To view the pictures, click on the thumbnails!
Here marks the beginning of the 2008 transformations of my 18′ x 9′ garden.

While digging up the soil, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I had ample numbers of earthworms.  I love those little guys, and they make for an excellently nitrated and irrigated soil.

After tilling the garden, it looked like this:

This is from the northwest corner, also the entrance from my yard to the enchanted garden area.  There are blackberries in corner and golden raspberries along the fence.

From the northeast corner of the garden.

Here’s what it looked like after I planted!  Three kinds of tomatoes in the upper left; carrots, onions, some sort of turnip and radishes between the tomatoes and the paving stones; peppers and eggplant in the upper right; lettuce between the pavers and the raspberries; watermelon and squash on the lower right; and directly at the bottom, cucumbers, broccoli and cauliflower.

Aw, beautiful tomato plant!  I *heart* thee!  These are like baby pictures for me.  Isn’t it soooo cute?

Egg plants that are big already are the key!  In the top of this picture, you can see my 3 types of peppers and the strawberries!

From the northeast corner.   *giddy*  Do you know how excited I am about this garden?

Cheers to the best one yet!!

I had a semi-revelation here regarding my Behavioral Neuroscience paper that was due two weeks ago.

Honestly, I’ve been resisting this.  I don’t think the topic is that interesting, and I don’t agree that the researchers who are exploring the topic have necessarily justified their reasoning behind why they’re so interested in figuring out neuronal pathways that a brain uses to identify an object or mentally rotate it.

They’ve come up with results that generally don’t support their theories, which I suppose is truthfully how you go about researching something so great a feat as figuring out How the Brain Works and what not.  Have a theory (an educated guess) and construe a study that will either support or dispute your theory.  Much of what I’ve read thus far has been a whole lot of disputing although the researchers still tend to throw a happy twist on to it by saying, “Yes but we think that blah blah blah doesn’t quite eliminate our theory…”

Whatever.   It really doesn’t matter to me personally, and I’ve had a really challenging time embracing this whole thing.

Then I read this article, which I just finished a summary on, and it sort of changed my perspective on it all.  It gave reasons behind why it’s interesting to learn how we process object identification and mental rotation.

First of all what IS mental rotation, really?  Well, it can be the technical this is your object in this orientation (point A), and then this is your object in a different orientation, rotated around an axis (point B).  And how do we come from point A to point B?  Well, I’ll give you a little hint: imagination.

Yes, we imagine this rotation around the axis.  We are using our imagination when we see one object and mentally rotate it.  Undeniably, there is a strong connection between imagination and… well, a whole lot of interesting things.  Consciousness, for one.  We have to be conscious to have an imagination… or do we?  I suppose this depends on your definition of consciousness– is consciousness being awake?  Because if dreaming isn’t a use of the imagination, I’m not sure what IS.  Is consciousness the act of being aware of yourself?  For example, I’m here typing out my thoughts because I can think them, then I can identify that I’ve thought them, and then I can type them out here on this warm laptop, putting my thoughts (imagination) out for the world to see.  I am aware that I am a thinking being and therefore find value in my ability to share my thoughts with you, other thinking beings.

Physiologically, what IS imagination?  And what IS consciousness?

If we can start with the tiniest building blocks– visual perception, mental rotation, object recognition, and find connections through measurements such as response times and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), then we may be able to build up a bigger picture of understanding just how the brain works.

Of course, I still think this is a much greater task than can be found by simply asking subjects to mentally rotate an object and then watching the electrical activity in their brains.  I don’t think that our brains are all the same, and I think, instead, that our awareness is all greatly unique based upon what we’re taught from day one of existence as a human.  (When that exact point is, I’ll not go into, that’s another post entirely.)  I think we associate things with each other and THAT is how our network of consciousness evolves.  I think that we begin with a completely egocentric perspective– one where we feel physical pains (hunger, gas, defecating, cold, warm, etc), and we learn to interact with our environment by crying, grunting, suckling, and smiling.  As we get older we learn to integrate visual, audio, and tactile stimuli into meaningful patterns– where we discover the things our parents are demonstrating for us as examples of what it’s like to be human.  We learn that humans walk on two feet and use our hands to eat, and express our needs and desires through language.  We learn to be afraid of what our parents teach us to be afraid of, and we learn to be confident in the ways they encourage us to be confident in.  After time, we move forward to learning from people other than our parents.  We learn from other children, from other family members, and become socially educated in how to elicit what we want from our environment.  All of these things we tie into our memory (our cortex) as associations.  I associate smells with food.  I associate food with mouth watering.  I associate the sound of keys jangling with being told to put on my shoes and jacket.  I associate getting a positive reaction from adults when I say the words “Please” and “Thank you” and “May I.”

I don’t believe that we all store all visual stimuli in a storage place in our brains that allows us to identify them.  I think we use all forms of stimuli (visual, audio, gustatory, taste, tactile) and save that data all together relative to the other things with which we associate them.  For instance, some of us have strong associations with smells, such as the smell of cherry pie.  I associate the smell of cherry pie with being with my family on holidays, and I associate it with the memory of my great grandmother.  Perhaps the visual cue of cherry pie, my grandmother’s house, and the image of my great grandmother are not all stored along-side of my other visual cues– like apple pie, my aunt’s house, and other family members as much as they are with the experience, or memory of the experience.

I’m not entirely certain that we are going to be able to do an experiment that eliminates all variables to test my theory– an I suppose I would be okay if the results dispute my theory.  After all, those of us researching this stuff have to pin point somewhere to begin.

I was amazed just now.

I love the smell of bleach, but I just don’t use much of it anymore… something to do with dying streaks of funny colors into my favorite clothes. Now I’m really aware of which rags I use with bleach– and I end up keeping said bleached rag in the laundry until I can get a sufficient quantity of laundry that I won’t mind streaks of cream or white on… Which takes a pretty long time to happen.

I am going to miss getting high off of the bathroom cleaning fumes prior to bathing… because I’m notorious for cleaning the tub immediately before getting into a nice hot bath… but, I’m not going to miss the sad discovery I’ve made a million times when I realize that there’s still ajax in the tub that I’m sitting in…

So, check it out. Baking soda cleans just as well as any bleach powder, and scrubbing bubbles, and any other junk that’s got stuff that leaches into our drinking water even during the purifying process. Baking soda has no major side effects other than alkylization and curing a plethora of acidic problems like heartburn. And frankly, you’re not alkylizing squat with baking soda… only neutralizing what’s already naturally weakly acidic.

To clean my tub just now, I used baking soda (light dusting around the tub), a clean rag, cold water, and about one squirt of eco-friendly soap. There are million brands of these vegetable-based cleaners to choose from at Vitamin Cottage, and I think I went with the cheap one by Lifetree.

It smells really yummy, too, almost as fabulous as bleach!!! It has a lemony scent, and it can be used on your body, your car, your dog, and your bathtub– and more.

So, I’m pretty pleased– so pleased I had to come down here while the bath was running so I could share this with you.

Gotta go get naked…

It’s Friday night, yay!!!

Here I am.

Alone.

I suppose there’s nothing wrong with that.  I’m pretty happy in my own company, and I know I’m doing this to myself because if I didn’t still have a million things I had to get handled, I’d be out soliciting my “friends” for entertainment.

So.

I guess I’m happy.

I figure before & after pics will be fun. So, here is a sort of before picture. It’s technically after I built my fence, which was awfully macho of me… But before anything is planted. Seriously, stay tuned this summer. I’ll post lots of follow ups and have a knack for making the dirt sing.

This is a picture of my not straight T-bar. I pounded the hell out of that to get it in the ground, and frankly, the ground isn’t straight and I don’t figure my fence HAS to be. It just has to be strong, immobile, and keep the Great Danes out.

If you look closely, you’ll see my hot pink and other multi-colored lovely zip ties. I rock. Like majorly.

Oh, and if you want to see the bigger version of the picture, click on it.

Paving stones were my saving glory last year. That was back when I believed that paving stones and long two by eights would keep the dogs out. I’m much wiser this year. Much.

It’s totally normal to take garden pictures at night, no???

C’mon, you already knew I was weird. You should expect these things from me by now.

To the most amazing fog. Fog is unusual in Colorado, seeing as we’re landlocked.

I snapped a photo out my bedroom window. Yes, I swear it’s Colorado, and this is NOT how it normally looks, but it was SOOOO pretty.

Lately I’ve been feeling more sensitive to people’s lack of consideration towards me.

I don’t know if I normally don’t notice it, or normally don’t care as much…

But I’m cursing at people more while I drive.  I am acting more sarcastically than normal.  I’m inwardly blasting people for being rude to me…

I know *this* is not me.  *This* is not behavior I like…

And, well, if I can stop the behavior of smoking, I better STOP acting like this.

*sigh*

As much as my bittersweet ambiguity has bothered me, I feel blessed to know I have the OPTION and the ABILITY to feel ambiguous.

I picked up the kids from Grammy & Granddad’s today after work. I love those little boogers.

We came home, and between the three of us, we polished off the alphabet soup I made using Grammy’s homemade chicken broth and my old old old alphabet pasta. The kids liked it, and therefore I liked it. I treated them to ice cream afterwards… it’s the weirdest thing, Tyler doesn’t like chocolate… so, shhh, I let him have maple syrup on his ice cream while Kora and I had chocolate. I mean, really, is there THAT big of a difference between the two?

Then we ventured outside to see what we can do about the garden. I was given some plastic fencing, and I already had some T-bar. I bought a variety pack of plastic zip ties, which came in hot pink, hot orange, lime, yellow, and dark blue. I borrowed this massive hammer from the neighbor, got up on a foot stool, and started beating the hell out of the T-bar. Amazingly, I got it in the ground. And I got all four of them in by at least five inches. (You go girl!!)

Then I secured the fencing to the T-bar using pretty plastic ties. If it seems like this muther is going to stay erect, I intend on covering the dark green fencing with more colorful plastic and who knows what other sorts of decoration.

*grin*

Of course, my T-bar is crooked, and my fence isn’t perfect, but it’s on a hill and frankly I have no clue. If it keeps the dogs out, I’m going to keep it. And I WILL be taking pictures of the progress for you all as I go along.

Life *is* pretty good. There’s nothing like being outside doing stuff to make me smile.

That, and I have a job I love. I have beautiful happy healthy kids that I can enjoy without having to do all the hard work. Like birthing them and potty training. I get to teach them things about Life every minute of every hour I’m with them. And I’m amazed at what they retain. Tyler’s memory is absolutely incredible. He remembered what he was doing last year when he helped me plant my garden and was asking me about people that he hasn’t seen in nine months. Amazing. Out of sight out of mind does NOT apply with these two.

Tears silently roll down my cheeks.  I try not to get them in my mouth.

Sometimes it’s more difficult than I allow people to believe.

One side of me is positive, cheering myself on.

The other side of me is crumpled on the floor.

Twenty five more days.

And then what.

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