Raspberries, Pumpkin, and 80 Onions (UPDATED)

I picked out a raspberry, out of 4 to choose from, and no idea what to look for.  I took home the Meeker, which turns out to be some scientific prize-winner, with the most "ellagitannins" of any raspberry.  However, then I found out it's not "ever-bearing" and I want something that will produce all summer and into Fall so I have to get another one or return this one.

I might take two.  I chose the Meeker because of how sweet it said it was, and thought this is good for fresh berries.  I liked the idea of "Latham" because it was described as "aromatic" and I was about to get that one.  I think the Heritage Rose is all-season too.

So I might get a couple, with at least one as ever-bearing.  I don't mind the idea of lots of "ellagitannins" though, whatever that is.  Sounds good for organic raspberry teas and things, to me.

I got two pumpkins, the jack-o'lantern kind and the pie kind, and white onions.  I always buy yellow ones, but white is good for salsa and if I'm selling them, maybe they'll do well, and you can charge a little more.

Then I had to get gloves.  I wasn't going to because I like the cloth ones I have but there's a hole at the finger and I keep getting dirt in so until I sew it up, I need an alternate pair and I got lavendar ones.  I like orange, but when my hands are in the dirt, I like a soothing lavendar or light flowery pattern or something.  My last set of gloves was cloth, and purple with a little red and white.  I've always gone with cotton, which I prefer, but they had a different kind there so I got them.

I had this spontaneous moment of bursting into song after I picked up the gloves.  It was just me and the cash register woman so I laughed and she said she understood when I explained.  I don't know, I know why the birds sing in Spring.  And Summer.  I know why birds sing.

I didn't plan to do it, it slipped out.  This song was on the radio and I had just picked up gloves and set them down and out came, "Don't wanna break your heart!"  The weirdest part was that my voice came through sounding clear and high, and true.  It sounded like my voice before I was tortured and poisoned.  I guess I shocked myself, because when it slipped out, and I hadn't even planned this, I thought, "that was me?  that did not sound bad at all!" and then I had to explain to the woman there and thankfully we both laughed.

I just looked it up and it's from a song by Demi Lovato.
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I have to redesign something.  Not sure yet.  I planted a lot of things today, including 80 bulbs of white onion.  I still have to plant the yellow button kind, but the bulbs I know how to do--I remembered today, oh yeah, I planted tons of white onions (or yellow?) when I was a kid.  Pretty sure they were white.  I had asked my mom, "Why are they all green and no onion!" and she said I had planted them too deep.  All the memories came back though, as I was pushing in bulbs.  I felt like I was embedding the soil with little jewels.

I sort of re-arranged some things and then decided I'll try re-positioning something else later.  I was thinking, I might start out this year or next, with an "everything" garden and then after that, fill it with raspberry, with onions to keep out aphids organically, and maybe have some jewel mint (corsican mint) for walkways.

Right now I have something in a row that won't work, because it's pumpkin, and once that pumpkin starts to grow, it will be busting through the lavendar border.  I keep seeing this raiders of the lost art scenario with giant pumpkins on the loose and my Dad or something running for cover.  These seeds are not really what I wanted I guess.  They're from colombus, ohio and compared to the organic seeds, they don't look quite as healthy.  There were not any organic pumpkin seeds where I've been, but the zucchini ones I got are organic and they have a totally different appearance.  But maybe that's just bc zucchini seeds look different from pumpkin seeds.  I don't know.

I think I hone my patch done to raspberry, with onion at foot for organic control, and jewel mint and a little lavendar to keep the deer away.  I wanted to plant raspberries all along the horse fence, but I guess horses eat raspberries.  I know goats eat everything, but I didn't know horses will eat them.

I like the idea of strawberries too, just not sure what you would do for organic cover.  I've always loved strawberry shortcake.  I picked tons of raspberries as a kid, we had a couple of rows, and I sort of remember what to do.

Anyway, I might move the pumpkin and zucchini to it's own patch and then put in my raspberries.  I got 4 plants, there were 4 separate shoots/starts in a pot, but I'm wondering where the main root is because I didn't see a stalk.  Anyway.

It was there on the counter and I saw this tiny red bug scamper across very fast and said, "Is that a red aphid?!"  and said I might have to return if I'm getting the wrong kind.  But I think it will work out fine.  Might have to find other variety too if not enough, but I like the idea of medicinal leaves and then can add to that.  Maybe it was a tiny red mite.  I said is that a red aphid though, because I know the main thing raspberries are prone to, is aphidism. 

Maybe I need to be sure it doesn't have a virus too bc I pinched off a leaf that didn't look too healthy but probably it's fine.  Will have to look closely.  I read there is something called a dwarf virus that will stump the plant's growth and can make it impossible to pollinate.  There's no point to keeping it if it's diseased because this one kind you can't get rid of and if my whole point is to produce raspberries to sell, and not just for myself, esp. selling organic, I have to make sure the starts are okay.  They might be though.  I hope so, bc I think it's a good variety.  I read it comes from Oregon State? or Washington State university.  Oregon State is very good when it comes to agriculture and sciences.

I looked up that song that was playing in the store today.  I don't really think I've listened to it before, even though I knew the words to the chorus, I think just bc I heard it a few times before repeating.  I haven't seen the video until tonight.  Her grip on her pen drives me crazy.  I don't know why teachers don't show their students how to hold a pen but maybe it's because her nails are long.  Whenever I see someone writing with this kind of grip I wonder if they are actually a leftie that was told to be a rightie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14PBYVZYTzg&feature=related

I used to have a silver ring like the one she's wearing on her right hand.  It was a very wide silver ring with lots of bands.  I usually kept small jewelry but had one larger ring like that.  Sometime in early 2000s-2003.  But there was no separation, it was all one ring and I wore it sometimes on my middle finger because it was loose elsewhere.   I listened to the words but in the store,  I wasn't paying attention at all.  I guess, now listening, it sounds like some kind of liason.  Anyway, good energy while listening to it, in general, even if I'm not sure what she's refering to.
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I then got water and tried a different kind.  I need to get some larger containers though, to save money.  I got smart water while at the store, and put it all in my cupboard with a bunch of  recycled stuff and one pack next to my son's homework, to remind myself to write him.

I don't know what happened to my Dad while we were gone, because I came back and he had this new and odd mark on one side of his face.  Basically, the left cheek, and the same dimensions as the ring on this woman's left hand.  His pigment was changed or burned or something.  It had to have happened while I was at the nursery or getting water.
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I am not taking the nursing class I still have, but I have to wait to switch it out with something else.  I need to be able to be at home right now and transportation is hard at the moment.

I just looked at my email and thought something with a college abroad looked interesting but not in their master's programs.  The way the master's program is worded, it doesn't translate well to me.  But the learning without borders and cultural things looks interesting, combined with english.  I'm looking forward to my mythology class.  I would add, I remembered too, what this woman said on a program recently, about business and thought she had a good idea to be a "turn around" expert.  She didn't do take-overs, but turn around work.  She said this isn't a country, or the U.S. economy, it's a global economy.  It's something to think about but I still agree with individuality and retaining ones culture.  I mean, and economy should be country-based, but with reflection and consideration on global, definitely. 

Other things...Oh, this guy on Huckabee's program today, what a hilarious thing, this introverted-seeming man who decides to try a lot of things for a book idea (I think) and ends up doing "caveman" exercise in Central Park.  That was very funny.  He tries all these different diets and work-outs and plans to "be healthy", even borrowing someone else's dog for awhile to try that for lowering blood pressure, and the part that made me laugh was seeing how laid back he was, and then this clip of him doing a "caveman" work out because that's what someone suggests--we stayed in shape by throwing boulders and doing such work.  Do not encourage bad behavior though.  The most fascinating part was how innocuous and introverted he seemed to be and yet he was clearly bold enough to go out and do things no one would ever do in public.  Even some of your most extraverted and energetic types would never do some of those things.

I think, personally, eating less blood makes for more peaceful people.  I mean, nothing against eating meat and I am not down on anyone who does, but honestly, in general, there is something to being vegan and even vegetarian.  Especially vegan or fasting.  I wonder if that guy fasted as part of his search for health.  He should try that instead of an all-candy for a year diet next.

Fasting really subdues a person.  I mean, not at first, but it helps you to be more reflective.  Not always, and not every fast is the same at all, but after several days, there is something quiet about it.  Veganism feels very similiar to me.  I mean, yeah, there are mean people of all kinds, or not just 'mean', but I mean "violent" but I think few vegans or vegetarians are violent types.  A few contradict the theory, I guess Hitler.  Hitler was vegetarian for example, and his idea was that the elephant is the strongest animal and doesn't eat meat.

I have a different idea.  I think of tyrannosaurus vs brontosaurus.  The tyrannosaurus was the most vicious blood-thirsty, meat-eating animal out there while this plant-eater was more peaceful.  I don't mean "better" and I don't mean "superior" or even less "mean" per se, but definitely less violent.   When I think about what I eat now, it's not why I'm vegan, I choose to be because of animal degradation and harm and suffering...

However, I also think it has to do with even spirits of animals.  On a religious biblical outlook...Jesus drove an evil spirit out of a person and into a herd of wild pigs.  These pigs then raced over a cliff into the sea.  I don't think animals are bad at all, and don't think they have the same free-will humans do, but I do believe certain spirits and energies can attack to an animal and then if you eat it, it can affect you.  I mean, not for a christian believer that trusts God and knows all things are done in faith, even what we eat, so there is nothing wrong with it or to be worried about...but I do think there is sometimes an energy with certain products.  Also, I think it's possible that eating less animal meat just means it's less horomones.  I mean, you're not ingesting animal testosterone and estrogen.  Even if it's organic meat, animals are made up of natural chemicals and horomones and these of course, affect people.

My mother said before the Fall in the Garden of Eden, she believes people were vegans.  Vegans or vegetarian.  Something like that.  I said, "Where does it say THAT?" and she said, "Humans lived in peace with animals--they didn't kill them."  It does say that it was "after the fall" that humans had to work the soil for food and that there was animal killing.  She added, "In the new world, it says the lion will lay down with the lamb, which means there is no killing between animals and people."

So I thought this was an interesting idea, that it's maybe not "unhealthy" to be vegan at all.  I don't know, possibly our bodies changed and adapted to be better suited to animal meat, but there are people who live long and well without it too probably.

So imagine Adam and Eve as vegans. 

I was just thinking today that the only food consumption that really doesn't harm any animal, or insect or anything, is the fruitarian thing, but I am so NOT going to be a fruitarian.  With fruit, you just pick it from the tree.

"You may have any fruit from any tree you like, but not from the one of Good & Evil".  Then this big angel with a flashing sword that goes back and forth is stationed at that tree to guard it.  How do we find that angel and tree? maybe we enter through a door in the bermudas (just kidding). 

But maybe that's the idea fruitarians have.  I don't know, maybe it was everything that's already growing on the ground, and hanging from a tree.  Thorns and weeds came up later but maybe nothing was disturbed or harmed then, according to Genesis.