What If Bees Disappeared?

Gardening is my Prozac. The time I dedicate to training tomato vines or hacking at berry bushes seems to help me stave off feelings of sadness or dread and calm the chatter in my mind. My vegetable beds have even buoyed me through more acute stressors. I’m not alone in appreciating the antidepressant and anti-anxiety effects of gardening—countless blogs are dedicated to this very subject, and a rash of new studies has documented that spending time around greenery can lead to improved mental health.

Perhaps the best place for us each to begin is with our own backyard plot or window box. Planting a rainbow of seeds, avoiding the use of garden chemicals, nourishing the soil with plant matter, digging with our hands, and eating the bounty—while not guaranteed to replace a pharmaceutical grade antidepressant—is a wonderful chance to hang out with “Old Friends.”   

******

Forever in search of safe, low-tech solutions that I can offer my patients, I wondered if exposure by eating backyard veggies or digging with glove-free hands could be a potential new antidepressant therapy.

“What our research suggests is that eating, touching, and breathing a soil organism may be tied to the development of our immune system and our nervous system. But you have to understand that we fed our mice much more of that organism than you are likely to find in a peck of dirt—it was more like a drug dose.”

These creatures, which interact with us through our skin, lungs, and gut, are what Graham Rook, physician, microbiologist, and professor emeritus at University College London, refers to as “Old Friends.” I met Rook last year at an evolutionary medicine meeting at the University of Arizona where he presented a series of compelling studies in support of his “Old Friend” theory of immune dysregulation: that a mismatch between our DNA and our modern microbe-depleted environment is responsible for a recent increase in chronic health problems, including autoimmune diseases and depression. 

On a large scale, we can begin to do this by increasing the diversity of what we grow on our farms because agriculture, covering more than a third of the earth’s land surface, is an obvious reservoir for biodiversity. Our prevailing system of crop monoculture has severely limited the variety of organisms hiding beneath the soil, lying on the plants, and roaming the fields. The herbicides and pesticides used in monocultures narrow this spectrum further. We can start to shift to a more diversified system of farming by patronizing farms that grow a range of crops and by educating friends, neighbors, medical providers, and lawmakers about the health importance of this type of agriculture.--source

Spring Is Coming===Getting Ready ====Time-Lapse: Watch Flowers Bloom Before Your Eyes | Short Film Showcase

Start A Garden Journal

10 Reasons to Start Keeping a Garden Journal

Tomato Harvest Time & Stuffed Mushroom Happy Faces

Heirloom Lemon Cucumbers.(Hint:They Are Round & The Size of Tennis Balls, Have a Great Cuke Flavor With Softer Seeds And No Burp, In Case You've Never Heard of Them Before)

Gourds and Patty Pan Squash

A Sun Dog Encircling The Eclipse

A halo rainbow-like sun dog
encircling the total eclipse
on August 21, 2017
a day that remain in my heart
forever as much of a rare
event that it was.

I cried.
I admit it
I was moved.

and here's another pic....
and yes we had totality
and  yes we were able to view full totality
(without the
clouds)
because the clouds cleared
just in time
like a parting of the Red Sea

woo hoo for me

...

My Sunflower

.......

My moonflower

....

My cosmos

Maybe yours too?

Prepare to be Wow-ed By This Garden Dweller

A Montage of Pics

A Praying Mantis

Big, Huge, Healthy Tomato Plants

Cosmos

It's Garden Time Somewhere
handpainted by me
in my garden

The Latest Incarnation & Cast Of Characters In......TO WEED OR NOT TO WEED, THAT IS THE GARDEN

Fairy Stories from all
the Big Think Heads
like Joseph Campell are true
in the SOUL'S HIGH ADVENTURE
without any of that
WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE-ness
that currently is keeping all people in the
USA in their rightful places.
Those with  money  are definitely
proved to be  SOMEBODY's
 Far be it for me to say that that I've noticed that
Those Without Money Are Definitely being proved to be
NOBODY's and treated as such.
It seems to be some of the American People's
Job & Mission to prove who  the Nobody's are.
(and this goes for other countries too, not just individual people in the USA where the "who do you think you are"
comes into play.
It's that simple (minded) really as you continue
on your Joseph Campbell Hero's Journey

Frank , aka St Francis  knew it.

Gnome knows it

Blooms and Birds know it

Organic Happenings Know it

The COSMOS knows it

Whether You Want To Know It Or Not

Is Your Choice

A Hummingbird Moth------ A MoonFlow-er------- And A Sunflow-er...Flow-ers FLOW

Not a Perennial.... A SunFlower

On the other hand, The Periennial
MOONFLOWER
The Yin and Yang of Flowers
in the Garden

A Hummingbird Moth that
adores  My Moonflowers

Coreopsis & Blue Pea Pods

The Perennial that I love, Coreopsis

Heirloom, Blue
(but they look like Purple to me)
Pea Pods...

Heirloom Romaine Lettuce & A monarch caterpillar munching away at the MILKWEED. Just doing my part to ensure the Monarch Butterfly continues to exist.

~~~~

Grown from Heirloom seeds,
Romaine Lettuce in a window box
planter works for me.

Handpainted by me, YOU ARE MY SUNSHINE
garden art sign

A monarch caterpillar munching
away at the MILKWEED.
Just doing my part to ensure
the Monarch Butterfly continues to exist.

BTW the heady, heavenly scent the
blossoms of the milkweed give off
are second to none in sweetness
of the smell that envelops
you as you walk past them.

The vermillion cardinal against the pink backdrop of the dogwood blossoms sets a stunning natural scene. outside my window at the birdfeeder

A male cardinal in the Dogwood Tree.

The red against the pink backdrop of the
dogwood blossoms sets a stunning natural scene.
outside my window at the birdfeeder

FLOW-ERS FLOW & PUNKINS GROW

A Shasta Daisy I planted from seed
looks up to the sky

Another Hand Painted Garden Art
Sign  I made because everybody knows
FLOW-ERS FLOW

Gorgeous bird at the bird feeder
as the squirrel looks down at it

A concrete pig I've named WILBUR
from Charlotte's Web
sits atop a spray painted wooden box
alongside geraniums and daisies

 A Punkin Plant from seeds I saved from last year's
punkins is growing nicely.
I'm hoping to have a nice crop of all sized punkins
this year

Garden Update: IT'S GARDEN SOMEWHERE & Other Garden Art

Yes Indeed, My Handmade Garden Art Sign
from a takeoff of Jimmy Buffet's
It's 5 o'clock Somewhere

My qusai Fairy/Budda Garden

A Swift I found by my window, dead,
that I coupled with my Garden Art Sign
that  reads:

THEY ALWAYS KNEW
THEY WERE BIRDS
OF A DIFFERENT FEATHER
AND THAT WAS OK.

A flower I painted on an
old glass window.