When inspiration deserts, you can always paint your lunch.
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Lamiaceae
Lavender and oregano are both in the same family, Lamiaceae, along with about 7500 other species. This family of flowering plants is commonly known as the mint, deadnettle, or sage family. Many of the plants are aromatic in all parts and include widely used culinary herbs like basil, mint, rosemary, sage, savory, marjoram, and thyme, as well as other medicinal herbs such as catnip, salvia, bee balm, wild dagga, and oriental motherwort.
How many members of this family are growing in your garden?
Linum usitatissimum
Flax, also known as common flax or linseed, has been cultivated as a food and fiber crop in temperate climates for over 9,000 years.
Linen is made from this plant’s fibrous stems, and the seed’s oil is known as linseed oil. Humans first domesticated flax in the Fertile Crescent region. Use of the crop steadily spread, reaching as far as Switzerland and Germany, China and India, where it was cultivated at least 5,000 years ago. It was grown extensively in ancient Egypt, where the temple walls had paintings of flowering flax, and mummies were embalmed using linen.
The seeds and their oil are highly nutritious, and the oil also has industrial uses. It is often blended with combinations of other oils, resins or solvents as a drying oil finish or varnish in wood finishing, as a pigment binder in oil paints, as a plasticizer and hardener in putty, and in the manufacture of linoleum.
A most useful plant indeed. And pretty!
Yerba mansa
Lovely SMMNJC meetup yesterday at Rancho Sierra Vista/Satwiwa. Between us we saw four different rattlesnakes and a gopher snake (along with lots of other interesting critters).
BB14
We did it! All 67 miles of the Backbone Trail were traversed; we actually added 8 miles to the total with our couple of detours. It’s been such a great experience, seeing new parts of the gorgeous Santa Monica Mountains and revisiting favourite sections. Check the ‘backbone trail’ tag to see all the journal entries.
Big thanks to my BHBF (Best Hiking Buddy Forever) for sharing the adventure.
bud vase
Getty Villa Museum
This Roman marble theatrical mask on the mosaic fountain in the East Garden is my favourite thing at the Getty Villa Museum. I like to think he is expressing shock and horror at the antiquities theft that was rife in the heyday of the British Empire, examples of which are on display all about him.
dispersal
Acacias are introduced here, and several are classified as invasive. I think the one proliferating in our neighbourhood is Acacia melanoxylon, Australian blackwood. I don’t know what bird moves the seeds about, but I have found them in my bird bath so I’m pretty sure they are involved!
buzzfeed
I’d seen a tuning fork used to trigger pollen ejection from nightshade flowers, but an electric toothbrush is cheaper and more accessible for demonstration purposes. I might add one to my school walks kit.
imaginal discs
Why had I never heard of imaginal discs before? Such a cool name, and structure!
hashiworks 