Rivenrock Gardens Cactus Blog

Corvus Corax - Lingua Mendax

Lyrics: Latin
Lingua mendax et dolosa,
Lingua procax venenosa,
Lingua digna detruncari
Et in igne concremari

Lyrics: English
The mendacious and crafty tongue
The bold, venomous tongue
The worthy tongue is cut off
And is burned by the fire

Corvus Corax is a German band that plays music with an elemental twist,
and their lyrics are often in Latin or other ‘Romance Languages’.

In this video, some has wedded some images from computer games to the magnificent song called Lingua Mendax. It is just so great to see how much creativity humans can have. Would that we as a species were to spend it more fruitfully.

This video is so much like my dreams.

   The Santa Barbara Botanical Garden is one of my favorite places to visit. Although I only visit the garden every year or two, I tend to go there on Tuesdays if possible because it is free admission on Tuesdays.

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For Immediate Release
August 21, 2008
Media Contact:
Amanda De Lucia
Public Relations & Marketing Manager
adelucia@sbbg.org
(805) 682-4726, ext. 139

Holiday Marketplace Artisans Needed!

CALL FOR ARTISANS & CRAFTS PEOPLE

Santa Barbara Botanic Garden’s
15th Annual Holiday Marketplace
November 22-23 2008

Juried Artisans gather at the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden for our 15th
Annual Holiday Marketplace, where we showcase local artisans in a
beautiful outdoor environment. Each year we welcome previous exhibitors
as well as new talent, who offer nature inspired, one of a kind, fine &
functional arts and crafts for sale.

For an application: call 805-682-4726 x113 or apply online at
www.SantaBarbaraBotanicGarden.org
Deadline for application: October 15, 2008

Please forward this email to any interested parties.

For more information, contact (805) 682-4726, or online at

http://www.SantaBarbaraBotanicGarden.org

The Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, 1212 Mission Canyon Road,
Santa Barbara, CA 93105

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Santa Barbara Visual Arts Alliance
Web Site: http://www.sbva.org
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Achtung! Klapperschlange Tal!
‘Warning, Rattlesnake Canyon!’

  The Botanical Garden is really a nice piece of art. I had a cousin and her husband visiting from Germany one time a few years ago… although he’s only seen them on TV, he is deathly afraid of rattlesnakes. I assured him there were few rattlesnakes in the botanical garden, and we’d likely not be in danger as long as we stayed on the marked trails.  I think we were near the 200 year-old dam in the canyon alongside the pretty creek with its picturesque boulders when we looked at a map encased along the trail. We were in ‘Rattlesnake Canyon’. Yeah, he kinda blanched, but we made it through.

   Actually, being afraid of rattlesnakes is the wisest course of action.  I used to handle rattlesnakes a quite a bit some years ago. Now I haven’t picked up a live rattlesnake for some years.  As long as you stay on trails, you are unlikely to fall into real danger from a rattlesnake. If one is on the trail you should be able to see it well enough. It is when you are in grass and brush and might step too close (or on) to a snake and cause it to bite you in response that you are in danger.

   In time you can learn to recognize the places snakes will tend to go on particular days.  Sometimes they’ll be in the open sunning themselves to get warmed up, other times they might try to stay in the shade to avoid overheating. 

   All-in-all, I’d recommend staying away from snakes in general, you don’t want to hurt a beneficial snake… and rattlers in particular, you don’t want to get a rattlesnake scared when you’re too close.

Here’s a couple photos of rattlesnakes I’ve taken this last year.

   This guy was curled up right next to this weed which I was about to pull (this was in our cactus orchard on the hillside). Luckily I noticed the little guy before I pulled the weed. Even a small snake like this (perhaps a foot long,it’s hard to measure a live snake), can put out a lot of poison. There are some who say the younger ones are more poisonous because they have little ‘flow control’ on their poison. They might dump all their poison in a bite, when a mature snake knows to apply just the amount needed and not waste poison which will take time to grow back in sufficient amounts to use. This might also explain why some people will get bitten and not seem to get much poison put into them.

   I’ve known a number of people who got bitten by rattlers. One fellow was airlifted out from a ranch to the hospital. He said there was pain, but he got lightheaded and woozy as if he’d been drinking, or perhaps like some depressent drugs might give. He laid down to keep the poison from racing and awaited the copter. 

  One other fellow I knew some decades ago had been bitten some five or six times. The last couple times he didn’t even go to the doctor. He said that he seemed to have grown a certain immunity, so he only got a bit swollen and sore for a week or two. He was on old-time rancher from an earlier age, the thirties through the sixties when cowboys were a bit extra tough. In fact, he won several national awards for ‘quick draw’ competition in the seventies.

This little rattlesnake was in some rocks at Montana de Oro park in California’s Central Coast.

Some folks might think that snakes in public access areas like this should be removed, but I disagree. The snakes are part of the environment, and if people don’t get into the brush or rocks you are pretty safe.  Myself, that’s the places I like to walk in.

We call this the ‘Triangle Garden’

It barely cleared the hilltops. It must be an exciting way to travel.

   Yes, I have found a new career path to look into. This one will combine my love of the outdoors, riding horses and seeing cats. In fact, this is a job that Vickie and I can do together since she loves cats even more than me.

   A quarter century ago, a church in a nearby town was having a Christmas show. This show entailed a huge map-drawing of the Holy Land on the church floor. Each city and town with a mention in the Bible had a small group of church members depicting some famous scene from the Bible.

   This show seemed very interesting to me, it would combine so many of my favorite subjects; geography, sociology, religion, acting (through the actions of the actors) and perhaps plants (I mean, there is a whole slew of plants mentioned in the Bible, one could have a great time building one’s own ‘Biblical Garden’ using such plants).

  So it was with a happy heart, high with the season of Christmastime which has always been my favorite season when everyone seems so much more jubilant and positive than most of the year, I decided to go and see this celebration. The event was going on through the entire day, so I could show up any time between the posted hours and see the show. Since we usually get such fine weather in December, and the sun was shining warm on this Saturday morning, I decided to take my motorcycle. Now, my motorcycle is a bit like me, it’s loud strong and large. And put me on that chopped 1960 Harley with my big leather jacket with all my 6′4″ 235 lbs stuffed in and covered with hair, leather, denim and boots… and pull up to a church parking lot and walk in…. I think I kind of scared them. I was nice, I waited in the line in the lobby and signed the ledger book, smiling and talking nice like I usually do with people,  and two fellows in suits came up and whispered to the lady behind the table, and after they walked away she looked up at me, with vacant eyes, kind of a Stepford imitation, and she said “I’m sorry, but we don’t think this is the right church for you”.

   Smiling, aware of how I scared them by my appearance, I explained I wasn’t there to join their church, but I was coming to see the public event they had advertised in the paper.  She replied in the same way “we don’t think this is the right church for you”.  Well, if my looks will scare people enough that they can’t be comfortable, I’d rather not put them through the discomfort. So I told her that I’d just leave, and wished her a Merry Christmas.

   Ol’ Betsy started up on the first kick, I dropped her into first gear and started up the road, heading onto Santa Rosa road, and went over to Solvang where I just blend into the Scandinavian population.  And I had a Happy and Merry Christmas time.

‘Wind Up’

~Jethro Tull~

When I was young and they packed me off to school
And taught me how not to play the game,
I didn’t mind if they groomed me for success,
Or if they said that I was a fool.

So I left there in the morning
With their God tucked underneath my arm –
Their half-assed smiles and the book of rules.
So I asked this God a question
And by way of firm reply,
He said — I’m not the kind you have to wind up on Sundays.

So to my old headmaster (and to anyone who cares):
Before I’m through I’d like to say my prayers…
I dont believe you:
You had the whole damn thing all wrong…
Hes not the kind you have to wind up on Sundays.

Well you can excomunicate me on my way to sunday school
And have all the bishops harmonize these lines…
How do you dare tell me that I’m my fathers son
When that was just an accident of birth.
I’d rather look around me… compose a better song
`cause that’s the honest measure of my worth.

In your pomp and all your glory you’re a poorer man than me,
As you lick the boots of death born out of fear.
I don’t believe you;
You had the whole damn thing all wrong…
Hes not the kind you have to wind up on Sundays.

 Jethro Tull, Live in Florence, 1988
‘Wind Up’

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~Khalil Gibran~

I have learnt silence from the talkative,
toleration from the intolerant,
and kindness from the unkind;
yet strange,
I am ungrateful to these teachers.

 This is me in 2007… hard as it is to believe, in 1984 I was even hairier.
On the one hand I don’t blame the people for being afraid of me…
But it would have been nice to be allowed in to see the play.
I’ve been followed by security in stores, been denied admission to a hostel due to my looks, and shuttled to the back and ignored in a restaurant.  The police have pulled me over because ‘the sun was reflecting off my tags and they could not tell if they were current or not’, and I was kicked out of the ‘Alamo’ in San Antonio (and threatened with jail) because I had a knife on me….one I carried always out of habit and the fact that I live and work on a farm in the wilderness.

   But those are all very rare occurances…
I have been treated with the greatest respect and hospitality by almost everyone I’ve ever met.  So for me life has been a half century of learning and loving and living…. I’ve been blessed to have met the people that I have, and everyone whether they treated me ill or kind was a teacher… and from the majority of them, I learned of kindness.

   But still it is a nice thing to have a little refuge back in the hills…. away from the teeming masses on the lowlands. A quiet, reverential place is Rivenrock…

I’m so happy with our corn that I put a bunch of photos of it into the paint program to make kaleidoscope images, then I put them into a screen-saver you can have for free.

You can get more screen-savers made by me (all free) at www.rivenrock.com/screensavers.htm

The two images below are both in the screen-saver,
there are a total of thirteen images in that free screen-saver.

   In the image above you can see the delicate corn silks being woven into a delicate filigree….
something like the doilies they use in Europe for their tables.

   The image below took on a Native American type motif.

   The blondes in my garden are the corn silks. The silks on ears of corn are designed to gather pollen. Each silk is connected to a space for a kernel in the ear. If a grain of pollen does not land somewhere on the silk, that kernel will not develop.  So it is important that you preserve your pollen in the home garden, you want to tap the stalks and let the pollen drop onto the silks rather than letting a hard wind blow it away. I like to do this in the morning before our winds come up in the afternoon.

You also want to water your corn well while it is tasselling and silking. You do not want anything to reduce the pollen count. But do not water overhead, as this will wash much pollen off of the tassels. You need to let the pollen have a chance to drift to the silks, not run down the stalk to the ground. So water with ditches or by hand with a hose near the stalk bottoms (my favorite way). The time of potential pollination is fairly short, perhaps less than a week. This is why you need to plant your corn in a ‘block formation’ of four or more rows rather than one long row. You need that massing effect of the pollen in order to get good ‘tip fill’.

   This is how the silks appear on the tops of the ears. The silks are just now forming and gathering pollen, hopefully I’ll get good pollination and the ears will fill in well. As they grow I’ll continue watering well to let the kernels grow big and full. A week before harvesting (you can only guess when that is) you need to reduce watering severely… the ears will reduce their water a bit, increasing the sugar ratio.

   Corn is one of the most ‘American’ of plants. It was grown throughout most of the Americas for thousands of years. As time has gone on, the varieties become ‘better’ in terms of different standards sought. These might include disease resistance, ability to withstand extreme environments, nutrient value, size or appearance or taste etc.  It is important you be aware of other corn varieties grown near your corn, there are types of corn that if cross pollinated can make the kernels tough and chewy. The seed packet will likely warn you of any such ‘combination alerts’.

  This is a photo of the pollen coming off the tassels. You can see jets of it bursting from the flowers on the tassles, and the specks all throughout the photo are little grains of pollen. I tap the stalks while bending the stalks towards the breeze, so that the pollen will more likely drift back into the corn patch.

   Good pollination is what you need for good corn. So you need to have a good variety, plant it in good soil, water often enough to encourage the maximum growth for that variety (the tips of some of these tassels are over eight feet off the ground), and plant it in a block, I’d recommend no less than four or five rows, with some minimum of twenty five plants total. This means you will have a lot of corn coming off all at once because the harvest for each block you planted is only one week or so. So you need to eat a lot and freeze the rest… I just toss it in the freezer cobs and husks and all with no prep, just fast freezing, then I’ll pop it in the microwave when I want an ear of corn, or thaw it and grill it (tastes even better). Either way, I cook it in the husks which traps the moisture and steams the kernels.  If you have the space, have a new block of corn you plant every few weeks through the summer. Then you get fresh corn for a week here and there, and then fresh-frozen for a couple weeks before your next batch comes ‘on-line’.

   The evening weather was spectacular.  Oddly enough, the day started with a  sudden thunder and lightening storm that then dropped a considerable amount of water on us for ten minutes. It was not enough to cause any washouts in the roads, but it is so unusual to see rain in the summer here, … it was  a surprise.

A beautiful sunset ended the light of day.

A Black Oak tree along the path.

Our Bell Peppers

It’s really neat to be able to step out and pick a pepper and bring it in to cut and put into the pan with some other good foods…. yeah, I for sure do love to eat.

   Bell Peppers like a good soil with plenty of sun. They should be kept on the edge of ‘always moist’. In other words, when the soil is drying out, get water back in it for these guys.  But don’t leave it sopping wet all the time. Let it drain out just a bit. In the gravelly soil of the arroyo these are in, I water them once a day, but they don’t get too much because a lot would just wash through the gravel. So they get a half gallon per plant on average.

  You can tell from the photos that they do like the conditions. Healthy happy plants are more resistant to disease and pests… so it is worth making the soil a bit extra good, make sure you plant and harvest when the season is right for that activity with that crop….etc. In other words, ‘A stitch in time saves nine’. It’s so much easier to keep the plants growing well in the first place than to have to fret over problems with scroungy plans that are stressed.