Monday, 20 August 2018
Our rainy, muggy, steamy August continues, and this new (maybe two months old) mulch is supporting a healthy crop of fungi. All locals are reminded to carefully clean between their toes. 😀
My weather app indicates sunset will be at 8:18pm; too cloudy to see it….
Friday, 17 August 2018
Out and about, I stood under a large pine (mentioned before here) and I was in a rain of cone-parts. Here’s a spent cone amidst conifer detritus.
This afternoon, after two brief rain-events (with sunshine between), I spotted this rodent eyeing the street (unfazed by my activities). Is this a belly-cooling pose?
Thursday, 16 August 2018
Big hibiscus, and not-open-yet four o’clock.
Well, it’s after nine o’clock and I’m no hibiscus.
Wednesday, 15 August 2018
Native peoples of the lowlands of Mesoamerica used a cousin of this garden morning glory in converting rubber-tree sap into a version of what we’d recognize as rubber. Plant magic.
The little upright pods…I don’t know their name, or what we called them when I was a kid and we’d harvest and eat them…a citrus-like bit that I enjoyed. Not much substance, however.
Tuesday, 14 August 2018
The other day I came across the word “eidolon/eidola” (singular/plural), Greek for a look-alike phantom for a person, in their case, especially applied to Helen of Troy. [And in Greek letters: εἴδωλον].
The Guru and I are binge-watching a Canadian TV series called “Continuum,” which has character duplicates, which I think can be called eidola.
Too many doubles. Here’s a single purple fleur; buds don’t count—my rules.
Friday, 10 August 2018
The simple functional analysis of leaves is that they make nutrition happen for plants. The mechanism for this is evident in the green of leaves [duh: chlorophyll]. However. When plant “gamers” manipulate the leaves, uh, well, some of the green may be excised.
Which leaves (haha) the plant nutritionally diminished.
Soooooo, look at these powerful plants overcoming their genetic inheritance! Lush!
Visually, hey, lovely aesthetic juxtaposition. Which is why this composition caught my eye…. [Truth: nothing botanical in that analysis….]
Thursday, 2 August 2018
I live in a bubble, so was not familiar with the phrasing I heard applied to Apple today…it’s now a four-comma (club) company. [This has nothing to do with dependent or independent clauses, etc.]
Friday, 27 July 2018
I found this giant yellowing leaf in the sidewalk planting by that house a few blocks away whose people turned the lot next door (after a tear-down) into a garden (nice extra greenspace for the rest of us…). I forget what the plant is. Leaf is maybe a yard across….
This is what I think of as a small hibiscus bloom. Some are salad-plate sized, but this one is only about three inches across. Retro.
Thursday, 26 July 2018
I’m such a sucker for new vocabulary words. I like those adopted from another language. And I sometimes have a soft spot for technical/specific vocabularies. Today I came across this term for a particular leaf vein pattern: campylodromous. Of course, when I did some research, it turns out there are a whole suite of vein pattern classification-names that I don’t remember seeing before. Not that useful, but descriptive terms, yeah…soft spot. [Details: see Wkeepee here.]
Saturday, 21 July 2018
I tried new-Cam on an errand trip. And discovered with this outdoor shot that…um, the screen is black when viewed through my polarized sunglasses. Oops. Gonna take a while to get used to that (head tilt or push glasses down nose)…. Not sure why the decision was made to use a screen with this problem–it’s been a known problem for, what?, almost a decade.
Nice snap of interior decoration, however.
Via my iPhone, here’s a crepe myrtle bloom (not the one in the first photo) closer-up.