Pasted from the HGTV site... 'Long-lived perennials "I just helped a friend move a peony that's 125 years old. Her great-grandfather had planted it," says perennial expert Stephanie Cohen, whose new book The Perennial Gardener's Design Primer is already into its second printing. Given the right place and the right care, these plants will typically live at least 15 years, and some a lot longer than that. # peony # hosta # bearded iris # Siberian iris # daylily # hellebore # euphorbia, spurge Euphorbia # red-hot poker or torch lily (Kniphofia) # monkshood (Aconitum) # bugbane (Cimicifuga) # gas plant (Dictamnus) # balloon flower (Platycodon grandiflorus) # false indigo (Baptisia australis) # lily-of-the-Nile # astilbe (Astilbe) # purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) # black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia fulgida) # Helianthus # butterfly weed (Asclepias) # goldenrod (Solidago) # bee balm (Monarda) # goatsbeard (Aruncus) # ironweed # Joe-pye weed (Eupatorium) # sneezeweed (Helenium) # sedum # trillium Short-lived perennials These plants typically last for three to five years before fading away, or "the plants that live for three years if you don't kill them first," says Cohen. # columbine* [but they reseed a lot] # scabiosa # wallflower (Erysimum, or Cheiranthus) # basket-of-gold (Aurinia saxatilis) # hardy mum # lupine [collecting and starting more from seed is easy] # leopard's bane (Doronicum caucasicum) # feverfew (Tanacetum parthenium)* # geum # cardoon # fire pink (Silene virginica) and many other pinks # blanket flower (Gaillardia)* # Coreopsis grandiflora, C. lanceolata* # lavender # Phlox divaricata* * reseeds freely :-) pm2

I would also like to point out how infant and early childhood mortality also plays into the factor. Infant and early childhood mortality dropped dramatically with the advent of refrigeration (both ice boxes and gas-/electric-powered refrigerators) and it was the advent of safer food. Where a healthy adult would usually recover from tainted food, an infant/young child would easily die from dehydration from. I'm sure this has improved the overall numbers over the years. With fewer young children dying from food poisoning, and more of them growing to be adults, this could be a huge factor in the "average" life span. Other common causes of death for children were pneumonia, influenza, cancer, and birth defects, and for the most part, now successfully treated thanks to advances in medicine. The last infant I can personally recall dying was that of an acquaintance about 20-years ago who became a vegan while pregnant with twins. One of the twins did not thrive, and soon after birth died of malnutrition due to the mother's diet and lack of consuming quality protein while she was pregnant, and she wasn't able to supply enough breast milk for both babies. When we lived in a predominately agrarian society, young children often died from unintentional farm-related injuries. So once again, as we moved from the country to the cities, and there were fewer families needed to feed the nation, and more needed in the cities due to the industrial age, there were more children becoming adults than ever before. These are just a few more reasons.... -Grainlady

A glue joint like you envision will fail. Only question is when. Reason is because wood moves due to moisture/temperature changes. You cannot stop this movement. Since the wood moves, is has to be joined to allow that movement. Gluing wood together with the grain aligned(matching) allows the movement, since the grains are matched. Gluing with grain pattern at 90° angles means the movement will be different---and the joint will fail. That is the reason for the technique I described. The joint is tight where the two pieces are joined, but there is space to allow for the movement. That is the way very well built and expensive furniture is made. Because it is the only way to assure the joint lasts.

People who read live longer than those who don’t, Yale researchers say Posted January 4, 2019 THE BENEFITS OF READING SHOULD NOT BE UNDERSTATED, EVEN WHEN IT COMES TO LIVING A LONGER LIFE. A NEW STUDY FINDS THAT READING BOOKS IN PARTICULAR RETURNS COGNITIVE GAINS THAT INCREASE LONGEVITY. By Laurie Vázquez – Flying Books – NationalReadingGroupMonth.com – homepg_photo_2014b Bookworms rejoice! A new study in the journal Social Science and Medicine just discovered that people who read books live longer than people who don’t. Researchers at Yale University asked 3,635 participants over 50 years-old about their reading habits. From that data, they split the cohort into 3 groups: non-readers, people who read less than 3.5 hours per week, and people who read more than 3.5 hours per week. The researchers followed up with each group for 12 years. The people who read the most were college-educated women in the higher-income group. Over the course of the study, the researchers consistently found that both groups of readers lived longer than the non-readers. The readers who read over 3.5 hours a week lived a full 23 months longer than the people who didn’t read at all. That extended lifespan applied to all reading participants, regardless of “gender, wealth, education or health” factors, the study explains. That’s a 20% reduction in mortality created by a sedentary activity. That’s a big deal, and a very easy fix for improving quality of life in anyone over 50. Credit: Social Science and Medicine The results get better. “Compared to non-book readers,” the authors continue, “book readers had a 4-month survival advantage,” at the age when 20% of their peers passed away. “Book readers also experienced a 20% reduction in risk of mortality over the 12 years of follow up compared to non-book readers.” The authors continue: “Further, our analyses demonstrated that any level of book reading gave a significantly stronger survival advantage than reading periodicals. This is a novel finding, as previous studies did not compare types of reading material; it indicates that book reading rather than reading in general is driving a survival advantage.” “Stack ‘o Books” courtesy ABookSource.com The reason books had greater gains than periodicals is because book reading involves more cognitive faculties. The readers didn’t begin with higher cognitive faculties than the non-readers; they simply engaged in the activity of reading, which heightened those faculties. “This finding suggests that reading books provide a survival advantage due to the immersive nature that helps maintain cognitive status,” said the study’s authors. As any book lover knows, reading involves two major cognitive processes: deep reading, and emotional connection. Deep reading is a slow process where the reader engages with the book and seeks to understand it within its own context and within the context of the outside world. Emotional connection is where the reader empathizes with the characters, and that promotes social perception and emotional intelligence. Those cognitive processes were cited by the Yale team and used as markers for this study. While they apparently offer a survival advantage, “better health behaviors and reduced stress may explain this process [as well],” according to the study. Still, those cognitive benefits are real, as writer Nicholas Sparr explains [in a video associated with this article]. All the data was self-reported via phone survey and it didn’t really account for ebooks, but it’s still encouraging. There are no real downsides to reading, other than making the time for it. But if you’re not convinced and would rather have John Green teach you literature instead of reading the classics for yourself, philosopher and Yale University Dean Jeffrey Brenzel lays out 5 additional pro-reading benefits for you [in a video associated with this article]. Happy reading! (For the source of this article, and to watch a couple of videos related to it, please visit: https://bigthink.com/laurie-vazquez/yale-study-people-who-read-live-longer-than-people-who-dont/)