I’ve been trying to be vegetarian since 2020 with more success than not. One of my favorite recipes lately has been mushroom stroganoff. It’s a simple recipe with any type of mushroom, onions, vegetable broth and a few spices along with sour cream. It’s amazingly good.
Mushrooms have a connotation that brings to mind magic mushrooms. Magic mushrooms brings to my mind the days of free love, hippies, love ins, communes. When students would ask me where I went to college, I would tell them the University of Mississippi from 1966 to 1970. Their immediate response was “you’re a hippie!” They severely overestimated the student body at Ole Miss.
In the late 60’s, Ole Miss was probably the second most liberal institution in the state, behind Millsaps College. At least the professors were. You were considered radical if you didn’t wear button down shirts with khakis and Oxfords. Women were not allowed to wear pants and had to sign out of the dorm on dates.
Ole Miss, specifically Powers Hall – my dorm – was the site of the first marijuana bust in the state. One weekend morning I waked to sirens and cop cars pulling into the rear parking lot. There were, conservatively estimated, 100 cop cars from all over the state. Everyone in police work wanted in on the bust. I never found out who it was arrested but back then, Mississippi had a very harsh prison sentence for possession, much less dealing.
In 1970, everything changed for me. I was number 19 in the national draft lottery and number 7 in Scott county and they were drafting the first 9. I enlisted in the Coast Guard and went to boot camp in Alameda, California. Talk about Alice in Wonderland! We were granted a day of leave and several friends and I went into San Francisco which was probably the peak of Haight-Ashbury. It was a wonderland, indeed.
When I was stationed in Corpus Christi, Texas, I finally was exposed to some hipster vibe when I traveled to San Antonio to see my cousin Jo and saw the retail shops around town with a different vibe than Ole Miss. I bought my first paisley shirt somewhere in Texas and then several more. I loved those damn shirts and wore them completely out. It was my go to civvies when I went into town on shore leave. That was about as hip as I got.
I mean, really, all my students had to do was take one look at me and realize how unhip I was. I think part of the reason they thought I was a hippie was because I spent a lot of time in lectures talking about psilocybin mushrooms and how difficult there were to distinguish from a very deadly mushroom. Both happen to be coprophilic and you basically have to do a spore print to distinguish between the species. I was doing it as a noble gesture to warn them away from the Davie cow fields and and cow patties and I think they took it as my being expert in selecting psilocybin.
I always pointed out the discovery of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) from ergot. Ergot is a fungus that infects wheat and rye grasses. Bread made with ergot infestations would often be a darker brown than normal breads. Eating ergot infested bread would cause hallucinations and many people back in the Middle Ages were declared witches and warlocks and put to death because of ergot poisoning. There is some evidence that the Salem witch trials may have been due to ergot poisoning.
The scientist who isolated LSD from ergot has an interesting story. He had a purified vial of liquid LSD and was observing its physical characteristics. He, like any good scientist, kept meticulous notes. He made the mistake of putting his finger over the vial and shaking it. The LSD was absorbed through his skin. He then began to jot down his perceptions. As he wrote in his notebook, he finished the page, wrote across the table, down the leg of the table and onto the floor. He disappeared for a week or two before anyone could find him.
I also mentioned the LSD experiments the military did on soldiers. Sadly, some committed suicide because they had bad hallucinations.
Invariably, students wanted to know more about hydroponics. I don’t think they were interested in growing tomatoes.
There was a fungus we always cultivated in botany lab called Achlya. You could grow it in a Petri dish on either dead cockroaches or marijuana seeds. You can guess which we chose as our medium. We would split the marijuana seed in half and put in distilled water and “seed” the fungus. Students were sadly disappointed when I revealed the seeds were sterile and would not germinate.
I guess I can understand why some students thought I was so hip. All the talk about drugs and their questions about hydroponics.
Mushroom Stroganoff – makes 4 servings
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil 2 cups thinly sliced onions 1 tablespoon Paprika 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper 1 teaspoon lemon zest 1 1/4 pounds remind mushrooms, sliced (just about any mushroom will work. Creminis are more mature white button mushrooms. I like to use baby portobellos. I don’t recommend psilocybin! 2/3 cup unsalted vegetable broth 1/2 teaspoon coarse salt 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 1 tablespoon flour 1/2 cup Greek yogurt or reduced fat sour cream 2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill
Heat oil in a Dutch oven or large frying pan (preferably non-stick) on medium; add onions. Cook 15 minutes or until the onions begin to brown. Stir in paprika, cayenne and lemon zest. Add mushrooms and broth. (I cooked the mushrooms a bit before adding the broth.). Cook for 10 minutes or until liquid is reduced. Season with salt and pepper. Remove from heat and let stand 2 minutes. Stir flour into yogurt or sour cream. Swirl dairy mixture into mushroom mixture. Sprinkle with dill and serve.
I know I’ve gotten used to my routine when a Saturday rolls around and it’s time to wash clothes and clean house. It got me to thinking how much wash day has changed through the years. I’ve probably waxed poetic about this before but it’s on my mind, so here goes.
Saturday in the south was always wash day – at least with my grandparents on both sides of the family. Never on Sunday! That was a sin! Most important in my mind was when I would visit Grandma Searcy in Pulaski, Mississippi (named after Count Casimir Von Pulaski of revolutionary war fame). You would think grandmothers would put everything on hold on a Saturday when grandkids came around but chores in the country never stopped.
Grandmother Searcy boiled her clothes in a cast iron pot. First, she had to build a fire (think summertime heat here) and then she would pour in well water (that she had to draw from the well on the other side of the house) about half way up the pot and add lye soap shavings. Clothes needed to be washed would be immersed in the pot and she would agitate the clothes with a boat oar.
Grandma Searcy’s cast iron wash pot
Once she was satisfied the soap had done its job, she then used the oar to pull the clothes out one by one and spread them on a clothes line to cool off. While waiting for them to cool, she turned over the pot with the oar, rinsed it out with well water, flipped the pot back upright over the fire, stoked the fire, and added well water up to the half way point and got it boiling. Back in went the clothes and she stirred them around until she was satisfied most of the soap was out of the clothes.
Back to the clothesline with the boiling hot clothes until they cooled enough until she could rinse them. She used an old scrub board to finish rinsing the clothes, wrung them out and then put the back out on the clothes line for drying. I actually have a wash tub and scrub board here in the garage. I keep it on hand for emergency purposes.
I was always thrilled when I got old enough to help her wash. I became the agitator with the boat oar. She constantly chastised me that I was “going to fast” or “stir harder” or “quick spilling the water out of the pot.” Later, when I got even older, she would let me do the final rinse on the scrub board and then she would wring them out for me. She must have had a great set of arm muscles to wring out blue jeans and overalls.
As you might guess, this was good for everyday wear like dresses, overalls, jeans, every day shirts, socks and underwear. So what do you do when it is you Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes.
She once told me before automobiles were very common, she would ride into Morton (7 miles away) on a horse and buy a bottle of acetone from the pharmacist. Acetone was the original “dry” cleaner. You’ll be hard pressed to find acetone these days because it is a carcinogen. In essence, wash day in the country on a Saturday was pretty much an all day affair. It took her most of the day to ride into town and back on that horse.
She still ironed her clothes and she had the old flat irons that you heated on a stove or in a fireplace.
She had three or four of these around the house. Once heated, you would iron clothes until it began to cool and then you would put it back on the stove or facing an outdoor fire and pick up another hot one. Sadly, I don’t have any of her old irons.
Mother actually used these when I was a kid. If her electric iron died (they often did back then) she’d put this on the electric eye of a stove to heat it up. You could stand it on it’s end like a regular iron, but a lot of people had a “holder” that you sat on the ironing board so it would lay flat. The reason you’d do this instead of stand it on its end was if you knocked the ironing board, the damn thing would fall off and smash your toes.
A step up in my clothes washing education was the old wringer type washer.
This machine is dangerous! It’ll crush your fingers if you are not careful. You plugged it in, raised the drain hose and clipped it off and filled it by hand with water. Then you added your soap of choice and turned on the agitator. If the clothes were exceptionally dirty (think kids in blue jeans) you lowered the hose, unclamped it, drained the water, and then repeat.
After you decided clothes were clean, you drained the soapy water and filled the tub with rinse water and let that agitate a while. You may have to do that two or three times. When you were ready, you then started the wringer. There were two rollers and you could adjust the roller separation by the twist you see at the top of the machine. You fed the clothes up the tray and into the wringer which got rid of the water. There was a handle (usually on the right side) that allowed you to stop, start, or reverse the direction of the rollers. You could then wring the clothes one way and then have it come back through for an additional wringing. The trick was to keep your fingers out of the rollers. After my first pinching experience, I got pretty good at keeping my fingers protected. By the way, the button industry was very busy during this period because the wringer crushed them like crazy.
My Aunt Sue on my Dad’s side had this type of machine and so did my Aunt Mabel on my Mother’s side. As you can see by the picture, these machines were pretty much indestructible. One thing you had to worry about when the agitator was going was the machine had a tendency to “walk” across a room. When I was at Aunt Sue’s I was constantly dragging the machine back into position. I think I remember the one at Aunt Mabel’s was a little more lively in its dance across the floor.
When I first became a counselor at Camp Kickapoo near Clinton, Mississippi, the only washer they had available for camp staff was the old wringer type. Since most of my fellow counselors were from wealthy homes in Jackson, they never washed clothes at camp. I was probably the only one who knew how to use it and I did every Saturday afternoon after all the kids had left for the week.
My first truly “modern” washing machine was at my Grandmother Ruby’s. It had the agitator inside the tank and the process was pretty much fully automated. If I remember correctly, you didn’t set the machine for delicates or anything type of setting, you just set the time for the wash. This one was hooked up to both hot and cold water taps.
Later, the washing machine industry started making the gears of the agitator out of plastic and they would wear out over time. I’m pretty sure this was designed to get you to purchase a new machine because most appliance repair stores wouldn’t even consider trying to find replacement parts.
My latest washing machine (I don’t like it) doesn’t have an agitator. It simply has a set of four bumps at the bottom of the tank. The water level is automatically set on low unless you tell it “deep wash” (which I do.). It also takes approximately 43 minutes to wash a single load. My old machines could do a wash in 20-25 minutes. I’m not sure the new machines are an evolutionary advancement over the older models with the large agitator in the tub.
Up until a few years ago, I still ironed clothes. I was a little anal about handkerchiefs. I still iron my blue jeans. I can curse Mother for that.
Mother, the few times she decided to be a homemaker, would starch and stretch my and Archie’s blue jeans. The starch was a powder that you mixed with water – probably Argo starch. You would dip the clean wet jeans in the starch solution, wring them out and then insert stretchers into the legs and hang them out to dry. After they dried, you ironed them.
To iron them, you sprinkled them with water using a sprinkler head and an old Coca Cola bottle. The old electric irons didn’t have a steam setting so you had to moisten the clothes before ironing or you’d never get the wrinkles out. It was typical to take any clothes that needed to be ironed, sprinkle them with water, place them in a bag and put them into the vegetable crisper until you were ready to iron them. Sometimes Mother would leave them in the refrigerator for a couple of days until she could get to the ironing.
You could cut your finger on the crease put into those ironed, starched jeans. Mother always over did the starch. You could stand those jeans up in a corner and they’d stay that way for days. What was sheer agony was putting your legs into those jeans. You had to pry the layers apart with your feet and then feel the starch scratch away at your legs as you inserted them. The first time you sat down in those jeans, it actually hurt because of all the starch.
Mother truly believed in starch. When my Dad went back into training for Korea, Mother didn’t know any better and starched his underwear. Since they hadn’t been married too long, my Dad held out for a few months and then begged her not to starch the underwear anymore.
If I never see another pair of jeans stretchers again, it’ll be too soon.
Of course, today we have spray starches and irons with steam function. I really don’t mind ironing clothes. It’s somewhat therapeutic. I used to iron all my pants, shirts and handkerchiefs for teaching. Then I discovered the magic of no-iron shirts. Before they went out of business, Brooks Brothers had the best. You took them out of the dryer and hung them up immediately and they were wrinkle free.
When I did iron shirts, I was light on the starch. One Saturday I was apparently in la-la land and I picked up what I thought was the spray starch to iron a shirt. It turned out it was Scrubbing Bubbles. I realized the difference when it foamed up like in the bath tub. Other than my blue jeans, I don’t iron much of anything any more.
You would not know to look at the photo above but I raked leaves a couple of days ago. When the mango tree that hangs over my yard starts shedding, it really sheds.
I try to be diligent about it and rake them at least once a week, usually on Friday in prelude to my cleaning the pool filter.
It looks pretty nice for a few hours and then the mango takes over again. There has to be some metaphor about life in there somewhere. In everyone’s life a few mango leaves must fall?
More bad news for Florida on the Covid front. The Sun-Sentinel reports nine counties at high risk for Covid. As you might guess, they are concentrated in the high population density areas. Of these nine, five are showing infection rates of over 20%. As far as the number of cases, Miami-Date leads the state with Broward County as number 2. As of 25 May, the state of Florida has seen 74,466 deaths from Covid. I suspect that is severely under reported. The statistics are from the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta but they only report what the state of Florida reports to them.
Florida has a population of approximately 21.5 million souls. Based on my calculations that 2.8% of the population in the state is dead from Covid. As I’ve written before, I don’t believe the data from CDC or Florida.
Diane Rehm, on her podcast today “Diane Rehm: On My Mind”has an episode called “Untangling the Mystery of Long Covid” and what was most concerning was how little we know anything about long Covid. It’ll be years before any of this is figured out.
On a brighter note, I spent a little time yesterday organizing my photos from my recent trip. I snapped 642 photos and 28 videos. I think back to the time when I was a kid with my first camera and mother berating me for taking so many photos of flowers. She, of course, was angry about paying the development costs. It took me a while to get over that and it wasn’t until Sara Hurdle gave me a camera for my graduation present for my masters degree that I got back into photography big time. That Canon camera was also a film camera but I had started developing my own photos back then because I had access to the dark room for the professional photographer for Ole Miss.
Digital photography was a revelation. I could snap as many photos as my memory card would allow and I’ve pretty much snapped everything in sight. Since most are photos of plants (sorry mom) I keep all the shots. Not only do I photograph the flower or fruit but also leaves, stems, and any other part of the plant that will help in identification. They are not pretty in the esthetic sense but are invaluable in identification – such as hairy stem, opposite leaves, etc.
My plant checklist is up to 1,748 plants and that does not include this trip nor the plants I collected and identified for my thesis (over 2,000). It’ll take me some time to identify the plants on this trip but it will be a little easier for me this go around since I’ve photographed many of the plants before.
Sadly, when I had to replace the hard drive on my iMac, it kept the photos but lost all the metadata which included the identification of the plants. I’ll have to use my checklist to go back and assign the names again – a project that should only take me three lifetimes to do. Gotta keep busy somehow!
Slowly, slowly I’m getting back into my routine. I remember how I exactly make my coffee every morning, no longer forgetting the series and sequences of steps. It sounds mundane but it does brew a pretty good cup of coffee.
My morning walks have become a way to wake me up from my Benadryl induced sleep. It’s the only way to keep from waking and scratching the rest of the night. Typically, I’m one of those persons who, when they wake, become fully awake and functional before I get out of bed. The Benadryl makes me a little woozy first thing and for the first few mornings, things got out of sequence.
I have four main walks to choose from in my neighborhood and I alternate the walks. To add more variation, each of the four have a long and short version. My longest walk is 1.8 miles and is along Riverland Road – quite the scenic drive for Fort Lauderdale.
As I stepped outside this morning and started heading to Riverland, the first thing that came into view was the Royal Poinciana. May and June are the height of the blooming season for this Madagascar native.
Royal Poinciana (Delonix regia)
It’s a neighbor’s tree and about two months ago it looked as though it were dead. It sheds leaves and very long leguminous pods just before blooming season. It’s a messy tree, very brittle which isn’t good for hurricanes, but you can’t beat it when it is in bloom. The flowers are very red and the sepals are very yellow on one side.
Royal Poinciana bloom
The leguminous pod is so tough the pod has to rot before seeds can be released and even then, the outer coat (aril) has to rot in order for the seed to germinate. I used to use them in botany class to show them how to sclarify the seeds to get them to germinate more quickly.
For the past several months, Riverland Road has been undergoing a make over. The city is putting bike lanes on both sides of the road and they are reworking the sidewalk on the north/west side of the road. I can’t wait for the bike paths to be functional. Right now they are just asphalt paving that’s waiting for the entire road surface to be repaved.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been walking down Riverland on the only sidewalk when a kid heading to the middle school comes up behind me and passes me on a bike with any warning. One time I was so startled I threw my arms out and almost took the kid off the bike. It seems no one teaches bicycle courtesy any more. As kids, our bikes normally either had a horn or bell that you would ring when passing someone. I don’t blame the kids right now for riding on the sidewalk. Riverland Road has become a major traffic throughway. I wouldn’t want to ride the road either.
Anyway, the city is also widening the existing sidewalk. The original was very narrow and two people would find it difficult to pass each other. In this era of Covid, it meant one of you would have to walk either in the swale or on the road itself.
In the construction process, they have blocked all drains on Riverland. The road is flood prone and with hurricane season start only a few days away, that’s a concern. There is no way they will be finished by the start of the season and I hate to think of a heavy downpour with blocked drains. There are places along the road that when it floods you cannot get your vehicle through.
On my Riverland walk back, I usually cut by the Boys and Girls Club, a couple of blocks from my house. It used to be my precinct until a few years ago when they moved it to the elementary school farther away. One of the reasons I like to cut by there is there are a pair of Golden Shower trees. May is also their peak season.
Golden Shower Tree (Cassia fistula)
Don’t confuse this with the Golden Rain Tree (Koelrueteria paniculata) often planted as an ornamental in the U.S. However, golden shower and/or golden rain tree reminds me of the 1957 movie Raintree County. I was all of 9 years old when I saw Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Cliff, Eva Marie Saint and Lee Marvin star in this Civil War film. I must have seen it either at the Larmar Theater or the Paramount Theater in Jackson, Mississippi. It was probably the Paramount – the classier of the two theaters. My grandmother Ruby was a big fan of movies and she often took me with her. The movie was controversial in the south because of the idea Elizabeth Taylor going mad because she thought she might be Black.
I was ready to do yoga and swim laps in the pool but my neighbor Trevor chose that time to mow my lawn. I really appreciate him doing that. He does it dirt cheap for me. Since I swim au naturel I didn’t want to send him into shock so instead I made three bean salad for dinner and curled up with a book. That was much more pleasant than exercising, not withstanding the guilt for not exercising.
The sad news about the Ulvade shooting continues. It seems it may be like the Parkland shooting when police delayed entering the school. It will probably be months before the picture becomes complete.
The horrors just keep coming. There are no answers but there certainly can be some actions. As a kid, I can remember the National Rifle Association was an organization concerned with gun safety. In Boy Scouts, we picked up on that theme one year at the state fair and presented lessons to people at the fair on how to safely handle a gun when hunting. How to carry a gun while walking in the woods, how to safely cross a fence with a gun (you unloaded it first), how to never point a gun at a person. In the military, before we were allowed to even hold a rifle or a pistol we were required to undergo a gun safety lecture.
Think of what must occur before you can legally drive a vehicle. Age restrictions, learner’s permit, insurance, renewal of licenses. How is it that these regulations are not even debated and yet anyone over 18 can purchase a gun without training, licensing, insurance?
Apparently, thoughts and prayers are not getting it done. Neither is Congress.
What a night! I was so tired from the massage, I turned out the light at 9:30. Around midnight, I woke to itching. Either I am allergic to something or there’s some strange thing going on with me physically, but for several months I periodically start itching all over.
I keep some anti-itch creams and stuff near and so I smeared some cream on the area itching under my arms. That just seemed to start everything itching – from my ankles, to forearms, to the groin area, my chest, and even my back. I gave up around 1 am and popped a Benadryl. It didn’t really kick in until around 3 am and until that time I was dousing myself with anything I could find to stop the itching. I had welts on my forearms than ran from my wrist all the way up to my elbow. Around 3 am I dozed off and waked around 8 am. At the least Benadryl worked.
I was dragging all morning from the after effects of the Benadryl and didn’t do my morning walk, nor yoga, nor laps in the pool. At least I was able to make coffee and eat breakfast.
I had my six month eye check up today at 2 pm. Since I’m diabetic, my endocrinologist wants me to keep on top of glaucoma. Strangely, my ocular pressure is always normal but the six month check ups have caught two conditions. The first was an extra retinal membrane, which in itself is not so much a problem except when it detaches, it can pull the lining of the retina with it. The ophthalmologist sent me to a specialist and they monitored it for two years until it finally detached with no problems.
The second condition they found was the vitreous humor that fills the chamber of the eye with the retina is shrinking and liquifying with – guess – old age. Again, not a problem but sometimes as the vitreous shrinks, it can also detach the retina. In most cases, it doesn’t affect the retina but I have to be careful if I see more floaters or start seeing flashes of light in my left eye. The right eye seems fine.
There was no change in prescription so I was happy not having to change glasses. The worst part is the dilation of the pupils so the ophthalmologist can examine the inside of the eye. The other tedious part is the checking of peripheral vision. I hate that part where you have to click every time you spot a speck of light. It takes the rest of the afternoon for my eyes to get back to normal.
I’ve pretty much reconciled myself that I will always have some specialist wanting to check up on me every 6 months. So far, my endocrinologist wants me every 6 months, the ophthalmologist every 6 months, and my cardiologist every 3 months. Then I usually go to the orthopedic doctor for arthritis in my hands every 4 – 6 months. It’s a good thing my GP only wants to see me once a year.
The latest news about monkeypox is that most of the outbreaks are in the gay community. It now makes sense that Fort Lauderdale is reporting two cases since there is a large gay population in Broward county. The other news is that people who have been vaccinated for smallpox probably have some immunity from monkeypox. I’ve been vaccinated three times for smallpox and the vaccine produced a reaction two of the three. The last time was while I was 1970 in the Coast Guard and I didn’t get a reaction. Even vaccination immunity wanes over time, but I hope that I still retain some immunity from the three vaccinations although the last vaccination was 52 years ago. The Department of Health, New York State says immunity for smallpox lasts 3-5 years and if revaccinated, it extends the 3-5 year period even more. Maybe, just maybe, I still have a small bit of immunity.
I’ll be taking Benadryl a little earlier tonight. I’ve already started with another rash this afternoon.
There’s redness within the red block and the two arrows show two bumps or welts that have developed.
Getting on towards the end of my mother’s life, when I would visit from Fort Lauderdale, I noticed if I picked up some particular item – say my grandmother’s butter churn – there was a piece of Johnson & Johnson medical tape on the bottom, the type of tape that was in a metal spool, with my mother’s hand writing on it saying either “Archie” or “Freddie.” Finally, my curiosity got the better of me and I asked what she was doing labeling “everything in the house?” She replied that when she died, she wanted us to know what was to go to whom. Even the furniture was marked, even Dad’s bed. I guess my Dad, who was very much alive, had to give up the goods. I put it down to one of her ideas, once embedded, never removed.
I have become my mother. Either COVID or turning 73 or feeling more aches and pains, have led me to start labeling things. To be clear, my will states that three organizations get everything, split three ways so it’s not like my grandmother’s churn is going to some relative and the lamp is going to another. Instead, any Christmas presents I have put aside for this year have been plainly markd as to whom they go – in big, bold, black letters. So if I kick the bucket before the holidays, then the lawyer who will settle my estate will know to give them to whomever.
I’ve also started thinking of what the lawyer who will settle my estate will think when he finds really strange things, like the piece of electrical conduit at the base of the washing machine which sometimes rolls up under the side of it. I’m sure he will think what was the idiot doing with this?
I use the conduit, about 2 1/2 feet long, to stick in one of the holes around the pool that is used for the uprights of a toddler fence to keep them from falling in and drowning. I don’t have the fence and I’ve plugged all but three of the holes around the pool but I use one on the east end of the pool to fit the conduit. I loop my swim cords over the conduit so I can swim “laps” in place. There have to be a hundred of these little surprises scattered throughout the house that someone will have to deal with and wonder about.
For that, first of all, one need to know the main controller of your health, you tadalafil sale have not to spend money too much. As follows: Blood tests Imaging scans MRI of the neck Nerve ultrasound Nerve conduction tests Recording of the electrical activity in muscles (EMG) X-rays Swelling amerikabulteni.com canada cialis and nerve function in the ulnar nerve can be determined based on these tests. Hair loss Nausea and vomiting Infection Fatigue Diarrhea Nerve pain Muscle pain Mouth sores Temporary loss of menstrual periods amerikabulteni.com buy levitra no prescription Decrease in red blood cells by enhancing their iron percentage and motivating blood flow therefore assisting to stop anaemia. The tablets are a world class solution tadalafil cipla amerikabulteni.com of dealing with the corner drugstore.
For example, I have coasters strategically placed throughout the house in what would appear to be a haphazard arrangement. They are not haphazard at all. Each one is where I, at one time or another during the day, will sit and either have a glass of water, some hot chocolate on cooler days or lemonade on warmer ones, or my nightly cocktail. Each coaster is precisely placed for my habitual moves through the house. It makes me think of Rocky. He had a series of rotations around the house at night for sleep.
He would start out on the rug beside my bed (after he was too old to leap into my bed) and then move to his bed in the living room, then the chair in the living room, then the couch in the living room and then the carpet in the living room before moving back to the rug by my bedside before I got up in the morning. Let’s just say he and I were creatures of habit. I still am.
We leave some funny “marks” on this earth when we depart. We certainly leave people with various opinions of our lives – some good, some bad – but since I don’t have any children or grandchildren, looks like only close friends will get a few labeled packages with my demise.
Just think of what my friends will think when they get a wrapped Christmas present, open it, and find their names written in large block letters on the boxes. Keep ’em guessing, I always say!
Back to the butter churn. My name was on the bottom of it so I’ve had it sitting on the floor in the living room even before my mother died. I claimed it early. Otherwise, I would not put it past my brother pulling the tape off with my name on it and putting the tape with his name on it. For a while, it held my brother’s will and sobriety chip. Lately, it has been used to make homemade sauerkraut. I’ve never made butter with it but it makes excellent sauerkraut and homemade pickles. Thanks mom!
I have a sometimes walking partner in the mornings. We don’t plan anything but while walking, we sometimes bump into each other and will continue walking together. We usually catch each other up on the news of the neighborhood. In short, we gossip. I know some things she doesn’t and vice versa. Lately the topic has been Covid-19.
As of this writing there are 10 Covid cases within a block of me affecting five families. To my knowledge, none were vaccinated at the time of their testing positive. Four became very sick.
In some of the cases, either the vaccine had not been developed or they were not eligible at the time of their infection. However, several were eligible and chose not to get vaccinated for one reason or another. I certainly don’t know their specific reasoning and it’s not for me to judge but I find it pretty significant that there are that many cases within one block of me.
In my own extended family, I have eleven relatives who have tested positive, some vaccinated, some not. Some have had severe cases and others have not, even within the same family.
A friend who still teaches was notified by a student she tested positive for Covid. She was tested on a Monday, received the results on Wednesday, yet attended three classes while positive. The entire class was masked and my friend was vaccinated but the CDC has no specific guidelines on that particular case. She’s being trying to get tested but she teaches most of the day and the testings sites are closing by 1 pm.
The college does not offer rapid testing on campus, probably because they are afraid the governor will cut funding to the college if it even acknowledges the threat of Covid. The college encourages students to be tested and encourages them to wear masks but doesn’t mandate either. I think professors can require masks but not testing and vaccination.
It seems there is no end to this pandemic. I’m getting to the point that I am thinking of going back to the stay-at-home scenario and stop going out in public. I become eligible for a booster shot on September 29th and I intend to get it as soon as I am eligible.
The emails to ignore are the vast majorities which are selling deeprootsmag.org cialis generic pills, levitra, penis enlargement drugs and other similar products and services. And the same is true of societies and the contexts in which they free tadalafil sample find themselves. It boosts physical health and improves sensation cheap viagra soft in your genitals. When diagnosing the brain, the viagra sales in canada medication goes along the premises of trial and error.
I still wear a mask anywhere indoors or anywhere I can’t get six feet of distance from other people.
It seems people have decided they have to live with the idea of Covid and have adjusted accordingly. I dined al fresco with Michel and Nancy on Sunday night at the Boathouse at the Riverside Hotel on the riverfront. The hostess wore a mask but the waiter did not.
About half the people wear a mask when I shop Whole Foods on Sunday. All the employees wear masks but some of them have them below their noses.
The media is full of stories of people who chose not to get vaccinated, developed Covid and said they wish they had it to do over – on their deathbed.
The giant Sturgis, SD motorcycle rally has resulted in South Dakota reporting a 312% increase in cases. What is even more scary is that that is only South Dakota reporting. The majority of the supposedly 450,000 participants come from all across the United States.
Florida’s governor has changed the way statistics are reported to CDC and in some cases the CDC has to guess at the number of new cases, particularly on weekends when the state doesn’t report data. Now the state simply reports a seven day trend. As of yesterday, the seven day trend in Florida was 21, 208 new cases. Even with my poor math skills, that seems to be over 7,000 new cases daily in the sunshine state. In August we’ve been accounting for anywhere between 16-20% of Covid cases nationwide.
Even with that, he’s also about to withhold pay from administrators that put mask requirements into effect in the K-12 system. He’s adamantly opposed to schools requiring (1) masks (2) tests or (3) vaccinations for students and faculty.
At least we now have a fully approved vaccine by the FDA and the military will now require everyone to get vaccinated and some businesses are beginning to require vaccinations.
Still, there is a significant part of the population of the U.S. that will never agree to be vaccinated. We may not stick together but we may all die together.
I was at dinner with Michel and Nancy last night when the conversation turned to the construction of their new house. It’s going to be a beautiful home and it’ll be finished probably before December rolls around. In any case, it got me to thinking about my experiences renting homes through the years and upon reflection, I realized there were quite a few weird things that happened up until I bought the house I’m now living in for the past 27 years.
My first location in south Florida was the Lincoln Chateau apartments on, you guessed it, Lincoln St. in Hollywood, Florida. I found the apartment after quite a bit of searching. Most of the places I could afford either didn’t have central air nor did any have any form of heat. I was told at one place that “This is Florida, you don’t need a heater.” By the way, that was 1985 and it snowed a few flakes that year and water puddles froze over.
Lincoln Chateau Apartments in Hollywood, Florida.
I was on the second floor of the Lincoln Chateau and had a U-Haul of furniture I needed to offload. I simply pulled up as close to the building as I could and began to unload with the help of my brother Archie. We had no more gotten started that someone pulled up very angry and explained I was in their parking place. I asked if they would consider parking in my spot until I got unloaded. Nothin’ doin’. I pulled the U-Haul over to my space and doubled the distance Archie and I had to move things. This should have been an omen.
“Dining Room” at Lincoln Chateau
It seems parking in Hollywood, Florida is at a premium. I realized it when I finally got time to explore the downtown area and every parking spot had a sign or stencil indicating which stores the spots were for. If you parked at one spot and went into a different store than marked, the store manager would call a towing service to have your vehicle removed. That’s when I noticed the proliferation of signs advertising towing companies.
Back to Lincoln Chateau…. I had a neighbor on each side of me. The couple to the east was very quiet. The one to the west was a gentleman of about 50 years old who lived alone. He was friendly enough and me, being a southerner, was friendly right back. It was only later that I learned the neighbors had called the police on him because he had a habit of having young kids in the complex crawl into his lap while around the pool area.
One afternoon I came back late from campus and found my door wide open. There was a distinct smell of tear gas in my apartment. I had noticed the police in the parking lot so I walked back down and asked what was going on. I was informed my neighbor had gone off the deep end. He’d reported to the police someone had shot at him while he was in his car. Later the police learned he had shot his own car up and that’s when they called out the tactical unit to storm his apartment. He apparently had barricaded himself in his apartment and the police had to break down the door after shooting tear gas through his window. The tear gas had leaked into my apartment and the police were airing my place out – without any guard on the place.
Lincoln Chateau was not too good with maintenance issues. His window and door remained un-repaired for several months. Actually, my air conditioner was down for six months and even though I walked over to the office every day to report it, they did nothing. They finally gave me a break on the rent but not retroactively.
Later, I asked for a month to month lease – I was looking to get the hell out. They agreed. It’s law in Florida that landlords must return deposits after a specified time. My time was one year and it was up. When I moved out, they refused to refund my deposit until I threatened legal action.
My next place was a little garage apartment off Funston Street, exactly 1/2 block off US1. It had a living room, a large kitchen/dining area and a tomb of a shower. The back door of the place opened up into a 4×8 space that was my bedroom.
My garage apartment just off Funston Street in Hollywood.
My landlady was an 80 year old Italian lady – who had an 80 year old Italian boyfriend. I was notified of the vacancy because the person who moved out – and told me about it – was my department chair at the time. The rent was perfect, $300/month. It had one window air conditioner in the living room and it fit me perfectly.
The kitchen on Funston was quite large.
I would frequently host department parties and there was a law office just off US1. I called the attorney and asked if my friends could park there after hours. He gladly gave me permission and so there was always easy parking for guests.
One party got a little loud when, gasp, teachers overimbibed! I realized it and quickly cut the volume down on the stereo. About an hour later the police knocked on my door and said they had received a complaint. After talking with me a minute, the police realized they couldn’t even hear the stereo and let it go.
I reported it to my landlady and she let loose with a stream of Italian curses about one of her neighbors who had nothing better to do than phone in complaints. It was then I realized that in Hollywood, everyone hated everyone else. She talked badly about the Russians (who I got along with) the Jews (who I got along with) the Blacks (who I got along with), etc., etc. The truth is every ethnic segment of Hollywood seemed to have something against the other.
My landlady always used to feed my department chair when he lived there so she decided to do the same to me. She thought I needed fattening up. She was constantly bringing over dishes and soups and breads. It was great until I realized her sight was failing. I think she had some dishwashing detergent sitting next to the salt because the next time she fixed me Pasta e Fagioli it was sudsy. After that, whatever she brought me ended up in the garbage and I returned her clean dishes the next morning with profuse thanks.
A friend of Mississippi came down one weekend and he asked me to take him around to all the gay hotspots. He accumulated a good bit of gay “literature” from the bars and he was looking through it while I read the Sunday paper. Then he wanted to read the paper while I cooked breakfast. After we ate, I asked if he was through with the paper and he said yes. I always took my newspaper, after I had read it, to my landlady and her boyfriend. I gathered it up and about an hour later, he asked where his reading material was. It dawned on me he had mixed his magazines in with the Sunday paper. I had to rush over and ask for the paper back. The boyfriend was in the middle of reading it but he didn’t say a word as he handed it back over with all the gay magazines in it.
In the spring I used to sleep with the windows open since the air conditioner didn’t cool too well anyway. One night about 2 am I awoke to someone standing over me going through my bill fold. I shouted “Hey!” and sat up in bed. It was dark but he pointed something at me and said “I shoot you! I shoot you!” I got less brave at that point. He literally jumped out of the bed room window. I called the police. They actually nabbed someone and asked me to identify but I couldn’t because I only saw the outline of him. For the next 10 years I would wake up exactly at 2 am.
Robbery Central – my bedroom where I awoke to a robber.
The strangest thing that ever happened was someone knocked on my “front” door one day and asked if my name was Searcy. I said yes and he handed me a wad of my mail. I asked what was up and he said the postal carrier consistently delivered my mail to his address two blocks over on a different street. I asked why. He said the mail carrier told him that someone used to live at that address five years ago by the name of Searcy so that’s where he delivered it. Every piece of mail the guy handed me said clearly Funston Street, not the street the guy lived on.
So it is important to “learn how to learn.” In the past 10 years it has become easier to buy them online. cialis sale australia Anti-impotent medicines inhibit the enzyme called PDE5, which in turn stimulates the creation of a second substance cyclic GMP – cGMP – which is advertised as a strong sexual stimulant if used in bigger amounts, beside sexual enhancement can cause dangerous side effects levitra online purchase too, like increased blood pressure and heart failure. It’s easy, it’s viagra online from canada guaranteed, and it’s worked for a large number of men. Doctors say that this method is most cost viagra online effective in making our immune system stronger and stable.
After three years, my little Italian landlady got greedy and wanted to raise the rent. I went apartment hunting. I found another garage apartment on SE 9th Avenue in Fort Lauderdale in the swank Rio Vista neighborhood. Enough of the Hollywood hate! The owner had taken the garage/carriage house and decided to redo it and live in it and rent out the big house. At least that was the plan until he met his girlfriend who took one look at it and said uh uh.
The main house is to the left and the garage apartment is to the right. You can see the garage door that opened up into the living room.
The garage had been turned into the living room. The bedroom, kitchen and bath were three steps up from the living room. I had a stove, full sized fridge, a dishwasher, and a sunken bath tub! There was white tile throughout the “house.” That threw me for a minute because I figured it would be impossible to keep clean, but honestly, that white tile was the easiest. It showed any speck of dirt instantly and all you had to do was damp mop it.
The garage door still functioned and I could open the living room up to the outside. There was a wall around a patio area that gave me privacy from the big house as well as the street. I stayed there and did work on the place while living there. The previous renter would deduct his hours and materials from the rent but I never did. I painted the inside, caulked all the windows (which leaked) and generally kept it in excellent condition.
Thanksgiving at Rio Vista. The green curtain hide the garage door.
There was a retired school teacher next to his place and she had fruit trees in her back yard. She was constantly bringing me grapefruits, oranges, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, etc. from her trees and garden. It was paradise.
Keith Robertson, Ron Jone, Mary Halstead, Larry Halstead, Sara Hurdle, Sue Peters, Joel Lee at Rio Vista House for Thanksgiving.
Then the evil girlfriend thought I was getting by too cheap. I think I was paying around $600/month. She sent me a note and said they were increasing the rent to $1200. I left.
By the way, she had two children, a boy and a girl. She named the girl Amanda and the boy was named Blake. Shades of Gunsmoke!
From there I moved into Ron Jones apartment on NE 6th Street in Fort Lauderdale, a half block off Federal. That’s twice I’ve lived 1/2 block off Federal (US1). It was a two story, two bedroom, 2 1/2 bath apartment with a pool for the complex. This was the most entertaining place I’ve ever lived. You didn’t need TV.
Ron Jones Condominium in Fort Lauderdale
It turns out NE 6th St and Federal, at the time, was the place to pick up male hustlers. I would stand by my bedroom window which looked out on the street below and see a regular cavalcade of prostitutes and their Johns. There were knife fights, lovers quarrels, robberies, drug deals, you name it, all unfolding before my eyes.
The busiest street at night in Fort Lauderdale. The rows of brown roofs are the condos.
The guy to the east of me often partook of the cornucopia of prostitutes and was often “rolled” by the hustler. I woke one night to a guy jumping the brick wall to the street from his apartment. The next day I saw my neighbor with blackened eyes and bruises for days. He was really hustled.
I spent many nights at this window being entertained by the street below.
The guy to the west of me worked nights as a lineman for FPL. He had roll down shutters on every window and door. His girlfriend worked at Shirttail Charlies during the evenings and when she would get in, she’d often go out to the pool and we’d get into all kinds of conversations. Every time she was on duty at Shirttail’s I got a free drink after that.
I was robbed (technically) one day when I got out of my truck in my parking space. A woman walked up to me and immediately stuck her hand in the window and started stealing change that I kept in the door panel.
One day Joel and I were doing something out front of the complex when a guy on roller blades came past us. We both did a double take. The guy was naked except for a thong.
To the east of the complex was one of those old fashioned drug stores with cafe. The chef worked there during the day and as head chef at 15th Street Fisheries during the night. It was the place to go for lunch because it was very, very cheap and very, very delicious. His wife was the waitress and we became friends. We always got larger servings than anyone in the cafe.
Sadly, the owner died and the place was sold. No more gourmet lunches for rock bottom prices. I think I lived at Ron’s for seven years. That’s when a friend recommended I use my GI Bill to buy the house I’m currently in. It’s the first house I’ve own and probably will be the last house I’ve owned.
Over the years, I’ve had two pickups. When you have a pickup, you become everyones’ best friend. Particularly when they need to move. Particularly when they want you to not only loan them the truck but also your muscles. I’ve helped move too many people for me to remember but I have never asked anyone to help me to move. Ever. Archie volunteered otherwise he wouldn’t have come down the time he did.
I decided that for the move to 2451 I would ask for help. I had things boxed up pretty well and the night before the move, Keith and I painted the entire inside of my house. I waked the next morning and I didn’t think I was going to be able to get out of bed. I forced myself up and by that time the door bell rang and the first of the movers showed up. The people I called on came through in spades. Betty Brady and her two sons, Irmgard Bocchino, Tom Green and Kurt Wilhelm, and Joel and Keith pitched in.
One of Betty’s sons brought a trailer, I had my truck and I also rented a U-Haul. We loaded everything up and we made it to 2451 and started unloading. I realized it was getting close to time for lunch so I was told to go get pizza and sodas. By the time I got, they had made a second trip and unloaded everything. It was all done and the only thing I had done was load my truck. It was the easiest move I’ve ever made.
Thankfully, there’s been no real drama at 2451. Maybe it has something to do with rental properties in South Florida.
I’m nothing if not organized. Some might say anal. I could blame it on having a Dad in the military but more likely it was the influence of Boy Scouts and their motto “Be Prepared.” I am – overly.
Hurricane season rolls around, I’m already there. Not only to I have a plan B but I have plans C and D and E. You might suppose this would lead to a lack of spontaneity but I do have my moments.
There was the time that Crag Knox and I left Ole Miss around 10 pm one Friday night and drove to the Smokies for the weekend. It’s not like I don’t do things on the spur of the moment but I do find some joy in planning things. Not always but sometimes.
I think my organizational skills were one of the things that got me into botany. I liked the idea of categorizing things and seemed to have some aptitude to it in Boy Scouts when I was a counselor at camp.
What decided me on a major was a display by my eventual major professor, Dr. Thomas M. Pullen, on the third floor of the biology building at Ole Miss. I was an undergraduate and he put a display of herbarium specimens on poisonous plants of Mississippi. I think I was hooked at first sight of that display.
I like things that challenge. Crossword puzzles and card games like bridge excite me. I like the comfort it brings to walk through the woods and know many of the plants I see by common and scientific name. Sadly, as I get older, it takes me longer and longer to come up with either name these days.
I’m not sure I was particularly good at plant identification – at least in the courses I took under Dr. Pullen. He seemed to be satisfied but also understood that I tended to rush through the taxonomic descriptions of plants and that I needed to be reeled in on occasion. I let my natural tendency to recognize something get in the way of actually reading the description. It sometimes led to the wrong conclusion.
In graduate school, I hated slugging through the technical descriptions of plants. This leaf was “2-5 mm wide and 15-30 mm long with strigose, unbranched trichomes on the abaxial surface.” Boring!
When I moved to Florida, I encountered a flora with which I was totally unfamiliar. Mississippi is more typical of southeastern flora. Southern Florida is officially designated as subtropical. When I first got here, all the plants looked alike.
I started to collect plant specimens and work on identification while at the college. I needed local floras and manuals for identification and immediately became frustrated when, lo and behold, they did not include any technical descriptions that I used to hate. I realized I needed them to identify the plant I wasn’t immediately familiar with. (In order to save money on printing costs, authors only included the standard dichotomous key that all manuals and floras contain.)
A well written dichotomous key can get you quite a ways in identification but it becomes essential to eventually work from each plant species description which includes specific physical details and measurements – as well as where the species are found – both in location and habitat. Those millimeters tend to be important. So far, I’ve never found a decent manual or flora for the flora of South Florida.
Most people know I take numerous photos on my trips – mostly of plants. Where most people take scenic views or views with people in them, I take strange photos of particular parts of plants. Half my photos seem to be of plant stems and plant leaves – as much as they are about the pretty flowers. It’s the leaves and stems that often give you the best clues as to the species since most flowers of the same species look very similar.
In my dotage, I have taken on the task of identifying plants by photograph alone. There are several reasons for this, foremost, it is illegal to collect a plant in most state parks and all national parks. I would have to press it and dry it while on vacation before I could bring it back for examination with a dissection scope anyway. Besides, I don’t need a federal felony on my record.
I get a lot of exercise on outbound hikes because I’m constantly stopping, kneeling down and photographing, getting back up and heading off again. If it takes an average person 1 hour to hike a trail, it takes me 1 1/2 hours or up to two because I’m constantly photographing plants. In bound, I’m much faster because I’ve pretty much photographed everything I wanted on the outbound trip. However, I usually have to make one or two stops even if retracing my hike because I see something I didn’t see on the outbound trip.
For example, here’s the data on number of photos for my latest trip.
Location Plant Photos Scenic Photos
Palo Duro 100 78 The Knock 133 113 Carlsbad 37 35 Big Bend 95 108 Total 365 334
That’s 699 photos with more than half of plants. As you can see, only at Big Bend did I take more scenic photos and you have to take into consideration I had already been to Big Bend and snapped 244 out of 340 photos of plants – and Big Bend is very scenic!
The frustration comes when I return home and start to try to identify the plants by the photos. I have a lot of local guides such as Wildflowers of Texas by Geyata Ajilvsgi. However, Texas is a pretty big state and the wildflowers found in Palo Duro Canyon are significantly different from the wildflowers found in Big Bend. Palo Duro is located in the northwestern part of the state with flora very similar to New Mexico while Big Bend is more Sonoran desert and flora more akin to Mexico, southern Mexico, southern California and the Baja peninsula. Palo Duro also doesn’t have a guide to wildflowers specific for the area.
There are a lot of web sites will show you maybe two or three species that you may be interested in but you realize quickly that your photo doesn’t match their photo. It’s not uncommon for me to check three or four local guides, two floras, and up to 10 or 15 websites trying to identify one species by a series of photos I took while on a hike.
For example, I had a real hard time trying to pin down the identification of this flower.
What threw me was the deeply split petals which recurved back on the flower along with the very narrow leaves. Normally, in the west, I think of the genus Penstemon when I see red flowers with long, entire leaves. But it didn’t look like a Penstemon. I photographed it in Big Bend. Sadly, there is no flora of Big Bend, no wildflower guide of Big Bend that I own (you can purchase a guide on Amazon for $74 but I’m retired and on a fixed income) and the only web site close to showing any flora of Big Bend is The American Southwest. Big Bend is close to Mexico, Arizona, and New Mexico so any guides in those areas are useful.
I searched Wildflowers of Texas, Epple’s Plants of Arizona, MacKay’s Mojave Desert Wildflowers, Ivey’s A Guide to Plants of the Northern Chihuahuan Desert, Spellenberg’s Sonoran Desert Wildflowers, Rickett’s Wildflowers of the United States – Texas (2 volumes) as well as his Southwestern series (three volumes) and the current volumes available of Flora of North America.
What you do is look for photos that resemble your photo. In the business, it’s known as picture keying and no self respecting botanist would stoop to such foolishness. Liar, they all do to some extent.
I will admit to having an idea it belonged to the honeysuckle family of plants but other than that, I didn’t have anything to go on. I was totally frustrated with this one. Sometimes typing into a search engine the characteristics of the plant like flower color, number of petals, stamens, and other physical features will get you in the ball park but nothing worked with this one. When a flower is showy, there’s a better chance to find it in a wildflower guide than if the flower is less attractive. This was in none of the guides.
I accidentally found it looking for something else. It was a web site iNaturalist.ca, a website for the Canadian Wildlife Federation. Yes, it also grows in Canada. By the way, the plant is the narrow-leaf desert honeysuckle, Anisacanthus linearis (S.H. Hagen) Henrickson & E.J. Lott). Last I checked there were no deserts in Canada.
Sometimes, I just have to give up. I can usually get plants identified down to genus but getting the specific name can be a real pain. Sometimes, I have a real problem getting things down to genus. Members of the aster family have always caused me trouble (I’m not the only one) and I do well to get it anywhere close to genus. I seldom photograph members of the aster family because I know it’s a losing battle.
The fun is when you do figure out a plant identification. You follow the clues and hopefully it leads you to the right conclusion. I feel pretty confident on the majority of my identifications but I know I make mistakes. Even the best taxonomists do.
I remember Arthur Cronquist visiting the herbarium at Ole Miss for a book he was writing on the Composite family (aster family). He was considered the world’s expert on this family (with an ego to match). Dr. Pullen allowed him access to the herbarium but there was one species Dr. Pullen vehemently disagreed with him. Cronquist changed Pullen’s identification. After he left, Pullen went back into the herbarium and changed it back to his original identification.
I’ve already identified over half of the wildflowers from my last trip but I suspect there are another 25% that I’ll never decide on the species. Any botanist worth their salt will keep a journal with plants collected and identified along with field notes for each species. When I moved to Broward College, that journal got misplaced for all my graduate work.
Since I’ve been back in the plant identification business (2013) I’ve managed to identify 1,738 species (I’m keeping a record). A lot of these are duplicate identifications but from different locations. I’ve found Fragaria virginiana (wild strawberry) at Acadia National Park, the Bugaboos in British Columbia, Isle Royale National Park, Linville Falls on the Blue Ridge, The Smokies, Voyageurs National Park and Warm Springs, Georgia – and that’s only what I photographed. You can pretty much find that species anywhere in the United States. I’ve also identified F. chiloensis, and F. vesca, also wild strawberries. They all look similar but there are significant differences when you look closely.
Notice the difference in the leaves of F. virginiana and F. chiloensis.F. chiloensis has leaflets that have a heavy waxy coating and they are more oval in shape. Leaflets of F. virginiana are more elongate and have less wax on the surface of their leaves.
Ah, it keeps me off the street at night. I enjoy it (when it doesn’t get too frustrating) and it keeps my mind agile. And sometimes, some of the photographs turn out really nice!
