Rebecca Blake

This post was in the daily-ish e-mail today… which was quite timely for me.

A couple weeks ago I enjoyed the used bookstore at the library, purchasing a couple of native flower books and a load of children’s books. Including the first 8 Magic Treehouse Books which I hoped would get my daughter into reading chapter books. It cost more than borrowing them but I had no idea how long it would take for her to get into them and they still were cheap.

Lo and behold, it worked instantly! She blew through the first eight books of the series and begged for the next one, so I took my kids to the library last Friday due to this urgent need.

While my kids played in the children’s zone, decked out like a mini preschool, I asked one of the librarians about the addition they hope to have done. Unfortunately, the add on would go where the butterfly/native plant garden currently resides but they are already transplanting everything to another location!

I mentioned I saw a new children’s section in the plans so he explained how the children’s area would be moved to where the current “maker’s space” was and the current children’s area coupled with the add on would become the new maker’s space… giving 75% more room to club meetings and all things making!

How spectacular!

But I asked if they were getting any more space for books and he said… no.
All of this work done to what’s a fairly small library and no expansion for books? Such a pity.

He mentioned how this library is essentially the only “third space” in the area, so I understand why the add-on and renovation would prioritize these community areas. It still is a bummer about the books, though.

But I have to give it to them… even though the selection of books is not very voluminous they almost always have the kind of stuff I want whereas the larger library “in town” has over twice the books but never seems to have what I want! Funny how that works.

Mine has another fun feature I didn’t see other replies mention… an indoor plant exchange! They have a wall of little test tubes of water where you can put a plant cutting from your plant and take another. This is in addition to the seed exchange which has a lot of native plants included!

Since you have two places to buy one slice of pie, I think it would make more sense to remove the “automatically buy pie monthly” slider and just make that the product you are purchasing in the first box that says buy pie for $10. Emphasize it’s a monthly subscription or something.

Then the place lower with the up and down arrow will let people buy a one off pie if they want.

This would keep people from accidentally registering to buy $600 (or $65) worth of pie a month which would cause refund headaches for you.

I’ve been eyeing the madrone trees here (central Texas) for trying out dying as well. But I have never dyed a thing in my life :)

As mentioned before, the peeling bark is red and will be found red on the ground.

Here we have a not so politically correct nickname for the madrone, “naked Indian”.

I like to think a glance of the tree in the woods must have really spooked the settlers to have acquired such a name.

When I was visiting my relative who fell off a cliff I happened to have a bottle of verbena tincture with me, so I gave it to him before I left.

I wasn't originally planning on giving him some but after I spoke with him I learned he had a damaged nerve in his face and I thought the verbena might help since it's a nervine.

We of course can't say whether it expedited his healing or not, but the nerves were doing much better after. I also have no idea how often he took the tincture, but I do know he was taking it.
(It was a local variety: Glandularia Bipinnatifida)

The more commercially available verbena would be Blue Vervain (Verbena Hastata)

Here's an article on other herbs for nerve damage you may enjoy reading up on

On Blue vervain it says:

Blue vervain (Verbena Hastata) is used to strengthen and regenerate the nervous system while relieving tension and stress.

Of course... NURSERY PLANTS!

My birthday was not long ago and my husband came home with some 'random flower' from the nursery. He didn't realize it was one of my favorite medicinal herbs! Echinacea!

Nicky Schauder wrote:And honestly, cancer or no cancer, we want to know what the changes we need to make are.
And For what its worth, we're including your healing in our family prayers.

I want to join the forum for this exact reason.. and to maybe join the support group of making positive change in our lives.

Paul mentioned light above. I KNOW I need more organic light in my life but it's just so hard for me to actually do. Dealing with my own chronic issues (luckily, on and off rather than just a constant flow of bleh) I'm sure much of what's going down in the support forum would help myself.

I presume these would not be considered safe for cosleeping?

I am intrigued; however, the whole reason I need a new mattress is because I need something less soft for the baby.

Do people find just a pillow assists in better sleep? The aforementioned baby has turned me into a night time contortionist and my body aches as a consequence!

A pillow probably won't resolve that, but I am still curious.

I just realized, we got flower seeds from someone a year ago and I think it may had included hollyhock. I personally didn't plant any but my 5 year old can sometimes go rogue and do whatever so maybe she planted it here!

Considering I'm not growing much of anything this year... she's a better gardener than me lately lol

Maieshe Ljin wrote:That looks very much like a volunteer ornamental, double-petalled hollyhock. I don’t know Texas flora so you may want to double check. Like most mallows the young growth is edible.

If it's of the mallow family, is it medicinal like mallow?

I honestly know nothing about hollyhock nor why one would be envious of it volunteering in my vegetable garden! Still glad I left it and let it grow to maturity :)

I had this mystery plant growing in my vegetable garden. I am unsure if it was a seed I planted in a previous season and forgot about or just some random volunteer. At first it looked kind of like a squash to me, then like okra, and now that it flowered I have no idea. Can anyone help me ID it?