7 quick takes - nature edition

I am doing a theme with my quick takes this time. Yes, some of them are a bit of a stretch. But oh well.

1. I made some Jasmine tea (loose leaf that I had gotten at World Market a few years ago. Then I drug Daisy outside to find some Carolina Jasmine, which is blooming right now. Although they are different flowers, they do smell fairly similar.

The Jasmine are the beautiful yellow trumpet-like flowers. I will try to get a picture but we are having a cold snap so I don't know if I will be able to.

They have a sweet smell, almost like honeysuckle. Which makes the unsweet tea a little odd. I haven't tried it with honey, but I don't really like sweet teas.

2. Yesterday we went to the zoo, and had a great time. Our zoo is a small town zoo so it isn't an EVENT like the big city zoos, but it is still a good zoo. There are 2 hippos, a rhino, a giraffe family, and several varieties of alligator and crocodile, just to name a few.

We saw 2 peacocks trying to woo a female peacock (who was clearly uninterested). The males will fan out their tail and then somehow vibrate it so that you can actually hear it. It sounds almost like a cell phone vibrating.
The female is standing in front of the colorful male, you can just barely see her.

It was a beautiful display, especially since one was an albino peacock while the other was the usual bright colors.


There were actually 3 peacocks wooing, but one was much, much younger. One of the adult males looked at the teen as if to say "just go home kid."

3. There is a "lake" which is more of an overgrown pond right outside the zoo. The lake has signs that says no swimming because of alligators. People don't really believe the sign, but we have been seeing the alligator for years. This time in addition to seeing the adult alligator, on a nature walk around the lake we saw a baby alligator.

So it is not just an adult alligator, there is apparently a breeding pair. Yikes.

4. I have been wanting a lemon tree for . . . a few years. I finally got one on Sunday, a Lemon Drop which is supposed to be a cross between a lemon and a kumquat. I am hoping that like other hybrids it will be more than a regular plant (for some reason hybrid for the first generation or 2 tend to be sturdier, more productive, etc).

Right now it has some little tiny lemons on it, and then the lovely smelling flowers.

5. Hubby is trying to grow some tomatoes from seed. He was reading somewhere that the stalks grow thicker (and so do better) if you put them under fluorescent light 24 hours a day.

Especially when compare to the sunshine coming in through a window that his wife keeps closing the curtains on.

Junior found these and was pretty upset. He is now convinced that we are both pretty stupid because "plants need light from the sun, not from a light bulb."

At least he didn't say "Duh"

Then later he was eating a pear and he said "Who made pears?" waited a moment the continued "God did! Let's thank Him" and bowed his head to say a quick thank you for the pears.

He was a little mad at me when I bought them because they were "brown pears" and he was positive that brown pears couldn't be as good as green pears.

6. This I thought was nature related. Proving once again, I have blond hair.

I went to the credit union to get some tax stuff and once again noticed these measuring things. They look like the measuring things on the side of the road in flood zone areas, so that you don't drive over the flooded road (I grew up in west Texas where the streets would flood if someone over watered their yard.)

Anyway, I had been looking at those for awhile and each time thought, "wow, that would be bad if the water came up to 5 feet or more in here." This time I asked it the CU was in a flood zone (ignoring that it is on a hill).

When the lady gave me a blank look, I started to explain I was wondering because of the measuring bars that start at 5 feet . . . and as I said it, I knew what they were for.

You may have seen them in service stations too. It is really handy for telling the police that the thief was almost 6 foot or whatever.

7. Yes, this one is stretching it but I really don't care.

Junior loves Curious George. I like it but find myself getting irritated with the man in the yellow hat. Almost every episode he says "be a good little monkey." And that always results in mayhem.

Always.

But there is also my favorite phrase from Curious George, "George was curious." I really want Junior and Daisy to continue to be curious. I want them to want to learn for the sake of learning.

I am grateful that Junior is no longer experimenting with abandon since the seam ripper incident.

All the same, I want him to be curious, just not destructive.