Native to the Americas, the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) travels widely in search of sustenance. While usually foraging alone, it relies on other individuals of its species for companionship and mutual protection. Sometimes misunderstood, sometimes feared, sometimes shunned, it nevertheless performs an important role in the ecosystem.
This scavenger bird is a marvel of efficiency. Rather than expend energy flapping its wings, it instead locates uplifting columns of air, and spirals within them in order to glide to greater heights. This behavior has been mistaken for opportunism, interpreted as if it is circling doomed terrestrial animals destined to be its next meal. In truth, the vulture takes advantage of these thermals to gain the altitude needed glide longer distances, flying not out of necessity, but for the joy of it.
It also avoids the exertion necessary to capture live prey, preferring instead to feast upon that which is already dead. In this behavior, it resembles many humans.
It is not what most of us would consider to be a pretty bird. While its habits are often off-putting, or even disgusting, to members of more fastidious species, the turkey vulture helps to keep the environment from being clogged with detritus. Hence its Latin binomial, which translates to English as "golden purifier."
I rarely know where the winds will take me next, or what I might find there. The journey is the destination.
It's been years since I grew tomatoes and never knew any of this. Now that I know, I'm with Brandiwyn🎶 I'm not eating any tomatoes with chemicals in them.
Hm. Where I live right now, we've had days over 85F in January. Summers get up into triple digits. I guess my tomatoes will have white, shriveled rings?
Tomatoes need a very balanced diet to grow well. In addition to the potassium, which prevents white rings, they need calcium to prevent blossom end rot.
When your hobby becomes your job, it loses a lot of what makes it interesting.
I'm not sure if I'm the right gauge, since I have a disorder that makes my hobby-turned-career more difficult and in some cases, impossible, but I still play piano for fun occasionally. Not nearly as often as I used to.
Doing nothing feels differently depending on location.
When I do nothing at home, I have dishes and dusty floors silently judging me.
Second Son got stung on the cheek by a bee in Rome and his face swelled up like that of a cartoon character. We spent half the day resting in the hotel room. It was the most glorious doing nothing ever. We were in one of the oldest cities in Europe in a modern hotel doing nothing.
The best doing nothing in many years. Except for the bee sting.
I have a lit of leisure time..most of the time. I used to feel guilty thinking I needed to be doing something constructive. I'm getting passed that..I worked my entire life..now it's time to relax and do what I want..if it's nothing..so be it.
All I really know about it, was that there was a police department that had an issue with cops that liked to abuse their power. They tried yellow bands (or whatever), but other officers thought they had looked cool, and intentionally got into trouble to get them. So, they decided to punish the officers with Hello Kitty stickers - hard to look intimidating, or cool, with one of those stuck to your breast pocket.
I saved this link for a few reasons. One of them is to display an example of how you can do a headline without making it clickbait. "Some Tomatoes Have A White Ring Inside. How Dangerous Is It?" would be clickbait.
Have you ever cut into a tomato and been perplexed to see a white ring?
No. Oh, I've seen the white rings. I was just never all that curious about them. It just never occurred to me that it was anything but standard variation in quality.
One of the primary causes of a white ring is a potassium deficiency in the soil when the tomato is growing. It's important to have an adequate concentration of potassium because, without it, the fruits may not absorb enough magnesium and calcium to properly ripen.
ChEmIcAlzzz!!!
However, too much sun exposure can also lead to your tomato growing with pale tissue. If the fruits are left out in the open at temperatures higher than 85 degrees Fahrenheit, they may turn white or yellow, and some areas may end up being dry or shriveled.
Do what now? Okay, it's been a very long time since anything useful has grown near me, and even longer since I (or rather my parents) grew tomatoes, but I seem to remember "plant after last frost" and "plant in an area with full sun." And Potomac River basin temperatures stayed above 85F most of the summer, even before climate change started to accelerate.
I could be misremembering. Also, what with selective breeding and genetic engineering and whatnot, I'm pretty sure there are hardier varieties.
There are a few other reasons why you may see white flesh inside your tomatoes. If stink bugs, beetles, spider mites, and other bugs get under the fruits' skin and start feeding, they'll suck out the juice and insert their saliva, leading to a white spot rather than a white ring.
You know how it goes: what's worse than finding a bug in your tomato? Finding half a bug.
The good news is that if you spot a white ring inside your tomato caused by a potassium deficiency in the soil, it's typically safe to eat and can simply be removed by cutting...
And why would you want to cut it out if it's safe to eat? Well, "safe to eat" isn't the same thing as "appetizing." I routinely excise the stem parts from tomatoes, just because I don't like them.
Really, there's not much to this article, but it did sort of answer a question I never knew I had.
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