On Fri, 28 Jun 2013 07:30:56 -0400, Pat Kiewicz wrote:

Oh, I hope he plans to release them somewhere. What a lovely snake.

All dangerous critters get released into my ravine, which is filled
with poison oak (which I had to tunnel through wrist-thick poison
oak fines with a chain saw, just to get to).
http://www1.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/11947484.jpg

The only one who goes down there is me; this picture shows why:
http://www1.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/11917454.jpg

We call it the "ravine of death", since there are so many poisonous
creatures and plants living and relocated there ...
http://www5.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/11917693.jpg

On Thu, 27 Jun 2013 21:48:01 -0700, Roy wrote:

Yes, it would be better Danny...it is not necessary for quality
on these forums. If you were entering a contest then the
image would of necessity be your best.

OK. I'll start putting the 640x480 pictures there.

If anyone wants the larger ones, they'll need to know to
substitute "img" for "640" to get the zoomable details.

PS: They both (big or small) load fine for me, and my Internet
comes in through 15 miles of air to an antenna on my roof via
WiFi. It was a bear to set up, but, now it's working (for all
but for the VOIP - which has jitter that's too high. Sigh.)

On Thu, 27 Jun 2013 15:05:59 -0500, Natural - Smoking Gun - Girl wrote:

Those thorns are crazy!!

That's why I own a lot of very long and thick gloves and why I've
researched which are the best price for the best protection.
(Hint: Welding stores have the best value in wrist-long work gloves.)
http://www2.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/11925505.jpg

You may or may not have noticed the black stains all over those
gloves. That's oxidized urushiol. The oil from the poison oak plant.
http://www5.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/11917988.jpg

My work clothes are covered in these black splotches because the
oil literally splashes on me when I'm chain sawing tunnels through
the poison oak jungle.
http://www2.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/11917950.jpg

Literally a human cannot pass without cutting through or hacking
through. I used to use a machete, but, it was just too tiring.
http://www2.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/11925520.jpg

Of course, I've also learned how to deal with avoiding, and
ameliorating the inevitable rash - all of these topics we've
covered in gory pictorial detail in a.h.r in the past year or so
when I came out.
http://www4.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/11926557.jpg

On Thu, 27 Jun 2013 14:09:40 -0700, Oren wrote:

*Almost* like cactus thorns.... they hurt

In my younger days, hiking with running shoes, I stepped on a small
fuzzy soft plant with many short puffy branches looking like cute
teddy bear arms.

Ouch! Jumping Cholla. Opuntia bigelovii

I no gotta lotta lovi for that plant!

On Thu, 27 Jun 2013 11:58:23 -0700, chaniarts wrote:

Wouldn't shoveling it at the root base first to loosen it help out?
http://www.leevalley.com/US/garden/p...,40706&p=10418

I like the idea of the water weeder!
http://www5.picturepush.com/photo/a/...0/13430193.png

In effect, that's what I did with the garden hose nozzle.

However, I just realized, from your post, that I had this big boy
buried in my tool shed!
http://www1.picturepush.com/photo/a/...0/13430394.jpg

I have to go out now but I'm going to try it on a forest of Scotch Broom:
http://www1.picturepush.com/photo/a/...0/13430429.jpg

And, if it works on that easy stuff, then I'll try it on the
vastly more tenacious Spanish Broom later on today:
http://www4.picturepush.com/photo/a/...0/13430437.jpg

Note: Substitute "img" for "640" for a larger-definition photo.

On Fri, 28 Jun 2013 14:40:28 +0000 (UTC), "Danny D."
wrote:

In my younger days, hiking with running shoes, I stepped on a small
fuzzy soft plant with many short puffy branches looking like cute
teddy bear arms.

A neighbor has a cactus with what looks like cotton candy. I handled a
piece he cut off using gloves.

Later I noticed that the gloves felt like it had thorns inside.

Danny D. wrote:
On Thu, 27 Jun 2013 16:44:17 -0500, Natural - Smoking Gun - Girl
wrote:

aaahhh Dark horses are good entertainers!

Naaaah. I ain't no dark horse; I'm just a responsive polite
experienced inquisitive friendly erudite nntp poster who likes to
learn & teach.

I like that too!

--
Natural Girl //(**)\\

Danny D. wrote:
On Thu, 27 Jun 2013 22:20:19 -0500, Natural - Smoking Gun - Girl
wrote:

I was going to try to catch one THAT big?

I've never caught a tarantula - but that story of the spider being
bigger than the jar is interesting!

My penultimate black widow was huge - but - she turned out to be
pregnant!
http://www5.picturepush.com/photo/a/...0/13430013.jpg

ugh ... my worst nightmare ... years ago when my kids were toddlers, a
black widow decided to make it's nest right nest to our front porch steps.
I was scared of it, but more protective of my kids, so I said my short
condolences to the spider with the egg sac and prompted smashed it and its
progeny with a big board!

--
Natural Girl //(**)\\

Danny D. wrote:
On Fri, 28 Jun 2013 07:30:56 -0400, Pat Kiewicz wrote:

Oh, I hope he plans to release them somewhere. What a lovely snake.

All dangerous critters get released into my ravine, which is filled
with poison oak (which I had to tunnel through wrist-thick poison
oak fines with a chain saw, just to get to).
http://www1.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/11947484.jpg

The only one who goes down there is me; this picture shows why:
http://www1.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/11917454.jpg

We call it the "ravine of death", since there are so many poisonous
creatures and plants living and relocated there ...
http://www5.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/11917693.jpg

That must be the ultimate place to take out your frustrations on!

--
Natural Girl //(**)\\

Danny D. wrote:
On Thu, 27 Jun 2013 15:05:59 -0500, Natural - Smoking Gun - Girl
wrote:

Those thorns are crazy!!

That's why I own a lot of very long and thick gloves and why I've
researched which are the best price for the best protection.
(Hint: Welding stores have the best value in wrist-long work gloves.)
http://www2.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/11925505.jpg

You may or may not have noticed the black stains all over those
gloves. That's oxidized urushiol. The oil from the poison oak plant.
http://www5.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/11917988.jpg

My work clothes are covered in these black splotches because the
oil literally splashes on me when I'm chain sawing tunnels through
the poison oak jungle.
http://www2.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/11917950.jpg

Literally a human cannot pass without cutting through or hacking
through. I used to use a machete, but, it was just too tiring.
http://www2.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/11925520.jpg

Of course, I've also learned how to deal with avoiding, and
ameliorating the inevitable rash - all of these topics we've
covered in gory pictorial detail in a.h.r in the past year or so
when I came out.
http://www4.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/11926557.jpg

hmmm I've never known anyone to tackle poison oak on such a gigantic level
before. I'm not sure I really understand how you manage to not get the
rash, tho.

--
Natural Girl //(**)\\

On Fri, 28 Jun 2013 11:18:02 -0500, Natural - Smoking Gun - Girl wrote:

Naaaah. I ain't no dark horse; I'm just a responsive polite
experienced inquisitive friendly erudite nntp poster who likes to
learn & teach.

I like that too!

It's amazing, but some people think I'm weird, simply because I post pictures
of what I'm doing, and I ask a lot of questions, yet I always answer all the
requests politely, and I even buy a few more things to test them out for the
group (e.g., with the hose nozzles).

They're not used to someone being responsive, and closing the conversation
with the updated results, and, giving updates along the way. They think there
is something sinister about that ...

Oh well - I guess I am a dark horse after all ...

On Fri, 28 Jun 2013 11:22:07 -0500, Natural - Smoking Gun - Girl wrote:

That must be the ultimate place to take out your frustrations on!

Well, it's 500 yards of poison oak jungle! I'm the only one who ever goes
there (I wonder why). It's very peaceful. The birds like me because I hacked
out a trail,and they were right behind me, eating the bugs that I had to
dig out of the steep hillside with my gas cultivator in tow.

Note: Using a cultivator on a steep hillside of poison oak was when I
got the worst case yet. Something about chewing up poison oak vines in
the tines got the stuff on me, no matter how hard I tried to dress for
success.

Here you can see one of the "momma vines" which was about as big as they
get in my ravine, where it's just oozing with enough urushiol sap to
infect every human on earth!
http://www1.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/11947484.jpg

On Fri, 28 Jun 2013 11:20:14 -0500, Natural - Smoking Gun - Girl wrote:

I was scared of it, but more protective of my kids

Every mother would do the same to protect her kids.

My kids always knew to scream, and I'd come a' running, to take care
of whatever it was that scared them, whether it be a rattler, gopher
snake, black widow spider, daddy longlegs, or even a bee or horsefly!

On Fri, 28 Jun 2013 08:50:10 -0700, Oren wrote:

Later I noticed that the gloves felt like it had thorns inside.

That's because it did!

On Fri, 28 Jun 2013 11:27:04 -0500, Natural - Smoking Gun - Girl wrote:

hmmm I've never known anyone to tackle poison oak on such a gigantic level
before. I'm not sure I really understand how you manage to not get the
rash, tho.

I tunneled through about 500 feet of poison oak jungle over a period
of a few months.
http://www1.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/11917454.jpg

I learned a lot! It's all in the a.h.r threads.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!to...B1-25-false%5D

Of course, you'll notice I'm covered in a sweatshirt and boots and jeans
and leather gloves. I probably should have worn a hat and a scarf, but
there's only so much you can wear in 70° to 80° weather.
http://www4.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/11917872.jpg

If I were a fireman, I could afford (at public expense) the expensive
ivy block creams and the ultra expensive ($40/ounce) Technu creams; but,
since I'm just a regular guy, I get drillers Bentonite clay for free
ivy block, and and I buy 20¢/ounce Dawn liquid detergent as my poor
man's Technu:
http://www5.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/11917988.jpg

Of course, the urushiol catechol penetrates the skin within 15 minutes;
but I can't wash up every 15 minutes so after about 2 to 3 hours of
being covered in poison oak bits, I disrobe in the laundry room, wash
everything I have, and take a shower covered from head to toe in Dawn
dish detergent.
http://www4.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/11926802.jpg

Detoxifying the camera is an additional step, I incur, for the team,
since poison oak has been known to stay viable for over 100 years:
http://www4.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/11926557.jpg

For any spots I've missed, I'll know within a day or two, and for those,
I brew up the concoction that I had posted, which includes tooth paste which
contains silicon dioxide (i.e., very find sand) which scrubs away the skin
around the spot, and then I let the Dawn dish detergent work its magic.

I should buy a pint of spermicide, that would work even better because
the surfactant disrupts cell membranes, and it yanks the oxidized urushiol
(which is a quinone by now) off the cell receptor site.
http://compare.ebay.com/like/1209722...pes& var=sbar

At the risk of saying too much, the quinone attached to Langerhans cells
under my first few layers of skin, is what my body's T-Cells react to
by producing a cytokine storm, which, like a hand grenade, destroys all
the cells in the vicinity of the quinone (hence the blisters from dead
cell cytoplasm, and the itching from dead nerve cells, which get caught
up in the dragnet).

The spermicide is a tiny surfactant, which is small enough to wiggle
into the tight spots, where it wrests the quinone off the Langerhans
cells before the body does too much damage with the cytokine grenades.

Oh oh ... I think I've said too much. Anyway, that's how it works.
Sun Tzu told me (a few thousand years ago) that you must know your
enemy and know yourself - and only then, do you stand a fighting chance
of not getting poison oak too badly after battling all day against this:
http://www5.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/11917693.jpg

On Thu, 27 Jun 2013 15:12:04 -0500, Natural - Smoking Gun - Girl wrote:

Nice tools!

Well, I experimented this morning with the weed washer thing:
http://www1.picturepush.com/photo/a/...0/13435889.jpg

It gave mixed results ...

Here you see me begin my attack on a combination of Scotch &
Spanish Broom, which infests acres of my hillsides:
http://www3.picturepush.com/photo/a/...0/13435901.jpg

I start by plunging the double-barreled weed waster directly into
the heart of the noxious weeds, and holding it there for minutes
at a time, as muddy fluids bubbled out and down the hillside:
http://www4.picturepush.com/photo/a/...0/13435907.jpg

The Scotch Broom surrenders as easily as the French in WWII,
after just a few moments of coercion; but the Spanish Broom
stood its ground with the tenacity of Japanese Bushido:
http://www3.picturepush.com/photo/a/...0/13435936.jpg

The problem is that you can't press any deeper than the foot
pedal, so, you can only go about six inches deep:
http://www3.picturepush.com/photo/a/...0/13435916.jpg

So, you can soak, and soak, and soak, but you're only going to
liquify the first foot or so of soil - and nothing much deeper:
http://www2.picturepush.com/photo/a/...0/13435920.jpg

So, I ditched the double-barreled water washer:
http://www3.picturepush.com/photo/a/...0/13435926.jpg

And, brought back my trusty American Made brass hose nozzle:
http://www5.picturepush.com/photo/a/...0/13435928.jpg

I wrapped the Spanish Broom in my hand like a bronco rider:
http://www2.picturepush.com/photo/a/...0/13435930.jpg

And I pulled. And I tugged. And I pulled harder. And tugged harder!
http://www2.picturepush.com/photo/a/...0/13435940.jpg

It wouldn't budge!

Finally, I resorted to *the claw*:
http://www3.picturepush.com/photo/a/...0/13436001.jpg

Exhausted, mud spattered, battered, bruised, the enemy finally
yielded, the wrist-thick root cut off, its dying grip still
holding fast to the soil:
http://www1.picturepush.com/photo/a/...0/13436014.jpg

Having said all that above, the mixed results are that on much
younger and smaller enemies, the water weeder things did work
wonders, making it trivially easy to pull them out by hand:
http://www4.picturepush.com/photo/a/...0/13436017.jpg

On Fri, 28 Jun 2013 15:12:35 +0000, Danny D. wrote:

I like the idea of the water weeder!
http://www5.picturepush.com/photo/a/...0/13430193.png

Just to report back to the team, when I picked on the smaller,
more vulnerable weeds, like the Wild Mustard, and baby Scotch
and infant Spanish Broom, the weed washer method worked rather
well.

These branched Spanish Broom babies came up easily:
http://www5.picturepush.com/photo/a/...0/13436063.jpg

The Spanish Broom infants were almost trivial when wet:
http://www3.picturepush.com/photo/a/...0/13436066.jpg

Some held on for a few seconds, but eventually yielded easily:
http://www3.picturepush.com/photo/a/...0/13436071.jpg

The thick-rooted ones were the worst - but even they fell:
http://www4.picturepush.com/photo/a/...0/13436082.jpg

So, it seems, the water nozzle trick *does work* rather well:
http://www5.picturepush.com/photo/a/...0/13436083.jpg

As long as we pick on weeds with taproots of only a foot or two:
http://www1.picturepush.com/photo/a/...0/13436084.jpg

On 6/28/2013 11:32 PM, Danny D. wrote:
On Fri, 28 Jun 2013 11:18:02 -0500, Natural - Smoking Gun - Girl
wrote:

Naaaah. I ain't no dark horse; I'm just a responsive polite
experienced inquisitive friendly erudite nntp poster who likes
to learn & teach.

I like that too!

It's amazing, but some people think I'm weird, simply because I post
pictures of what I'm doing, and I ask a lot of questions, yet I
always answer all the requests politely, and I even buy a few more
things to test them out for the group (e.g., with the hose nozzles).

They're not used to someone being responsive, and closing the
conversation with the updated results, and, giving updates along the
way. They think there is something sinister about that ...

Oh well - I guess I am a dark horse after all ...


Not at all Danny, I think it's great that you post links to pictures of
what you're writing about. You're not forcing anybody to look at your
pictures and anyone who chastises you for posting links to pictures is
an idiot. I have pictures of the kind of work I do and have posted a
link here to some of them in the past. Since me and JH do contract labor
for a national service company, I have to take pictures of the repairs
and installations we do all the time then upload them to the company's
website. I also must label the pictures with the work order number, job
name and the date. Keep on posting links to your pictures Danny, it does
help me learn about what your problems are and the solutions that you
come up with. ^_^

TDD

On Sat, 29 Jun 2013 04:32:27 +0000 (UTC), "Danny D."
wrote:

It's amazing, but some people think I'm weird, simply because I post pictures
of what I'm doing, and I ask a lot of questions, yet I always answer all the
requests politely, and I even buy a few more things to test them out for the
group (e.g., with the hose nozzles).

They're not used to someone being responsive, and closing the conversation
with the updated results, and, giving updates along the way. They think there
is something sinister about that ...

Relax Danny. I enjoy your threads and photos. I've learned a few
things from them and enjoy the banter. Keep doing what you do.

'course sometimes I will poke you a bit for fun, but nothing personal.

On Saturday, June 29, 2013 5:17:28 AM UTC-6, The Daring Dufas wrote:
On 6/28/2013 11:32 PM, Danny D. wrote:

On Fri, 28 Jun 2013 11:18:02 -0500, Natural - Smoking Gun - Girl

wrote:



Naaaah. I ain't no dark horse; I'm just a responsive polite

experienced inquisitive friendly erudite nntp poster who likes

to learn & teach.



I like that too!



It's amazing, but some people think I'm weird, simply because I post

pictures of what I'm doing, and I ask a lot of questions, yet I

always answer all the requests politely, and I even buy a few more

things to test them out for the group (e.g., with the hose nozzles).



They're not used to someone being responsive, and closing the

conversation with the updated results, and, giving updates along the

way. They think there is something sinister about that ...



Oh well - I guess I am a dark horse after all ...





Not at all Danny, I think it's great that you post links to pictures of

what you're writing about. You're not forcing anybody to look at your

pictures and anyone who chastises you for posting links to pictures is

an idiot. I have pictures of the kind of work I do and have posted a

link here to some of them in the past. Since me and JH do contract labor

for a national service company, I have to take pictures of the repairs

and installations we do all the time then upload them to the company's

website. I also must label the pictures with the work order number, job

name and the date. Keep on posting links to your pictures Danny, it does

help me learn about what your problems are and the solutions that you

come up with. ^_^



TDD

And those smaller sized pics are great as well Danny. Good show.

On Sat, 29 Jun 2013 09:05:31 -0700, Roy wrote:

And those smaller sized pics are great as well Danny. Good show.

I hate to provide *less* information than I can, but, the
consolation is that anyone interested can substitute "img"
for the "640" to get that larger image.

On Thu, 27 Jun 2013 15:05:59 -0500, Natural - Smoking Gun - Girl wrote:

I've seen something similar to those growing on
the side of the highway

Funny thing happened today when I opened the green garden recycling
bin. All the nascent flowers had erupted into seeds!
http://image.bayimg.com/854d9f9f82de...20bf7c98e2.jpg

Now I know why they said you have to collect the heads - as the
Bull Thistle spends all its remaining energy making sure the seeds
survive:
http://image.bayimg.com/d966555a10e5...c92347c4f1.jpg

And, I can see why they said the plant only spreads a few feet, as
the seed itself extremely easily falls off the downy parachute:
http://image.bayimg.com/50a9de66c000...93d0af524e.jpg

"Danny D." wrote in
news
On Fri, 28 Jun 2013 11:18:02 -0500, Natural - Smoking Gun - Girl
wrote:

Naaaah. I ain't no dark horse; I'm just a responsive polite
experienced inquisitive friendly erudite nntp poster who likes to
learn & teach.

I like that too!

It's amazing, but some people think I'm weird, simply because I post
pictures of what I'm doing, and I ask a lot of questions, yet I always
answer all the requests politely, and I even buy a few more things to
test them out for the group (e.g., with the hose nozzles).

They're not used to someone being responsive, and closing the
conversation with the updated results, and, giving updates along the
way. They think there is something sinister about that ...

Oh well - I guess I am a dark horse after all ...


Well Danny, I don't think you are a dark horse. I think you are a moron.

--
Do you consider my post to be politically incorrect? Report me to the
NSA by calling 1-800-EAT-****

On 29 Jun 2013 20:30:58 GMT, JoeBro wrote:


Well Danny, I don't think you are a dark horse. I think you are a moron.

Go jump on Danny. He will take the wind out of your sail!

I'm the one that called Danny a dark horse - the first time

Shall I give a llink for the song

On Sat, 29 Jun 2013 20:30:58 +0000, JoeBro wrote:

I think you are a moron.

Spoken by one who should know because he has
a lot of practice being one.

Danny D. said:


On Fri, 28 Jun 2013 07:30:56 -0400, Pat Kiewicz wrote:

Oh, I hope he plans to release them somewhere. What a lovely snake.

All dangerous critters get released into my ravine, which is filled
with poison oak (which I had to tunnel through wrist-thick poison
oak fines with a chain saw, just to get to).
http://www1.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/11947484.jpg

My brother would freak just thinking about such giant poison oak plants.
As a kid, he spent much of one summer indoors due to an extreme reaction
(that required medical intervention and injections). He can get a rash
just walking by a patch. As the older sib I had to learn to identify poison
ivy and point it out. All these years later, it's still automatic for me to ID
poison ivy, oak, or sumac to anyone nearby. I am amazingly good at
spotting it.

Oh, an good on you for relocating rather than eliminating the snakes and
such. Though I don't think I'd be as kind to the black widows. I only
rescue jumping spiders. I sometimes rescue the crab spiders that come in
on flowers. The rest get squished.

--
Pat in Plymouth MI

"Yes, swooping is bad."

email valid but not regularly monitored

helloo

hello world

On Mon, 01 Jul 2013 07:47:19 -0400, Pat Kiewicz wrote:

http://www1.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/11947484.jpg
it's still automatic for me to ID poison ivy, oak, or sumac
I am amazingly good at spotting it.

I understand what you mean, as I am always identifying it for the
grandkids, who wander by oblivious to all harm.

Nobody is immune to cell-mediated immune responses (since the T-Cell
are randomly generated and passed by the Thymus), but some people just
haven't (randomly) gotten it yet. Or, they haven't gotten enough of a
dose that their T-Cells wandered by a urushiol quinone which has
bound to a receptor site on a Langerhans cell in their skin.

NOTE: Contact dermatitis is NOT mediated by humoral antigen/antibody
responses, so, all the conventional wisdom of "being immune" goes out
the door.

In the case of the amount of sap in that picture, almost nobody on
earth would not respond to that amount, were it to touch skin (keeping
in mind, the urushiol oil is known to stay active over 100 years in
dendrology drawers) and probably 10 years in my relatively dry climate.

On Mon, 01 Jul 2013 07:47:19 -0400, Pat Kiewicz wrote:

As a kid, he spent much of one summer indoors due to an extreme reaction
(that required medical intervention and injections).

I think those who have had an extreme reaction have had a pretty good
dosage of the plant, since the oils do not migrate per se; the oils
are "spread" (just like any other oil) though, and, in fact, 1/4 of
an ounce of urushiol is said to be enough to infect all people on earth:
http://poisonivy.aesir.com/view/fastfacts.html

Given the amount on a pinhead can give 500 people the rash, it would
not take all that much to cover your body in the oil; hence the key
to preventing that extreme reaction is to avoid the urushiol in the
first place.

However, when you have to tunnel through 500 feet of the thick tangly
vines, there is no way to completely avoid exposure. All you can do
is ameliorate the damage by knowing thine enemy and knowing yourself
(which is what Sun Tzu taught us a few thousand years ago).

Given the minute amounts it takes to "infect", you can't avoid getting
the urushiol-laced sap on your skin; and, once on the skin (which is
inevitable when you're chain sawing the stuff for hours) it behooves
us to get it *off* the skin if we can. As soon as we can.

It turns out that it's not easy to *remove* urushiol from the skin
because the lipid easily diffuses past cell membranes deeper into
the layers of your skin within 15 minutes of exposure and then the
urushiol is oxidized into a quinone (i.e., an oxidized aromatic),
which binds to large skin proteins - which, I must emphasize,
are the real culprit in the type IV immune response.

Note: Type IV cell mediated immune responses have *nothing* to do
with humoral antibodies; so, the normal rules of immunity that most
people think of, as in vaccines, do not at all apply!

Since these now-modified proteins suddenly *appear* to be foreign to
our (randomly-sensitized) T lymphocytes, the T-cells elicit a vicious
but localized cytokine attack, which is sort of like throwing a purple
anti-personnel marker grenade into a foxhole. This cytokine grenade
basically marks all your cells in the localized vicinity of the
offending now-mutant protein for death. As soon as your circulating
white blood cells smell the cytokines, they turn into cannibalistic
zombies, who eat all the marked cells, thereby destroying not only
the mutant proteins - but also killing your uninfected cells, and,
in part, your nervous tissue, so, that's what's causing the classic
poison oak rash of redness (i.e., blood), blisters (i.e., lymph)
and itching (i.e., damaged nerves):
http://waynesword.palomar.edu/images2/urushiol1d.jpg

The trick in preventing or reducing the rash after the protein is
forced to the other side is to direct a probing attack at the
pentadecacatechol (aka hydroureshiol) quinone. You do this by
substituting a harmless decoy for the offending hapten before
the T-cells have had a chance to mark them with cytokines.

It turns out that spermicides, which are tiny surfactants, are just
the ticket for swapping themselves in place of the quinone on your
skin proteins. If you're late to the game, you need to scrape
the skin with something (anything) that will allow the surfactant
to reach the Langerhans cells. The Zanfel/Technu creams use little
balls of polyethylene; but I use baking soda or toothpaste (which
contains tiny grains of sand) to the same effect.

The magic of the expensive creams is that they scrub, oxidize,
wash away, and substitute themselves for the quinone. My poor-man's
Zanfel/Technu does the same thing (we hope) by scrubbing (baking
soda or toothpaste abrasive), oxidizing (dilute bleach or peroxide),
washing away (full-strength dawn dish detergent), and substituting
(industrial non-ionic cleaners such as nonyl phenyl ethoxylate).

http://www2.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/11912430.jpg

["Followup-To:" header set to rec.gardens.]
On Thu, 27 Jun 2013 05:47:06 +0000 (UTC), Danny D. wrote:
On Wed, 26 Jun 2013 15:42:03 +0000, Kay Lancaster wrote:

I control it here in my Oregon yard with heading the flowers**
as soon as I see them, and spot applications of glyphosate on
established plants in the fall.

Hi Kay,

I have 5 gallons of concentrated 40-something percent glyphosate, so,
I do have plenty to go around ... but what does "heading" mean?

Gads! That's a 500 year supply for me!

I guess that means to chop off the purple 'ball' at the top?
http://www1.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/13420064.jpg

Not just the purple, but the green "ball" underneath it. That's where
the seeds are going to form.


What about the green balls that look slightly different?
http://www2.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/13420070.jpg

Thistles are members of the Asteraceae, also known as the Compositae,
a very large family where the individual flowers are often mistaken
for "petals". The seed forming portion of the flower, the ovary, is
underneath the actual flower, and inside that cluster of overlapping
green bracts. And there can be literally thousands of flowers in one
of these "flower-looking" inflorescences (cluster of flowers).

If you think of a dandelion "flower", it's a disk about an inch or so
across when blooming. There are lots of little green leafy things
surrounding each "flower", that are really bracts, modified leaves.
http://newfs.s3.amazonaws.com/taxon-...-ahaines-b.jpg shows the greenish and brownish bracts on red-seeded dandelion,
a species you probably haven't met. And then you can see the yellowish
things that most people think of as petals, but they're actually
complete flowers... just a whole bunch of them gathered up together.
http://newfs.s3.amazonaws.com/taxon-...-ahaines-a.jpg See those sticky-up things with a double curlicue
at the tip? those are the tips of the pistil, which, like the mustard, is
a compound ovary with two carpels -- the curls are the stigmas of the flowers.
T

Here's a photo of a single dandelion flower: http://www.plingfactory.de/Science/A...nzelbluete.jpg
The curls at the top are the stigmas, and then just below that, you'll
notice a thicker yellow ring. That ring is 5 stamens, fused together
by their anthers, into a ring around the style of the pistil. http://www.inhs.uiuc.edu/~kenr/Photos/Taraxacum2.jpg Inside the ring of stamens is the
"neck" of the pistil, called the style, and way down at the
bottom of the flower, you'll see something that looks like a small white
sunflower "seed", which is the ovary of the flower. The white fluff is usually
interpreted as sepals, modified into seed hairs. The flat yellow thing over
to one side is actually 5 petals, fused together through most of their length
if you look at a dandelion flower you'll see that the "petals" look
like they've got teeth, and those are the tips of the real petals.
http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4038/4...8b088dfe_z.jpg

So whole flower-like inflorescence has multiple flowers crowded in it (why? Probably because it's easier for pollinators to spot a big clump of little flowers than single little flowers. It also spreads the bloom time, lengthening
the time when there's a chance a pollinator might pollinate it and you'd
get seeds forming. Once all the flowers in the head have bloomed, the
bracts close up, and you get the narrow fluff-end stage as the petals
and stamens dry up and the pistils start maturing their seeds.
http://www.cepolina.com/photo/nature...mus-flower.jpg
And finally, when the seeds inside the fruits are mature, the
bracts drop once again and you get the fluffball stage:http://i00.i.aliimg.com/wsphoto/v0/7...pping-E007.jpg where you can see the white hairs that were WAY down
in the real flower making the downy parachutes for the matured fruits,
the brown seeds.

Anyhow, your thistle heads are put together similarly, but a little
different. And each of the groups of fluff are going to have a seed
attached to parachute onto some new bare ground and possibly start
yet another thistle. http://www.backyardnature.net/n/09/090906cc.jpg

So that's probably more than you've ever wanted to know about the
structure of Asteraceae inflorescences, or as most people think
of them, "flowers". There's an incredible amount of variation
in structure of flowers and inflorescences in the Asteraceae, and
thistles and dandelions are just part of the story.

Oh yeah, sometime when you're really bored, ask me about dandelion sex.

Kay

On Thu, 27 Jun 2013 04:32:27 +0000 (UTC), Danny D. wrote:
On Wed, 26 Jun 2013 02:01:03 +0000, Kay Lancaster wrote:

Turn the flower upside down and you'll find there are 4 green sepals,
then the four yellow petals.

Thanks for that information.

Here's a picture of the underside of the wild mustard flower:
http://www2.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/13419875.jpg

Is the green arrow pointing to a (football-shaped) sepal?

Looks more like a petal that hasn't completely colored up yet. But that's
really hard to tell in a photo.

If you look at sepals and petals on almost all flowers, you'll find
that each series of flower parts are in whorls -- multiple parts
all coming out at the same level. So the lowest series is the
sepals. Let's say in an opened out mustard flower, they're laid
out like a + sign. The next whorl is petals, and if the sepals are
laid out like a + sign, the petals will be an X. Then there will be
4 stamens, laid out like a + and two more like two arms of the X,
and finally in the middle, the two chambers of the ovary, the two
carpels joined together to form a single fruit.

http://www.discoverlife.org/mp/20p?i...WS95452&res=mx is a pretty
good view of the flower of a different species of mustard from the side...
in this case, both the sepals and petals are yellow, but different shapes,
and you can also see the four long stamens and two shorter ones most of
the mustards have.
http://www.plantbiology.siu.edu/PLB3...werGeneral.jpg and http://www.tsflowers.com/lilyphotos/Lily_Stargazer2.jpg is a lily
flower straight on, and you can see the different shapes of the
sepals, the narrower "petals" and the wider petals. Unfortunately, it's
not a good photo of the stamens or ovary, but I'll take what I can
get here. g

And yes, I can rattle on for hours about flower parts and how to
interpret what you're seeing... it's one of the major tools for plant
identification, once you get beyond pure recognition of different species.

Kay

On Thu, 27 Jun 2013 04:41:35 +0000 (UTC), Danny D. wrote:
On Wed, 26 Jun 2013 15:42:03 +0000, Kay Lancaster wrote:

Try pulling one up... you may find they're attached to an underground
root and stolon system, in which case you may be dealing with
Canada thistle, Cirsium arvense, a noxious weed* in California

Hi Kay,

I started pulling one up, then another, and another, and another,
until ... after a long while ... I filled my chest-high green recycling
bin with the thistle!
http://www1.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/13419889.jpg

8-)

I'm not sure how they process those things at the town recycling
center - but those thistle thorns are nasty!
http://www1.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/13419894.jpg

Pretty much like anything else... dump it in a hot pile, add water,
stir periodically, and turn it into compost. If you can get the whole
pile heated to about 140, it's not going to grow.

Kay

Danny D. said:


On Mon, 01 Jul 2013 07:47:19 -0400, Pat Kiewicz wrote:

http://www1.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/11947484.jpg
it's still automatic for me to ID poison ivy, oak, or sumac
I am amazingly good at spotting it.

I understand what you mean, as I am always identifying it for the
grandkids, who wander by oblivious to all harm.

Nobody is immune to cell-mediated immune responses (since the T-Cell
are randomly generated and passed by the Thymus), but some people just
haven't (randomly) gotten it yet. Or, they haven't gotten enough of a
dose that their T-Cells wandered by a urushiol quinone which has
bound to a receptor site on a Langerhans cell in their skin.

NOTE: Contact dermatitis is NOT mediated by humoral antigen/antibody
responses, so, all the conventional wisdom of "being immune" goes out
the door.

I've never gotten a rash from poison ivy, even when (as a kid) I was dared
to rub a leaf on my skin, or when I've pulled seedlings out bare-handed.
My dad's side of the family, very vigorous reactors. My mother never has,
if I recall correctly.

Which is sort of odd, as both my mother and I have had serious
reactions to other chemicals and adhesives. I've had at least one
quite serious case of photoallergic dermatitis which required
(unpleasant) steroid therapy and I have to carefully read labels to
avoid certain preservatives and also avoid sun-screens other than
zinc oxide. I mainly rely on sun protective clothing and hats,
which means long sleeves and long pants no matter how hot it is.
(Coolibar makes some clever items, but it's still easy to overheat.)

In the case of the amount of sap in that picture, almost nobody on
earth would not respond to that amount, were it to touch skin (keeping
in mind, the urushiol oil is known to stay active over 100 years in
dendrology drawers) and probably 10 years in my relatively dry climate.

That I could believe.
--
Pat in Plymouth MI

"Yes, swooping is bad."

email valid but not regularly monitored

In article ,
Danny D. wrote:
On Fri, 28 Jun 2013 11:27:04 -0500, Natural - Smoking Gun - Girl wrote:

hmmm I've never known anyone to tackle poison oak on such a gigantic level
before. I'm not sure I really understand how you manage to not get the
rash, tho.

I tunneled through about 500 feet of poison oak jungle over a period
of a few months.
http://www1.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/11917454.jpg

You need goats, lots of goats.
--
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6 http://rule6.info/
* * *
"Sociobiology might be interesting if the sociobiologists would just pay
attention to the way people really behave." --SJM

In article ,
The Daring Dufas wrote:

Danny, I want to complement you on your picture taking. It makes it much
easier for others to understand what you are writing about and
you really seem to enjoy photography. I have to Email lots of photos
of the work me and JH do to the service corporation we do work for and
I've gone through two inexpensive digital cameras this year. I'm going
to see if I can find a darn rubber coated drop resistant camera. ^_^

Easy option is to just use your phone and stick it in a good case. There
are also plenty of rugged cameras available, just go to dpreview.com,
camera feature search, fixed lens cameras, advanced search filters,
"durability/sealing" under "physical".

The Olympus TG-2 would be a good option if you have any challenging light
situations because the max aperture is F2.0, although it's a bit more
spendy.
--
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6 http://rule6.info/
* * *
"Sociobiology might be interesting if the sociobiologists would just pay
attention to the way people really behave." --SJM

On 3 Jul 2013 09:53:41 -0700, (Aahz Maruch) wrote:

I tunneled through about 500 feet of poison oak jungle over a period
of a few months.
http://www1.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/11917454.jpg

You need goats, lots of goats.

....and a truck for transport.

In article
,
Pat Kiewicz wrote:

Danny D. said:


On Mon, 01 Jul 2013 07:47:19 -0400, Pat Kiewicz wrote:

http://www1.picturepush.com/photo/a/...g/11947484.jpg
it's still automatic for me to ID poison ivy, oak, or sumac
I am amazingly good at spotting it.

I understand what you mean, as I am always identifying it for the
grandkids, who wander by oblivious to all harm.

Nobody is immune to cell-mediated immune responses (since the T-Cell
are randomly generated and passed by the Thymus), but some people just
haven't (randomly) gotten it yet. Or, they haven't gotten enough of a
dose that their T-Cells wandered by a urushiol quinone which has
bound to a receptor site on a Langerhans cell in their skin.

NOTE: Contact dermatitis is NOT mediated by humoral antigen/antibody
responses, so, all the conventional wisdom of "being immune" goes out
the door.

I've never gotten a rash from poison ivy, even when (as a kid) I was dared
to rub a leaf on my skin, or when I've pulled seedlings out bare-handed.
My dad's side of the family, very vigorous reactors. My mother never has,
if I recall correctly.

I'm the same with poison oak, but my understanding is that this can
change without notice.


Which is sort of odd, as both my mother and I have had serious
reactions to other chemicals and adhesives. I've had at least one
quite serious case of photoallergic dermatitis which required
(unpleasant) steroid therapy and I have to carefully read labels to
avoid certain preservatives and also avoid sun-screens other than
zinc oxide. I mainly rely on sun protective clothing and hats,
which means long sleeves and long pants no matter how hot it is.
(Coolibar makes some clever items, but it's still easy to overheat.)

In the case of the amount of sap in that picture, almost nobody on
earth would not respond to that amount, were it to touch skin (keeping
in mind, the urushiol oil is known to stay active over 100 years in
dendrology drawers) and probably 10 years in my relatively dry climate.

That I could believe.
--
Remember Rachel Corrie
http://www.rachelcorrie.org/

Welcome to the New America.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA736oK9FPg