photo 365, day 14

I was hoping to post pictures of the snow we got yesterday morning, but I’d forgotten to charge my camera. Here’s some cuteness instead:

HIV and salmonella

Botany Club Garden

Botany Club started a garden this year. It was looking great when I took this picture yesterday. But I woke up to 6 inches of snow today. Cross your fingers for the seedlings!

gardening

Spring break, day 5: Lotusland part 8

My favorite part of the garden by far was the cycad garden. Ganna Walska put this garden in later in her life. She sold a significant amount of her jewelry to be able to afford the cycads.

This particular cycad is a male of the species Encephalartos woodsii. This is an incredibly rare species and is actually evolutionarily extinct: there are no remaining females.

The last garden we visited was the tropical garden. They’ve done an incredible job creating and maintaining this microclimate. The temperature drops and the humidity rises just a few feet from the cycad garden.

philodendron

You can see all of my posts about spring break here or just the Lotusland posts here.

Spring break, day 5: Lotusland part 7

The succulent garden felt strange to me because of the deciduous trees nearby.
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One of the oddest gardens was the blue garden. Ganna Walska planted as many foliage plants with blueish foliage as she could find in this garden.
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There was an incredible planting of cacti and euphorbs near the main house. This is a spectacular specimen. To the knowledge of the garden, this is the only existing specimen left in the world of this cultivar.

Pain Relief

I was thrilled and scared at the same time. I marveled at how everything in life was now so incredibly easy with this relief: returning phone calls, doing errands, cleaning up. I remember stopping in the middle of the aisle at the Jewel grocery store and feeling as if I would float away to the paper goods section because of the ease of my movement.

From All in My Head

On living with chronic pain and having a social life

If I went out, I was drained. If I canceled plans, I felt detached and guilty. When you’re in pain, hell is other people, and hell is also the absence of other people.

The stark reality is that you basically have to suffer your pain alone and in silence. In the beginning, you can talk about chronic pain to friends, but then it gets old, fast.

From All in My Head