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February 2012
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Orange, orange everywhere!

It is that magical time of the year when everything turns orange.  The air itself must be tinted — just look at this photo.  We don’t get to observe the setting sun directly from our windows but its bright orange reflected light provides some truly dramatic lighting for Midtown skyscrapers in the fall.

Where have all the flowers gone? – you might ask this  New York’s leading florist… Well, obviously, they have all turned into pumpkins.

Last year I, too, planted some pumpkins and was very excited about cooking all kinds of stuff with them.  They grew big and pretty but turned out to be completely inedible.  So, this year I decided not to plant any; yet, this one somehow grew on its own!

And I’m very happy it did.  First of all, it proves that my feral gardening method works.  And secondly, even though it isn’t large enough to turn into a carriage or round enough to be carved into a jack-o-lantern, it . . . CONTINUE READING → Orange, orange everywhere!

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Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Japanese Eggplant Flower

The time has arrived to reveal the vegetable behind the flower of our penultimate photo quiz from a few weeks ago. It was an eggplant, a Japanese Choryoku hybrid, to be exact.  Here it is again, photographed flirting with a different bug, our old friend Agapostemon.

It was correctly identified as a member of the nightshade (or potato or Solanaceae) family that also includes Mandragora (mandrake), belladonna (deadly nightshade), Lycium barbarum (Wolfberry), Physalis philadelphica (Tomatillo) , Physalis peruviana (Cape gooseberry flower), Capsicum (paprika, chili pepper), Solanum (potato, tomato, eggplant), Nicotiana (tobacco), and Petunia.  Just like any normal family, a healthy balance of pretty, functional and toxic…

However, nobody recognized it as an eggplant, so there is no official winner this time around.  Ironically, the plant itself did not produce winning results either… Something ate all of its leaves, leaving it looking rather sad. . . . CONTINUE READING → Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Japanese Eggplant Flower

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