Wordless Wednesday: Roses
My neighbor’s rose bush blooms in both orange and pink. I’ve never seen anything like it. When I asked, they told me that particular variety of rose was called Joseph’s Coat of Many Colors.
Why did the Bird of Paradise flower evolve to look like that?
It’s easy to see how the Bird of Paradise flower got its name. It looks like a crane’s head crafted from flower parts. Now I’m no botanist, but even I know enough about plants to realize that when such a highly specialized and unique structure evolves in nature, there’s generally a reason for it. All of which made me wonder: Why did the Bird of Paradise flower evolve to look the way it does?
Wordless Wednesday: Cherry tree in bloom
I had more or less stopped doing Wordless Wednesday posts last year, but recently my daughter told me that she missed seeing them. I have to admit, I missed them too. Pictures like these are a helpful counterweight to the news. So I’m resurrecting Wordless Wednesday as a regular feature of the blog.
“Why does bug spray smell so icky?”
I don’t know about you, but I have a terrible time convincing anyone in my family to wear bug spray. It just smells so bad. Sadly, that stink is why bug spray works.
Aunt Meg consults Caterpickles: “Do they really still use leeches in modern medicine?”
My sister and I have been talking about medical things more than usual lately, and since she also inherited our family’s wildly roving mind, somehow we got on to the topic of leeches, and whether this medieval practice was still popping up in modern medicine.
Have you heard about the National Park’s free annual pass for fourth graders?
Have you heard about the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Every Kid in a Park program? In a nutshell, the program offers fourth graders (and 10-year-old home-schooled equivalents) a free annual pass to every National Park in the U.S. Between now and August 31, 2019, fourth graders can use their passes to get free admission to any park in the National Park system for themselves and a select number of family and friends.
“Do fish have tongues?”
When @kristadb1 tweeted that she was going to take a suitcase full of cod tongues home with her from Newfoundland, I had some trouble wrapping my mind around the concept. Cod tongues? Surely that was a secret code word for steak. Fish don’t have tongues. Do they?
“There’s a mouse in my pool. Is it time to freak out?”
This morning when I came downstairs for my necessary cup of coffee, I spied a bedraggled brown lump floating on the surface of the swimming pool. On closer inspection, it proved to be a dead mouse. Which brings us to today’s question: “There’s a dead mouse in the pool. Is it time to freak out?”
“Is the vulture the state bird of Nevada?”
On a recent roadtrip through Nevada, The Ten-Year-Old spotted a lot of vultures. So many she wanted to know: “Is the vulture the state bird of Nevada?”
“Can cats smell stress?”
One afternoon after a rough day at school, The Ten-Year-Old tried to calm herself down by picking Canelo up for a hug. He was having none of it. The Ten-Year-Old was disappointed when Canelo ran off instead of giving her the reassuring head-bonk she was looking for, but as always, her curiosity won out. “Mommyo, can cats smell stress?”
