The joke, for anyone not familiar with hostas, is that there are more than 5,000 varieties.

Only a few years back this wouldn’t have been funny at all. In fact, legend has it that the very first westerner to see hostas in their native northeast Asia sent two back to Germany in the 1600s, naming one “the common giboshi with plantain-like leaves” and the other one simply “the other one.”

I’m not the only one who disdained hostas for years, because they were all just big boring green leaves. Now I have more than 50, and no two are alike. They range from green to blue to gold, or in combinations where white or yellow stripes are on the leaf edges or down the centers, in size from tiny Mouse Ears to such giants as Empress Wu and Sum and Substance. Amazingly, new varieties still appear, every year.

But then, new varieties of almost every plant grown show up in garden catalogs every year. Where do they all come from, and will it ever end?

No, it won’t end. As for where they all come from…

New plants obviously appeared with some regularity even before there were humans. Mutation is the fundamental source of heritable or genetic variation, which is found throughout nature. Environmental factors influence the natural selection of those mutations best suited to survival.

The process was slightly refined when humans first started crop improvement by selecting, and nurturing, the best of the plants they depended on for survival. The first corn — Zea mays — was a far cry from any corn of today. It was even a far cry from its actual ancestor, teosinte, which was formerly thought to be more closely related to rice. (The story of the botanical archaeology that scientifically connected the teosinte of 9,000 years ago to today’s supersweet corn-on-the-cob began in the 1930s by comparing chromosomes, and wasn’t concluded until DNA profiling became available some 30 years later.)

The average modern supermarket reportedly stocks some 4,000 products that use corn, in some way. And all because early farmers in Southern Mexico spent many generations observing their crops and selectively breeding the best of them.

Most of us are familiar with the work of Gregor Mendel, often called the Father of Genetics, in the mid-1800s. That helped speed things up for intentional crop improvement. Yet, many new and improved cultivars “just appeared,” as the result of mutations.

A classic example is the Red Delicious apple. It was found in Wellsburg, Iowa, in 1880. Jesse Hiatt, a farmer who called it the “Hawkeye,” entered it in a contest held by Stark Nurseries in 1892 to find an apple to replace the popular Ben Davis. Stark bought the rights to the apple and renamed it “Stark Delicious.” By the 1980s, the yet-again renamed Red Delicious comprised 75% of the Washington apple harvest.

My just-wondering question is, how many other equally-good or better sports (mutations) have appeared, but without attracting any attention? We have more than a hundred wild apple trees on our land, and I prune and care for as many as I can (not very many) in hopes of eventually finding a real winner. It’s unlikely, but possible.

Incidentally, the Red Delicious has been largely replaced by newer varieties such as Gala and Honeycrisp.

Consider the clematis. English gardener Jo (Josephine) Hill bought a seedling from her local market in the early 1980s. Once it flowered she was charmed, but unable to identify it. When she showed it to the owner of a wholesale clematis nursery, he declared it a new cultivar, propagated it, and released in 1998 as Clematis “Josephine.” Again, how many gardeners see something unusual like this, never mention it, and let it die out? I recently heard a speaker call these “miracles in the garden,” urging everyday gardeners to be on the lookout for them.

Yes, science has allowed us to speed up the process. In the early 20^th century somebody discovered that ionizing radiation could artificially induce mutations. Early attempts used X-rays. Later, gamma and neutron radiation came into play. More recently, chemical agents with mutagenic properties were found, and now, of course, we have genetically engineered crops as well.

It’s obviously easier to make money by speeding up what is basically a natural process. Unfortunately, the profit factor also enters into such traits as shipability, which has taken precedence over flavor, nutrition, and other desirable traits. Consumers of both foods and flowers are always eager to try something new, and there are always businesspeople eager to sell to them.

We might debate whether the world really needs Roundup-Ready corn and soybeans, or how many cultivars of hosta or clematis are optimal for the public good, but one thing is certain: With more than 100,000 genes in the cell of a higher plant, mutations are inevitable, and both scientists and consumers are going to make the most of it.

This is obviously important to a writer. I try to anticipate possible objections to everything I say. Sometimes this helps clarify my thinking. It can make me change my mind by seeing another angle before engraving my own idea in stone. Or setting it down on paper. Or just sending it out on the ether.

Sometimes it prepares me for negative feedback. In that case I can try to fill in the gaps in my argument or presentation, to head ‘em off at the pass.

(Alas, this can be futile. In The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Self-Sufficient Living I knew very well some readers would say I didn’t explain enough about how to live self-sufficiently. So I stated quite explicitly, and several times, that there are dozens of entire books devoted exclusively to raising goats… as well as others on chickens, food preservation, wood heat, alternative energy, and of course gardening, along with every other topic pertaining to self-sufficiency. There is no way on Earth anyone could cover any one of those in a single chapter or less. Still, several readers have complained that the book doesn’t tell them everything they want to know about self-sufficient living.)

Even when it’s futile, I can take refuge in knowing that I did my best… and I don’t have to change my thinking. And yet, even after cross-examining myself to the best of my ability, I can still be caught by surprise.

Such was the case when I picked up the Saturday-Sunday Wall Street Journal last weekend. I had just posted my Friday blog based on an article by Joe Queenan in the previous weekend’s paper. I obviously thought it was a great piece, so I wasn’t prepared for the reader reaction. “Mr. Queenan’s rant…” “Mr. Queenan’s snide comment…” “Mr. Queenan’s passionately cynical lament…”

Wow! And that was on nothing more consequential than the prospects of the class of 2010! I shudder to think what they would have said about something more earth-shaking, or even just my embellishments to his essay!

Disagreements are all around us, every day. The Wisconsin legislature recently okayed the sale of raw milk, after a lengthy and sometimes bitter debate. But then, last week, the governor vetoed it. A few weeks ago Eau Claire decided not to allow chickens in the city, so this week a nearby village decided to follow their lead. Let’s not even get into what’s going on in Washington, the oil spill, the two Koreas, or the divorce courts.

I’m not sure what all this means. There are diff’rent strokes for diff’rent folks, to be sure, but so many of our disagreements go far beyond mere diversity. And if we humans find it impossible to agree even on petty matters, what hope is there for the big and important things, which usually encompass many, many petty matters?

There is compromise, of course, the usual tool of democracy and civilized peoples. But any decent craftsman knows that a multi-purpose tool seldom works as well as a specialized one, designed and fabricated for a specific purpose. Too often, compromise ends up being the worst of both worlds.

We don’t like to even acknowledge the use of force to settle disagreements, but its presence is obvious. Today, force is usually in the form of money, in one way or another. Call it greasing the skids if you will, and yes, it does make life easier and less contentious for many, but is it the best way to solve problems or to advance civilization?

Power? Political power, which more often boils down to class and position rather than formal legislation, can also be based on money.

It’s rare when the power of an idea takes hold to such a degree that it sways opinions and outcomes. But when it does, it’s a beautiful example of what it means to be human.

As the most interesting argument-settler, I nominate Fate. While two factions of a village are debating whether they should build a dike or a tornado shelter, the village is destroyed by a forest fire.

This happens all the time. The Great Concerns of 10, 20, 50 years ago have mostly faded away. Most of the Great Concerns of today weren’t even on the radar a few years back, and they’ll fade away too. No one can say with any certainty what the Great Concerns of tomorrow will be. Maybe arguing about them is a waste of time. Getting vehement or even violent about it is definitely a waste of effort.

It might be impossible to avoid disagreements, but this doesn’t imply that conflicts must necessarily follow. Ask anyone who’s been married to the same person for 50 years or more. But thinking of that…

When you consider that no two people have exactly the same experiences, starting with childhood… exactly the same education or ideas… the same genes and dreams… maybe the amazing thing is that we humans get along as well as we do. — Jd Belanger

So it was that after last week’s blog I wondered why I hadn’t written about Earth Day.

So far as I’m concerned, The Complete Idiot’s Guide (CIG) to Self-Sufficient Living should have been required reading for Earth Day. It could be the Earth Day Manifesto. It could be the game plan for saving the Earth. But so far as I can tell, nobody connects its self-sufficiency message with sustainability the way I do.

Anyway, in that book I wrote “I could easily say that the future started around 1970 when the first Earth Day was celebrated, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was created, and Arcosanti, an experiment in urban ecological architecture, started to take shape. The Whole Earth Catalog was in its second year; Countryside was launched in late 1969; and Mother Earth News appeared in January, 1970, indicating the widespread and growing interest in self-sufficient living and sustainability. It was also the year a group of scientists began work at the New Alchemy Institute. Clearly, something was afoot.”

This was one of those “Off the beaten path” sidebars. The chapter itself is titled “Looking Back, Moving Forward,” and has sections on Arcosanti and New Alchemy. But it also notes that there are four times as many people on Spaceship Earth today as there were in 1900, and vastly more “energy slaves” that affect such things as carbon and water footprints. Compare the planet to an island where there is ample food, water and fuel for just two people. When the two become eight, something has to give.

I said, “This is the new face of self-sufficient living. It’s not an option: it’s a mandate. But is that so bad? We’ve seen enough (in the preceding 333 pages) to suggest that maybe, just maybe, a new outlook, a new Establishment, might actually be kind of neat — even fun.”

The problem is that most people still don’t see the mandate. Much worse, they don’t even take the option seriously. They don’t want anything to change: they want to keep on making progress — down the same increasingly rutted dead-end road.

The “real estate crisis” is “over.” But instead of learning some lessons about sustainability, we’re going back to the resource-gobbling over-built and over-priced castles and mansions that provide no more shelter than a sensible cottage, but at far greater cost to the planet and humanity. Since we have all that space, we have to fill it — with junk. Instead of learning to live without automobiles, we dither around with talk of MPGs and cleaner fuel and all the rest that, in the final analysis, is nothing but a delaying tactic: putting a Band-Aid on a wound that requires amputation.

Speaking of cars, we can supposedly beat the oil shortage by drilling more offshore wells. That might not look quite as attractive this week, since the Deepwater Horizon “incident” that as of now is said to be spewing 210,000 gallons of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico.

But that could also bring us to the claim that such accidents aren’t supposed to happen: There are safeguards and measures to prevent them. Unfortunately, in this case they didn’t work. So what happens when the same types of safeguards don’t work with, say, a nuclear power plant? How much can we trust any scientific, engineering, to say nothing of political reassurances?

Unemployment? How does taking in each other’s laundry solve any long-term problems? What kind of decent economy (let alone a decent life) can be based on a workforce of burger flippers and prison guards? Most jobs today involve toil that’s deadening to the workers, useless to society (except for supporting the artificial consumer economy), and inimical to the planet.

All of this could be avoided. The rational solutions involve not simply rejiggering what hasn’t been working on a global environmental standpoint since the Industrial Revolution got underway, but realigning priorities and setting a new course. The simple steps to these solutions have already been pioneered — by homesteaders.

I often refer to The Establishment: the manufacturers and retailers, the realtors (one of several words I refuse to capitalize,not from editorial ignorance but on principle), lawyers and politicians, credit card companies, tv shows, and ultimately your friends, neighbors, relatives and co-workers who determine how content you are with your lot in life. It’s all relative. Many people feel deprived in a 2,434 sq. ft. house (the American average) because some other people have 4,000 sq. ft. houses — even though as recently as 1950 the average American home was 983 sq. ft., and we survived just fine. (A house that’s 2-1/2 times bigger than another house uses 2-1/2 times as many resources. Or even more when there are several opulent bathrooms, gourmet kitchens, and spacious watered lawns, along with several cars, multiple televisions and computers, and oodles of appliances and gadgets to fill all that space. Oh yeah, and clothes. And shoes.)

Earth Day and most other environmentalism is about conserving and recycling without making any basic changes. Much has changed in those 40 years, but still, many people — most people — see no need for making the drastic but essential corrections. For them, being unhappy and concerned about a few current problems is preferable to readjusting their attitudes and embracing the actions required.

Even when all the water in the world has turned to oil-slicked sewage (and most inhabited areas are either very close already, or they have no water at all, not even dirty water); when all the air in the world has become unbreatheable (60% of humanity now breathes unhealthful air, at least occasionally); I’m sure some of the people who now scoff at the idea of self-sufficient sustainable living will still be ranting and raving about being denied their perceived birthright to what they deem easy living. And after 40 years of writing about it, I’m no longer interested in even talking to such people.

The simple solution is simple living. But that’s too complicated to explain here, and I’m over my word limit already. Read the book.

Me, yesterday, in one of my 21 gardens.

Yesterday was a beautiful, almost too-warm day for April 1 in Northern Wisconsin. It’s been over 70 almost all week, and I did quite a bit of work in the garden. So much work, in fact, that I dragged a lawn chair out there for an occasional break. I used to chuckle at the old goats who kept chairs in their gardens. Now I’m one of them, and that made me think.

I remember (a long time ago) when a reader asked what happened when a homesteader got old. “All the work is hard enough now,” she said. “How will I do it when I have even less strength and vigor?”

Many of the answers were practical: Use your head instead of your back, stuff like that.

But most of the answers we got from other readers who were speaking from personal experience were reminiscent of directions on how to eat an elephant: a spoonful at a time.

“I do almost everything now I did years ago,” was the common refrain. “It just takes longer.”

At the time I thought that was just common sense (like most of Countryside). But I had no idea how much longer everything would take!

There’s lots of good advice on using your head instead of your back. I wish I had written down some of the ah-ha moments I’ve had when finding simple ways to do difficult jobs, so I could share them with you. As you probably know, great memories are not one of the shining attributes of the older generation.

And taking things slower? Also great advice, and very easy, when your knees give out and your strength wanes and you avoid getting up out of a chair too quickly (even if you could) because the room starts spinning.

But the mainest thing (spellchecker tells me I just made up a word, but I’ve been using that for years and I’m too old to quit now) is that when you get old, you don’t need as much! My RN wife limits me to one piece of bacon—on the days I’m allowed any at all. (That has something to do with the AFib I had a few years back.) We also usually share a pork chop, and a small roast lasts so long we could write a cookbook on using leftovers. So there ain’t much point in raising a pig anymore.

Half an apple is a treat. Half of a Snickers is a real treat.

I make a big point of this in Self-Sufficient Living. You can become more self-sufficient by producing what you want and need, or you can reduce your wants and needs so neither you nor anyone else has to produce them at all. When you get old, reducing needs becomes much easier than producing stuff to meet them.

I vividly recall the day I first realized I was old.

Son Steve was helping me reroof the house. It didn’t take long before I got really, really tired. I was halfway up the ladder with an 80-lb bundle of shingles on my shoulder when I thought, why is this such a drag? Heck, as a Marine, I used to run up and down the hills of Camp Pendleton all day with an 80-lb. pack plus a 9-lb. M1 rifle!

Then it hit me. That was 40 years ago. I dumped the shingles on the roof, climbed back down the ladder, and never went up again. (Except to clean the chimney, of course.)

That roof is now almost 15 years old. It doesn’t need replacing yet, but when it does, I won’t be up there.

Roofing is a young man’s job anyway. Woodcutting? Eh… maybe. I use the smaller, lighter chainsaw now. But son Dave has a fine oak forest and my woods is mostly popple, so he delivers most of our firewood.

My beloved chickens flew the coop several years ago when I was diagnosed with poultry lover’s disease, a lung infection. When I came home from my second hospital stay due to a collapsed lung, all my birds were gone: chickens, guineas, pigeons, even the cockatiels, thanks again to my life-saving wife and two of our sons. I still miss my birds, which were supposed to be my retirement hobby. But our daughter-by-marriage Elaine (the editor of Backyard Poultry) furnishes us with fresh homestead eggs, which lessens the blow.

Cooking, including canning and baking, is an excellent occupation for an old guy with plenty of time. And of course gardening is the traditional domain of codgers who can’t do much of anything else except fish. To me, fishing is boring, but I could garden 24 hours a day and half the night.

But then there are times when the knees just can’t take it anymore, or the back gives out, or I run out of breath. Thus, the chair. After a short rest I can go back to work again, but it’s also pleasant to just sit and listen to the birds with my new hearing aids.

And in a way, getting that chair out there was a kind of celebration. Today is my 72^nd birthday.

“Green fanatics wrong” (Voice of the People, Saturday, Feb. 27) is a wonderful example of using accurate data to reach a questionable conclusion. Jeff Nicol is right about the current high initial cost of wind and solar power, and other facts, but he ignores a lot of relevant information that’s essential to making a wise decision.

The efficiency of solar cells has increased more than fourfold in just the last five years. Even so, as of now, only 14 percent of the photons that strike a photovoltaic cell are converted to electricity. If Moore’s Law (which states that the number of transistors on a chip doubles about every two years) has any application whatsoever to alternative energy — and it certainly does — the potential for solar power is enormous.

One reason Moore’s Law works is because early adaptors made use of microprocessor chips even when they weren’t “affordable.”

The first pocket calculators became available in 1972 (Hewlet-Packard’s HP-35). The price was $395 — more than $2,000 in today’s money.

Now we take pocket calculators for granted, and most kids (for me, that’s anyone under 50) have never seen nor used a 35-pound hand-cranked desk calculator, much less a slide rule. Even more astounding, today you can get a multi-functional Casio SL200-TE for under $10!

And please note, Mr. Nicol: it’s solar-powered.

Yes, as he points out, we do need fossil fuels — nonrenewable resources — to develop and produce new products. “Nonrenewable” means we will eventually and inevitably run out of them. It will be impossible to develop new and sustainable technologies using the last drop of oil or pound of coal, which is why we must act now.

Mr. Nicol calls for more common sense in the world. I wholeheartedly agree. However, I would add the caution that a little knowledge can be dangerous. Mr. Nicol, who “did a little research on the Internet recently,” has a different perspective than I do. My first wind and solar installations were more than 35 years ago, and I recently spent six months researching and writing The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Self-Sufficient Living, which involves many aspects of sustainability — food, water, clothing, shelter and transportation, as well as energy and more.

In other words, to answer Mr. Nicol’s rhetorical question, I’m one of many Green fanatics who knows exactly what he’s supporting. As for “pushing” our agenda on others, as he puts it, consider this:

We’re investing in the nascent technology the skeptics consider uneconomical. As with the electronic calculator, this supports innovation, mass production, and lower costs that will eventually affect even the naysayers. So I don’t see us pushing them. We’re dragging them, kicking and screaming, into a sustainable future.

— Jd Belanger