Free Republic

Who Is to Say Flora Don't Have Feelings? Figuring Out What Wheat Would Want ZURICH -- For years, Swiss scientists have blithely created genetically modified rice, corn and apples. But did they ever stop to consider just how humiliating such experiments may be to plants? That's a question they must now ask. Last spring, this small Alpine nation began mandating that geneticists conduct their research without trampling on a plant's dignity. [Beat Keller] Beat Keller "Unfortunately, we have to take it seriously," Beat Keller, a molecular biologist at the University of Zurich. "It's one more constraint on doing genetic research."...

State forestry officials have shot down a water company's proposal to log a stretch of land in the Los Gatos Creek watershed. Members of the Board of Forestry and Fire Protection voted unanimously Wednesday that San Jose Water Co. did not qualify for the open-ended logging permit it was seeking to log 1,000 acres near Highway 17 in Santa Clara County.

After three years of hearings, debates and studies, a plan by San Jose Water Co. to log redwood and Douglas fir trees over 1,002 acres in the Los Gatos Creek watershed along Highway 17 is facing its day of reckoning. The state Board of Forestry is scheduled to hold a hearing today on whether to allow the plan to go forward, or to deny it, as the state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection has recommended. The showdown — a culmination of the most contentious logging battle in decades in Santa Clara County — centers on two vital questions: What...

Will Allen was cutting heads of lettuce in a farm field when his cell phone rang. The caller told him to put down his knife. He had good news: The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, known for its annual award of “genius” grants, was giving Allen $500,000 — no strings attached. Allen is not your typical farmer. He is the founder of Growing Power, a nonprofit farm in the middle of Milwaukee that raises fresh produce for under-served populations with high rates of obesity, diabetes and heart disease. The son of an illiterate laborer, Allen has been a...

REMEMBER 9/11: The WTC, Flight 93 and the Pentagon! Never, never forget the attacks on our country. We need to be ready to protect this country from all who would do her harm, both foreign and DOMESTIC.

I've been asked to start you this week...those who normally do this..... can't...so you got me. I haven't even looked at the news ...but my coffee is very good this morning....so get a cup and lets get this show rolling.

(More than 150 battle in Rotten Tomato Fight on the east side) The tomatoes had been cooking on the blacktop since 8 in the morning — 100 cases worth, past their prime and starting to ooze. By 4 in the afternoon, more than 150 combatants were staring at the pen full of produce, itching to mix it up. Milwaukee's second annual Rotten Tomato Fight was minutes away. "So, is there going to be a winner in this?" asked Karen Kainz, a 56-year-old homemaker who had come to watch the spectacle at the North Avenue parking lot between Beans & Barley...

Most people don’t think of raw vegetables as art. But in the hands of an artist with a sharp knife and a cutting board, a few shiny onions, vibrant bell peppers and linear green beans can be transformed into a harvest mosaic that remarkably resembles a still-life painting by Post-Impressionist Paul Cezanne. A steady rain kept much of the usual crowd from the South Shore Farmers Market in Bay View on Saturday morning. But a couple hundred die-hard shoppers still came, and many watched artist Katie Schofield and two assistants re-create - with vegetables - Cezanne's still-life painting of a...

Stop Deer From Devouring Your Landscape Anyone who's ever had deer in the garden knows that these cutesy marauders -- which author Rhonda Massingham Hart calls "Agent Orange on hooves" -- can decimate a landscape like no other pest. Safe from hunters in the suburbs and well fed by the shrub and flower buffets set out by kindly gardeners, deer are becoming more and more of a problem in these protected pockets. Penn State University wildlife specialist Dr. Gary San Julian says just five male and five female deer can produce up to 200 deer in just five years. "The...

Three Somerset County residents have learned firsthand the dangers of picking and eating wild mushrooms. The trio from Franklin Township have been hospitalized with liver toxicity; one is in critical condition and may need a transplant. Bruce Ruck, director of drug information and professional education at the New Jersey Poison Control Center in Newark, identified the victims as a mother and her daughter and son-in-law, all Asian Indians. The mother is in critical condition and being evaluated for a liver transplant at University Hospital in Newark; the other two are at Princeton University Medical Center. "They picked and ate wild...

To Amy Hobbs Harris, a dozen jars of strawberry preserves are worth $391 — the amount she estimates she'll save in a year by canning the fruit herself. Not that she normally would spend that much on jam. But the savings add up once she factors in other uses — giving them away as gifts, for example, or stirring the preserves into plain yogurt instead of buying pricier flavored cups. Harris, 33, of Tipp City, Ohio, started canning for the first time last summer, putting her a bit ahead of a trend seen around the country: as food prices rise...

The smallest species of snake ever discovered lives on the Caribbean island of Barbados. The new species is called Leptotyphlops carlae. It may look like a little worm, but a newly discovered creature has earned a spot in the record books: It is the smallest species of snake known on Earth.

I chainsawed some "trees" (I call them weeds), leaving stumps that are 8-10 inches in diameter. I'm looking for a chemical that will prevent them from growing back. In this particular area, I am not concerned about run-off. Any suggestions? I haven't bought a defoliant in years.

No excerpt, but a bear got into an apple tree. The family's cow is named apple because she likes to eat apples from this tree. The bear and cow sniff each other then the cow chases the bear away! Just what I need, a guard cow!

I have been cultivating a Rose Hedge, the roses are doing well but I need some advice on training and pruning.

A handsome new book by Amy Goldman jump-started memories of my family saving seeds from our beloved yellow oxheart tomatoes through fall and winter for spring planting. This was our heirloom tomato, although we did not think of it as such. In reading Miss Goldman's "The Heirloom Tomato: From Garden to Table" (Bloomsbury), I learned that one woman, who was involved with preserving a strain her ancestors had brought when they emigrated from Germany, still puts sugar on her sliced tomatoes. I remember my grandmother doing this, although she also added a few drops of vinegar on the slices of...

It used to be that marijuana came to the Bay Area from the legendary back country of Humboldt County or the desert fields beyond Tijuana. Now the fields are in the Bay Area, and everywhere else in the state. Marijuana is one of the top cash crops in California, NBC Bay Area's Mike Luery reported. Many of the fields are located next to popular trails and in the middle of state parks. A fierce battle is being waged in our own back yard to remove the pot groves. They are hidden in brush so thick that specially trained officers must...

Hotness has got a new definition, courtesy a curry called 'Satan's Ashes', which requires its makers and staff to wear masks and rubber gloves to handle it. Touted as the hottest in the world, the dish contains the Naga Morich chilli, which measures 953,721 on the Scoville heat scale. If this was not hot enough, the dish also contains the Bhut Jolokia, which has been registered at a sweat-inducing 1,001,304. And to get a spoonful of this sadistic dish, one has to visit Cumbria, where it is prepared, reports News of the World. Now, Ged Fowler, of the Chilli Pepper...

Working in the solitude of an Austrian monastery, one 19th-century holy man managed to unravel the basic principles of heredity with just a handful of pea species that he bred and crossbred, counted and catalogued with monastic discipline. While plant and animal genes were Gregor Mendel's original focus, his ideas later made sense of our complex human workings, too, kicking off the scientific discipline of genetics. An unconventional scientist Today, Mendel is revered as the father of genetics, but the Austrian's work on heredity didn't initially make the kind of big splash in the science world achieved, for example, by...

Dear fellow forum members, What are the best reasons or arguments you can think of to keep marijuana illegal? It would really really help to if you can reply only after reading http://www.nationalreview.com/12feb96/drug.html . Thank you.

OK. I had a few small like hills in my backyard where moles (moles? gophers? chinese miners?) had dug up I guess for air or whatever. No biggie, really. Never had the problem when I had a dog, maybe getting another dog would be the ultimate solution. But this morning I go out there and there are SIX of these large hills, with the opening very clear and visible, no doubt the little bastids did a lot of work! While I applaud their tenacity and dexterity, enuff is enuff. So I have this stuff called "Critter Ridder". It is a...

Syracuse, IN (AHN) -- Two men and a juvenile have been charged with possessing more than 1,000 marijuana plants with the intent to distribute after more that 5,000 plants were found growing at a Girl Scout camp. Mario Comacho, 44, and Mariano Gonzales, 38, were charged with growing thousands of marijuana plants on land belonging to the Limberlost Girl Scout Council, which runs Camp Ella J. Logan in the area where the plants were discovered by Indiana State Troopers while searching the land by plane. Sherri Weidman, CEO of the Limberlost Council told the Journal-Gazette that the plants were located...

Where, oh where, has Sarah Jessica Parker’s famous facial mole gone? The “Sex and the City” actress’ face was mole-free when she stepped onto the field at Tuesday night’s Major League Baseball All-Star Game at Yankee Stadium in New York. A source told Foxnews.com that the 43-year-old actress had her trademark bump removed sometime during the last two weeks. Another source told UK’s Daily Mail that the singer wants to keep “Operation Mole” on the down-low. “I don’t know exactly when she had it done but she has definitely had a procedure. She’s kept it really quiet, though,” said the...

Clues in Saratoga pot bust suggest link to Mexican drug cartel From the bags of beans and rice found in the camp to the type of fertilizer used on the plants, the large marijuana farm in the Saratoga hills that was the scene of a deadly shooting last week has all of the marks of a Mexican drug cartel, law enforcement officials said Tuesday. The farm is part of a growing trend dating back to the 1980s, when increased security at the U.S.-Mexico border prompted drug trafficking organizations and cartels to move part of their business to California - and...

Sexually deceptive orchids, as biologists have long known, look and can even smell so much like a female insect that males will try to mate with the flower in a sometimes vigorous process that can result in pollination. But scientists now report that the tongue orchids of Australia are such thoroughly convincing mimics of female wasps that males not only try to mate with them, but they actually do mate with them — to the point of ejaculation.

It's County Fair season in Wisconsin -- when you can ride a Ferris wheel, win a giant stuffed gorilla at a ring toss, watch a "spine-tingling, death-defying" daredevil show, share a funnel cake with your family and watch sparkling clean hogs snore in a pen, all in one afternoon. It's the kind of fun that is hard to come by at any other time of the year. But it's something else, too.At the heart of most fairs are boys and girls who spend months, sometimes even years, raising cows, pigs, sheep, guinea pigs, birds and a variety of other animals,...

Deputies seized more than 60,000 marijuana plants over the past week from the Santa Ana River bed west of Norco, potentially removing millions of dollars from the pockets of drug dealers, sheriff's officials said.

After this weekend's barbeques and fireworks displays, you might wonder why some people wind up covered in mosquito welts and others are bite-free. It's not a coincidence. Each person's individual body chemistry determines how many mosquitoes will come calling. According to Joe Conlon, a medical entomologist who advises the American Mosquito Control Association, the insects can detect their targets from nearly 100 feet away. But what are they seeking? Mostly the scent of carbon dioxide and lactic acid, two compounds that indicate to the hematophagous — or blood-sucking — pests that their next landing pad is nearby. (It's worth noting...

Where’s the "First"? McCain appears before the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, as reported in Politico: McCain, speaking first, promised the approximately 700 attendees that resurrecting the bipartisan immigration bill he helped shape last year would be at the forefront of his agenda as president. "It would be my top priority yesterday, today and tomorrow," McCain said in response to a question about whether he would pursue a comprehensive approach beyond his campaign promise to secure the border in his first 100 days in office. Seeking to win some points for his initial support for a comprehensive...

WASHINGTON -- Food prices could rise even more unless the mysterious decline in honey bees is solved, farmers and businessmen told lawmakers Thursday. "No bees, no crops," North Carolina grower Robert D. Edwards told a House Agriculture subcommittee. Edwards said he had to cut his cucumber acreage in half because of the lack of bees available to rent. About three-quarters of flowering plants rely on birds, bees and other pollinators to help them reproduce. Bee pollination is responsible for $15 billion annually in crop value.In 2006, beekeepers began reporting losing 30 percent to 90 percent of their hives. This phenomenon...

More than a third of Danes have used cannabis at least once in their lives, making them the top users of the drug in Europe. The new statistics from the European Centre for Monitoring of Drugs and Drug Addiction show that Denmark comes out ahead of France and the UK for use of the illicit drug. Of Danish adults 36.5 percent have tried it at least once in their lives, compared to 30.6 percent in France and 29.8 percent in the United Kingdom. However, Denmark only lies in seventh place for the use of cannabis in the last year, which...

Extreme weather has virtually wiped out Door County’s cherry crop for this year, which not only means slim pickings in orchards that attract thousands of tourists each summer, but also a loss of an estimated 350 to 400 seasonal jobs for workers who harvest and process the iconic scarlet fruit. At a time when epic rains and flooding have wiped out berries and vegetables in other parts of the state, Door County’s loss may seem surprising because it is attributed to an opposite extreme: a three-month drought last summer, followed by a January that brought rain and wild temperature fluctuations....

Back in 1985, I'm five years old and staring into my lunchbox. All around me, children are ripping into packs of Monster Munch. I've got yesterday's quiche and a mushy tomato. And there's something soggy at the bottom, possibly a homemade rock bun, but I can't be sure. My lunchbox was a testament to my mother's thrifty habits Today, it would be celebrated as a resourceful meal made from leftovers. Back then, I didn't give a hoot about food waste and packaging. I wanted pickled onion crisps and a Penguin bar. It wasn't that my parents were tofu-munching hippies who...

A rare wildflower never before seen in the Garden State has been discovered in a forest in northwest New Jersey, state officials said Thursday. The fern-leaf scorpion-flower, or Phacelia bipinnatifida, was found on the forest floor and adjacent rock outcrops in the natural area at Whittingham Wildlife Management Area in Sussex County, a botanically rich location already home to 22 other endangered or threatened plants. "The amazing discovery of this beautiful wildflower underscores the importance of the work we are doing to thoroughly inventory the natural treasures that exist within hundreds of thousands of state-owned lands," said Lisa Jackson, commissioner...

What kind of insect is this? (The background is the close up of a chaise lounge pad)

WASHINGTON - Droughts will get drier, storms will get stormier and floods will get deeper with a warming climate across North America, U.S. government experts said in a report billed as the first continental assessment of extreme events.

London, England (AHN) - A British man has died from kidney failure after inhaling poisonous fungal spores. The 47-year-old died of a fungal lung infection after inhaling spore-laden dust stirred up while gardening. The symptoms started less than 24 hours after he had dispersed rotting tree and plant mulch in the garden. He died in intensive care a week later. By the time the man's doctors realized his condition was aspergillus fungal infection and began appropriate treatment, it was too late to save him. Later tests revealed he had developed acute aspergillosis, a dangerous reaction to aspergillus fumigatus spores. The...

Nancy Nedveck loves the colorful blooms that grow on agastache and penstemon, two plants that attract tiny hummingbirds. Some varieties of these plants used to be too fragile to grow in south-central Wisconsin, but now Nedveck is happy to be able to offer them among the endless rows of perennials on display at her nursery, south of Oregon. Thanks to global warming, these and other less hardy plants are surviving and even thriving in this area, said Nedveck, who has owned the popular Flower Factory for 25 years. "The change over the past 10 years has been gradual," she said,...

GAYS MILLS, WI -- Another wave of severe thunderstorms pounded the southern half of Wisconsin Sunday, creating flash floods, forcing evacuations and dredging up nightmares of flooding not even a year past. Reports of flooding came in across a 150-mile swath of the state, from the Milwaukee suburbs of Oak Creek and Cudahy to parts of Crawford, Dane and Vernon counties. The National Guard from Fort McCoy also was called in to help Vernon County emergency personnel evacuate about 50 people from a trailer park in Ontario that was flooded, said Jane Larsen, a spokeswoman for Wisconsin Emergency Management. Residents...

A jumbo black watermelon auctioned in Japan on Friday fetched a record $6,100, making it one of the most expensive watermelons ever sold in the country. In a society where melons are a luxury item commonly given as gifts, the watermelon's hefty price tag followed another jaw-dropping auction last month, when a pair of "Yubari" cantaloupe melons sold for a record $23,500.

LEONA VALLEY - Hundreds of cherry lovers wound their way into the hills west of Palmdale on Saturday to gather some of the first fruit of the cherry season. A handful of cherry growers have opened their orchards for the season. Many more are expected to open within the week, said Joe Lucida, the owner of Amber's Sweet Cherries on Leona Avenue and vice president of the Leona Valley Cherry Growers Association. "It's been kind of cool. It's slowed the ripening process," Lucida said. Amber's could open its gates for the "u-pick" season on Saturday because about 30% of his...

(Trouble is, Mukwonago officials say it's zoned for farming, not nuptials) Sherry Towns says she spends about $50,000 annually to sustain a formal French garden with six fountains on her 111-acre rural estate in the rolling fields of rural southern Waukesha County. Towns, who grew up amid Mukwonago-area farmsteads, can expect to pay even more this summer if Town of Mukwonago police ticket her on allegations that she's running an illegal wedding service in her lush, 10-acre garden, known as Millennium Gardens.A distraught Towns said Thursday: "It is easy to destroy, but difficult to create. Are we going to punish...

Air pollution from power plants and automobiles is destroying the fragrance of flowers and thereby inhibiting the ability of pollinating insects to follow scent trails to their source, a new University of Virginia study indicates. This could partially explain why wild populations of some pollinators, particularly bees – which need nectar for food – are declining in several areas of the world, including California and the Netherlands. The study appears online in the journal Atmospheric Environment. "The scent molecules produced by flowers in a less polluted environment, such as in the 1800s, could travel for roughly 1,000 to 1,200 meters;...

(With food costs rising, many are expecting green thumb boom) A perfect storm is brewing over Wisconsin garden centers, and if the forecast is correct, it will rain Early Girls, Beefy Boys, Mr. Stripeys and other colorfully named vegetables - assuming the weather finally warms up. The buzz at the start of Memorial Day weekend, traditionally prime time for planting gardens, is that sales of herb and vegetable plants and seeds might outpace last year by as much as 40% to 50%, according to the nation's largest mail-order seed company. A storm front of high food and gas prices -...

Ok. I don't mean Cannabis. These days, with the rising prices everywhere, it should be noted that there are a whole lot of edible plants that grow naturally. Of course everyone is familiar with the good old dandelion, which was originally brought to America as a food crop. But there are many other plants which are at least edible, even if not delicious, so I thought I would start a thread. And while many wild plants aren't too easy on the tongue, the first one I will mention is quite good. And just about overflowing with vitamins and minerals. So......

In what seems to be a genuine concern of the effects of radon emissions in residential homes. A certain website from a non-profit organization out of Houston has made it a point to imply without scientific proof, that natural stone could be a major contributor of radon in a household. The allusion that seems to be made, that natural stone installed in your home is dangerous to your health is raised repeatedly on the website and in a recent local Houston TV news program. It’s interesting to note that the two major contributors of this non-profit organization are manufacturers of...

The TV news report sounded so absurd that I grabbed the DVR remote and rewound to hear it again. "The cemetery says middle-age women are stealing flowers to make crafts," the anchor repeated. Move over, common everyday criminals. There's a new breed of lawbreaker in town, and no final resting place is safe. It turns out that some plastic flowers have disappeared from Holy Sepulcher Cemetery in Cudahy. The culprits are crafters."They help themselves to the flowers they think we're throwing away," Butch Miller, director of cemetery operations at Holy Sepulcher, told me. "I ask them, 'Why would you want...

The trillium thief is not exactly a murderer, I know. Murderers usually commit their crimes out of hate, or jealousy or greed. You can figure out why. No one seems to know why the trillium thief drove into the Lac Lawrann Conservancy in West Bend and ripped off 54 red trillium plants valued at about $540. For money? "I can't imagine where they would sell them if they are going to try to sell them," said Gary Britton, president of the Friends of Lac Lawrann. It's not, he notes, like the thief is likely to pull down some side street...

Hundreds of Americorps members will join forces with the Natural Resources Foundation and the state DNR to attack invasive plant species in Sauk County on Wednesday, May 14. "From what we can tell, this is going to be the largest single largest one-day volunteer event to combat invasive species in Wisconsin history," said Kelly Kearns, plant conservation manager for the Department of Natural Resources. "Invasive species don't just threaten the beauty of Wisconsin's lands and waters, they also cost us millions of dollars each year," she said. The invasive plants to be combated on May 14 include garlic mustard, buckthorn...