A little over a year ago Time magazine proclaimed that ‘local food is better than organic,"  in an article I didn’t much care for. Someone must have given President Bush a copy…

Thanks to Aloma Dew of the Sierra Club for passing this along to me. Despite my deep trust in Aloma I had to Google the speech Bush made today just so I could believe my eyes. Somebody pinch me (not that the speech didn’t include some cluelessness re alternative fuels, the economy in general, etc.).

Not sure people realize the intelligence network utilized by insects in the garden but I always suspected it was more complex — and effective — than we ever realized. The following study was published on the site of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), which funded the research.

Insects use plant like a telephone

11 April 2008

Communication between subterranean and aboveground herbivorous insects.

Dutch ecologist Roxina Soler and her colleagues have discovered that subterranean and aboveground herbivorous insects can communicate with each other by using plants as telephones. Subterranean insects issue chemical warning signals via the leaves of the plant. This way, aboveground insects are alerted that the plant is already ‘occupied’.

If you can only cook one thing and do it well, let it be roast chicken. Roasting a chicken with just a few ingredients, especially one this good and green, is all that’s necessary, really, to enhance the deliciousness of a bird raised the way nature intended.