Some Random Friday Things

In Spanish, these are called verdolagas (a.k.a. purslane, portulaca, pigweed, hogweed, pusley). They do grow wild here, mostly along the ditch banks but sometimes in yards where the seeds are transferred by people who walk along the ditch banks. My grandmother used to love to eat these and would talk them up through the spring until she could find ones large enough to gather in the summer. She gathered the wild ones and cooked them with onions and other things. I never ate them though; The always looked vaguely slimy to me. Apparently they're eaten all over the world, cooked or uncooked, in Europe, the middle east, Asia, Africa, Mexico. Who knew?

These little babies were grown from seeds that we ordered off the internet.



They're apparently ridiculously good for you, have tons of omega-3 fatty acids, more than any other green leafy plant. I'm really trying to talk myself into eating these eventually.  We'll see.

Here's another set of potted plants, some kind of sage on the left, stinging nettles on the right. (The skul is a little raku one made by a young artist at the studio.)



Why are we growing stinging nettles? A couple of years ago, my brother gave us a box of seed bon-bons (like seed bombs, but smaller) that are a mixture of seeds and clay and we planted them and that was one kind of seed. Apparently you can cook and eat nettles or make them into tea, or like me, you can curse them when you go to pull a weed out of their planter and end up getting stung all along the side of you hand. (It raised welts on me and stung for about five hours, despite my washing it under very hot water, using hydrocortisone cream, and taking a Benadryl.) Now the skull reminds me to keep my hands away unless I'm wearing gloves.


This is a detail from a painting called Moonshining by Jon Serl. I took this little detail photo of the painting when we were at the American Folk Art Museum in NYC. This is what the larger painting looks like.




And yesterday was Therapy Thursday. I sometimes feel like this woman, creature, when I leave therapy.  Yesterday, after, I went to the studio and ended up helping to unload the soda kiln. I had about four small tumblers in there none of which were that impressive.