Permaculture Blog

Toads ewwwww they give you warts. NOT

But does not the Western spadefoot toad have beautiful eyes.

Bob
www.PuraVidaAquatic.com

And look at them growing up Western spadefoot toad

And the “Spade”  on their hind foot not to mention scaring me to death 😃 Waaaaaaaaaaahaaaaaaa

Picture is of the author Stephen Adams erasing our brains.

Scientists have discovered the first direct evidence that a chemical, produced by algae in freshwater all over the UK, might be linked to devastating neurological conditions, such as Alzheimer’s.

Source: Algae found in freshwater in UK could be fuelling dementia epidemic

I really do dislike overly sensationalistic news stories that get plastered across the world headlines.

This toxin BMAA (Wikipedia it my friends) has been known for decades it is not generated in the common green algae that people see in ponds. It is mostly produced by bacteria (called cyanobacteria also known as blue green algae), and in cycads on the island Guam.

Freshwater Cyanobacteria (bacteria) form a very dark green -almost black at times- slime that is usually found coating heavy sludgy organic material on the bottom. Any green or bright green color in ponds especially if it’s floating usually indicates a healthy algal (plants) ecology which prevents the Cyanobacteria (bacteria) from becoming prevalent. But the picture in the actual article is of common everyday normal bright green string algae (plants). You think the news media could show a picture of the actual thing we’re supposed to be afraid of. So I chose a different picture. A picture of the news media erasing our brains :-)

Hey, let us let the news media terrify us so that we will come back and watch/read what to be afraid of tomorrow.

Let’s all be deathly afraid of what we don’t know.

And then kill it. So we will be safe.

By spraying neurotoxins all over the place: on our food, on our roses, on our lawn, in our homes, in our water! , but then blame all our neurological problems on something else that we are hardly ever exposed to. Good thinking everyone.

I know so many people that scream you can’t trust the news media who would be the first people I know to read this and suddenly be terrified of algae because [Stephen Adams, Health Correspondent For The Mail On Sunday] did such a good job of scaring us …

… (Health Correspondent) but apparently doesn’t know or care about the most basic biology.   Hey Stephen Adams and his editor,  bacteria and plants are entirely different organisms.

You know … maybe people who would be terrified of a plant ….
Deserve to be terrified of a plant.

Except they’re the ones doing everything they can to buy the good rat poison.
Sheesh.

I have no idea where to find a business that practices permaculture principles. Do you have any suggestions?

Some Permaculture systems can be installed by regular handypeople. However one of the most difficult area is in landscaping.

While you may have a great Permaculture plan getting a landscape company to not use their library of toxins is a difficult task. And even those that say they are environmentally friendly often use things like neem oil and other “organic” or “green” toxins that are incredibly bad for the environment. And because most homeowners _are_ interested in trying to be environmentally friendly there are quite a few businesses advertising green or environmental or natural or the like that are anything but. Snake oil salesman advertising turf removal who dump tons of toxic chemicals and then stick a few plants around that don’t have their tap roots 20 feet down and fill in the gaps with rocks. These landscapes then use just a hair less or in some cases more irrigation water then your grass did. Turf removal businesses that simply scatter gravel around your yard with a few plants actually promote the use of herbicides because of all the weeds coming up between the rocks. And all the rocks create a thermal heat well. Good idea in Southern California.

There are still several wonderful Permaculture businesses in San Diego and surrounding areas. Who can help you learn how to think about your property. And truly save water, resources, and the environment. Others, unfortunately have gone out of business because of the difficulty of operating in these trying economic times.

Diane Kennedy of Finch Frolic Garden in Fallbrook runs regular tours of her demonstration Garden. She does consultations, puts on an annual marketplace, and has gathered together some information at www.vegetariat.com/resources/

Alden and Ann Hough at Sky Mountain. Sky Mountain Institute is a nonprofit educational, research, and training center. They are in Escondido and regularly run programs on a variety of Permaculture methods www.skymountain.org

Both of the businesses above can help you generate a great plan.

And since 1994 almost 22 years at the date of this post. I have operated PuraVida Aquatic. There is no “s” on the end. I operate from San Diego to Los Angeles helping people enjoy non chemical water features, ponds, rain water catchment and chlorine free swimming pools. I also have a little blog where I gripe about _everything_ :-). www.PuraVidaAquatic.com

Marianne West who with a friend started a podcast and blog called the Sustainable Living Podcast
http://www.sustainablelivingpodcast.com/.

Marianne deserves an award for all the work that she has done for permaculture. I’m not sure that she would classify herself currently as a business but she is an incredibly valuable Permaculture resource.

Chris Meador
http://www.permasystems.org
Rain water catchment tanks.

Is Jacob Hatch still in business? Contact me

I am personally familiar with the people listed here. And the main reason I am familiar with these people is that they put more, and in some cases much more into permaculture than they take out. And isn’t that the core idea behind sustainability! Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we were putting more nutrients into our cropland then we are taking out. That should be part of the corn story

There are other organizations working with Permaculture concepts in this area that I am, unfortunately, not as familiar with. And I have not included local Permaculture farms.

If you have a Permaculture based business or farm in San Diego please, please, contact me www.puravidaaquatic.com/index.php/consulting/ and I would be happy to talk with you and understand more about what you do and possibly add you to this list.

I wish everyone an Alzheimer’s, autism, multiple sclerosis, ADHD, Parkinson’s, mad cow, etc., etc., _etc._, free world.

Bob

I have been very fortunate to have had some of the schooling I’ve had. Neither of my parents had much chemistry or biology at all in school. I do not blame people for not knowing. I do blame people for deliberately ignoring.

It is mind boggling to me how many people know for a _fact_ that OJ Simpson was guilty because of some DNA evidence and at the same time _deliberately_ ignore the DNA evidence of evolution.

There are also those who for some reason believe that “both sides should be taught” in public schools. I would guess that these people think that they are being fair. But they are _not_ being fair _to the kids_.

We have phylogenetic trees now based on step by step by step single base pair changes in DNA. A _Mount Everest_ of data compared to a tiny single grain of sand that was the evidence against OJ.

How many people out there would say that we should teach (aka repeatedly drum into) some kids that they will fall off the edge of the Earth if they explore too far from home while at the same time teaching other kids that exploration is a wonderful and marvelous eye opening experience? How many? Not any that I want to associate with.

Teaching something that inhibits further exploration and learning is not what I want to be around.

Let’s teach that the Sun revolves around the earth because God made the earth first and then the sun in the sky. That’s “the other side” of what we know scientifically and “we should teach both sides.”

The DNA evidence against OJ, which a huge number of people believe, was DNA fingerprinting. DNA fingerprinting is a much more crude method of DNA analysis than sequencing. We now have exact sequences of sections of DNA for hundreds of thousands of organisms. We can now group species phylogenetically not because of what they or their bones _look_ like but because of what the sequence of their DNA itself reveals.

Bright, creative thinking people more than 100 years ago started thinking that our mitochondria, the fundamental power plants in each of our cells, had properties that indicated that they might once have been bacterial parasites. One of the properties that made people wonder was that each mitochondria contained its own DNA. In fact chloroplasts do as well :-)

Today we can sequence mitochondrial DNA and compare this sequence to DNA from other organisms. The exact linear order of hundreds of thousands of base pairs from the DNA of human mitochondria very, very, _very_ closely matches that of bacteria from the purple nonsulfur group. Look at the picture –in the blue “bacteria” blob — off to the right amongst the proteobacteria . That is _our human_ mitochondria. This entire post contains about 705 total words if you found an identical copy of this series of paragraphs somewhere else except for less than 5 single word differences you would not assume that someone else wrote it independently!

Now that I’ve got you looking at the picture, look up at the green blob. Now to the left and down — and the labels from the bottom up are “fungi”, “nucleariids”, and “animals”. The actual length of the lines between forks is a reasonably good (probably the best measurement we’ve got) of how similar biologically the organisms are. Humans, chimpanzees, elephants, dinosaurs!! (Yes all the dinosaurs the feathered dinosaurs ☺, reptiles, Koi, frogs, insects, worms –are _all_ represented on that one tiny line labeled “animals”.

Your brain is probably hurting at this point. I know I’m asking a lot, but I ask you: how is it that people can understand that antibiotics developed for us (up on the animal line) that target and kill organisms as different from us as the organism that causes staph infections
(Staphylococcus aureus — a member of the Firmicutes), way, way, _way_ down in the blue blob at the bottom; that those antibiotics, can have bad side effects on us, and yet the insecticides that kill insects who’s cellular systems are so similar to us that they are only a tiny, tiny fraction of a line away from us, can have absolutely no side effects on us humans at all??? And most insecticides are neurotoxins.
They target the cells in insects that are evolutionarily the sisters and brothers to _our_ brain cells.

Bob

www.PuraVidaAquatic.com

http://www.globalresearch.ca/how-monsantos-glyphosate-attacks-our-core-cellular-functions/5502566

I’ve given talks at Diane Kennedy’s on microbiology and how our mitochondria were originally parasitic bacteria that we came to depend upon. Our mitochondria are the core of our cellular energy systems. Our cells have no other option for using oxygen. If the above article on Monsanto’s glyphosate is remotely true it explains a lot. And it would mean that we have sprayed one of the most insidious and all encompassing poisons ever developed on our food supply in large amounts since 1970.

Bob

One of my clients near downtown Los Angeles is Peace Awareness Labyrinth and Gardens (http://www.peacelabyrinth.org). They are a wonderful group and “get it”. I was looking after their water features this morning and watched a hummingbird take a bath in one. I tried to get my camera out but was not in time to catch the speedy little thing. And that would have been in the end of this post except as I walked toward the other end of the garden…

Townsend’s Warbler???? I’m not good with bird ID so if you- the reader have any ideas feel free to send me a note.

And then as luck would have it a a whole group of Bushtits.

Peace Awareness Labyrinth and Gardens has worked hard to maintain this area as toxin free as possible. Hasn’t always been perfect but we have worked at it.

I have recently heard Pacific chorus frogs singing in the bushes. It is becoming their breeding season and I expect to have tadpoles in some of the water features again this year. There are dragonfly larvae in many of these features as well and they will emerge next year. It is amazing to have a non-toxic wildlife node so near downtown LA.

There is more and more research being done on how birds remember specific locations along their migratory paths and it turns out that they are remarkably adept at remembering specific locations. I expect that as these birds pass along the good news that others will join them in coming years.

Source: Monsanto asks the WHO, and California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, not to list glyphosate as a carcinogen

California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA), gave notice in September that it intended to list glyphosate under proposition 65, a state initiative enacted in 1986 to inform residents about cancer-causing chemicals. State officials said the action is required after the World Health Organization’s (WHO) cancer research committee in March classified glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen.

Monsanto is of course threatening legal action.

PS days later. It sometimes takes a while for things to percolate :-)

I started thinking about this and it seems to me that there is obviously at least some reasonable evidence that glyphosate is a carcinogen. I mean the World Health Organization doesn’t generally operate on a wing and a prayer. It may not be a proven fact yet, but what if even part of the research that the World Health Organization looked at is right? Monsanto it seems would rather error on the side of hurting us all then on the safe side. Even if it is only a mild carcinogen the shear magnitude of its use makes that significant.

Instead of looking at the fact that there is some doubt and either continuing to do research while not selling it, or finding another product, or both, Monsanto has instead put monetary pressure on groups, harassed people and threatened legal action simply so that they can continue to error on the side of hurting the rest of humanity: including children, infants, and unborn fetuses (where is the right to life in that).

Hmmmm makes one question their Christian ideals a bit doesn’t it.

So in spelunking for information on rat and gopher poison I came across the following website that talks about pulling some of them off the market.

http://cen.acs.org/articles/92/i23/Maker-Rat-Poison-d-CON.html

It is a fairly factual article, but then the comments below it caught my eye. I’m pretty sure the comments about an incredibly toxic compound  that is destroying wildlife to the point where the State of California managed to ban it speak for themselves.

Comments
Gayle (August 19, 2014 1:54 PM)
I’ve tried to new stuff without the D Con AND IT DOESN”T WORK> The rats are not attracted to it. Pleae keep on with the D Con.
» Reply

Brittany (October 25, 2014 7:27 PM)
Seriously, I have a rat in my kitchen now terrorizing me crunching loudly on food, and I’ve been searching high and low for this product. Nothing else works. Who paid someone to take this off the shelves?? Probably competitors. This O.G. product works!!! Help nothing else is working!
» Reply

Vladmir Jackofski (December 14, 2014 9:04 PM)
Profits over cures once again! OMG we’re all of a suddenly so concerned about wild life accidentally eating this bait. BS!
» Reply

Paulette (October 12, 2015 5:07 PM)
I personally believe it goes deeper than competitors and profits….the wildlife is only a concern to them now because of the implementation of AGENDA 21…does the word “sustainability” ring a bell? a favorite word of the makers of AGENDA 21. this is becoming the worlds new way of life brought to you by the folks of the UN implemented at the state, city & county levels. Look into this and you will learn how wildlife is going to become more valued than you or I. This is not a joke. They have big plans that are already in full force, by the year 2030 life will be quite different here on mother earth.
» Reply

Doug (December 26, 2015 7:19 PM)
Or, how about the over population problem we have according to the elite? We are now unable to kill mice and rats, and these rodents are responsible for the plague that decimated the world’s population not long ago. Watch for more plague in the near future. Agenda 21 wants to kill us any way possible.
» Reply

Larry (January 4, 2016 9:38 AM)
this once again is an OBAMA agenda idea carried out by the not so hard working left that allows gov. to control our lives. WAKE UP AMERICA !!!!!!!! Next is gun control today by the all mighty KING OBAMA to take away guns so we can’t even shoot the rats.
» Reply

Lisa Dietter (November 6, 2015 11:19 AM)
You have to thank the EPA for forcing this off the market. We will all now be hosting rats and mice on our property. The diseases, fleas etc. that rats and mice carry will start to ramp and they will share what they have. They rats and mice will now be able to enter our homes (kitchens, basements, bedrooms and wherever they want to go.

Thank you EPA, you just made our live more unhealthy!
» Reply

debbie (December 21, 2015 3:31 PM)
I found a few boxes left on shelves…I agree with all comments that this product was the only thing that worked.
» Reply

Mike (January 16, 2015 12:09 AM)
Thankfully, I don’t live in California so I’ve been able to stockpile the good stuff…I’ll never run out! Lol. Just like Diazinon and Chlordane, you just have to stockpile as soon as you hear of a coming ban! :)
» Reply

BillHoo (February 18, 2015 3:52 PM)
You can still find the product via online hardware store sites. Looks like they are still selling online until they get rid of their supply by the March 31 2015 deadline.

I was able to get a good supply of the DCON Mouse and Rat baits from a hardware store whose initials contain the letter “HD” via their website.
» Reply

Do you really think that “liking” a few permaculture posts but never doing anything, never going to a Permaculture meetup, never going to a March against Monsanto activity, never getting together with like-minded individuals, never promoting or hiring a permaculture businesses is going to make a big difference in the world?

But you sure made the effort to click that LIKE button.
Bob

I searched for LD50 bromethalin. LD50 is the amount of toxin given to a group where 50% of the test animals die.  (L)ethal (D)ose 50

Take a group of 10 dogs and give them all concentration X .   Take another group of 10 dogs give them concentration Y.   Another group of 10 dogs get Z.  Concentration X kills 9 of the dogs .  Y kills 5 of the dogs.  Z kills 4 dogs.  18 dogs have died without medical intervention or support therapy (pain medication) to give us Lethal Dose 50 Dog = Y. And they do it for cats, and mice, and rats, and bobwhite quail, other birds, male dogs vs female dogs, ….

There were relatively few hits but here are excerpts from some.  No hits on aquatic or reptile. Which in some ways is a good thing at least those animals didn’t suffer and die. Why are these things approved with …. Sorry rhetorical question. I already know the answer it’s because the companies that produce and test this stuff are big moral Christian people who only have our best interest at heart.

http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/sis/search/a?dbs+hsdb:@term+@DOCNO+6570

Ten random source male domestic short-hair cats, 2 to 6 yr old and 3.0-4.4 kg bw, were each given a single oral dose (1.5 mg/kg) of bromethalin (cat Nos. 1-5) or bait vehicle carrier (cat Nos. 6-10). Bromethalin-dosed cats developed a toxic syndrome characterized by ataxia, focal motor seizures, vocalization, decerebrate posture, decreased conscious proprioception, recumbency, depression, and semicoma. [Snip]… hypertrophied fibrous astrocytes, and hypertrophied oligodendrocytes were observed in the white matter of the cerebrum, cerebellum, brain stem, spinal cord, and optic nerve of all bromethalin-dosed cats.

 

Nine dogs given 6.25 mg bromethalin/kg po developed clinical signs and EEG abnormalities 15-58 hr postdosing. Predominant abnormal EEG changes included spike and spike-and-wave EEG patterns (66%), high voltage slow wave (HVSA, 50-150 microV, 1-6 Hz) activity (44%) photoconvulsive or photoparoxysmal irritative responses (44%), and marked voltage depression (dominant activity [Dorman DC et al; Vet Hum Toxicol 33 (1): 9-11 (1991)] **PEER REVIEWED**

 

LD50 for rats up to the 24th hr after swallowing the /EL614/ was 4.13 mg/kg, and it was 1.78 mg/kg at the 48th hr, and 1.32 mg/kg at the 72nd hr. Intoxication and death set in as the result of impaired function of almost all organs, which was explained by the lipidotropic action of the preparation. Particularly severe were the lesions (hemodynamic and degenerative) in the brain.

 

Dogs given a single oral dose of bromethalin at 6.25 mg/kg developed a toxic syndrome characterized by hyperexcitability, tremors, seizures, depression, and death within 15-63 hours after bromethalin admin. Gross lesions included mild cerebral edema (2/5) and mild pulmonary congestion (2/5). Histologic lesions included diffuse white matter spongiosis [Snip]…

 

In a second 90-day study, groups of 4 male and 4 female beagle dogs were orally dosed by gavage for 90 days at levels of 0, 5, 25, 125, or 200 ug/kg/day with bromethalin technical. Observations included daily clinical evaluations, ophthalmoscopy, body weight, food consumption, clinical pathology evaluations at weeks 6 and 13, necropsy, organ weights and histopathology. The NOEL is 25 g/kg/day. The LOEL is 125 g/kg/day based on spongy degeneration observed in nervous tissue components (cervical, thoracic, and lumbar spinal cord, brain stem, right and left optic nerves, frontal and median brain, pons, and cerebellum) in both sexes of dogs. At the high dose, 3 male dogs displayed the following neurotoxic signs before death or being sacrificed moribund: salivation and hypoactivity, followed by trembling, myoclonia, hyperesthesia, groaning, and decubitus. [Snip]…

 

LD50 Dog oral 4.8 mg/kg
[Krieger, R. (ed.). Handbook of Pesticide Toxicology. Volume 2, 2nd ed. 2001.

LD50 Cat oral 18 mg/kg
[Krieger, R. (ed.). Handbook of Pesticide Toxicology. Volume 2, 2nd ed. 2001.

LD50 Bobwhite quail oral 4.6-11.0 mg/kg /from table/
[USEPA; Reregistration Eligibility Decision Document – [Snip]…

I’m wondering if I can secede from the human race.

http://scvnews.com/2016/01/17/actions-have-consequences-commentary-by-dianne-erskine-hellrigel/

Everything you do either contributes to a healthy environment, or the devastation of the environment.

Take a hike and see discarded plastic bottles and wrappers along a trail in what should be the most pristine of environments. If you’ve seen this, did you pick it up?

This is your Earth, your California, your Santa Clarita. How do you want to live?

Thank you Dianne for your efforts.