Videos to Watch

I watched the Nature series on PBS last night and it was fascinating.  The show was called Botany of Desire and is based on a book by Michael Pollan.  Here is the summary from the webpage: http://www.pbs.org/thebotanyofdesire/video-perspectives.php check out the webpage and look at some of the video.


Flowers. Trees. Plants. We've always thought that we controlled them. But what if, in fact, they have been shaping us? Using this provocative question as a jumping off point, The Botany of Desire, a two-hour PBS documentary based on the best-selling book by Michael Pollan, takes us on an eye-opening exploration of our relationship with the plant world – seen from the plants' point of view.




Every schoolchild learns about the mutually beneficial dance of honeybees and flowers: to make their honey, the bees collect nectar, and in the process spread pollen, which contains the flowers' genes. The Botany of Desire proposes that people and domesticated plants have formed a similarly reciprocal relationship. "We don't give nearly enough credit to plants," says Pollan. "They've been working on us – they've been using us – for their own purposes."



The Botany of Desire examines this unique relationship through the stories of four familiar species, telling how each of them evolved to satisfy one of our most basic yearnings. Linking our fundamental desires for sweetness, beauty, intoxication and control with the plants that gratify them – the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato – The Botany of Desire shows that we humans are intricately woven into the web of nature, not standing outside it.


This show was followed by Silence of the Bees, also very interesting.  Here's the website:  http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/silence-of-the-bees/introduction/38/

Still working on the pepper jelly.  I've supplies a few of the neighbors with tomatoes.  Anyone who gets tomatoes has to take peppersa because I'm running out of things to do with peppers.