trying to find ways to get more energy out of the sun. In natural photosynthesis, plants take in solar energy and carbon dioxide and then convert it to oxygen and sugars. The oxygen is released to the air and the sugars are dispersed throughout the plant — like that sweet corn we look for in the summer. Unfortunately, the allocation of light energy into products we use is not as efficient as we would like. Now engineering researchers at the University of Cincinnati are doing something about that. The researchers are finding ways to take energy from the sun and carbon from the air to create new forms of biofuels, thanks to a semi-tropical frog species. Their results have just been published online in “Artificial Photosynthesis in Ranaspumin-2 Based Foam” (March 5, 2010) in the journal “Nano Letters.” (It will be a cover story for the print edition in the fall.)Research Assistant Professor David Wendell, student Jacob Todd and College of Engineering and Applied Science Dean Carlo Montemagno co-authored the paper, based on research in Montemagno’s lab in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. Their work focused on making a new artificial photosynthetic material which uses plant, bacterial, frog and fungal enzymes, trapped within a foam housing, to produce sugars from sunlight and carbon dioxide. Foam was chosen because it can effectively concentrate the reactants but allow very good light and air penetration. The design was based on the foam nests of a semi-tropical frog called the Tungara frog, which creates very long-lived foams for its developing tadpoles. “The advantage for our system compared to plants and algae is that all of the captured solar energy is converted to sugars, whereas these organisms must divert a great deal of energy to other functions to maintain life and reproduce,” says Wendell. “Our foam also uses no soil, so food production would not be interrupted, and it can be used in highly enriched carbon dioxide environments, like the exhaust from coal-burning power plants, unlike many natural photosynthetic systems.”He adds, “In natural plant systems, too much carbon dioxide shuts down photosynthesis, but ours does not have this limitation due to the bacterial-based photo-capture strategy.”There are many benefits to being able to create a plant-like foam. “You can convert the sugars into many different things, including ethanol and other biofuels,” Wendell explains. “And it removes carbon dioxide from the air, but maintains current arable land for food production.”“This new technology establishes an economical way of harnessing the physiology of living systems by creating a new generation of functional materials that intrinsically incorporates life processes into its structure,” says Dean Montemagno. “Specifically in this work it presents a new pathway of harvesting solar energy to produce either oil or food with efficiencies that exceed other biosolar production methodologies. More broadly it establishes a mechanism for incorporating the functionality found in living systems into systems that we engineer and build.”The next step for the team will be to try to make the technology feasible for large-scale applications like carbon capture at coal-burning power plants. Dean Carlo Montemagno“This involves developing a strategy to extract both the lipid shell of the algae (used for biodiesel) and the cytoplasmic contents (the guts), and reusing these proteins in the foam,” says Wendell. “We are also looking into other short carbon molecules we can make by altering the enzyme cocktail in the foam.”Montemagno adds, “It is a significant step in delivering the promise of nanotechnology.” Other Recent News About the College of Engineering and Applied ScienceUC Jumpstarts Charge of Educating Future Energy WorkforceUniversity of Cincinnati College of Engineering and Applied Science offers the first Energy and Materials Engineering undergraduate degree program in the United States.

via www.uc.edu

How cool is this??!!

So you wanted to know which tomato variety this was??

Alright folks, I'm letting the cat out of the bag. It seems Organic Gardening Magazine won't be publishing our test garden variety results this year. They do have a feature scheduled to publish the 2010 trials next year. So I guess I'm free to tell you now about my 2009 trials. The amazing tomato below, which was my favorite from the trials, is a variety called 'Sapho'. Yes, it's spelled correctly. North Haven Gardens will have a limited quantity of the plants available around mid-March. Call them to check for arrival time. Prime tomato planting time here in North Texas is about the second week of March through the end of March for early summer harvest.

* I wish I could identify this tomato variety for you...but I can't...it's top secret. LOL. If I told you, well then, you know what I'd have to do to you. It's one of my Organic Gardening Magazine test varieties. And, it's awesome. It's not often you can plant a spring crop of tomato and have it continue to produce and ripen through the entire summer and fall here in Texas. With a fantastic flavor to boot! Normally, once spring plants have produced their early summer crop, the heat of summer pretty much does them in. Then, we plant a second fall crop in mid-July. These babies have just kept on truckin' since spring. The plants are indeterminate and have gotten big and a bit rangy over the growing season, but the fruit are fantastic. It's a saladette type fruit. These are planted in my front yard and I usually just end up eating the ripe fruit right off the vine. So tasty...

 

I'll fill you in on this tomato next spring once OG publishes test results...*

First signs of spring...now signs of winter...

Lol...I'm sure spring will be back next week!

The veggie garden in the snow...

 

The gals huddled together inside their coop...poor Phyllis and Einstein and their poor wet dirty hair!

Back from the Amazon, Peru...

Wow, what an amazing journey. Not only did I see some amazing natural sights in the Peruvian Amazon, but also made some great new friends. I have so many photos to go through that it's going to take me a bit, especially amidst the holidays. I'll try and post a few as I go.

Me on a sweaty jungle trek!

My ultimate score!!! Poison Dart Frog, Dendrobates reticulatus. Very hard to find and photograph! I believe this species is only native to the small area around the part of NE Peru where I was staying. So exciting.

Just one of the many beautiful and huge trees. Home to so many epiphytes such as bromeliads, philodendrons, orchids and ferns. Lovely!

Striking Helliconia. They were everywhere.

I'm officially obsessed with the fungi of the Peruvian rain forest. There is so much diversity. Every time I looked I found a new one! So beautiful.

 

Me and my new boyfriend Jose...LOL

So I can't eat tomatoes anymore...Kill me now!

I've been holding back posting on this for about a week because, well, let's just say I'm suffering from PTTSD. That would be Post Tomato Traumatic Stress Disorder. I'm in a bit of shock. I had a full panel of food sensitivity tests done, thinking that I was having a problem digesting gluten and wheat. But little did I know the cruel joke fate would play on me...had I, I don't think I would have gotten tested! Anyway...as it turns out, the foods I reacted the most to (we call them the "red" foods), and thus must remove from my diet, are

• TOMATOES, garlic, oregano, apples, capsaicin (so nohot peppers), cucumbers, lentils, watermelon, salicylic acid, carob and phenylethylamine (diet sodas I think).

Now, I've been a vegetarian for 20 years...so most of the things on that list right there are pretty important components of my daily diet. I eat healthy and I grow and eat lots of veggies. Anyone who knows me will immediately wonder how on earth I'm going to get along without tomatoes or my hot peppers. My garden is bursting with them! I just planted all that beautiful garlic too...no more cucumber sandwiches...sniff, sniff. Ok, so maybe you're thinking, well, this isn't all that bad, you'll make it work. BUT THERE'S MORE.

Apparently I also have a bunch of other foods I'm highly sensitive too, although not as sensitive as to the red foods. These are the "yellow" foods. I'm supposed to keep these to a minimum and not combine any two together at any time.

• Baker's Yeast (there goes bread), beets, black pepper, broccoli, cabbage, caffeine, cauliflower, cayenne pepper, cherry, cinnamon, coconut, codfish, corn, grapes, mango, millet, oranges, peanuts, pistachio, plums, pork, rye, solanine, soybean (no more tofu) string beans, sweet potatoes and yellow squash.

Um, yeah, just kill me now. I'm now wishing it was the gluten and wheat I was allergic too! So great, I'm not allergic to gluten, I can eat bread, yay! Wait, no, it all has yeast in it...No corn...no soy...pretty much everything at the grocery store has yeast, corn or soy in it in some form. Broccoli, cauliflower??? I have acres of broccoli in the garden right now...lol. American wine is off my list now too because apparently they all contain corn of some kind? So, awesome, I guess I'll just have to drink nicer more expensive European wines right? NO...because I'm sensitive to GRAPES! Have you ever tried to find something already made that doesn't have black pepper or garlic in it???? 

Oh my gosh, my head is spinning...I need a drink...one not made with corn, or yeast, or grapes...LOL

Ode to Rhino Beetle...

So, I love bugs...all sorts of bugs. I draw and paint lots of pretty flowers, but bugs are one of my favorite subjects to render. Especially with high quality colored pencils. I can sit for hours and hours obsessing on all the tiny detail. This here is a drawing I've done of a rhino beetle in all it's glory. Aren't they amazing and beautiful?

Did you know...Rhino Beetles are the strongest creatures on Earth? The rhinoceros beetle can carry 850 times its own weight. That's proportionally more than an African Elephant can carry! That's the definition of a badass if there ever was one. Badass beetle!

Going to Peru...

So, have I told you guys I'm going to Peru in December? Well, I am! My best friend Kimberly and I are going to trek around in the Amazon jungle near Iquitos, Peru for a couple of weeks. We will be staying and studying with some native shamans. Very exciting.

This is where we will be...

This is where we'll swim...and hope the piranhas don't eat our toes..lol

 I (not Kimberly, lol) will be looking for these...and some bigger ones!

And these...awwww

And of course studying all sorts of fabulous plants...

Can't wait to go...but for now I have to be satisfied with the ache in my arms from the 5 shots I got to day...owwwww. Still a couple more to go. My poor, poor guns! At least they gave me cute band aids, lol.

I'll keep you guys posted and hope to have some wonderful photos to share upon my return.