Musings

I reached back to this day in 2021 for a photo. Sometimes the past is great fun to visit, and a distraction from the present.

Posted at 9:47 PM | Comments Off on Timing

Native to Mexico and southward. I knew dahlias are New World, but not marigolds.

Posted at 9:27 PM | Comments Off on Incremental botanical knowledge

The other day I came across a discussion of perhaps the most common protein on earth, rubisco, technically styled RuBisCO. Its long version is Ribulose-1,5 bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase. I have no recollection of encountering mention of RuBisCO before.

RuBisCO is an enzyme, and it is critical for plants in extracting CO2 from air as part of the photosynthetic process. One key aspect of RuBisCO is that is extremely slow-acting, for an enzyme.

The utility of RuBisCO for human dietary needs is still under development, although I don’t know what the holdup has been…maybe it’s all chemistry? 🤣 Anyway, it has to be extracted from plant matter, then purified, etc., all without altering its protein properties.

My perspective is merely from trying to manage the onslaught of vegetative summer growth, without consideration of its potential RuBisCO content. Think: mowing, walking, cutting, and the like…. How would these chores be different if I could dump the plant-matter into an extractor…and, pfft, there’s dinner.

Posted at 9:28 PM | Comments Off on Lost in the weeds?

I didn’t see much in the way of wildlife today. I did see two garter snakes. Also, multiple flickers. And the usual deer, plus geese on the lake. I heard night-time loon calls and multiple sandhill cranes above.

Posted at 9:18 PM | Comments Off on Critter rundown

Despite there being plenty of sunshine today, I continued the laziness of yesterday…reading a John Grisham novel (library book) set on the GA–FLA line, on islands on the coast. Ho-hum.

Posted at 10:11 PM | Comments Off on Out of body experience?

I’ve always heard this called sweet pea. For sixty-ump years.

Then, a few minutes ago, I did an online search, and oops. Nope. Sweet pea is botanically Lathyrus odoratus, which is a tip-off that it’s a scented flower. These specimens are not scented. That means they are Lathyrus latifolius, or everlasting pea (and other common names). The two are close cousins looking very, very similar, and I’m sure there are also morphological differences.

I’ll keep calling these flowers sweet peas, because tradition is tradition; however, I’ll try to remember if someone knowledgeable about such things is around that it’s really L. latifolius.

Posted at 9:10 PM | Comments Off on Live and learn

Meet Acer palmatum. This maple is native to east Asia, from Korea north into Russia. Knock me over with a feather; I just read that there are over a thousand cultivars of this species.

Posted at 10:16 PM | Comments Off on Go horticulturalists

Around here, June was a bust for rainfall…we received close to zero-zilch. The last four days have more than made up for that deficit and launched us most of the way to our July average to boot.

The tough part is that it is darned humid outside (outside meaning: beyond the air-conditioning).

Posted at 9:23 PM | Comments Off on Drops do accumulate

Look at all the visual contrasts! Color, shapes, living vs inanimate—the whole shebang!

Fireworks began precisely at 9:15pm, and they’re now booming in various locations in the southern direction…with nothing sounding in the northern quadrants. This is audio contrasts?

Posted at 9:44 PM | Comments Off on Delving into contrast

I have irregular success with flash and fleurs. Today, the gods favored me. [Framing, not so much.]

Posted at 9:42 PM | Comments Off on Working the odds