Posts made in December, 2012

Fun at the Mall

Posted by on Dec 30, 2012 in holiday, seeds, Unmowed Blog, wildlife, winter | 1 comment

This holiday season, I tried to keep out of the big box stores. Shop small, shop local was my mantra. And I mostly succeeded. But once in a while I would find myself, for one reason or another (usually involving the dire needs of high-school students for electronic devices) in the mega-parking lot of a mega-mall. But holiday shopping is not my favorite pastime, and before I know it, I find myself wandering away from the stores towards the interesting part of the mall: the unmowed area that fringes the lot. On one side of the fence: stores, cars and blacktop. On the other side, the good...

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Moss as Metaphor

Posted by on Dec 25, 2012 in leaves, plant parts, Uncategorized, Unmowed Blog | 1 comment

A nearly manicured office building. Trimmed lawn, weeded garden, paved walkway. Not much chance for weeds to sneak in here. Except for the moss. What, you don’t see any moss? Moss–soft, green, fuzzy. It’s a plant everyone can identify, and yet no one can identify it.  I once took a course on moss identification. And what you had to do to figure out which species of moss you were looking at was to detach one moss leaf. (One moss leaf. Do you know how incredibly small a single moss leaf is?) Then you had to use a razor blade to slice a cross-section of the moss leaf. Then you...

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Peace on Earth

Posted by on Dec 23, 2012 in Unmowed Blog | 1 comment

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Winter Solstice

Posted by on Dec 20, 2012 in holiday, photos, Unmowed Blog, winter | 0 comments

Welcome the light!

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Thistle: A Visit From a Poet

Posted by on Dec 18, 2012 in adaptations, holiday, photos, plant parts, seeds, Unmowed Blog, winter | 0 comments

For those of you who celebrate Christmas, a certain poem was probably part of your upbringing, along with Frosty and Rudolph and all that sort of thing. You know the one I mean. You heard it, I heard it, we all heard it a zillion times in school, at home, on TV. “Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house not a creature was stirring not even a mouse…” But although I heard the words enough times that they embedded themselves in my memory, I really had only a hazy idea of what it all meant. I mean, I got the general drift of Santa bringing the good stuff, but what, exactly, were...

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