Thursday, June 14, 2018

J Post - Nothing Is Lost Or Erased in the Digital Age


One hilarious theme in the last few years concerned Hillary wiping her server ("like with a cloth?") and we heard - "using BleachBit" to erase it forever. Not only that, many good cell phones were pounded to bits "to erase all information."

The NSA pulls everything out of the air and off digital devices, storing the data. The emails were never lost. The cell phone material still exists. The NSA always had it.

I tell people "I just phone 1-800-NSA-HELP to retrieve my forgotten passwords."

However, another part of prosecution is introducing information according to legal standards. One enormous help is the legal standing of Weiner's laptop. When the emails and videos from the Insurance folder are introduced into evidence, many more connections will be made.

Backups of servers are made all the time, as a matter of policy. Some are copied at other locations.

The NSA can pull digital photos off smartphones. I could go on. It is a new age. If honest people pursue the truth, America can be restored, but not without God's help.


Beating the Heat in a Drought - Islands of Flowers

Double Delight

Some roses have spectacular blooms but are not as vigorous in their growth. I can think of various small plants with large blooms - Veterans Honor, Double Delight, Fragrant Cloud.

Also, when plants are getting started, the watering they get may give the weeds a better start than the plant. I am using the following to create zones where a plant can do well, rise above weeds, and hold more water in the soil.

Pulling grassy weeds will often not work well, because they want to pull the new plant up with them. Gabe Brown has taught me not to fear the weeds but use their root growth to some extent.


  1. Anything growing can be used against itself, so I snip grassy visitors and leafy weeds with scissors  - or rose shears - sometimes with small battery operated clippers. The cut greens make a layer of mulch, high nitrogen fertilizer.
  2. I place newspaper or cardboard on top of the plant material mulch. Newspaper can be torn to pieces to add to the shading effect, which discourages weed growth. Some small cardboard boxes (crackers, etc) open up perfectly to create an opaque area around the plant, giving it room to grow. This cardboard or newspaper layer blocks sun to hold down weed growth and keep moisture in the soil. Plants do not like hot feet any more than we like walking barefoot on the sidewalk to the mailbox. 
  3. Newspaper and cardboard can be weighed down by wood mulch. I use cyprus rather than dyed wood. Wood mulch does not need dye. I am generous with wood mulch because it does not cost much and looks attractive. Wood slowly decomposes into the soil and boosts the hard-working soil fungi.
  4. My first choice for extra watering is stored rainwater, the second being stored tapwater. Today I took stored rainwater and boosted nine young Crepe Myrtle bushes. Yes, in the not noonday sun. Why? Because if I felt miserable, they felt just as bad. I used the sprinklers on some areas that seemed burning in the heat and relatively dry.
If a plant is well established and healthy, a cool shower on a hot day is be good for it. Water droplets do not burn - they cool. 
 Whimpy Crepe Myrtle - when we moved to the cul-de-sac.


I am likely to give extra compost and mulch to those established plants, because their growth demands more food. Eventually their soil foundation is rich in organic matter, abounding in fungi and soil creatures, trapping nutrition and moisture for the best and healthiest growth.


 The same CM, a few years later.
Wait til this year's blooms are all out.

As I mentioned before, I took the whimpy Crepe Myrtle and doted on it, knowing the plant would bloom in the dry season without my help. I wanted more than ordinary blooms. I wanted the Fourth of July. Every time I had some extra mushroom compost, grass clippings, or wood mulch, the Crepe Myrtle got it.

Pruning is another way to boost growth, so I pruned it all the time, shaping and improving its look.

The Crepe Myrtle became the centerpiece for the cul-de-sac, an explosion of pink blooms that never seemed to quit, pruned away and blooming again.

Each autumn, I pile all the leaves (especially the wet slimy ones from the street) under the CM. The leaves are slowly decomposed during the winter, speeding up by spring, when I add a thin layer of wood mulch so the Calladiums can come through. Now we have them putting up their bright red and green leaves under the CM, a colorful counterpoint.

These ideas all stem from Creation principles, which are already at work, whether we observe them or not. I start with the foundation, the soil and what makes it fertile. Secondly, I avoid man-made toxins which hinder rather than helping the garden. Finally, I try to do extra tasks for plants, insects, birds, and toads, to get the team working faster, better, and more productively. That is roughly .00001% of the garden. God does the rest.

Mark 4:26 And he said, So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground;
27 And should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how.
28 For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.
29 But when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come.

Sassy Sue Sits for a Formal Portrait at J. C. Penney's.
Her Staff Gets Bonus Photos

Sassy Sue is half German Shepherd, half Cattle Dog - intelligent, gentle. loving, and an expert in managing her staff.

Sassy has always been a bit shy around the camera, but we wanted a special portrait of her. Penney's did a great job last year, so we took her to the same studio. As always, awkward poses led to good results, and the photographer was very good.

Sassy was in a goofy mood and wanted tummy rubs to go along with her poses. She barked going in and barked even more while waiting for the selection of poses. She was clearly done with her job for the morning. Everyone loved her as they walked by the tiny office, and some wanted to pet her before and after. Sassy promotes a lot of affection. Ranger Bob insisted on a formal photo and wanted a print. He loves the photos, which were downloaded about an hour after we were done.


One studio posed Chris with plastic flowers, so I brought fresh roses from our garden.



The photographer had us sitting on the floor with Sassy, on our stomachs with her, and trying to make her a lap dog. We had a great time and got some extra photos. Our 49th anniversary is in November.


J Post on Current Developments

 MI - Ministerial Intelligence.

Today should be filled with news about the Inspector General's redacted report. People should call their political representatives and ask that the complete un-redacted report be released. Phone calls are tabulated - they count. So so emails, tweets, and letters.

House of Representatives

The Senate


Many current issues relate to the same set of problems. When we listen to Fox News, I marvel at how they ignore what is happening. However, when we turn to CNN, those newsies remind me of the WELS Appleton Gang - a collection of the inept, always outraged about the truth.

When I gave the last chapter of Liberalism: Its Cause and Cure at a WELS pastors' conference, three men had raging tantrums - Kovaciny, Oelhafen, and Adrian. That was when I decided the paper was the final chapter. NPH published it and and the Shrinkers did their best to get rid of me. The point here is - people rage against the truth, so CNN's behavior has a lot more behind it than Korea or some other topics. Their paradise is threatened and is coming down. We should help that happen.

One topic is world-wide and not recommended for reading. But it has come up repeatedly and unites many of the worst characters involved. Google - Keith Raniere (trafficking cult), Allison Mack (TV star and participant in Raniere cult Nxium), Catherine Oxenberg and her daughter India, same cult. Seagram's Whiskey was once controlled by the Bronfman family, which works with the Rothschilds. The Bronfman sisters spent $150 million supporting Raniere and Nxium. This one topic alone connects England (Jimmy Saville and the royal family), Pope Francis and Argentina/Chile. Additional names to search - or avoid searching - on this topic are Hillary Clinton, Haiti, and Laura Silsby.

The more we are informed, the more difficult it is to fool us.

Dr. J Solves the Creation over Billions of Years Problem


In the 19th century, the Evangelicals and Lutherans faced the issue of Creation versus Evolution with boldness. The LCMS faculty at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, has caught up with them - only a century or two later.

This scientific age creates a problem for churches - we cannot expect people to go along with Creation in six 24-hour days. Thus a solution developed in the 19th century - one so good that it is still being used today. A day could be any length of time, so God could have created over a vast space of time. When the going gets tough, reconsider and compromise.

Demi-Semi-Hemi-Creation Works out This Way

  1. "Let us create the earthworm to mix, fertilize, and aerate soil." 
  2. Millions of years later, "Let us create bacteria to digest the food in the earthworm gut."
  3. The earthworms are all dead, because they were able to swallow soil and leafy material, but they could not digest their own food by themselves.
  4. The created bacteria are dead, because they had no place to do their work and multiply.

I could go on with many more examples. No, this does not prove Creation, because Creation is revealed by the Holy Spirit in the Word. Like the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation of Christ, Creation is a mystery revealed, not a debating point.

However, the field-workers who raise roses, hostas, berries, and Joe Pye realize something. Creation by the Word explains why multiple layers of plant and animal life work and thrive together in many ways at once.

They were created and engineered together, with far more complexity than we can imagine. The "simple" plant cell is more like a complex miniature factory, with many different engines working to move water, obtain food, grow, differentiate, and reproduce. 

If that were not enough, the timing of the natural world is exquisitely precise. 

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms;
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
Earl of Oxford, As You Like it.



Our Crepe Myrtle mother ship leafed out late this spring, so the cardinals did not build their love nest in it. Instead, robins came, built, and raised their young, which were on the ground testing their wings the other day.

Now I am wondering if the Japanese beetles aka June bugs are making their appearance at night.

We have enough problems staging a play or passing a bill in the legislature. A wedding is a series of panic attacks, but God's Creation is managed around us, with few thinking about how endless complexities and dependencies are all organized together.

  1. If a thoughtless gardener makes a mistake, and plants or animals are harmed,
  2. If he gets a 10 horsepower tiller for Father's Day and uses it to wreck the soil,
  3. If by chance, a finger gets in the way of the rose shears, and blood drips onto the garden,
  4. Creation will eventually heal the damage.
If so much can take place without our anxious thoughts, how much more does the Creator mend, heal, and guide us.


Pruning Roses, Weeds, and My Finger

I got my Hidden Lily roots for a song, after the season last year. Now they are coming up in bloom.

Everything is growing in abundance: flowers and grass and weeds. Today, I enjoyed the chance to work on individual plants, pruning away the grassy weeds and dead wood, building up the mulch.

 Joe Pye is hardy, colorful, and the ultimate butterfly plant.

 Cat Mint


The rose collars make it simple to weed-eat some areas, then throw down newspapers and wood mulch. Joe Pye and Shasta Daisies are so vigorous, they almost make their own mulch by growing fast and dominating the space. Roses and hostas need the grassy weeds suppressed close to the plant, especially since squirrels love to plant nut trees with each rose.

I pruned into my left index finger, which did not hurt at all, but started to fertilize the rose plant. Finding a bandage inside elicited suggestions about being more careful.

 I am olde school - I grow my Hummingbird feeders:
Trumpet Vine and Hostas.

The big bloomers of the week are:

  • Hidden Lily Wild Ginger
  • The Mother of All Crepe Myrtles
  • Bergamot
  • Trumpet Vines, front and back yards (Hummingbird delight)
  • Easy Does It roses
  • Pokeweed
  • Butterfly Weed (front and back)
  • Elderberries and Blackberries

 Horse Mint is best marketed as Bee Balm,
and it is great for bees and Hummingbirds.

One can easily determine the popular plants by the ones already sold out at The Growers Exchange:


  1. Common Milkweed
  2. Bee Balm (Bergamot, above)
  3. Borage (Bee Bread)
  4. Cat Mint
  5. Garlic Chives
  6. Fox Glove
  7. Fever Few
  8. Mountain Mint
  9. Mullein - a roadside weed in Michigan
  10. Tansy
  11. Valerian
 Mountain Mint