WaPo shines a light on the ghost pipe... which looks familiar.

Screen shot:

Here's the link to my post from last year, and here's the WaPo article. Excerpt:

“Ghost pipe is the bee’s knees for anxiety, panic attacks, insomnia, migraines, muscle spasms and just all the things,” says a popular forager on [TikTok]. “It makes you feel very Zen and grounded.”

“Basically, it will solve all your problems,” a user whose account is dedicated to holistic healing says in a video that has been watched more than 17 million times....

Ghost pipe became widely popular in the mid-19th century, thanks to a group of physicians known as the Eclectics, who rejected the punishing medical practices of their day — such as bloodletting and mercury-induced purging — in favor of botanical remedies. Eclectic doctors administered ghost pipe as a tonic, sedative and antispasmodic. The odd flower also blossomed in the popular imagination. In 1890, the cover of Emily Dickinson’s debut book of poetry featured a painting of the plant; the poet called ghost pipe “the preferred flower of life.”...

At Meade's Sweet Potato Café...

... you can talk through the harshest sunlight hours.

Meade took that photo on the occasion that led to yesterday's "After talking with Meade about the sweet potato vine he's got trailing over the edge of the deck railing...."

After talking with Meade about the sweet potato vine he's got trailing over the edge of the deck railing...

... I had a conversation with Grok, from which I will quote only my own writing. You'll have to imagine the Grokage:

1. Am I right that in the 1950s there was a trend, among housewives, to cut off a piece of a sweet potato and use it to grow a vine, which was considered decorative? And am I right that this was inspired by a Matisse painting?

2. I'm thinking of "The Red Studio."

3. Yes, please search for 1950s primary sources (e.g., magazine articles or gardening guides) to see if there’s any mention of Matisse or The Red Studio in relation to this trend.

4. Maybe I just remember my mother's sweet potato vines and then later I connected to "The Red Studio" because the item with personal resonance was part of the rather chaotic assemblage.

5. Something in a work of art can have resonance for you that has nothing to do with what the artist had in mind. That's great, perhaps, but some people don't like interpretation that isn't grounded in the intent of the creator.

6. No, I'd like you to connect my last observation to the notion that the Constitution should be interpreted in accordance with the intent of the framers.

7. Now restate that point about the "living Constitution" to create resonance with the idea of the sweet potato vine twining about the 1950s kitchen or the Matisse studio. Be creative. Consider the potential for writing a poem (in the style of Billy Collins) about the memory of the sweet potato and the professionalism of judicial technique.

You can see the whole conversation here, including the poem Grok took the initiative to write.

"I’ve been wanting to come for weeks and weeks and weeks. I’m excited that the spring is happening and she’s really activating the girls to touch some grass — literally — and get outside."

Said Lydia Burns, a model, quoted in "These New Yorkers Are Touching Grass" (NYT).

I'm a devotee of ritualistic nature walks myself, but I still laughed at:

This Sunday, at 10:30 a.m. sharp, a group of stylish, mostly 30-something New Yorkers gathered at the Hare Krishna Tree in the center of Tompkins Square Park. Despite a few complaints of hangovers, they had made it there on time for a plant and history tour of the park led by Olivia Rose, who handed out tote bags and forest green zines she had made for the occasion....

I loved the video snippet of the stylish, youngish folk walking quite slowly, each holding a disposable plastic cup of something brownish and milky. Plastic cups, tote bags, zines — zines! — nature is so great.

Here's the Wikipedia article on Tompkins Square Park, where I learned that the park is the namesake of Daniel D. Tompkins, who was once Vice President of the United States.

At the Trout Lily Café...

... you can write about whatever you want.

"As long as the roots are not severed, all is well. And all will be well in the garden."

The color changes.

A lot of gall.

"The habitat was constructed as future Mars dwellings will be constructed: by 3-D printer."

"For 'ink,' Martian colonies will use Martian regolith. Because NASA does not possess sufficient quantities of Martian rock, CHAPEA used a proprietary, airtight cement-based material called Lavacrete.... At one end of the rectangular habitat, four identical 6-by-11-foot cells serve as bedrooms. In the middle lies the 'lounge,' a small room with a television and four reclining chairs. The other end is occupied by several desks with computer monitors, a medical station and a crop garden. The vegetables are not intended for subsistence but for mental health: Growing plants... may 'provide psychological benefits for astronauts living in isolated, confined environments away from Earth.' Rooms have different ceiling heights, in order, according to its builder, to 'avoid spatial monotony and crew member fatigue.' A hatch opens to a Martian backyard: a tented sandbox of reddish sand and two treadmills, to be used for 'spacewalks' by virtual-reality-goggled crew members. The walls of the backyard are painted with a mural of Martian cliffs. There are no windows...."

From "Can Humans Endure the Psychological Torment of Mars? NASA is conducting tests on what might be the greatest challenge of a Mars mission: the trauma of isolation" (NYT)).

The prairie at 1:35 p.m....

... and the prairie at 7:21 a.m....

The drying out and fading stage is lovely too.

Talk about whatever you want in the comments.

"To assess green spaces, the researchers used satellite imaging and applied a widely accepted measure of quantifying vegetation..."

"[T]hey also identified major parks near the participants’ homes. While that helped identify the location and quantity of plant life, the approach does not provide details about the type — for example, whether the area is a golf course or a forested nature trail — or quality of green space. 'We have this vegetation data, but it tells us very little about what the active ingredients in nature are that influence health....' 'Because we don’t know what type of green space it is, I think for cities, they don’t know is it sufficient just to plant a bunch of street trees?'... The study also left other unanswered questions, such as why the rate of biological aging did not appear to be the same across race, gender and socioeconomic status. For example, the researchers observed Black people who had more access to green space were only about 1 year younger in biological age compared to the study’s average 2.5 years. Experts said more studies are needed to pinpoint how people might benefit from greenery and what other social determinants that could be involved...."

From "Living near green spaces could add 2.5 years to your life, new research finds" (WaPo).

At the Raspberry Café...

April green at sunrise.

The second photo shows the scorched ground from the prescribed burn a couple weeks ago. It's interesting how some of the regrowth is coming up in circles. 

The forest floor in early spring.

"Spanning thousands of miles... the blob — a tangled, buoyant, mass of a type of seaweed called sargassum — is expected to come ashore in Florida..."

"... and elsewhere along the Gulf of Mexico.... [I]t will then begin to rot, emitting toxic fumes and fouling the region’s beaches over the busiest summer months....While floating sargassum can benefit marine animals by providing shade and shelter, the problems begin once it comes ashore. As the sargassum begins to die, it degrades the water quality and pollutes beaches, scientists say. It can also choke vital mangrove habitats and suck oxygen out of the water. The decaying algae also releases hydrogen sulfide, a colorless gas that smells like rotten eggs, and can cause respiratory problems in humans.... The most immediate threat, however, is to tourism."

 
From "A Giant Blob of Seaweed is Heading to Florida/The mass, known as the great Atlantic Sargassum belt, is drifting toward the Gulf of Mexico. Scientists say seaweed is likely to come ashore by summer to create a rotting, stinking, scourge" (NYT).

At the New Seeds Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

"They’re unable to see properly, they’re confused, they’re having hallucinations. And we’re talking about scary hallucinations; it’s nothing that’s fun."

Said Darren Roberts, quoted in "How Can Tainted Spinach Cause Hallucinations? A food recall from Australia sheds light on an unusual aspect of brain chemistry" (NYT).

The belief is that there's some other plant in there with the spinach and that it's "'anticholinergic syndrome,' a type of poisoning mainly caused by plants in the Solanaceae family, which includes nightshade, jimson weed and mandrake root."

At the Sunday Night Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

WaPo columnist Dana Milbank "recently bought a property in the Virginia Piedmont, with the pandemic-inspired idea of finding peace in nature."

"On paper, the parcel is three-quarters wooded, one-quarter pasture. In practice, the place is about 95 percent brush... an entire civilization of invasive vines and weeds.... Asiatic bittersweet and porcelain berry, kudzu and Japanese honeysuckle, invasive wineberry and aggressive Canada goldenrod had devoured the place, turning forest and field alike into tangled masses of vines and thorns, and murdering defenseless native trees by strangulation and theft of sunlight... [A]ny attempt to remove the invaders by mechanical means alone (or by planting more native species — which will be the topic of a future column) is doomed; the interlopers would grow back faster than I could cut them out or replace them. The only chance of victory... is with a laborious, multiyear course of herbicides applied to each invasive plant.... Clearly, I won’t be defeating these invaders. At best, I’ll battle them... holding them at bay until I lose the will to fight them...."

From "I’m losing the battle against the brush. I’m not alone." 

He tells us the place is 95% brush but not how big it is. Why did he buy land that had problems he didn't understand at all and that make the place entirely unsuitable for its intended purpose (finding peace)? And more importantly, why does a person with this level of practical sense and good judgment have a column in The Washington Post expounding on politics? Can we take his inane real estate venture as a metaphor?

Meade and milkweed.

This morning, at 6:26.