Everything Fred – Part 103

13 August 2023

It was one of those “I’m awake at 4:30 am” mornings. I couldn’t get back to sleep so I pulled out my iPad and finished one of my Kindle books from BookBub. As you might guess, it was an early breakfast and I’m running on coffee fumes.

Part of not going back to sleep is the pull and tug of the mastectomy scar and the bandage over the drain insertion point. There’s no good way to get completely comfortable and I end up tossing and turning.

Tomorrow I see if Dr. Burgers will take out the drain. I feel it’s akin to water torture – drop by drop.

I managed to get my walk in this morning, somewhat. I walked Riverland Road for 1.4 miles. By the time I got home I was dizzy and out of breath. It doesn’t take long to get out of shape, does it? I meant to do 2 miles this morning but it wasn’t gonna happen.

I started the walk around 8 am and it was already “feels like” 86°F with 83% humidity. Another day under a heat warning. As of July 24th, South Florida has had 42 days of a heat index of three figures. Who knows what August will bring.

Normally, I grocery shop on Sundays but the refrigerator is a little overstocked at the moment. Last night I couldn’t decide what to eat and ended up ordering a pepperoni and onion pizza from PizzaHut. I was a little reluctant because the last pizza I had didn’t taste right. Thankfully, this one tasted pretty good. I managed two slices and refrigerated the rest. Maybe, just maybe my taste buds have regenerated. Just in time for more chemotherapy (August 21). Two more slices will either be lunch or dinner.

I ordered the hand tossed medium pizza. I swear it looked like an individual pizza in size. The size of products seems to be shrinking while the costs seem to increase. Add in the delivery charge and any tip you might wish to award and it gets to be a pretty expensive meal at $26.

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There were a couple of interesting plants along my walk this morning. One that really stood out is the Chenille plant (Acalypha hispida).

This native of Asia quickly gets your attention. It’s a member of the euphorb family (think pencil cactus) and has a poisonous latex associated with the sap. It generally tends to be a small shrub in our environment.

The plant is dioecious which means it has separate male and female flowers. It’s the catkin of female flowers that attracts all the attention. A catkin is a spike of flowers that fall off as one unit. Although it has nothing to do with the cloth known as chenille, the effect of the catkin brinks to mind the fibers of chenille cloth.

Another plant that caught my eye was Ramgoat Dashalong (Turnera ulmifolia). What a terrible common name! The specific epithet ulmifolia is in reference to the elm-like leaves on the plant.

Strangely, this is in the Passion flower family of plants but it doesn’t show any of the characteristics you think of with maypops or Passion flowers. It’s native to Mexico and the West Indies. The flowers are ephemeral. They open up around 6 am (not sure if standard or daylight savings) and they wilt around 11:30 am. Fortunately, in South Florida it’s pretty much constantly in bloom.

In teaching about flower parts at Broward College, you ran into the trouble of showing students a “typical” flower. The most common and convenient flower on campus was the hibiscus but it is very atypical in its construction. We did have one shrub of Ramgoat Dashalong and when it was in flower, it was probably the closest to a “typical” flower we could find.

I intend on a long nap this afternoon.

Stay tuned!