Category: Uncategorized

Black-tailed Prairie Dog and an excerpt

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“After hundreds of miles through the spiky short-grass prairie—a dry and windblown Poaceae desert tunneled by black-tailed prairie dogs (Cynomys ludovicianus), big-eyed and breathlessly barking at the end of their mating season—the conductor and the whistle’s scream signaled my stop.

I’d taken the tonic each night. It had tasted of cherries and made my skin sensitive. My clothing touching me left a pleasant tickle that threatened to break into waves of some sort. My breasts were gone, but was it enough?”

In Natural Attraction, Clementine wants to be a naturalist. She travels out West to search for new plants and animals to study.

Prairie dogs are social animals and live in underground “townships.” They eat the same foods that cattle eat so farmers and ranchers consider them pests. Their population today is only 2% of that in Clementine’s day.

First Kiss

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I’ve always enjoyed a good kiss. Kisses are a way of testing out the chemistry of a potential mate and basically keep us from hooking up with a close relative. The kiss just won’t be right. It’s best not to choose that mate when chemically altered, such as pregnant or on the pill. Arranged marriages probably don’t have the best outcomes. In Natural Attraction, I had a challenge with that first kiss. It had to seem to be between two men, but not be between two men. In Lily Graison’s blog, you can read all sorts of fictional first kisses, including that of Calvin and Wesley. The problem is, of course, that Calvin isn’t a man but a woman named Clementine chemically altered. What happens next? You’ll just have to read.

Poke!

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Poke!
Poke!

I live in a very old house and there are strange things in my yard. Do you know what this is? It’s not ripe yet and I’m not going to let it live. Pokeweed (Phytolacca) has been called “useful but dangerous” because the berries were used for ink by pioneers. It’s said that the leaves are edible if boiled in two changes of water. That’s the useful part of it. This plant shouldn’t be messed with–stems, seeds, roots and leaves are poisonous. Pokeweed can even kill large animals!  Other animals such as doves and opossums  love those berries. I like doves and opossums but sorry pokeweed. You have to go.

Monarch Update

On By Catherine HausteinIn Uncategorized1 Comment

2 monarchs

We’re headed for the 4th generation of monarchs in the garden this summer. This next batch will be the ones to fly away to Mexico.  The eggs have been laid by now and caterpillars across the state are hatching on what is left of our milkweed plants. By what’s left, I mean that which has escaped the Roundup, a decrease of approximately 58% since 1999. Half of all overwintering monarchs are Midwesterners, making the loss of their primary food source a crisis

(Here’s more about it.)

There are 74 species of milkweed and 17 in Iowa.No doubt about it, these things could be called weeds. Once you get them going, they spread like the dickens from their roots. They’re poisonous too. (But the blooms smell wonderful!) The milk or latex holds cardenolides (cardiac glycosides), toxic chemicals, which make the monarchs taste bad to predators. Handle milkweed with care! However, like many natural products found in plants, these chemicals could be potential medicines both for heart failure and cancer. That’s what natural products chemistry is all about–finding things in nature that can benefit humanity. It also brings up WHY scientists dislike species loss. Besides being a tragedy from a biological standpoint and an aesthetic standpoint, it could be a tragedy from a natural products standpoint. More than butterflies will be wiped out if milkweed plants are lost forever.

An Unruly Woman

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I’m going to have a story in an anthology. It’ll be out November 1 and you can pre-order it here.

To quote from the website

“The Female Complaint:Tales of Unruly Women
A Short Story Anthology
Edited by Rosalie Morales Kearns

ISBN 978-0-9913555-5-6, paperback, 329 pp., $24.95, November 1, 2015

The thirty-six stories in this anthology, all by women authors, center around female characters who follow their own paths and tell the powers-that-be what they don’t want to hear, women who stand up for themselves, for each other, for their beliefs.”

I know you’re all fans of unruly women so check it out!

Back At It

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Thanks for all who voted in that last poll. It looks like Tesla is the man to beat or should I say date? And I do want one of those Tesla cars!

We’re back in lab this week and kind of glad to be back at it. It might surprise people to know that working in a lab is both social and peaceful. The data is what it is and nature takes quite a lot out of your hands. It’s a place where you can control the variables. I can’t say that I enjoy the safety eye-wear but of course, it’s important that a lab be totally safe as well. We got some nice results too.

Research can even be pretty at times.
Research can even be pretty at times.