Little bits

Belladonna has been sick for four days. She missed work. She missed school. The upside is that much of her school-work is available on-line.

I have been getting lessons on axons, ganglia and neurotransmitters.  And no, GI Joe is not an axon figure.

Boy Scouts
I regret that they are going bankrupt but it is probably simply recognition of a reality.

Bankruptcy is better called "reorganization". It frees up viable resources and buries the non-viable.

Scouting has many great things going for it but there is nothing to stop other organizations from copying those things. Merit badges, for instance. Camping. Oath, motto...

Scouting's failure is nothing more and nothing less than thinking that "My group of humans is not vulnerable to sin." Due diligence was not followed. "Hey, old Fred couldn't be doing that. I know him. It is just not possible."

Heads will be bent in sorrow. A few tears will be shed. The parts that are worth salvaging will be salvaged and people will move on. And we will keep making that mistake over, and over, and over again. "...not my party..." or "...not my church..." or "...not my family..."

Callousing box

This is a pretty simple set-up. If used for rooting, the cuttings should be placed in the dark (like black plastic bag) as blue light inhibits rooting in many species.

A callousing box is a heated box used by horticulturists to knit grafts together or to push cuttings into throwing roots.

Commonly grafted species like apples and pears callous easily, consequently they are easy to graft. Callous is undifferentiated tissue that covers and heals wounds in a plant.

"Difficult to graft" species are often difficult to graft because they are fussier about the temperature and will not produce enough callous at cooler temperatures.

Just a little bit warmer.  The setup is simple. It is a translucent storage tub purchased from Walmart. It is on top of a 1" piece of foam insulation. I have a dark Tee shirt in the bottom and a heat lamp shining through the top. I modulate the temperature with the newspaper. The temperature in the basement is 53F.

Most species callous most profusely at temperatures between 80F and 85F. Mother Nature does not produce those temperatures on command. One way to get difficult species to knit together is to create a warm space for them...like a callousing box.

With regard to rooting, many plants that root from cuttings must first produce a ball of callous. After enough callous is produced, some of the cells get a clue and strike out as roots.

Callous is the equivalent of Stem-cells for plants.

I intend to graft some pears to some unrooted quince cuttings. The quince will be the roots. Then I will simultaneously heal the grafts and, hopefully, convince the quince to throw roots.

Running
I am an on-again, mostly off-again runner.

Covid-19 convinced me to start running, again.

We will see how long that lasts.

"Everybody" says to run every-other day. I am slowly accepting that as a +55 year old in my particular body I might need to run one day and have a two "off" days for my recovery period.

An alternative might be to keep the one-day recovery and alternate short and long runs.

I hesitate to even call it running. I am going SOOOO slow.

Cards
Mrs ERJ mailed the last of the cards I was on the hook for. A surprising number of people showed up for Dad's funeral back in December. I was given a list of names and a stack of cards. I flew through them but somehow could not finish that last card.

In retrospect, it was because I would have to admit that Dad was no longer in this mortal realm.

Yesterday, Mrs ERJ gave me a nudge. "Cousin Tish needs her card."

After finishing it, Mrs ERJ told me where she had hidden my keys.  No, just kidding.

Lichens

It is interesting that Woodland Caribou used to inhabit Michigan's Upper Peninsula. They ate lichens. After being expatriated, they were replaced by Whitetail deer. The deer are an asymptomatic host for a brain-worm that is nearly always fatal for moose and caribou.

Procrastinating
I gotta bad case of it, right now.

Covid19
I had breakfast with a small businessman. He called a supplier yesterday to place an order. The supplier informed him that he was supposed to ration parts. Headquarters had been informed that China had set up roadblocks and have testing truck drivers for fever for the last week. If they did, they parked the truck on the street and the driver was popped into quarantine.

Gangs showed up at night and stole the trucks from beside the roads. The police were too busy enforcing quarantine to deal with hijackings.

Rabbits

Rabbits are enjoying the branches I pruned out of the apple trees. They prefer the bark.