Day One

Today was my first day in gardening training. As expected, the class was dominated by women. Of the thirty-four participants, twenty-six are women.

We had a three-hour lecture this morning on soil science by a soil scientist from the local university. He focused on salty soil conditions, a big issue in the desert. This afternoon there was another three hours on basic botany by an extension agent, also from the university. Both were interesting, but very, very technical and at times, hard for me to follow.

I was surrounded by people furiously trying to take down every word these guys said. If this program demands that I understand cell biology, I'm in trouble. I am confident that we were supposed to get the big concepts, in a general way and not the minutiae.

My long tenure at Tedious Systems has given me a pretty good idea of what will turn out to be important and what is just interesting to know. They gave us each a three-inch thick manual, that covers the same material as the lectures, so I figured what was the point of taking notes? I'll reread the book and I will be fine.

One of our speakers was talking about photosynthesis and he strayed into global warming. He flat out said that the notion that carbon dioxide is causing global warming is wrong and that many of the scientists that signed on to the idea are rethinking it. He claims that water vapor is the problem and that global warming will turn out to be from natural causes.

He may be right or he may be wrong. I am an agnostic on the causes of global warming, so I don't feel like I have a dog in the fight, but let me tell you, it made some folks uncomfortable.

All in all, it was today good experience, but it felt a little like working to me. I am looking forward to the coming weeks to see how things unfold.

Marcia commented on yesterday's post by asking about life insurance for burial costs. I suppose it never hurts to have insurance enough to bury you. Just buy term life, not whole life.

The Sneeds don't go in for burial, so it isn't an issue for me. Mrs. Sneed can have a yard sale to raise the few dollars it will take to cremate me, should we blow through the vast Sneed fortune before I die.




Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky