Red Bud Maples On The Edge Of The Swamp

❧
Not knowing the truth of a situation is a constant state for me. I have to go off alone and think things through before I can let what passes for the truth for many people... go. It seems I am forever dumping baggage and blowing bubbles. Like doing the maintenance work on my computer system and running all the checks and balances through their paces to make sure they're still working.

It doesn't take much input to stimulate me into diverting my attention to keep the bad guys at bay. I don't want them to cross the street to say "Hello". I don't wanna go to some defensive stance in the middle of just being out for a walk. I disengage from the world of the senses, and the other assumes I must be out for lunch.

The red bud maples are working their magic over in the edge of the swamp. Since the only place to live on the coastal plains are the ridges that are higher than the swamps, swamps are always right around the corner, and red bud maples are one of the dominant species that grows on the peripheries of the swamps.

As the precursors of the arrival of Spring they sort of forecast what kind of summer it's gonna be. Usually due to how late the last killing frost descends on us in the form of a Montreal Express. It's warmish now. It hasn't been for the last six weeks. If the blossoms on the fruit trees emerge and then a killing frost puts and end to the process, it means you gonna hafta buy your fruits and vegetables at the grocery store at a higher price to pay for the shipping. Bummer.

Not me though. I've been so successful at growing sprouts it's hard for me to live with me. I found myself wishing today that my parents had known about sprouting seeds and eating the results to keep the family healthy. Since we kept cows we always had meat and dairy product year around, and since we kept a large garden and preserved food by canning we had really good soup and bread, but no living vegetables much.

The good thing about me being successful in growing sprouts is that it's hard to go wrong. If you use the right procedure and have live seeds that will sprout it's a cinch. I like to experiment with this process, and I don't have to leave my house to do it.

I've read a little about germinating flax seed, and most of the authors I've read suggested that one should not expect much success. I'm having a little success with germinating flax seed, but I don't know what the end game will be.

It's this business of hulls that have me confounded presently. I first ran into it when I germinated some black beans I got off the shelf at Wal-Mart. When they germinate they split into by the white sprouting leg . the two black halves of the seed is where the energy for the plant is stored, but they taste bad. What happens next is that two green leaves and a growing tip emerge. Those first two leaves are the best food you can get out of this legume. They can be put in a salad or a juicer and you get the good stuff. Like the first trimester of human growth. Uncommitted stem cells galore are abundant.

I'm an old man and it doesn't take much to amuse me. I use the top of my washing machine as a counter top because it's there. Yesterday I was cleaning up around the kitchen after I had transferred my sprouts from the wide-mouth jars into plastic baggies before I stashed them in the refrigerator.

A couple of alfalfa sprouts had fallen by the wayside, and just to indulge my miserliness I pick them up and ate them. The sprouts were less than an inch long, and growing. They were alive. Perfect little plants in every way including what would become the root. From the seed I germinated the plant only has one mission, to produce more seeds. Everything that plant has to offer to grow is there for the taking. Good stuff.
❦

Seaweeds And Sprouting

♛
Yesterday my youngest brother and I rode together to Fayetteville for different reasons, but we got done what needed to be done in good humor. He had to drive over the company headquarters of a company he has spent the last few years working for to pick up some video he will turn into a safety film the Army Corps of Engineers has begun requiring of it's contractors. I went along to check out a health food store I didn't know existed until the last couple of days.

The health food store is called The Apple Crate. They carried the sprouting seeds I needed. A fairly large bag of them only cost $8. That's the most reasonable price I've encountered. Radish seeds. They're really tasty. I make myself a sandwich with alfalfa and radish sprouts with some mayonnaise and eat it up.

Later, I juiced up some wheatgrass along with a couple of apples and three medium-sized carrot and took my time drinking it. The wheatgrass juice is so powerful the taste and my light revulsion of it makes it an ordeal. That's what the apples and carrots are for. To lighten the load of the wheatgrass juice.

I read another article on health this morning about some doctor who claims to cure people with raw food diets. This article led me to a youtube video of an interview he gave about his medical doctrine for diagnosis. I'm not as impressed with him as he seems to be:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r106Iqh3OD8&feature=related

I went over to Rainey's house for a while last night. He had stopped and bought some fast food at Hardee's and I brought some alfalfas sprouts and bread. We played some music together. He wanted me to check out this guitar he has for sale. It's a nice guitar. I forgot the brand name. Rainey played his mandolin. I don't know exactly how long he's been concentrating on mandolin, maybe a couple of years. He's getting mo' bettah, but he's a great guitar player.

I'm not a great guitar player, but now I know how I could be if I was interested and thought I'd live long enough. I feel like I'm getting to the place where the scales I play on my digital piano each day is really paying off for me. I'm the only one who knows that.

Playing the scales teaches me about the instrument itself. I could do the same thing by playing the scales on the guitar or even the fiddle. We both played the fiddle a little bit last night. It's kinda challenging. Rainey taught me the chord structure of one of the Old Time Music songs he plays with his followers at their regular Wednesday meetings.

One of the items I bought at the terrific new (to me) health food store was some kelp granules. I'm interested in finding out for myself if a teaspoon of kelp added to the alfalfa seeds in their initial soak to get them to germinate will provide the micronutrients the seeds need to make themselves into the best little sprouts possible.

I prepared two wide-mouth Kerr canning jars by placing two tablespoons of alfalfa seed in each jar. In one of the jars I added the kelp granules, and the other jar got none. I added the water to soak them, and then tomorrow morning I'll drain the water out of them to let them germinate.

I looked at the jar with the kelp in it a few minutes ago. The kelp was dry when I put it in, but now it's been saturated with water and it looks fairly slimy in there. I don't expect that to be a problem because it will probably find it's way out of the jar when I dump the soaking water out to let the germination process begin.

The kelp might need to stay with the seeds as long as possible in order for the germinating seeds to absorb the sought-for micronutrients. That's why I started the other jar with no kelp in it at the same time. That's the only way I think I might be able to tell if the kelp makes a difference. What with the two jars being side-by-side. Even with that I might not be able to see a difference even if there is one. I'll wait.
♌

A Sprouting Seed Store

♠
The trip to the VA Hospital in Durham was turned into an exploration of some health food type places. I was looking for some seed to sprout. The first place I went to was named Trader Joe's. It turned out to be a grocery store for singles, couples, and small families. It had a lotta knick knacks and a fairly large selection of wines, but it didn't have what I was looking for. It'd be great to have a store like that here, but they probably wouldn't be able to take that much business away from Wal-Mart Supercenter. Too many families around here trying to save a buck to indulge in the kind of niceties Trader Joe's carry.

Next two places were both Whole Food Stores. One was a few miles down the road from Trader Joe's in Raleigh, and the second was in Durham about two miles from the VA Hospital. This store did have some sprouting seeds. They were high priced to me, but another shopper said the prices there was lower than most similar stores.

The Whole Food Stores are apparently a big nation-wide franchise and been around for a while. They don't do small towns so I've only read some mentions about them online. They're not really a health food store either, but an even higher toned grocery store than Trader Joe's. I don't think they attract a lotta family business either, but they're not so expensive that just about anybody could buy a little something they couldn't get anywhere else.

If the seeds I bought will germinate and grow into sprouts I'll have bought enough to last me for months for less than $30. It makes me somehow feel secure that I have a couple of months food supply in the house. That is if I do what it takes to grow them regularly enough to have some ready to eat constantly.

The proviso about about "if the seeds will germinate" has become real to me in a short amount of time. Currently I'm trying to sprout some flax seeds along with some sesame seeds that don't seem to be sprouting. I put them in a jar and soaked them for at least twelve hours, and then rinsed and wetted them at least twice a day for three days, and they ain't doing squat.

Simultaneously I soaked some more alfalfa and radish seeds that are sprouting away, But, the hulled pumpkin seeds haven't germinated at all. This sprouting business all seems to depend on the quality of the seeds you use to do it.

After I'd soaked all these seeds and waited for something to happen, with some success and some not, I read flax seed don't sprout, and the sesame seeds have to have the hulls removed to sprout, and the sunflower seed also need to be without hulls to sprout, but not to plant for greens. It might have helped if I had read about what to expect first, before I soaked the seed, but it didn't cost me much to find out the hard way.

I bought two pounds of mung bean seeds in the Raleigh store. It's at least 20-30 miles closer than the Durham store. I've read just enough about sprouting mung beans for it to get me cautious, and read some more before I try sprouting them. I think what I read said that mung beans need to be sprouted in the dark or they get bitter.

The Asian cooks use mung bean sprouts a lot. They're very crunchy, but the reason they're so popular for sprouting is that they have lots of vitamins and minerals and especially trace minerals. That's a little boggling to my mind because they're practically translucent. They're supposed to be loaded with dietary fiber, but I can see through them. Where's the beef?

I've read about juices like wheatgrass juice and carrot juice and apple juice also have more dietary fiber in the juice than other sources like bran flakes. I would have guessed that the "fiber" would be in the pulp I throw away for composting. I guess I have to learn to rethink the properties of dietary fiber.

The documentation that came with my juicer stated that it would grind coffee beans. I've put off giving it a whirl until a couple of days ago. The machine did a great job until I overfed it, and it came to a grinding stop (pun intended). Tonight I was more careful as I poured the beans into the juice, and it ground up the rest of the bean bag, but I don't think I'll be grinding my own coffee beans very often. Too tedious, and the results aren't that much better.

I've been waiting for this appointment to get my medications straightened out. It's been a real drag for four months. I was obsessed about how I was going to address this situation not only with the doctor, but with the staff that humiliated me with apathy. I went through every scenario I could think of to get it right every day and every night. That's just how it goes with me. I'd rather get obsessed than have sex.

In the end, as I entered the hospital to keep my appointment I decided to forget all the stuff I'd planned and just go with the gut reaction that grabbed me in real time. The first person I had to confront was the nurse who shined me on and out and out lied about how he would contact the doctor for me about changing my prescriptions. I didn't volunteer one word of information that wasn't required by his job. He didn't say anything about our last encounter either.

When I saw the doctor I told him as truthfully as I could what happened and how I'd written him two e-mails to the address he provided me with, and that he hadn't answered them. I told him about how the medicine he prescribed didn't address the pain symptoms and caused sores to appear on my body.

He seemed genuinely sorry he hadn't been on top of it, admitted he hates e-mail, and insisted on giving me the number to his cell phone along with instructions to call him personally instead of going through the hospital. He took me off the old medication and started me on one that will probably be the death of me too, but at least I can call him to say goodbye just before I croak.

I had these sorts of problems with my regular doctor at the Fayetteville VA Hospital. She was new to the system just like this guy. Since she's been on the job for a couple of years now she has turned out to be a really swell doctor. I hope the Rheumatologist-in-training will be too. I have him for four years, so I'm not giving him a choice.
☯

A Day Of Loud Marine Helicopters

❧
The Sunday morning news shows are all gone for today. I stayed in bed as long as I could. It's not a pain free day. I got up to urinate several or three times. Cold. Mid-twenties. There is a documentary on PBS about the Buffalo River National Park in Arkansas. Been there. Would go again.

This is the place I went to find a cave to meditate in several years ago. I didn't find one, and got lost instead. It wasn't that I was exactly lost because I was within sight of the river. I just didn't know how to get away from it into civilization. It wasn't a happy place for me.

I had hitch-hiked west on InterState 40 to just past Little Rock to Conway, Arkansas and took the highway from there to Greenbriar, then Clinton, through Marshall, Arkansas. The Buffalo River was next, but the ride I had was with this middle-aged married woman who said she only lived about two miles up the river, and I could hike to the river from her house.

She took a lonely dirt road that went to the river and let me out, and told me she would be back in about an hour to see if I was okay. She wanted to mess around, but I wasn't okay with that. I was out in the middle of nowhere in Dogpatch and I didn't think she would come back alone.

I decided to go upstream a little ways to a place where I could watch to see if she came back, but mostly to stay out of sight until I felt secure. I was there looking for a cave, not to have an affair.

The river was nice. There was a sandbar/beach there where I'd been let out. The road that crossed the Buffalo River had a place where canoes could be rented to float the River. I think it's the only National Park based a river. Google Maps will take you to where I was if you type buffalo+river+national+park&fb into the search box.

There was no trail along the river where I was. The river was in the canyon that it carved for itself . The sides of the canyon was steep, but covered with primeval forest the loggers couldn't reach. Good thing the government was called in to protect it or it'd be gone probably by now. It was rough walking, and it took me a long time to get to where a small stream entered the river, and there was a dirt road that followed the stream up the hill.

The place where the stream entered the river was one of the most unique natural sights I've visited. It was very beautiful. I stayed there several hours. Only one vehicle came down the road. I hid until it was gone.

After I'd had my bait of nature, it happens, I started walking uphill on the gravel road that followed the small stream down to the Buffalo River. That gravel road had some interesting features along the way. There was a series of small waterfalls where the stream dropped incrementally from the plateau into the Buffalo River Canyon. There were a couple of homestead ruins where only the chimneys and stone footings still stood. To me it seemed obvious that the stonework was sturdy, but home-made. They made up with mass what lacked in engineering. I got the distinct impression the cabins were originally built and occupied by homesteaders or pioneers, and then later bought out by the government to make the National Park.

There was only the gravel road to suggest there was a fruitful route to civilization. It only went in one direction, and that direction was all uphill. I was physically tired to death by now. I had been on the road for four or five days previous to getting lost at the river. I had to keep going to see if I could find a road or highway someone lived on so that I could figure out how to get back to the small town of Marshall.

Eventually I came to a paved road and hitched a ride into town. I found a Laundromat and washed my clothes. I still hadn't gotten any sleep, but I got back on the highway to Little Rock, and didn't stop to rest until I found a convenient clump of bushes to hide behind inside the bypass around Memphis, Tennessee.

That's one way of being that always returned instinctually to me. How to hide in plain sight. I'd be hiking through some well-lit avenue in some of the largest cities in the United States, when suddenly I'd spot some unique out of the way nook I could drop out of sight into, and be quickly be covered by a darkness many people would dare not enter.

When I realized I could live like that it was almost impossible to not just give it up and go do it. I knew where to go that I wouldn't be followed. I hardly ever was by man or beast. That's not to say there ain't some real crazies out there that can be unknowingly provoked into doing a body harm, but that's easily avoided by the self-acknowledgement that I am is also that. When I admit their terror in my heart they gotta leave me be. No one person taught me that. I wouldn't know who to send a person to for them to learn how to be unfollowed.
❦

Un-ta-me-d

❧
It's a terrible burden to be born a provocateur unasked. It's certainly not what my childhood caregivers intended for me or for whoever possessed this body before I got it. He told me he was a virgin and I believed him. But, that's how it goes when you're a passerby. "Beggars can't be choosers."

I learned a lotta stuff about human desire in my youth when I lusted after having sex with as many other humans as possible. It's a yearning that virtually groaned for me to go out cruising for action. A bottomless pit sort of yearning that "pules for it's own pity". I can almost remember physically what that used to be like. I knew where to go and how to get what I wanted when I got there. I never asked for permission. Who?

The going to get there was exciting beyond words, but anticlimactic, because when I got there and instituted the rituals of conjuring, over time, I began to realize my rituals were unusually like the "fishing for men" rituals that I was taught to employ as a boy in Sunday School, that likeness is stunning.

As far as I was concerned while I was growing up I knew my fate in life from an early age. Becoming an expert fisher of men was what I took to have been promised by the Southern Baptist/Bible Belt/Jim Crow world that raised me. There was even a specific song we sung repetitively, hypnotically, over and over again, "I will make you fishers of men, if you'll only follow me. Hallelujah, what a savior. I'm from sin set, you're from sin set, we're all from sin set free."

Having been raised from childhood to believe "following me" was the only way to fly, I went outta my way to find out who this mysterious "me" was that I should follow. Perhaps that is my most powerful delusion. Practicing the religion of Christianity meant an apprenticeship for be-co-me-ing a "fisher of men." No holds barred. No stone unturned. Fisherman of men or bust! I honestly can't think of a more rewarding way to conduct my affairs.

Learning to become a fisher of men set the stage for my penchant for being a pesky provocateur. Yin and yang. The Creative/Provocateur vs The Receptive/Fisher King. The Sun and the Moon. Beach taffy. Polarities and worm holes spiraling out of the center of the obverse image of a black hole and into the pearly gates of the white light.

It must be strange for a Jew to live in Oklahoma so far away from his tribal ho-me land. Oklahoma? I don't know why I write that because I'm not a member of any Jewish tribe. I sorta belong to a tribe, but it's not necessarily based on blood, but it might be. Not that I know of. It's just that so-me people tell me I'm one of them. Either by slight of mouth or straight to my face. I seem to know what they're implying. In a lotta ways it has to do with discrete mannerisms such that "it takes one to know one."

There are Indians who live in these parts that know they're blood kin, but they can't get recognized as a tribe. They think they're a tribe, but it's easy to understand why so-me consider that wishful thinking. The coastal plains of the South Atlantic states, and the states around the Gulf of Mexico are full of swamps like the "reed sea" Moses used as an escape route to the promised land. 

Here, using a similar tactic during the Revolutionary War, Gen. Francis Marion of South Carolina, the Swamp Fox, used the "reed seas" (cane breaks) of the coastal plains as escape routes after he made sneak attacks on the British troops, and it wuz the sa-me lak wot happened in the Battle of New Orleans. 

The problem with these swamp fox-like Indians being recognized as a unified, blood-kin tribe is that lots of folks who hid in the swamps from Jim Crow and other wild beasts were not noble savages or savages at all, but run-away slaves, and po' white trash. They just gotta get over it, but it's hard when they all worship Jesus instead of their native Gods. They don't remember them.

Did you know that all the major Indian tribes in the United States kept black slaves that they bought and sold just like the Europeans did? That's what was promulgated by some black Harvard professor named Gates. The DNA tests done on the present relatives of the black slaves revealed very little American Indian blood in the black Americans, yet a large majority of blacks think they do have some Indian blood.

The Mormons claimed that the Indians in the Western Hemisphere were the lost Jewish tribes and they were visited by none less than Jesus himself, yet the DNA tests reveal that the Amerinds were from Asia instead, with no apparent genes from the MidEast races at all. The Mormons don't appear to acknowledge the DNA results. It don't fit with their dogma.

When the DNA tests became admissible evidence in a court of law that facticity put a mojo on the religions of the world in a very powerful way. I don't claim to know the truth about the future results of DNA testing, but it's gonna mess with a lotta people's claims to fame.

A lot of energy and emotional investment goes into controlling blood lines. It's fairly understandable that this is prevalent throughout nature with pretty much all forms of life. But, the real problem with enforcing this are the baby factories themselves. Women.

Women, as biological units, are gonna have the children of the most powerful man available no matter who or what their culture tells them they have to choose. I'm suggesting this is the default attitude of females in general. Where this dynamic can happen, it's gonna happen. Selah.
❦

It's A Little Bit Warmer Now

☯
The truth of how sprouts are taking over my diet seems a little too good to be true. I guess I'll find out as I go along. Today they've taken over my life. Just about every activity I've enjoined today has something to do with sprouting. I've got six different types of seeds either germinating or soaking to start the germination process.

The last batch of seeds I set to soaking happened because I suddenly realized that an empty mesh bag that some small limes came in from the grocery store, was just the perfect sized bag I could use to soak some hulled sunflower seeds in. It's the same kind of synthetic material that bags of oranges usually come in, but the mesh in the lime bag is small enough so that sunflower seeds won't fall out, but sesame seeds would. I put about a cup or so of sunflower seeds in that polyester bag, and now they're soaking in a dishpan of clean water overnight.

Using a cloth bag to germinate seeds in is another method for sprouting. The online articles about sprouting I've been reading states that using cloth bags instead of widemouth jars with screens is not unusual. The process needed for sprouting is still the same. Many sprouters who write about it seem to prefer using bags instead of jars, but the bags they recommend to do this with are very expensive for a fixed income person like me. $14 plus shipping for a quart-sized drawstring bag riles up the miser in me.

If this bag the limes came in works okay, I can buy more bags of limes for much less than I can buy one hemp cloth bag. The most popular sprouting bags are made of woven hemp cloth that's manufactured in China. The Chinese also use bamboo baskets for sprouting seeds. In a new age sort of way I can see where this would have a nostalgic appeal to a lotta people. Especially people who grow medical marijuana, but muslin cloth or cheese cloth bags work just as good or better.

All the containers are designed for conveniently wetting the seeds several times each day. The wide-mouth quart jars I use have stainless steel screen lids. After I put the seeds in them and cover the seeds with water to let them soak, I just pour off the excess water and lean them at an angle. I don't have to remove the screens again until the sprouts are grown. After they're initially soaked to start the germinating process, I gotta wet the seeds a couple of times a day, and then drain the excess water off through the screens.

I've read some comments about it being the size of the seeds being sprouted that decides whether to use a cloth bag or a screened jar. One article suggested using the same screening that can be bought at a hardware store. The writer said they preferred the plastic screen material because it comes in different gauges and is cheap enough to throw away if they get clogged or don't work as expected. .

Interestingly enough, most of the articles on sprouting are not about sprouting seeds for food, but growing marijuana. The process is exactly the same. They don't stop with sprouts though, but have instructions on how to grow the plants all the way through to harvesting the buds. Unfortunately that's illegal here. It's not worth the risk of getting caught growing pot.

I'll soak the sunflower seeds until tomorrow, and after that I'll take the bag of sunflower seeds out of the soaking water and hang them up to germinate inside a black trash bag to keep them out of the light for a few days. Then, all I have to do is put them under the faucet for a couple seconds to re-wet them a couple of times or so a day, hang them back up, and wait for them to push the hulls open and start sprouting.

Presently, I have some hulled sunflower seeds growing in one inch of potting soil over in the greenhouse. They grew real nice into two-leaved salad plants. Any more growth beyond two leaves and the sprouts get bitter. They have a strong taste anyway. I can either use them for a salad with the other sprouts or for sandwiches. I haven't tried them in an omelette yet. I have made an omelette with mung bean sprouts I bought at the grocery store.

In a way, changing my diet like this is sheer entertainment where none was before. It's a point of focus on something besides just making sure I take my medicine each day. That's no reason to live at all. I have lots to do each day with my writing and playing the scales on the piano, but growing the food I eat is a very interesting project.
☸

The Ups And Downs Of Hope

❍

Ibis

What never was is now.
But, back then, it was a rainbow
that stood between
God's promise and
Armageddon.
Both the cruel acts of nature
and the dispassion of kismet
happen together at times.
The changes are constantly
moving from what was
to how now brown cow.
What was important then,
when whippoorwills called,
and evening is nigh,
is now just so so.
Whatta ya expect
the effect might be
if all inspiration to create
speciously failed
to bait one's breath?

fmp, Thursday, March 4, 2010

It's always about hope isn't it. There's not any difference in the persuasion needed for proselytizing religion or selling AmWay products or running for political office. Professional educators make their living educating people to think that paying for even more education that will answer all their predatory prayers of learning to sell hope. Hope is the only product on Earth anybody got for sale. 

All professionals like doctors, lawyers, and Indian Chiefs sell hope or various products that promise hope. A surgeon sells his potential patients on taking his surgery with the idea that the procedure will give the person hope of getting healed or at least relieved of pain. It seems ghoulishly like the old highwaymen demands, "Your money or your life." 

In the cowboy movies of the Forties and Fifties, irately selling the hope of living in a decent community allowed street-wise rabble rousers to form a mob in small towns to break the unsuspecting lonesome drifter outta jail and hang him from the highest tree. Subsequently, the preacher/priests would come along and sell the guilt-ridden former rioters/townspeople the hope that for a generous donation to the building fund, God will forgive them for murder in the first degree. As if God has greasy palms too. 

Story-tellers from ancient times have employed cleverness and powerful conversion techniques to obtain the same results Sheherazade did by the enticing way she told The Thousand And One Tales of Arabian Nights. She saved her own life by telling interesting stories that so intrigued her would-be murderer King, that he eventually married her instead.

I am presently looking for hope in a series of internet searches. Some of the links I check out seem to have the info I need until I read a little further past the introductory paragraphs, and then the trail turns cold. I'm reading about sprouting seeds and legumes and whatever else will sprout cheaply for the greatest benefit. I reading to find out about using kelp for fertilizer.

The seeds that I bought and sprouted and eaten have provided me with some experience to base my reading on presently. I was real pleased with the alfalfa and radish sprouts I grew. They looked a lot like the alfalfa sprouts I bought at the store. That's kind of my criteria for judging how well the seeds I sprouted did. Mine tasted crunchier because they were obviously fresher, and I'm prejudiced. '-)

They're simple enough to prepare to eat. I just put some mayonnaise on whole wheat bread, stick a glob of sprouts on the bread and eat it just like I would a tomato sandwich. The radish sprouts tasted just a little spicy and were very crunchy, yet sweet.

I tried sprouting some wheatberries, but they didn't do like I expected. The broccoli seeds barely sprouted at all. Most of them appeared to be dead seed. Like two-thirds of them didn't do anything at all. Some of the red clover seed did better, but there were still lots of hard seed that didn't sprout. This may have a lot to do with the ambient temperature where I had the sprouting jars. I read today I shouldn't have had them in direct sunlight either. That's why I'm reading. To find these things out.

The sesame seeds I bought in the Mexican food section at Wal-Mart may sprout or not. Lentil and black bean and sunflower seeds have hulls on them that have to be dealt with. I sort of figured a way of getting the hulls off by degree, however, the reading material I'm currently plowing through has given me some hints about other ways of de-hulling that might work. It also said that some seeds like sesame can't sit around long after they germinate or they get bitter tasting.

It seems like I'm getting agreeably obsessed with knowing where the food I eat comes from. The food I buy at the grocery store comes from all over the world. It's picked green and sprayed with chemicals and gasified and radiated with weird x-rays to give it shelf life. It's a real mess, and I have begun to think the food I eat is more responsible for my health problems than getting old is. I haven't a clue about what excuse young people use for their health problems

My lack of knowledge about sprouting seeds probably has a lot to do with my brown thumb. It may have a lot to do with my not having much success with growing stuff from seeds. I never sprouted nothing, and didn't realize I was supposed to. One thing is for sure, I'm gonna have lots of sunflowers around my place this summer. The hulled sunflower seeds I germinated and put on top of some potting soil is growing like crazy.

Somebody wrote a short e-mail about us being the aliens we keep expecting from outer space. Each of us arrived from outer space just in ti-me. Each and everybody is always us. We are everything any of us can tolerantly imagine.
☪