FM Talk 1065 Podcasts
Plain Living w/Bill FInch 7.14.2024 Heat and Gardening, Featuring Sierra Ferell music.
It's time for Plain Living for Alabama and the Gulf Coast. With nationally recognized nature writer and award winning horticulture and nature expert, Bill Finch. Bill shares his knowledge of conservation, natural history, and gardening. Let's talk about living and growing in the deep south with your personal garden and nature consultant. Here's Bill Finch on F.M. Talked 1065. Well, take the path down to the river, it is hunting time to close the kids and feed the children, know the meat is fine, don't let them dogs out of your shop, don't let this slip through your hands, just chase that fox down through the pond to the core of a bee. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Oh, yeah, it's that fiddle and that's what it's all about. You know, it's Fox Hunt and that's Sierra Farrell. I warned you we were going to do this, so Steve and I have cooked this thing up and we're going to get better at it and figure out how to integrate it a little better into our shows. So you won't be so surprised by it, but we're going to be thinking about music again, we're going to be slowly integrating on music and it's going to be a wide variety of music. I give you a warning, you might be surprised, it's going to be music that probably some of you, I bet I find things that maybe at least many of you have never heard before or that virtually, there's always going to be somebody in the audience who hasn't heard some of the things I'm going to be playing and I would also guarantee you that just about everybody out there is going to hear one thing that they've never heard before and which is kind of fun. So we're going to be eclectic as they like to say in Elmore County. You know, eclectic is a little town just up above Whitumka. So we can use that word. It means we're going to select from a lot of different types of things. This is Sierra Farrell that you were just listening at, listening at, listening to, don't laugh at me, Steve. I've got to do this for two hours. You're going to, yeah. So trail of flowers is the album. Sierra Farrell just came out and I just think it's cool. I think Sierra Farrell is cool. I want to talk about a little bit why I think Sierra Farrell's cool. If you're tired of, she belts it out, folks. She got, well, as we say, music, she got the lungs. She can make it work. And she's got the, she's, she's, she's belting out. She's really cool. She's got some great stylistic things. She learns a lot from Dolly Parton. She learns a lot from that older generation of country music stars back before country music turned into the kind of over-processed pablum. Oh, I didn't say that out loud. Before country music turned into the over-processed pablum that it is turned into. Really cool. You know, back in the Merle Haggard days. Back before that, even. She's learning from all that and she learned from all time. Really cool stuff. Sierra Farrell. Check her out. Trail of Flowers. We're going to play one more song before it's over with. You know, I'm not going to play dollar bill bar, which is great. I'm not going to play American Dreaming, which is great. I'm not going to play Jettlyn Kugetheim. There's so many things. We started out with I could drive you crazy. And I told you I could drive you crazy. And she told you she could drive you crazy. And that's what we do here on the show. But we have fun doing it and we learn some things sometimes in the process. A little bit of music. So back now to plants, somebody. I, you know, I think it's okay for me to do this. Steve, you better stop me before. So, so a guy calls in and says, he sends me a text and says, let me find that text. I'm just, this is the text. If you was to be grazed in the ear with a bullet, what plant would you rub on it? If it's all you had. So, great question. And it's, it's really, it really makes me think a lot about plants. And I am thinking about, there are a lot of plants out there that I use all the time, by the way, to absorb blood and to stop blood flow. Because, you know, I get out in the woods, I get thorns, I cut my hands with my knife. And what do you do? There are lots of plants at work. Witch hazel is a greatest stringent. There are a lot of them. But, you know, just wrap it with a leaf. It's really works amazingly well. Most leaves work pretty well, honestly. I think some fuzzier leaves work better. I, Calicarpa, American Beauty Berry, the leaves have a lot of really interesting principles. And they're always out there. A little fuzzy, they're a little absorptive. And so, when I cut myself in the woods, I know you didn't think I would answer this question right away. But I'm going to tell you, when I cut myself in the woods, I go and get Beauty Berry. You all know what Beauty Berry is? French Mulberry, some people call it, which is a crazy name, because it's a native plant, not French at all. Not a mulberry at all. It's actually more closely related to mince. It's a crazy thing. Calicarpa, Americana Beauty Berry, really cool thing. And it's a good, it's a pretty good insect repellent. I'm not sure I can tell you how good it is in a fresh process form. But I have, when I got, when I got buggy and I didn't have anything else, I would just take a bunch of leaves and stick them around my neck and my shirt, hang them from my hat at work, seem to work pretty well. It's pretty, it's got an interesting smell that I like. It's a, it's a, it's an astringent smell. And the fruits are actually kind of interesting too. They're actually you can do a lot of fun things with them. And I know Jim and Georgetown, Jim and Georgetown, are you going to do something with Calicarpa Berries this year? Calicarpa, cool thing. Okay, I don't want to say what Ralph Stanley said. But Jim says, another Jim, agree my famous dollar bill bar, which is just, made like that's a great song too. I love made like that. It's from an earlier album. These are Sierra Farrell tunes. Dollar bill bar, just, I mean, it's just, you think it's kind of kind of run out of the stick on that song, but it doesn't. She actually plays it really well. Really works. I really like the way it, I really like the way that that one works. Let's see what else we got here this morning. We have been talking a little bit about the heat. And maybe the heat makes you crazy in a good sort of way. Maybe I'm living proof of that. Or at least maybe not the good sort of way, but it maybe I'm proof that it makes you crazy. I think it probably does a little bit. You know, it's interesting when I get out in the heat and this is, I remember this even when I was very young walking through the fields. I used to scout cotton in the black belt. One of the, it's the terrible way I had to learn to garden. I didn't hoke garden. I didn't hoke cotton, which probably is harder. I didn't pick cotton, which is probably even harder, but I was a cotton scout, which is hard enough. And you're out in the middle of the fields in July, when even people who wouldn't be, wouldn't be hoeing, wouldn't be out looking every week through these huge massive 750 acre cotton fields in the middle of the sun, not a tree anywhere. And it's July. And it's the black belt of Alabama folks. You talk about, but you get used to it. It's amazing. You get used to it. You don't get used to the smell of dead insects from the herbicides and the pesticides. You don't get used to the world being nothing but cotton, as far as you can see, that's hard. But you get used to the heat. We're going to come back and talk about that in just a minute. (upbeat music)