“Fruit” taxonomy
Wednesday, 25 June 2014
It’s sweet cherry season in the market….
Sources reminded me that (botanical) berries include…bananas and avocados.
But, cherries are a stone-fruit (aka drupe).
Conclusion: botanists are lingo-wild.
Musings
Orange is the new…
Tuesday, 24 June 2014
I’ve been groovin’ on these orange lilies for weeks; I think I saw the most amazing ones in SEA…but gorgeous ones in MI, KY, all over….
Sparkle-pollen
Tuesday, 17 June 2014
Wandered streets and alleys with The Nephew the Younger; found this yaller flour—neither of us knew its name….
Steamy evening
Sunday, 15 June 2014
Loving that it’s gardenia time again….
Surprise! Gardenias are taxonomically related to coffee….
Two more things…
Friday, 6 June 2014
First, the lupins/lupines are beginning to bloom! Just today; not yesterday.
This second one’s trickier. JCB and I have seen a white!! raptor!! soaring above the grasses above the field and through the orchard, yesterday afternoon and today, too. Not many times, but a few. It’s white. Like, very white. With black wing-tips and tips on the tail feathers. At least that’s what we think we’ve been seeing. Haven’t got the glasses on it.
Went through two editions of Sibley’s studying all the pictures, and there seems to be only one possibility: gyrfalcon, white variant. It’s a majestic bird.
Inhale (use your imagination)
Friday, 6 June 2014
Do you say lie-locks or lie-lacks?
The Guru wrangled the lawnmower, traipsing across the ENTIRE lawn, all the nooks and crannies—no big rectangles here…. The sun was out and it was a hot, red-face-inducing job.
This being Michigan—one of the places where the saying goes “if you don’t like the weather, wait ten minutes”—the weather indeed did change. The ten-minute window wasn’t met, however. Instead, the sun dipped behind clouds just as he was returning the mower to its parking place in the garage.
Sure enough, after he got out of the shower he checked the radar, and there’s a precip blob to the southwest moving our way….
Lawn now looks great! And so does the terribly strange screen-protected garden-mound sown with both seeds and sheep/alpaca/llama poop (thanks so much, Sherry!)….
Note sky
Thursday, 5 June 2014
Cloudless sky and pleasant-to-warm temps all day. New garden is drying under these conditions; I keep adding dishwater (my new chore).
Most of the apple buds are open. The trees are breath-taking. They have sound—buzzing bees.
Dark red petioles
Tuesday, 3 June 2014
The rhubarb is much improved this year, as I’ve already noted. The plants I see in gardens within twenty miles of here are generally twice this size or so, and more robust; our plants still need some TLC. Heh—especially weeding, eh???
In recipes, we almost always use rhubarb like a fruit, but the stem of the leaf that we uses (NOT the leaves!) is really what we’d generally consider a vegetable (like parsley or basil stems). For import purposes, however, it’s considered a fruit, WikiPee says…. This is the opposite of the tomato, which is botanically a fruit, but culinarily used as a vegetable (mostly).
Enough FYI.
Library trends
Monday, 2 June 2014
First trend: this tree is laden with blooms, and they smell heavenly. Sorry you’re missing it….
Second trend: older couples each with a small device, using the library’s fast pipe to cruise whatever on their phones/devices. We also see a combo with one laptop and one device. I have not noticed the two-devices phenomena here in the hinterlands before….
Life on a wee scale
Monday, 2 June 2014
While it was still super-overcast and before the spitty rain started this morning, I wandered about outdoors. Typical landscapes looked crappy, even if the exposure was right, because the sky was so flat. I thought: I need another plan.
And so I futzed with a few mossy shots. Preferring not to get on my knees in the wet grass complicated matters. However, as an adventure in creativity, I enjoyed myself.