The Lunch Box is a great new website I stumbled across, with the goal to improve school lunches, making for healthier, smarter kids. This is such an important issue, especially when you consider the statistics that show that the current generation of teenagers are predicted to be the first generation with a shorter lifespan than their parents, and the prediction that 1 in 3 white and 2 in 3 minority children will be diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes by the time they graduate from high school!

http://www.thelunchbox.org/http:/

If you are interested in reptiles and amphibians, check out this link to the Carolina Herp Atlas:

Since March 2007, the CHA has collected over 15,000 reptile and amphibian observations in the Carolinas. Please submit your reptile and amphibian observations to the Carolina Herp Atlas at www.carolinaherpatlas.org. Contact Steven Price at sjprice@davidson.edu with any questions you might have.

From Steven Price, the Dept. of Biology at Davidson, at way people can help scientists keep track of reptile and amphibian populations:
"Have you ever seen an eastern kingsnake in your backyard or found a Fowler’s toad on your porch and wondered if wildlife biologists needed to know about it? These observations are important and now there is a place to submit your observations that can help with the conservation of amphibians and reptiles in the Carolinas: The Carolina Herp Atlas (CHA). The CHA, developed by the Davidson College Herpetology Laboratory and Davidson College Information Technology Services, is an online database that uses observations by citizen scientists to track reptile and amphibian distributions in North and South Carolina. Funded by the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission and South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, the CHA also allows users a simple way to maintain a personal database of the reptiles and amphibians they observe. County-level distribution maps can be viewed by anyone who visits the website. Wildlife biologists and herpetologists can use these data to understand activity periods, habitat relationships, distribution, conservation status and other facets of amphibian and reptile ecology in North Carolina.
How does the CHA work? Before you can submit records, you must first register and set-up a “My Herps” account. Once you register, you are able to add records and keep track of your observations. Each observation should include: 1) state and county, 2) genus and species, 3) date, 4) location, 5) geographic coordinates (using our GeoLocator) 6) remarks, 7) and a digital photo for verification of the species identification. The GeoLocator allows the user to pinpoint the exact location of their herp observation.
Since March 2007, the CHA has collected over 15,000 reptile and amphibian observations in the Carolinas. Please submit your reptile and amphibian observations to the Carolina Herp Atlas at www.carolinaherpatlas.org. Contact Steven Price at sjprice@davidson.edu with any questions you might have."

Fruit tree grafting

I have a wonderful old pear tree in my yard. I have no idea how old it is, but half of the tree trunk is rotted away, and anyone looking at it would wonder how it could still be alive. Two years ago, our first summer in the house, it boasted a huge number of large round, green, crisp and juicy pears. They were delicious! Last year it produced nothing, but I have hope for this coming year. Anyway, my fear is that one day an ice storm (or a slight breeze) will come along and the old dear will split in two. In the hopes of keeping this glorious, if unknown, variety of pear going, I just took cuttings to provide scions for grafting. A farm up in Reidsville, Century Farm Orchards (www.centuryfarmorchards.com), grows heirloom varieties of apples and pears, ones grown for hundreds of years in the South, and adapted to our climate. They will also graft trees if people have old varieties at home they want to perpetuate. Fruit trees are typically grafted: this means that the top portion of the tree is one variety, and the bottom (roots) is a different variety, one which is more hardy than the top. Rootstock may also lend size characteristics to the tree, with semi- dwarf and dwarf rootstocks available which limit the height of the tree. They'll take my cuttings, graft (attach) to a hardy rootstock, and look after the new creations throughout the summer. Then, in the fall, the proper time to plant fruit trees, I'll ride up to CFO and pick up my new baby pear trees! I'll plant the pears near the 4 heirloom apple varieties I got at CFO last fall.

I'm already looking forward to having some of their sublime homemade apple cider.