Beauty still lingers, yet bounty has arrived

Beauty still lingers, yet bounty has arrived.  Janice and Joy are expert chefs when it comes to cooking the Taiwanese pumpkins, which can be stored for months.  And that solves the problem.  Jo, if you wonder what Christmas gifts you may get this year; here is the not so subtle hint.

Would Thomas Jefferson fight for Confederacy had he been around?

While viewing the two plaques (in the Rotunda, which Jefferson designed) honoring the University of Virginia students who gave their lives serving for Confederacy during the 1861-1865 Civil War, I cannot help but think would Thomas Jefferson fight for Confederacy had he been around?

My answer is sadly yes! Like Robert Lee, if “Virginia goes, I go”; if Virginia goes, Jefferson would go; this much I am sure.  In speaking of Virginia after retirement from the Presidency, he would say “Virginia, my country!”

Not that he was a slave owner, but he advocated the State Right.  He was a true believer of limited Federal Government; he said the State Government would know its people better than the Federal Government.  He once said “that government is best which governs least.”  As we know the South was fighting for their State Right and keep the slavery institution intact was part of their State Right.

Jefferson was of the opinion that if slavery is to be abolished it should be done by the South, not by any process imposed by the North.

Having been a slave owner, Jefferson was tormented by it all his life.  He thought slavery is immoral; one may say he didn’t have the moral courage to let go all his slaves, nor did the economic necessity allow him to do it.

One reads in his Notes on State of Virginia, “And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the mind of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever. . . .”

After reading his Notes on State of Virginia, John Adams said the passages against slavery “are worth diamond.  They will have more effect than Volumes written by mere Philosophers.”

Lincoln expressed similar sentiment in his Second Inaugural,

The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, . . .

Of course, Lincoln quoted directly from Mathew 18:7, not from Jefferson’s.

Language is the generation gap

This September 22 ZITS comic strip shows why Jeremy’s parents cannot communicate with him when they still say “it sucksth”.

Pray was commonly used as ‘please’ (in more earnest plea), less commonly used nowadays, though.  When “Churchill was back” as the First Lord of Admiralty at the outbreak of WWII; he sent out a series of memoranda that became known as the First Lord’s Prayers as they frequent opened with “Pray inform me . . .” or “Pray why has . . . not been done?”.

In a letter to her brother, Austin, Emily Dickinson wrote,

Prithee, my brother,
Into my garden, come!

Prithee is “pray thee” = I ask you, please

This link is to a related topic in my blog,

http://doctorjytsai.blogspot.com/2012/03/americans-like-to-say-lick.html

The flowers and veggies in Monticello’s garden and in ours: a comparison

The best way to elevate our garden/gardening is to find similarities between Monticello’s garden and ours.  We do not have anything to rival his famous garden book, but I have garden posts in my blog and I use FileMaker (a database program) to keep track our garden activity; a program Jefferson would envy.

We cultivate ethnic Chinese/Taiwanese veggies, such as luffa (絲瓜, 菜瓜), Yin-Tsai or Taiwanese spinach (空心菜), bitter squash (苦瓜), 冬莪 or 茼蒿, and Taiwanese pumpkin (南瓜); the veggies that we grew up with.  Thomas Jefferson did the same thing in his Paris garden; he cultivated the veggies that he grew up with and they were not available in Europe then.

The following photos of flowers or veggies are what we saw at Monticello and that we also cultivate in our garden, so I can unabashedly say we have the same taste, if you allow and forgive my indulgence.

foxglove:

Monticello's foxglove

foxglove in our garden

sweet potato:

Monticello's sweet potato

sweet potato in our garden

hibiscus:

Monticello's hibiscus

hibiscus in our garden

cilantro:

Monticello's cilantro

cilantro in the dinner plate from our garden

black-eyed susan:

Monticello's black-eyed susan

black-eyed susan in our garden

corn:

Monticello's corn

corn in our garden

cone flower:

Monticello's cone flower

cone flower in our garden (flanked by canna)

eggplant:

Monticello's eggplant

eggplant in our garden

four o'clock flower:

Monticello's four o'clock flower

four o'clock flower in our garden

kohlrabi:

Monticello's kohlrabi

 

kohlrabi in our garden

gomphrena:

Monticello's gomphrena

gomphrena in our garden

salvia:

Monticello's salvia

salvia in our garden

watermelon:

Monticello's watermelon

watermelon in our garden

greenbean:

Monticello's bean

green bean in our garden

green onion:

Monticello's green onion

green onion (& garlic chive) in our garden

celosia:

Monticello's pink spiked celosia

celosia in our garden

tomato:

Monticello's tomato

tomato from our garden

pepper:

Monticello's pepper

pepper from our garden