Dark Clouds, but No Rain

You may ask, where have I been and what have I been up to. You may ask, but most likely not. In your busy lives, I probably don't make it to the top of your list of things to think about. But that's okay. Because in my busy life, I don't always think about blogs either. However, I do try to keep up with all of you out there best I can even if I don't comment.

But just in case you have asked, where have I been and what have I been up to in the last couple of weeks, I'll try to give you some highlights.

After several tests, I decided to go with a one time treatment for my trigeminal neuralgia. It may take several months before I will know if it helps, but in the meantime, I think it's in the stage of it might get worse before it gets better. But having made the decision to go ahead with this treatment is definitely better than the indecision I had before.

We had some dark clouds while camping,
but luckily it didn't rain.

Also, last weekend I went with Ward's family to a big festival that is really hard to describe succinctly, so I'll just say that we were camping with 2000 people who were all having a good time--especially Ward's father who has been going for over 60 years without missing one. He spent a lot of time talking to friends old and new. His family, also, played a lot of music--both as a family and with pickup bands. Bluegrass is their favorite, but they are open to other things, also.

And to make sure that this blog continues to be about not anything significant, here are a few pictures of a recent outing we went on. I have mentioned before, that we keep a folder with info of local places we want to visit. Then when we have a day that we're tired of the grind and want to get out of the house, we look in our folder. This time we visited a nature center that we had passed by before. We had a good hike and saw some interesting exhibits.

Around the nature center building, they had natural, pollinator gardens. Among the plants were these Queen Anne's Lace. Notice the black spot in the middle. 

On the other side of the walk, there was a group of Queen Anne's lace
without the black spot in the middle.

A few years ago was the first time I noticed a Queen Anne's lace with a black spot in the middle. My friend said that was the only kind she had ever seen. That started me on path to learn more about the difference that I shared here on my blog.

This was our second stop that day. However, we got there too late to spend much time
so it went back into our folder for another outing.

Until next time, have fun.

Queen Anne's Lace Followup--A Year Later

or Not What Was Expected

Last year during one of my second looks, I was very excited because I found a Queen Anne's Lace with a black dot in the middle. It was the first one I had seen, and I learned that legend said that the dot represented a drop of Queen Anne's blood from a prick she got while making lace. I thought I had found something interesting and unusual, but for my friend, it was old hat. She said that all of the flowers she had seen had black dots. She didn't know that they came any other way.

The difference in our experiences made me curious, so I did an informal research project . There was no clear conclusion for the different blooms except from a Virginia Tech weed identification site. It said that during the second year of blooming (they are biennials),  the flower develops the spot. To test this, last year I counted the dotted and non-dotted flowers in my yard, and this year I counted them again.

What did I find? Last year I found 11 flowers with spots and 29 without. This year I found 5 with spots and 24 without. This is not what was expected. It was the exact opposite. I should have seen more black spots this year if they do indeed develop them during their second year of blooming.
 
I have a sense that there are certain varieties that have the spots and certain varieties that don't. It seems that the places where I saw the flowers with the spots this year are the same locations they were last year. But I'm not sure.That's a followup I'll have to do-after I get done with my egg cooking experiments.

The proportions here should have been reversed if the black dot appears during the second year of blooming.

A Second Look Follow up--Queen Anne's Lace

Queen Anne's Lace--Spot or No Spot
What's your experience?

My comments about the black spot in the middle of  a Queen Anne's lace bloom in a Second Look, 7-27-11, created several interesting conversations. I was surprised with the black spot because I had never seen one before and a friend said that all flowers she had seen were spotted.

I started wondering about this difference, so I began a very informal investigation. First, I asked several people what they thought a Queen Anne's lace flower looked like. Two people had seen some blooms with a dark spot in the middle and some without it. Four people had never seen the black spot. No conclusions from this survey except that I wasn't alone in my experiences.

Next, I carefully examined all of the Queen Anne's lace growing in my yard and found 29 plants that were spot free and 11 that had the dark spot in the middle. No conclusions once again except that the sample set of my yard was conducive to giving me the impression that Queen Anne's lace blooms are spot free.

After this, I did some internet research. Here I found that most places describe the flower as having a dark spot in the middle. Some say that they can sometimes be spot free. However, there was never any reason given for this difference except on a Virginia Tech weed identification site. Here they said that the spot occurs in the second year of maturity (they are biennials). Makes sense except I wonder why none of the other places mention this.

Anyway, my next step will be to wait until next year to see if any of my spotless flowers this summer will develop blooms with dark spots in the middle next summer. I'll let you know.