Category Archives: education

Blooming Butterflies the Sequel

The Frederick Meijer Gardens has an annual exhibit from the beginning of March through the end of April called “Butterflies are Blooming.” The Other Half and I attended an evening event at the gardens which allowed me to try out my new camera.

The Caterpillar Room was an area dedicated to the lifecycle of the monarch butterfly. Monarch caterpillars are placed on various plants in the exhibit, like milkweed, that serve as a food source. The caterpillars feed and then pack themselves away in a cocoon known as the chrysalis stage. It’s from these cocoons the adult monarch butterfly emerges.

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The main exhibit is held in the Tropical Conservatory. Upon entering the exhibit, you are surrounded by free flying butterflies. There are 40 tropical butterfly species from around the world represented in the exhibit. It was quite fun trying to snap photos of these pretty, little insects. Unfortunately, I could not get a butterfly with it’s wings open. The colors on top of the wings were quite brilliant.

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Cruciferae Kale – Details Matter

While scrolling through various news feeds on The Internets this month, I came across a link to an odd article about kale . The article was called The Dark Side of Kale and ran on the Common Health site. To quickly sum up the idea behind the post, kale is a plant containing compounds that can interfere with the thyroid gland. After being diagnosed with hypothyroidism, a writer for the NY Times had recently written an article called Kale? Juicing? Trouble ahead. Now I do love me some veggies, so those were fighting words. I dove into some fact-checking and reading about kale.

It’s All in the Family

A very wide variety of vegetables belong to the family Brassicaceae (also called Cruciferae). Examples of some cruciferous vegetables include bok choy, cauliflower, watercress, radish, broccoli, wasabi, and cabbage.  Brassica oleracea is a species of this family and includes broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, and kale.  Like collard greens and spring greens, kale is a cultivar (Acephala Group) of the Brassica oleracea species. These vegetables are packed full of vitamins, fiber, and other nutrients. These same vegetables also have the compounds mentioned before that can whack out the thyroid and alarm news journalists.

Now for the Details

After reading about several medical studies involving these vegetables, I feel it all comes back to what Dr. Teresa Fung mentions in the Common Health article, “It’s the dose that makes a poison.” A very high intake of these vegetables, consumed raw, would have to be met to cause any danger. In addition, an individual would have to be considered iodine deficient, which usually exists in more impoverished areas of the world.  On top of those two factors, a person affected by these compounds would more than likely be predisposed to hypothyroidism. Yeah, I don’t think I’ll be ripping the kale out of our garden anytime soon.

Skip the Fads and Stick with Variety and Moderation

Trends come and go in food and diet cultures. Mom G has bemoaned this before in our conversations. Foods being promoted one day as healthy for your family are the next day condemned as the main cause of a host of diseases. My opinion as a gardener is to ignore the food fads and to keep a nice variety of veggies circling through the garden and across our table. I even enjoy kale in a smoothie every now and then.

P.S.

A few days before I composed this post, the Common Wealth journalist conducted her own followup to the Killer Kale article. You can read it here.

 

 

 

Why Garden?

It’s the first day of the New Year and social media feeds and blogs are overflowing with “wishing you the best” messages and how to “make those resolutions really stick this year” posts. Our little family is no exception as we have many exciting plans brewing for 2014.  Among those is my wish intention of dedicating more time to gardening and logging the experiences here.

A recent holiday promotion I worked on shared a little book written by Chad Allen called DO YOUR ART: A Manifesto on Rejecting Apathy to Bring Your Best to the World. I adore this book and highly recommend it. Often while reading the book my thoughts turned to gardening. Here’s an excerpt from the holiday promotion sharing my “thing” or my “art.”

Cooking with hate frightened my husband, so I gave gardening a try instead. Now I grow beautiful vegetables and herbs he skillfully transforms into delicious meals.

There is a vital connection between people and plants. Nothing relaxes me more than tinkering in the garden. If everyone could become responsible stewards of the Earth and celebrate horticulture with me, I’m pretty sure we could solve world hunger and rid the world of reality television. The additional skill set would also help us survive the pending zombie apocalypse.

Working the soil to help plants thrive and sharing that knowledge with others… it’s why I’m a Master Volunteer Gardener.

I cannot wait to tackle this year. I’m excited by all the knowledge I will obtain by working hard in the garden. I can’t wait to meet new and interesting people who are just as nutty about gardening as me. Most of all, I’m completely geeked to help others discover and navigate gardening. Maybe it will be a new hobby that brings them a little bit of happiness as well.