Avocados

We've had two consecutive years of a bumper avocado crop. Unfortunately, they're not my favorite fruit, but these are a good variety and they'll spread like butter across a sandwich. I've been giving them away to anyone who wants some, but they're still way too many and the squirrels are having a fine old feast.

Last year, I gave some to Sparky. He wolfed them down and got diarrhea in the house, so he's not having any more. Some people I used to know moved, with their skinny black lab, to a house with several avocado trees. The next time I saw the dog, he was easily double the size. I think the owners finally resorted to putting a muzzle on him during avo season.

But why do trees make so much fruit when it only takes one successful germination to replace the parent? I found an answer in a 1990 movie called Mindwalk, starring Sam Waterston, John Heard and Liv Ullmann. It's kind of a forerunner to What the #*!$ Do We Know, with just as flimsy a "plot."

Waterston plays a failed presidential candidate who meets up with his poet pal, Heard, at Mont St Michel, off the Brittany coast. The film is all about the conversation they start with Ullmann's character, a Norwegian quantum physicist. It's she who puts forward the hypothesis that the tree -- my avocado -- is part of a much greater system and as such, the abundance of fruit nourishes the system, which in turn protects a new seedling, later to become the replacement tree.

James Lovelock wrapped this up in his Gaia Hypothesis, which has always appealed to me.

Prayer flags for the laundry gods

The NY Times' Green Inc. blog reports that residents in Greenwich, Conn., are being told they can't hang out laundry because it mars the look of the place.

I believe Coral Gables has the same daft rule.

The blog, Project Laundry List, says that dryers cause more house fires than any other household appliance, so hanging out laundry is safer, greener, and cheaper.

Here, in South Miami, is my current offering to the gods of clean laundry. (Note the fab mid-century fabric!) I give my laundry about 10 minutes in the dryer at the end to make towels and the like softer, but I never use liquid or sheet softeners; they're a waste of resources and money.

A train trip I once took in Switzerland took me through a ritzy part of Geneva, where many UN agencies are located, and I noted that washing lines were standard in embassy backyards. If it's good enough for the Swiss, it's good enough for the U.S.