Agriculture

Lilies of the Valley

/ Agriculture, Texts

A slow but aggressive spreader. Some facts: “In recent years it has been largely employed in experiments relating to the forcing of plants by means of anaesthetics such as chloroform and ether. It has been found that the winter buds, placed in the vapour of chloroform for a few hours and then planted, break into leaf and flower considerably before others not tested in this manner, the resulting plants being, moreover, exceptionally fine.” A poisonous plant that may strengthen the brain and renovate a weak memory. Flowers are associated with May Day in France. Also a book by Balzac.

Camo Day

/ Agriculture, Terrorism

"Texas Schools Scrap 'Cross-Dressing' Day" - -- Bobby Ross, Jr. (AP) in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 11/16/04:

A homecoming tradition in which boys dress like girls and vice versa in a tiny Texas school district won't be held Wednesday after a parent complained about what she regarded as the event's homosexual overtones.

As a substitute for "TWIRP Day," the schools ranging from elementary to senior high decided to hold "Camo Day" - with black boots and Army camouflage to be worn by everyone who wants to participate.

TWIRP, which stands for "The Woman Is Requested to Pay," was hosted by Spurger schools for years during Homecoming Week - to give boys and girls a chance to reverse social roles and let older girls invite boys on dates, open doors and pay for sodas.

Plano-based Liberty Legal Institute issued a news release Tuesday reporting that it "came to the aid of a concerned parent" over an "official cross-dressing day" in the school district 150 miles northeast of Houston.

"It is outrageous that a school in a small town in east Texas would encourage their 4-year-olds to be cross-dressers," Liberty Legal Institute attorney Hiram Sasser said in the release

Tanner T. Hunt Jr., the school district's attorney, called Sasser's statement "inflammatory and misleading." He said the district never planned or conducted a "cross-dressing day."

"They are a tiny little East Texas school district," Hunt said. "It never occurred to them that anyone could find anything morally reprehensible about TWIRP Day. I mean, they've been having it for years, probably for generations, and it's the first time anybody has complained."

Delana Davies, 33, said she complained after reading a school notice about "TWIRP Day." Davies, whose 9-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter attend Spurger Elementary, said she viewed the day not as a silly Homecoming Week activity, but rather something related to homosexuality.

"It's like experimenting with drugs," Davies said. "You just keep playing with it and it becomes customary. ... If it's OK to dress like a girl today, then why is it not OK in the future?"

Flora

/ Agriculture, Art, Minnesota, Texts, Weblogs

Help on growing ornamentals that are native to your (US) region. A weblog that is occasionally about gardening in Minnesota. Digitized rare botanical books from the Missouri Botanical Garden Library. Botanical illustrations from the University of Delaware Special Collections. Botanical illustrations by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century women. The National Agricultural Library’s collection of images from The Botanical Magazine, 1801-1807. The beginnings of the Smithsonian Catalog of Botanical Illustrations. Links and bibliography about botanical illustration at Western Washington University.

Nutrition

/ Agriculture, Food, Politics

How to make Japanese dumplings in 128 steps. Tomatillos. How to grow twenty-six herbs. Onions. The Cheese Diaries. Frost Street, “The culinary adventures of a New York City lawyer,” and The Food Section (also NYC-oriented). Chowhound messages for Manhattan and the Outer Boroughs. Robert Sietsema reviews in the Village Voice. More food weblogs: Noodle Pie, Too Many Chefs, Chocolate and Zucchini, and I Was Just Really Very Hungry. What’s in Rebecca’s Kitchen? The World’s Healthiest Foods.