Out, out, damn blank line

Don't you realize that's mine

I need it for rhyming lines

Do not intrude upon my places

Leave me alone to go through my paces

And let me fill the traces

Poetry does not need to rhyme

Sometimes it can just be the right word sublime

But it is hard to give up the feeling that is mine

What as each line gets longer as I strain to make a rhyme not vulgar

Pushing the limits of rhyme and reason as I struggle with the torture

Of reason and rhyme that fills the time to make a rhyme with rapport

I am sitting in my hot bedroom,

Looking at my Facebook Wall

Feeling friends and family across the room

And hoping that they don't see me stall.

As I try to compost all

My thoughts to throw upon the tall

Wall of comments by family and friends

That makes me believe that each attends

To make the goodness in this world.

Photos of the Fruit and Branches of the Unknown Tree

Here are some more photos of the unknown tree and its berries

A Closeup of the Leaves of the Unknown Backyard Tree

This is a posting of the leaves of the unknown tree from my backyard

What Species of Tree Is This?

I bought this tree along with 10 others from one of those National Arbor Day mailings about 20-25 years ago.



Of the 10 trees that I bought only one (this one) survived the first season. Now this tree has become something to reckon with. I may be cutting it down if it continues to grow as it has.

Pokeweed Salads

My mom mentioned her Aunt Sally going up the hill to pick poke weed for a salad in southern Kentucky (this must have been in the 1930's since mom is 82). This article in Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pokeweed, points out that the plant is poisonous but edible when properly cooked. I guess that leaves out raw salad.

I guess I'll have to be careful what I decide to eat from Nature's bounty since Nature might have a bounty on me.

Edible Weeds in Toledo, OH

My mother said that she had been pulling a weed that she did not recognize from her garden. I took a few samples up to my apartment and checked them on the Internet. In Wikipedia this article, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portulaca_oleracea , talked about the beneficial uses of the weed. I picked some, washed it off, and cooked it with onions on the stove top that evening. The onions masked any natural flavor from the "pig weed", but it tasted well. The Wikipedia article states (in part) "Purslane contains more Omega-3 fatty acids (alpha-linolenic acid in particular^[4]) than any other leafyvegetable plant. Simopoulos states that Purslane has .01 mg/g of Eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA). This is an extraordinary amount of EPA for land based vegetable sources. EPA is an Omega-3 fatty acid normally found mostly in fish, some algae and flax seeds.^[5] It also contains vitamins (mainly vitamin A, vitamin C, and somevitamin B and carotenoids), as well as dietary minerals, such as magnesium, calcium, potassium and iron. Also present are two types of betalain alkaloid pigments, the reddish betacyanins (visible in the coloration of the stems) and the yellow betaxanthins (noticeable in the flowers and in the slight yellowish cast of the leaves). Both of these pigment types are potent antioxidants and have been found to have antimutagenic properties in laboratory studies.^[6]

100 grams of fresh purslane leaves (about 1 cup) contain 300 to 400 mg of alpha-linolenic acid.^[7] One cup of cooked leaves contains 90 mg of calcium, 561 mg of potassium, and more than 2,000 IUs of vitamin A. One half cup of purslane leaves contains as much as 910 mg of oxalate, a compound implicated in the formation of kidney stones."