*Welcome!
Thank you. And thank you for the REPs. Regarding the comment you added to that, please do not ever feel the need to apologize for not quickly replying to one of my posts. People are busy, people have issues, I tend to compose somewhat lengthy posts, and... I am certainly not the center of anyone's personal universe, lol.
Yes. So much money is spent each and every year on cancer research (et cetera), and only a fraction of that is spent for brain-related issues. I understand that there is a finite amount of resources in the world, but... We collectively spend more on sports teams, so-called "reality" television shows, video games, CELL PHONES (I read last year that Apple, as just one example, has something like 200 billion dollars just in its non-domestic cash reserves), et cetera. Capitalism, in theory is a great economic model. But when so much of the general population allows - nay, expects - others to do their thinking for them, is captivated by every shiny thing that they see as if they were simple myna birds instead of (supposedly) thinking/reasoning beings, is so concerned with the instant gratification of a thing instead of long-term benefit, and thinks only of me, ME, ME instead of society as a whole...
Of course it doesn't help, in regards to things medical-related, that - even though (some) researchers actually are doing what they do because they see a need... the medical industry is wholly driven by the profit motive. I read just yesterday about a company that sells a drug, a combination of pain reliever and stomach upset remedy - both of which one can simply purchase over the counter for about $18. They've raised the prices for this "combo pill" ten times over time, and now a prescription for the pill costs almost $3,000(!!!) - and, if I'm not mistaken, Medicare/Medicaid paid something like $134 million last year for this thing. Translation: WE, the People paid this bill last year. And the companies that do this criminal thing... I'm sure you've seen the commercials - at the end, after the big list of possible side-effects of a drug ("...including death. This is not the complete list of side-effects, please see the medicine's accompanying documentation for more."), many of them have a blurb about how, if you cannot pay the ruinous prices for their golden eggs, you may be able to acquire the drug at the ultra-low price of (I have seen $10/prescription mentioned). And sometimes you think, okay, I can see why they "must" charge a lot to those who can pay. But they use this kind of thing for justification! And then they declare ($3000 per prescription, minus the ten bucks that a person pays) as a LOSS come tax time!
It's nothing less than organized crime, legitimized.[/RANT]
In truth, G2HM, I'm no better than the next guy. I wish that I did not have to be interested. I wish this was all an academic mental exercise. I wish that Mom could remember how to turn her car's headlights on from one use to the next. For that matter, I wish that I had the ability to provide for her, that a woman in her late 70s who has already had multiple cancer events, many physical issues, and in general an entire lifetime of doing without so that others could have something (if only that something... was something to eat) did not have to get in her car and drive herself to WORK. Just yesterday... I was supposed to go with her to the grocery store if she finished work early enough to do so before it got too dark for her to drive, as she has trouble reaching for things off the shelves. So she called me yesterday afternoon and said that was not happening, that she'd somehow messed her hip up and was having trouble walking - "...so I'll be lucky to finish work in time." The woman, having never had an education (no time, no money, someone always needed all of both), has always done manual labor all her life. She cleans people's houses. Not one person's house, all week long, where it becomes more just straightening a little clutter on a daily basis, but the "one day per week" kind of thing, where you have to actually CLEAN each and every day you work. And she's old-school - you know, those old black and white shows where you saw someone on their hands and knees scrubbing the floor? Yeah, she's not a "swifter" kind of cleaning lady. Her clients, of course, just love her to death. I often fear that that will end up being true in the literal sense.
And she has been known to call ME, and ask if I need something to eat! ("No, Mom, I just finished up a piece of hamburger, uh... some chicken, and a dessert thing. Oh, and... mashed potatoes? I, uh... I didn't have any leftovers, but I did end up with an extra $50 this week, and was going to drop it off for you. Will you be home in the morning?" - which, roughly translated, might have meant that I figured I'd be fine going another day without anything but the crackers I walked into a fast food joint and loaded up my pockets on, and that I managed to hustle up a basement cleanout that week... for fifty dollars.) Sometimes I wonder which of us thinks we're fooling the other the most.
When I manage to wake up in something approaching a decent frame of mind, the realization of the above kind of thing hits me (always) - and there goes my mental/emotional state right back down the tubes. I cannot escape the feeling that, if I cannot manage to get an actual employer to hire me to pour p!ss out of a boot (so to speak), that I should at least go rob a bank or something and drop the money off at her house - and make up some story about how I came into it legitimately and, therefore, she can and should spend it on her needs - before they come to arrest me. And I'd probably be seriously considering such an idea were it not for the fact that she buried one son (at twelve years old), almost lost our other brother at the same time, and I don't think she could possibly endure another tragedy where her children are concerned. That, plus, well... She's like me (or I should say I'm like her, I guess?), so when word got around to her about how I got the money in the first place, she'd turn it in instead of spending it.
Err... Sorry for rambling. Oh, wait! I had intended to respond to your "dosing oil" comment. Someone provided a bunch of cannabis oil capsules to me last Autumn so that I could see if they helped me. I think they were... unactivated? I took three at one point, and couldn't see any mental effect. Anyway, I was supposed to take three per day, spaced evenly. At that point in time, I wasn't tracking very well, so my dosing became pretty sporadic. I might take them on schedule for a day or so, then only manage one, then forget entirely for a few days... So I do not believe that they were helping, but it was because of my inability at the time to keep to a proper schedule. Then - and I have yet to admit this to the person who was kind enough to give them to me in the first place, out of shame/embarrassment - the (ONE) person who has been my friend for 33+ years, regardless of what kind of sh!t I ended up being now and then, stopped by and told me that he found out he had cancer in addition to all the other issues he'd been dealing with. So... "Hey, I don't know how well they'll help, but I just happen to have a bunch of cannabis oil capsules. Let me just grab them for you." The good news is, he just had surgery to see if they managed to get it all. I'm waiting to hear, and hoping for the best.
I hope to be able to provide such things for myself one of these days. I grew some cannabis last year, but had severe heat issues (among other issues :rolleyes3 ), so harvested only a small amount. And I ended up giving almost all of it to the friend I just mentioned and my brother. I did get to smoke a bowl of two different strains that I grew, though, so it was cool. It had been quite a while since I had been able to do that!
Well, purchase is somewhat unlikely at this time, lol. But I am occasionally offered a seed or two of this or that strain in the "offline world," so it is very helpful - at least potentially so - to see a recommendation of this nature. A couple of friends and some family members have issues both physical and mental (as do I), so I am interested in far more than just getting my head "straight" these days. Indicas used to be just something that we grew when we wanted to be able to harvest something outdoors. Now I have come to realize their "physical" health benefits. And then there are the various "CBD" strains...
I like pictures. But I also do not mind if I don't see a thread full of them. As you may have guessed, I also read a lot
.Thank YOU!
We can all use a little. Often, it turns out to be the only thing that I can offer a person.
I used to... Well, it would be fair to say that, at one point, I was earning far more selling cannabis (et al) than at my "day job." I didn't think anything of it, really, it was just what I did. Like some folks, you know to call them when your plumbing falls apart because they're the best plumbers, lol? I guess I wasn't cut out to be a plumber... :rolleyes3 .
I'm sure I have posted it somewhere here before, but: So I stopped by this elderly couple's house (actually, it was a house trailer (1970s connotations of the term apply strongly here) to drop off their weekly order. Just some random old lady, you know? I dropped a baggie on her counter. She started trying to tell me how she didn't have the money this week (but it's only an eighth, c'mon, now...) but if I let her have it on credit - which wasn't a word in my vocabulary, you know? - she could somehow find the way to come up with double the amount next week. Figure out what she could do without... Anyway, I'm kind of on the clock, I guess you could say. I've got deliveries to make, parties to spawn (my nickname was Party), fun to go have, <COUGH>women to experience<COUGH>. And this old coot was cutting into my ME time. So, to make a long story just a little bit longer, I finally said something like, "Yeah, okay, whatever," and turned around to leave.
That woman grabbed me from behind in a bear hug and started crying, thanking me like I was some kind of humanitarian or something! And she started babbling about how her old man couldn't get out of bed any more, but she could still get him to eat after giving him hits of cannabis (we didn't call it that at the time, and she might have meant that she was forced to blow shotguns to him, IDK)... and what a wonderful person I was.
I got pretty drunk (among other things) that night. Didn't seem to make me feel better, though. Sales and deals... Things just sort of fell apart, for some reason after that. My heart wasn't in it, I guess you could say. I started selling less, giving away more. But I was still consuming a great deal of things at the time, and so I started losing money instead of making it. And things in my personal life... I ended up quitting growing (for the first time (this happened like three more times, but that's a completely different tale, lol) cannabis altogether.
I sometimes wish I'd kept on growing - and selling - cannabis, and just used the profits from doing so to be able to give the stuff away where there was a need for it. But my future was in doubt, my present was a mess, and I probably would have just screwed that up, too.
Rambling again, huh?
Sadly, you can hold someone down, lol, and speak until you are blue in the face, but you cannot force someone to learn.
I used to wonder what all the "legalization hubub" was about, lol. I mean, sure, it was a nice concept - and one that I tried to do my part at advancing. But, around here and at the time, cannabis was pretty available. The fact that it was illegal, IDK, it mainly just seemed like some kind of practical IQ test. People didn't get arrested unless they were terminally stupid. Locally, I mean. And then local prices started going up to match what we heard about (in California, for example) on television. THAT was annoying, especially since by that time I'd stopped growing and started... buying. But I was still earning a living wage (more or less) because I had a regular job (or two) at the time. As an aside to an already wandering post... <SCRATCHES HEAD> I had always assumed that the eventual legalization (in any way, shape, or form) of cannabis would bring LOWER prices instead of higher ones. We paid - and charged - the prices that we used to because there was the possibility, however remote, of going to jail. Now, in many locations, a person can come out of the grocery store and cross the street to the cannabis store - and I hope they got lucky playing scratch-off lottery tickets or something, because the prices have gone up instead of down, FFS.
We are all dying of something, if only of... time. Life itself is a terminal kind of affair, lol. It's not about how a person dies, or what of, or how soon (or far off) that final event happens to be. Rather, it's about how they LIVE. IMHO.
But I know what you mean, I think.
I never expected to make it this far. To be honest, I didn't exactly go out of my way to make friends. I was hard on the few that I did have, just by being... me. I had a lot of adventures and misadventures, lol. I would never cheat on a spouse, but I didn't use to think anything of cheating WITH other people's spouses. And the substances (and quantities of same) I have consumed, whew. I used to laugh when I'd hear about what amount of a thing was said to be enough to kill a person, if they consumed that amount in a 24-hour period. There was a time when the woman I was hooked up with and I would take such statements as challenges (ironically, the woman I seem to have cared the most about, and who I later spent heroic efforts trying to help straighten out her own head, deal with her own nightmare reality that was her life from age seven or so onward, only to ultimately fail). Challenge accepted, and succeeded at.
Half the time, I feel like I do not even deserve to participate in threads of this nature. Yes, I have... issuses. YES, more and more every day, and they are becoming more and more significant, affecting my life... more and more. But, at the same time, I realize that I have brought most - perhaps even all - of them on myself. I probably qualify as a poster-child for things NOT to do if you want to attain any great age. For me, the phrase "sins of a misspent youth" is not merely a phrase. And as for "youth," well, it takes some of us a considerable while to grow up.
Me, too, lol! I was going to do it last time but never got around to it. To do it correctly, I would have had to give those cloned auto-flowering plants "pride of place" under the light instead of just sticking them in the shaded corners/areas. Otherwise, how would I be able to determine if they only produced (say) a gram or two each because they were clones of a-f plants - or if that happened because they simply were not receiving what they required?
I think it's still a safe bet that a person isn't going to get much off of them. And, since in order to create the things in the first place, we'll have to remove mass from the mother plant, it could even work out to be a negative overall. But I remain curious, and will try to stop procrastinating and actually do the experiment this time.
This time, lol - I have two seeds that have extended rootlets! That's two out of five :sad: . I think my oven's pilot light might have provided too much heat instead of just enough. One of those tiny roots looks ghastly. Normal, then "fat" / swollen, then so thin I could barely see it even with my magnifying glass. I removed them from my oven and gave each a little more water for the oxygen content. Then I fell asleep, so they didn't get potted up today. I hope to manage to do so tomorrow.
And it was 50°F outside this morning! (Which worked out to be room temperature <ROLLS EYES FURIOUSLY> .) It's 30°F now, but soon I won't have to try starting seeds in the oven.
And soon after that, it'll be in the upper 90°s in the grow space and only a few degrees cooler everywhere else in my home <SIGH> . But here's hoping that we'll have a decently "cool" Summer and I won't be forced to decide whether I'd rather plug in my grow light or my air conditioner.
Hmm... Okay. This is used when one wishes to root cuttings from hard-to-clone species. It has been used for trees. Picture this: You have a cannabis plant. You take a stem and gently cut a circle around it. Then you do the same thing an inch lower. By "gently," I mean making sure to only cut through the first layer! You do NOT want to cut off the nutrient transport mechanism (otherwise, that stem dies at the cut) - only the outer layer. Then you connect those two circle cuts with a straight, vertical one. Then you peel the outermost layer away, by opening it up along the vertical cut.
Wrap a piece of paper around a pencil, draw a circle around the paper, another one a little lower, and a vertical line connecting the two circles. Then use a razor blade to cut along each line you drew. That might help show you what I mean (although the paper will just fall away at that point instead of needing to be peeled off, since it's not actually attached like the outer layer / bark of a plant's stem is).
Anyway, you pack that now exposed portion of the stem with something that will serve as a medium. Wet that medium (not dripping wet), and wrap it with something to hold everything together. The area will grow roots, just like a cannabis plant will do outdoors if/when a branch droops enough to come in contact with the soil and you pile more soil over it.
I just looked for a website that showed how to do it (with pictures/diagrams) and, surprisingly, the first page of results seems to be all links to (other) cannabis-related websites. LMAO. Six or seven years ago, I didn't see any cannabis-related results. The times, they are a changin', lol.
Aha! <DOH!> Why don't I do a site-search of our forum via the web-search engine? <SLAPS FOREHEAD>
Here are a couple of on-site links:
Air Layering
What is air layering?
And one off-site (non-cannabis) one that goes into detail:
How to Clone a Magnoila Tree | Home Guides | SF Gate
You can find lots of information by doing a web-search for "air layering" (with quotation marks).
In some ways, it doesn't seem like the best way to create cannabis clones. First, because it's about as difficult in most cases to root cannabis cuttings as it is to actually manage to hit the ground after you've already fallen off a ladder, lol. But also because it's not necessarily a quick thing. You can chop a number of cuttings off of a mother plant and root them pretty quickly.
However, I think that it might - might - be the way to go with auto-flowering plants. It might save on some of that "plant is stunned" time of stress. And while you're trying to grow roots via the air layering technique, the "to become a clone" part of the plant is still actively receiving nutrients from the plant it is still attached to, you do not need to stick it in a location that provides less powerful light, et cetera. Instead, it remains right there in the grow room, getting the same nutrients in the same ratios that "mom" is getting, is receiving the same amount of light-energy, et cetera.
You are welcome, of course (and thank you for the kind words).
BUT, I tend to become a bit "wordy," and sometimes much more than a bit.
If you ever become annoyed at the length of my posts, or begin having trouble with same, PLEASE do not hesitate to mention it! I do not feel insulted if/when someone does, and I absolutely do not wish to - in any way - add to your difficulties.
— I'm at 300w now, I'll go to 600w at flower time. 
Thanks ITS
Thanks for dropping by fellow Canadian! I follow Nebula too, they are so informative. Got the humidity up to 53% today. It was just because of the freezing snow we got over night. Fun to drive in!
