It's November in Michigan. These photos were taken this week.When I was a little girl, we often had our first snow by Halloween, and our first real snow storm by Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving is next week, the 22nd. Today it's 60°F (15°C). But it could still snow next week.
Last year Don planted an English garden, with a few digitalis plants. We also call them "foxgloves" in the U.S. They kind of look like gloves, don't you think?
Medicines from digitalis are called "Digitalin," used for cardiac help to control the heart rate for patients in artrial fibrillation.
But if you eat it, it is toxic and will cause vomiting and diarrhea. Believe it or not, some people do eat it to keep their weight down.
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26 comments:
Do you know about the artsy music and prose publishing house, Foxy Digitalis? www.foxydigitalis.com. They should use some of these pictures, seriously, as their logos are a little - ahem - lame.
beautiful... are you implying global warming?
Very nice.
You can even see the little hairs on the blossoms.
~Oswegan
In Norway we call them fox bells (revebjelle)
Your photos are great.
No, Loring, I hadn't heard of foxydigitalis. I see their art is abstract, kinda cute. Thank you for the generous compliment. Are you getting more snow in CO?
RK, thank you. Well, I guess I'm observing the change in my lifetime. Whether it's one of the normal cycles of nature, or the result of human interference, this November is pretty strange.
Oswegan, thank you for your comment. Yes, there is a lot to see in a bloom when you look close. I love looking close, never did it really before this camera. I don't have a fancy camera, but it's an Olympus, and it's pretty good at macros, thankfully.
Thank you so much, Britt-Arnhild. I'm glad you told me about fox bells, because others in the world who saw this flower on my photoblog didn't mention anything except "digitalis" as a name. They probably resemble bells more than gloves, but I like both images.
Did Don plant these in a greenhouse? They're beautiful! At our farmer's market we have orchid growers all year, but we're in the tropics!! These don't look like they have longevity, but do they?
btw, Emma's dress is finally done!!
I love how you have put these familiar photos together into one post, Ruth. That Don is something else. What CAN'T he do, I wonder!
Mrs. M., no, Don picked these up at the local garden center. They're perennials, is that what you meant?
Congratulations on finishing the dress! I'll come over and see if you blogged it. :)
Ginnie/Boots, his energy seems to have no bounds. But as you know, he'll be laid up here pretty quick, so we'll see how antsy he gets. Poor man.
How 'bout you and Don just come over for hot cider, a fire outside, and a Friday night visit?! Oh, wait,.... :(
I promised Emma I would wait 2 weeks for pictures of the "whole package" during a performance. Opening night is in 13 days! Katy purchased her own ticket to come home for all 3 performances. Yea!
I actually dreamt of tiny fairies last night... in such vivid colors.. your post reminded me of that dream.
beautifully captured!
I have been over at the other blog, trying to comment a few times, but for some odd reason, my comments woudl nto go through..and this was several tries on two differnt days. I finally got tired of trying to write my thoughts again and again, and ofcourse the last time I did not save them before hitting the publish comment, because I was sure it would finally go through! :D
I was just going through your comment long long time ..I was wondering how was Rumi event ...We got a new feature on LIP (www.livinginpoetry.blogspot.com)
See u
Nasra
Mrs. M., we live too far apart. It stinks.
I guess I'll have to wait for photos then. And maybe they will be of the whole event!
Mystic Rose, fairies, oh, lovely. So delicate they are. I think they have something to teach us. These flowers would be nice little sleeping pods for them, don't you think?
Hello, Nasru, please click on "Older Posts" and I think you will find my Rumi post one past back.
Mystic Rose, I'm sorry you've had so much trouble commenting. But I saw that you finally got one to stick. Thank you for persevering.
Ruth:
Of course you would be posting about foxgloves this week. I'm reading a memoir by Canadian poet Patrick Lane in which his garden serves both as backdrop and metaphor. In the chapter I finished yesterday, he writes about planting foxgloves and contemplates their name: "The spots on their petals are as mysterious as their name until you imagine the tracks foxes leave in the sand or snow and then you understand." (from "What the Stones Remember," by Patrick Lane, p. 56).
dear Ink, of course.
So they're foxgloves in Canada too. Not in other parts of the world, apparently.
In German, they're called "thimbles" (literally: finger hats). As a child, I was fascinated by them. They grew wild in the region where we lived and my parents warned us to never even touch them, due to their toxicity. At the same time, I knew that the substance "digitalis" was in the tiny pink tablets my mom took every day for her heart. In her case, ingesting the plant's toxin helped keep her alive.
ah Ruth, you are very slim and have maintained your beautiful looks and figure so well.
But this gave me a wonderful idea.
i would like to run a restaurant where people would come and eat food i cook which will make them throw up the very next minute. i think i can make a lot of money.
Weight loss restaurant ?
Thow up restaurant ?
Ink, that must have been a strange combination of information for a young girl to mesh.
OMG, rauf, I think you're on to something, hehe. Is your cooking really that bad? :)
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