W.O.O.D. – 14 August 2022

Intro

This is another of the W.O.O.D. series of semi-regular
Weekly Occasional Open Discussions.
(i.e. if I forget and skip one, no big)

Immediate prior one here:

https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2022/07/20/w-o-o-d-20-july-2022/
and remains open for threads running there (at least until the ‘several month’ auto-close of comments on stale threads).

Canonical list of old ones here:
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/category/w-o-o-d/

“Me” News

All my “Florida Stuff” is in the new house. I have all but 2 of my cars here (the 2 in California at the mechanic’s). I’ve started the garden (really “Edible Landscaping” where it looks decorative but is really edibles).

We’ve bought some new beds, though the guest room is still an air bed. I’ve got a rudimentary office set up (still needs a desk… I’m using a folding tray table at present…) We’ve got a “card table” in both the dining room and the breakfast nook (pending arrival of our real tables / chairs) and I’ve got a set of 2 folding card chairs and 6 “lawn chairs” made of plastic to finish out the temporary furniture…

We have a new couch and love seat (with recliner sections ;-) on order, but delivery will likely stretch out to about Christmas… Oh, and we have one recliner in the house and one TBD later, after I’m done with the Road Warrior stuff.

Also we’ve bought a selection of cheap dishes (like really cheap… 50 ¢ plastic bowls kind of cheap) to expand on the 4 person Disney Decorative Set so we can actually get through the day without running the dishwasher. The rest of our dishes will be part of the first run to the California storage.

In short, the house is now “livable”, though not yet completely comfortable and a long way from Goal State. But we can see that end point from here.

In about a week I fly to California, rent a big truck, load it, and drive it back. Florida Friend flies with me, loads with me, then drives my Subaru back. That will leave just a Mercedes 240D that’s getting some restoration done for “someday” bringing out too.

After that first load, I think I’ll have over 1/2 of the “goods” moved. While loading, a bit more assessing and perhaps triage will be done on the rest. In any case, the most important “stuff” will be moved into the house.

The downside of this is that I’ll be “on the road” for about 1.5 weeks, and with most of the time spent sitting behind the wheel of a big truck, unable to do much on the computer…

The ML 320 got back from the Dealer. They want about $10,000 to fix it. Not going to happen. They think maybe, possibly that the EGR valve is sticking causing the hiccup in the turbo, so want to replace the EGR Valve AND the whole turbo for $6k. That’s nuts as the turbo isn’t the problem, it is being administratively turned off after the engine hiccups enough times.

The other $4k is to replace the “hind brain” and fuse box. This car has something like 4 fuse boxes, and one is in the rear quarter panel along with one of 3 or 4 “SAM” (Signal Acquisition Modules). The minor computer that actually turns on / off various things like gas gauges and turn signals after the front computer relays your requests from the switches via the car area network…

Seems that particular critical box “can get water in it” and mine did, so is a bit of a rust bucket…

Think about that. A $70,000 (new price, I paid far less used) car that dies if the little box leaks, and it tends to leak… but “only” $4,000 to fix it after it does.

I’ll be looking into independent mechanics (or a DIY) to fix it instead…

I can only say that this level of design stupidity is epic. I’ll never buy any Mercedes newer than 2002 or so again.

WatchMaga

This will continue to be DIY for a while still. I did do a Binge Watch catch up session and there’s a bunch of good ones, so well worth going there:

https://rumble.com/user/WatchMaga

News

It looks like the CDC has decided that Chinese Wuhan Covid is over now and everyone can just forget about it all. If flopped and failed to deliver a slave race, so they are moving on to Monkey Pox. (AKA “buggery pox” or “schlong pox” as it seems to have a preference for Buggery Indulgers. Oh, and I’m not interested in calling it “gay” anymore. The abuse of language has to stop somewhere. What it is, is buggery and lesbians.) I predict that nobody much is going to get excited about Buggery Pox when they don’t “do” buggery.

THE big news seems to be that the FBI went fishing at Trump’s House and came up with nothing. The Left Media demanded that IF Trump were innocent, he’d release the search warrant and inventory sheet… which he did… and now they are livid as he did NOT redact them. Yup, agent’s names and all. Hey, they didn’t demand he release it redacted, now did they.

It looks for all the world like Yet Another Nothingburger Investigation.

On the plus side:

It is now absolutely clear that:

1) The FBI is the Political Goon Squad of D.C. Federal Bureau of Intimidation at best. I will give no help to any FBI agent no matter the circumstances; after all, they mostly seem to do entrapments and instigation of crimes, so best not to be proximate to that kind of thing.

2) The DOJ is a Political Persecution Tool. Nothing more. When only Conservatives are prosecuted, and clear dramatically obvious crimes by Democrats get not even a finger waggle, well, ANY good Tyranny is like that.

3) We know Trump is incredibly Squeaky Clean! since after 6 years of trying they got nothing. Even this raid is turning up nothing.

4) Perhaps most important, we know that the USA is now a Banana Republic Tyranny, nothing more. Tyranny Rules apply. Offer nothing. Do not feed the animals. Keep your head down and figure the best way to escape or hide from The Machine.

After all, with an added 87,000 ARMED Tax Goons looking for someone to rob and shake down for the king POTUSino, they have to bother somebody. So me? I’m 100% on the Government Dole now (Social Security / Medicare ) with ZERO employment income. That’s the safe place to be, I hope… Maybe I can convince them to take my newest car… a nice little 2008 Mercedes ML…

Oh, and the Ukraine War seems to have drifted off to Background Noise in the news. America has a new Squirrel! to look at. Despite Yet Another $BILLION in arms being sent over for destruction. I can only think Putin is loving it. NATO delivering all their toys and ammo for him to destroy in a war of artillery where his side is unmatched.

I suspect the world will be a bit more dull for the next month or two. About the middle of October, things ought to get exciting again. Ukraine will be running out of soldiers to operate those $Billions of weapons and Putin will be happy to bomb them into fragments, then shut off the flow of oil & gas to the EU and watch it implode.

Only wild card likely to be when China invades Taiwan. IIRC, there’s only one month where the weather for that is favorable. March? Something like that I think… I ought to look it up, but it’s late…

Oh, and sometime in the next day or two Liz Cheney gets the official count and notice that she is retiring from politics to go write a book and work at pMSNBC or CNN as a RINO TDS Presenter… I think that will leave just 2 of the RINOs who voted to impeach Trump still in office. So a little more work to do…

Global News about things like Farmer Protests and such seems to have dried up (along with their rivers…). One wonders if folks are taking a break or if it is just that August is vacation time in Europe?

For more recent events, see:

Bongino Report:

https://bonginoreport.com/

Or Whatfinger:

https://generaldispatch.whatfinger.com/

I’ve also gotten addicted to the Top Ten Memes of the week from WatchMAGA here:

https://rumble.com/c/c-285381

They have interesting “bite” to them, along with a tendency to highlight the news of the week in memes, so good as a social attitude pointer too. Plus they are “way fun” ;-)

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3 Boxes, or More?

The Wiki details this. I’d first heard it as 3 boxes to assure liberty, to be used in order: Soap Box, Ballot Box, and Ammo Box. It looks like it started with those, but has expanded to four over time. There’s also “Jury Box” in many early forms:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_boxes_of_liberty

Stephen Decatur Miller may have originated the concept during a speech at Stateburg, South Carolina, in September 1830. He said “There are three and only three ways to reform our Congressional legislation, familiarly called, the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box”. This became his campaign slogan in his successful bid for the Senate on a platform advocating the abolition of tariffs. An 1849 edition of the Family Favorite and Temperance Journal extended the concept: “Four boxes govern the world:—cartridge box, ballot box, jury box, and band box”. The bandbox, originally designed to hold collar bands, was used to carry the elaborate women’s hats of the time as well as many other personal items. The quip was reproduced in the 25 December 1869 edition of the Spirit of the Times newspaper and in the 1881 Treasury of wisdom, wit and humor, odd comparisons and proverbs.

So there’s some history of folks “tagging on” some more boxes.

In a speech delivered on 15 November 1867, Douglass said “A man’s rights rest in three boxes. The ballot box, jury box and the cartridge box. Let no man be kept from the ballot box because of his color. Let no woman be kept from the ballot box because of her sex”.
[…]
In a commentary on Leonard Levy’s book Origins of the Bill of Rights (1999), Professor Brian C. Kalt of the Michigan State University College of Law argues that the saying simply expresses the intent of the United States Bill of Rights to enshrine and protect the popular sovereignty. It succinctly defines the four methods by which the people can stand up for their rights.

Taking a less positive view of the idea, in April 2010 the Anti-Defamation League noted that it is frequently used by anti-government extremists to justify violence to gain their ends on the grounds that all else has failed, and cites a typical comment on the Pat Dollard Web Site: “we’ve tried the soap box & the ballot box to no avail. Maybe it’s time to start thinking INSIDE the box – the bullet box”.

I can see how it fits the Bill Of Rights. Freedom of speech is the soap box. The 2A is the Cartridge Box. Jury of your peers and our legal structure is the “jury box”. Our Vote is the ballot box.

But the exact boxes enumerated tends to vary a bit…

Modern usage

James G. Watt, United States Secretary of the Interior 1981–1983
Time reported that the saying was used in September 1976 by a keynote speaker at a convention of the American Independent Party, […], all agreed with the saying. During a March 1991 dinner event organized by the Green River Cattlemen’s Association in Wyoming, James G. Watt said, “If the troubles from environmentalists cannot be solved in the jury box or at the ballot box, perhaps the cartridge box should be used.”

Larry McDonald, a politician from Georgia and former president of the John Birch Society has also been quoted, omitting the caution to use bullets as the last resort: “We have four boxes with which to defend our freedom: the soap box, the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box”. The term is used in newspaper articles, and has been used in a petition to the Supreme Court of California. “Four boxes” and derivatives have been used in the name of various websites that espouse patriotism and the right to bear arms.

So let’s start with a set of 4: Soap Box, Ballot Box, Jury Box, Ammo Box.

In our present Globalist Tyranny In The Making, the “softer” boxes have been systematically usurped, and they are attempting to ban the cartridge box entirely.

In The Public Square, you can not effectively use the Soap Box; what with extremely partisan “fact checkers” and assertions that their Party Line is the “scientific” truth. “Hate Speech” laws allow anyone to claim their feelings were hurt so you ought to go to jail. Then there’s the army of Doxers and intimidation for any speaker who goes against the Approved Narrative. (Seasoned heavily with smearing and “cancel culture” if you are important enough to get attention).

We now know that the Ballot Box is at a minimum tainted, and potentially completely pwnd and out of commission. China owns the Dominion Vote Counting Machine company (bought for $400 Million just before the Trump / Biden election). The DNC Ballot Harvesting, Fabrication, and Stuffing operation is documented as a giant operation (per Biden himself…) and you can see the massive 2 AM spike when they backed up the truck and dumped a load. We will find out in November if it is completely broken and non-functional. Anyone who thinks the country is happy with Bumbling Biden, Kackling Kamala, and the farce of a Congress flushing $Billions to family & Friends while the country burns; and claims folks will vote to support that in November is seriously out of touch. If there is not a clear and strong “Red Wave” at the count, you know it was seriously rigged.

The Jury Box is also now weaponized against anyone not supporting the Deep State & DNC. This is via loading “judges” into the court system who are partisan hacks, not honest unbiased judges (note that the one who signed off on the Trump Search Warrant worked to defend Epstein staffers… so likely has Deep State connections). Drawing from a population in D.C. (where political actions tend to be tried) uses a jury pool that’s something like 90% Democrats and likely about the same Government Employees. Like that’s going to be a fair trial. Then there’s the talk of Packing The Court… So while some cases are decided on the Law and Facts, it is increasingly the case that Judicial Rulings are biased, handed down with prejudice, or come with no Jury at all. Like all the FISA abuse. Oh, and those 87,000 new IRS Agents (claimed to be armed by one news source) can only be contested in their own Tax Court… without a jury I believe…

So does that only leave the Ammo Box? An armed revolt? Is there no other way?

IMHO, there’s 2 other “boxes” that exist and can be inserted into the stream. We ought to try those two first. (Though at least one of them is already shown to be partly compromised).

1) The Protest Box. (Imagine a square block of folks marching down the street, or a block of tractors parked on a freeway).

Yes, we’ve seen this one tried in Canada, by the Yellow Vests in France, and in D.C. on 6-Jan; and they were persecuted for it. Yet it is also ongoing in places as diverse as Sri Lanka (where their president was run out of the country) and The Netherlands. I think it still “has legs”. We need a lot more folks protesting a lot more to be effective, but it is having some good effect.

2) This one I’d call the “Galt Box”. Typically it is the General Strike. Everyone just stops work and goes home. Gandhi in India was successful with it. Right now in the USA you see a LOT of “Help Wanted” signs all over the place. (And it is NOT because the economy is doing so great…) IMHO, this is the indication that a whole lot of folks have just said “Up Yours!” to things like Vexxine Mandates and other stupidity.

I am one of them. I was working (part time, admittedly) and was told the Jab was a requirement (plus reporting my “status” to a couple of State and other government tracking databases). I said no and quit. I’ve “gone Galt”.

It will take a lot more folks Going Galt for the effect to be damaging, but I suspect we’ll get there eventually.

Oddly, I think the European Globalists are going to run the EU into a Gone Galt situation via their own stupidity. This winter, when there’s not enough gas to run both German Industry and German Homes, their industry will shut down. Germany is the financial engine that funds the EU Member Nations without the cash to run (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain – the PIIGS…). I’m not seeing how the EU avoids having most of all those nations Go Galt, even if involuntarily, due to fuel & food shutdowns.

In many ways, modern agriculture is the art of turning Diesel Oil and Nitrogen Fertilizer (made from / with natural gas) into food. Now the Gang Green want to ban Diesel and Nitrogen Fertilizer… which absolutely MUST result in a lot less food production at much higher prices.

So unless the EU drops sanctions and gets back on the Russian Oil & Gas supply Big Time and in a hurry, they can’t make it through the coming winter without shutting down major industry (including fertilizer manufacture). This ought to cause an EU Wide “General Strike” and “going Galt” as cold and hungry people try to figure out how to survive…

The USA will take longer, as The Powers That Be will want to make things look all rosy going into the November election, but look out 1 Jan 2023 (or they might be all sentimental about it and let the major screwage begin 6 Jan 2023). Canada and Australia I expect will be after the EU but before the USA…

So the way I see it, that kind of collapse has the same effect as folks choosing the Galt Box.

What order would I put things in?

Soap Box
Jury Box
Ballot Box
Protest Box
Galt Box
Ammo Box

My six steps… Right now, it looks like folks are more or less on the Protest Box. They are giving the Ballot Box one more try, to see if it is actually working or not; but not expecting it to be fair and valid (given the history of blatant voting fraud).

I expect that the Galt Box has already started a little bit among the folks just dropping out of the work force over Mandates. I think it will be strongly in play in December when German Industry is offline and the USA is fuming over another fraudulent “election”.

Hopefully those 2 can “Get ‘er done”. IFF they don’t, expect to see a new Civil War. It will start with “Disobedience”. To some extent it already has, with bussing of illegal invading migrants to DC from Texas and Florida. Increasing partisan Mandates and craziness from D.C. will just drive folks to “Just Say No” a whole lot more; to eventually include just saying “We’re outta here”. I hope nothing proceeds to the Ammo Box…

Notice I’ve left Constitutional Convention off the list. I’ve got 2 reasons for that. First off, the only folks who would be allowed into a Constitutional Convention are the same ones who are the Elites Who Love Big Government. It won’t be Trump, Bob The Butcher, and You doing the re-write. It will be the folks with Liberal Law degrees who got us into the present mess. The other is just that the process would take too long. Events will have run to an irrecoverable point before you could get the schedule set up and the Endless Bickering started…

In Conclusion

We have seen amply demonstrated that “whoever” is driving this process of Global Tyranny has no interest in “allowing” us mere Citizens to choose our government. They have decided a Global Technocracy Tyranny is what’s best, and are doing everything possible (legal or not) to force it. There is no negotiation and no relenting. They also have no respect for “rule of law” or “equal protection”, and love to corrupt governments (and people) to get their way. It looks like murders are also acceptable to them. (Certainly confiscation of property / money etc. and locking people up without trial or even charges for years is just fine with them).

Given all that: I doubt that “mere protests” will get their attention (at least not beyond demands to crush the protesters). That leaves a Vague Hope that the mid-term elections will be clean enough for a clear “Red Wave” to be seen and happen. A Vague Hope is not much to plan on…

Which, IMHO, will deposit us at Going Galt. Europe will likely get there first (voluntarily or through their own stupidity vs Russia). So I expect next January will be a highly enlightening moment. IF a major shutdown doesn’t change things, plan to be prepared, hunkered down, and expect things to get chaotic.

As is usual with any attempt to predict a volatile and uncertain future: Any speculation about future events or timing WILL BE WRONG. At best you can hope for some points to be similar to expectations, and a lot to be off (by more, or less). These are just my best guesses, and a whole lot of “unknowns” could make it all moot.

China might invade Taiwan – crushing all industries that depend on computer chips.

Russia might decide that NATO is too much of a threat (or NATO might start a Hot War with them) and we could even end up with a “Glow In The Dark” result.

Who Knows: We might even have Trump get elevated to POTUS via a House Vote (with him as Speaker post mid-terms and then impeached Kamala and & Creepy Joe, so Speaker moves up…)

I don’t expect any of those things to happen; but that’s the whole point. When what you don’t expect does happen, it all gets messed up…

So that’s my best guess as of now. Subject to revision as more becomes known.

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Survival Garden Begins

This started out to be a comment in W.O.O.D., but got long enough I decided to just put in the extra work to make it a posting.

I’ve started making a trial “Survival Victory Garden” at my new home. This isn’t something that looks like a garden at all. In fact, I’m going out of my way to make it “Edible Landscaping” that looks like inedible decorative plants.

In W.O.O.D., David A. pointed to an article about The Netherlands trying to destroy farming and deliberately reduce the food supply:

https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2022/07/20/w-o-o-d-20-july-2022/#comment-158916 (h/t David A.)

[…]
https://thecovidblog.com/2022/08/03/the-netherlands-is-now-ground-zero-global-famine-as-government-bill-gates-create-phony-nitrogen-crisis-to-destroy-the-countrys-agricultural-sector/

I did not know “The Netherlands is the second-largest agricultural exporter in the world after the United States. It is the largest meat exporter in the European Union.”
I did not know that in September 2021 Bill Gates apparently spent about 600 million purchasing a company that would immensely profit from the current government actions. Yet more evidence that they really are out to do great evil.

The null hypothesis of assuming disastrous acts as being the result of stupidity, versus evil, may now be reversed.

Same playbook as took down Sri Lanka (ban nitrogen fertilizers) but with the addition of drastically reducing farm animals too. Same thing being started for Canada. Expect it to roll out globally (to include Australia and the USA eventually…) So best to prepare for it. I’ve already stashed 2 large bags of fertilizer and expect to raise that to 4 shortly. Enough for several years of gardening if used sparingly and with “waste” composted to recycle the stuff. Planting plenty of beans also has them putting nitrogen into the soil and compost pile. So longer term they are the nitrogen fertilizer source.

FWIW:

I’ve got several Sweet Potato plants in the ground and a few more growing great guns in pots (to be planted out “soon”). Sweet Potatoes are special in a couple of ways. One is that they can be started from “slips”. Basically once you have one growing, taking little bits of the vines and rooting them gives you more plants… And that first one can get started just by putting a little tuber in a pot. Then the leaves are edibles too.

Sweet Potato plants don’t like cold, so I’m hoping they can grow more like a perennial here in warm Florida. I’d like to get a supply of tubers below ground. Even if they somehow become undesirable as food, they form the basis for new crops. (“splits” or getting fibrous or flavor changes? Don’t know what happens over a couple of years.)

The potential for rapid exponential growth of sweet potato supply is huge. It is also easy to grow, has few pests, and tastes pretty good just roasted or as fries.

There’s a lot of places say to slice the tuber in half and put it in water or potting soil. That’s OK, but sometimes they just rot. I had several grow just fine by simply sticking them in a pot of potting soil and keeping it damp. But I also chose the runts out of the grocery store so wasn’t wasting a 2 lb tuber either…

https://www.thespruce.com/how-to-grow-sweet-potatoes-in-the-home-garden-1403479

Also, I’ve got about a dozen Runner Bean plants going. 1/2 dozen in the ground, another 1/2 dozen in pots to be planted out “soon”. A Runner Bean plant can make a LOT of green leaves, young pods can be treated like green beans (older pods a bit tough and fibrous…) They make a big bean, about 1/2 tsp per bean. Making chili with them, you get about 1 bean per spoon full of chili ;-)

I’ve had vines of these grow 10 feet + up a bamboo tee-pee in a 4 foot garden square. A 4 x 4 x 10 foot cube of greens is a LOT of greens!

https://hort.extension.wisc.edu/articles/scarlet-runner-bean-phaseolus-coccineus/ has some nice pictures, like this one:

Scarlet Runner Bean, Phaseolus coccineus

Scarlet runner bean, Phaseolus coccineus, is a tender herbaceous plant native to the mountains of Mexico and Central America, growing at higher elevations than the common bean. By the 1600’s it was growing in English and early American gardens as a food plant but now is more frequently grown as an ornamental for its showy sprays of flowers. Unlike regular green beans (P. vulgaris) this is a perennial species, although it is usually treated as an annual. In mild climates (zones 7 – 11) it a short-lived perennial vine, forming tuberous roots from which new shoots sprout annually in areas with frost where it is not evergreen. In Mesoamerica the thick, starchy roots are used as food.

I’m hoping it is perrenial here, and I get to try the roots too ;-)

BOTH of those plants have edible leaves. This matters a lot in a Survival Food situation as you start to get lots of green leaves about week 2 or 3. Way faster than most traditional garden foods. They may not be the most flavorful food ever, but a “mess ‘o greens” will keep you fed. And “bland is good” for survival food as it can be flavored in many different ways from your spice cabinet… or mixed with other foods. They rival the radish in their potential to be “first food” in 20 to 30 days.

A pint jar of dry beans can be rapidly producing bushels of “greens” via planting them instead of boiling them. At about the 3 week point, you can harvest 1 leaf / plant (leaving plenty of other leaves for the plant to grow more…. so about 1 out of 4) and have some kind of food. By a couple of months, the long vines are making buckets of leaves…

i’m planting sweet potatoes and runner beans, alternating, around my back yard fence. This will cover the fence, look nice, and potentially be a couple of hundred feet of edible landscaping.

So what I’m doing now is a trial of that. Just way overplanting Runner Beans & Sweet Potatoes to see just how much how fast, and to find out if Florida has bean weevils or not… (In California, after a year or so, tiny little bean weevils got into my garden. Harvested dry beans would end up full of holes as the eggs hatched and the suckers would drill about 1 mm holes through the beans as they lunched on them. Freezing harvested dry beans for a week or so would prevent that by killing the eggs laid on / in the beans.

Climbing “pole beans” of the regular sort can also be used this way as their leaves are also edible (you could do it with bush beans but they are kind of small plants…).

Lima Beans have “issues” with this due to cyanide. Garden varieties of beans if cooked are OK, but I don’t know how much might be in the leaves:

https://extension.oregonstate.edu/ask-expert/featured/should-i-worry-about-cyanide-lima-beans

There are both low cyanide and high cyanide varieties, and the amount of cyanide made in the leaves varies by enough to change how much bugs like to eat them:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19424497/

But prolonged cooking can destroy cyanide (which is in many other food plants too….) so if extremely desperate they might also be usable in the same way.

FWIW, the bean weevils never bothered my Lima beans… So I like having some Lima Bean seeds just so that if I get an attack of bean weevils I have some beans that survive. Christmas Limas are nice and make big vines ;-)

https://www.seedsavers.org/christmas-lima-bean

Jackson Wonder also grew well for me. They are a bush type (so no trellis needed) and generally bush types produce sooner than pole types, but for a shorter period of time. (I think it’s a good idea in a survival situation to plant some bush type and pole type at the same time, so the bush type give a faster first crop, then later can be replaced with other plants for a longer harvest ) Jackson Wonder are a pretty red when fresh, but buff colored when dry.

https://www.victoryseeds.com/bean_lima_jackson-wonder.html

I’m also starting several other tubers that don’t look like food. More on them later. Some have high oxalate leaves and some oxalate in the tuber, so need “preparation” in how the tubers / corms are used. One or two look a lot like the Elephant Ear decorative plant. So essentially are a hidden food garden that requires knowing the right way to prepare them to make it edible. These I can plant in the front yard and nobody will be the wiser ;-) Malanga, for example. Though I’ll need to be careful about putting it where dogs can find it:

https://wagwalking.com/condition/malanga-poisoning

What is Malanga Poisoning?
The malanga can grow up to eight feet tall and about 5 feet wide in its native land of Africa. However, in the United States, they are not able to flourish in any of the states grown outdoors, although the malanga can be a great indoor plant. Those with dogs should always keep the malanga out of their reach because they tend to like to chew on plants. If you believe your dog has eaten part of a malanga, you should see a veterinary professional even if there are no symptoms yet.

Malanga poisoning is a moderate to severe condition caused by the ingestion of the malanga plant, which contains insoluble calcium oxalate crystals. Biting into or chewing part of the malanga plant produces immediate pain and burning in the mouth as the crystals (in bundles called raphides) puncture the soft tissue. This can cause your dog to vomit, not be able to swallow, and your pet may even have trouble breathing due to the inflammation. In fact, although it is not common, some dogs have such bad swelling that they cannot breathe at all. The oxalic acid in the plant also decreases the availability of calcium, protein, and other minerals. Another toxin in the malanga plant is asparagine, which has been known to cause several kinds of cancer and can affect the kidneys as well.

So while you may know not to chew the leaves, and know that the root is edible, the dog doesn’t know that. OTOH, after a bit of a chew on a leaf, the dog usually stops…

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Bishop Sheen 50 Years Ago, Words About Today

This is a bit startling. From 50 years ago, describing the condition of the world today. My Mum used to watch Bishop Sheen fairly often. He’s a thinking person, and I suspect some of my world view was shaped by him.

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