A Weed By Any Other Name...

Would be Crocosmia. Or Montbretia. Or any number of other local names, such as Copper Tip or Falling Star. The following is a picture of said "weed"


Personally, I think it is all in the eye of the beholder.

Anyway, a while ago Elise asked me if I could identify this flower that she saw frequently in the northwest on her journey from Washington to Virginia (that's the state, not DC...long trip!), or if I knew a way to identify things from their pictures. And since I still don't have a job (what is the deal with "experience"? Does education count for nothing?! I mean, I can't get a job without experience and without a job I can't get experience. Something's gotta give here! Also, why the arbitrary amount of experience? Is 2 years absolutely necessary or can I get by with 20 months? Not that I have 20 months of experience because, oh yeah, nobody will hire me because I have no experience! Do you see the problem here?) and my only other project at this point in time is peeling wallpaper in my room (now officially the second biggest bane of my existence) I decided to see if I could figure it out.

I started with a google image search for red flowers but that quickly went nowhere. So then I figured that it was probably a wildflower so I searched for "red wildflowers of the northwest" which miraculously got me nowhere :) However, it did turn me onto Flickr. Flickr is kind of like a cross between Facebook and Photoshop where you can edit your pictures and share them with other people. There are photo sharing groups on Flickr for pretty much every subject that you could possibly be interested in, from llamas to babies falling asleep in their food. (Actually, I can't attest to those two groups in particular because I didn't really search for them, but I would still say there is a pretty good chance they exist.) In this case I found a group dedicated to shooting and sharing pictures of wildflowers. And while I still didn't find a picture of this particular wildflower I did notice a few conversations going on in the comments section in which people were asking the very question Elise had. Namely, how in the world do you identify something solely from its picture?

The answer: flowerguide.com. It is a site run by a floral company or something and they have common flowers listed in alphabetical order with a written description of color, size, shape, other names, etc, and a photo of each. Fortunately for me, Crocosmia is fairly high in the alphabet :)
At any rate, once I found the site it only took about 5 minutes to identify the flower and a quick trip to Wikipedia to learn the following facts about Crocosmia:

• It is a member of the Iris family (Probably my second favorite flower, after California Poppies. In case you were wondering.)
  
• It is actually native to South Africa
  
• They are usually Orange or Red in color
  
• The flowers are hermaphroditic (Mostly I just thought that was a cool word and didn't know it existed so I thought I would share it with you)
• The name Crocosmia comes from the Greek Krokos, meaning saffron, and Osme, meaning smell. Apparently they smell like saffron.
  
• They are actually an invasive species in the Pacific Northwest of the US. In other words, they are a WEED!!

I was kind of surprised by that because I think I would much rather have these growing in my front yard than the dandelions that like to make their home there. But weeds they are, since apparently they can choke out native flora and fauna. (Sidenote: Flora and Fauna mean plants and animals respectively and always make me think of Flotsam and Jetsam, which you might be surprised to learn are not just evil hench-eels [hench-eels. HA! I love it!] in Disney's The Little Mermaid, but maritime terms for wreckage left floating in the sea after a shipwreck (flotsam) and cargo thrown overboard by distressed ships and either sunk or washed ashore (jetsam). Also, they are a heavy metal band from Phoenix, Arizona, but that's not really my thing).

Anyway, I think they are quite beautiful and wouldn't mind if they decided to invade Utah. As it is, we get invasive species like cheat grass, which is not only plain and boring but also presents a fire danger in the summer. I think it would be much cooler to look out into a field that you thought was on fire and find that it was actually the bright reds and oranges of these "weeds."

In conclusion, weeds are just expatriate flowers out roaming the world, experience is overrated, and wallpaper will be the preferred decoration in hell and scraping it the preferred method of torture.
Also, I would like to suggest the name Montbretia for any friends or family of mine who plan on having children or are currently expecting. After all, a Montrbretia by any other name would smell like saffron :)

Mold Surgery

That would be the literal translation for plastic surgery if you were to translate it from the original Greek. But don't worry, it's not the yucky green stuff that has an affinity for proliferating in unclean bathrooms (like the one in my basement, cough, teenage brother, cough....) That would make for some pretty unsanitary surgery. Although, on second thought, mold is the original antibiotic so maybe it wouldn't be too bad? I mean, gross for sure, but maybe not lethal. At the very least un-beneficial. So moving on.

Anyway, plastic surgery gets its name from the Greek word for "to mold" (which on second thought doesn't really clarify....hmm.) Well, let me explain. The term "plastic surgery" has been around much longer than the stuff water bottles are made of. Plastic, both the surgery and the name for the material are taken from the Greek word "Plastikos" which means "to mold" or "to shape." It was first practiced over 4,000 years ago (I can't believe that surgery existed that long ago, not to mention plastic surgery, but apparently it did) in the form of skin grafts and such.

The history of plastic surgery in the US begins in earnest around 1830, when surgeons began to repair cleft palates. After that it got a big boost from various wars, especially World War I, due to the various non-lethal injuries that soldiers sustained. There were a lot of advances in skin grafts and burn treatment at that time and in 1931 the American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons was formed. After that it was pretty much history. The shift from reconstructive (repairing birth defects or injuries) to cosmetic (purely for aesthetic reasons) happened slowly but got a big boost in the 1960s and 70s. Nowadays when you say plastic surgery most people (well, at least, I) think Hollywood glamor/beautification. But even though the glamor aspect is probably more common, the repair aspect is still important and still practiced.

As I was looking up the various types of surgery offered, I realized that the idea of beauty and glamor is pretty subjective. I was amazed to learn that among other things, plastic surgeons can

• Turn your outtie bellybutton into an innie (But not the other way around. Interesting sidenotes that I learned about bellybuttons: Did you know that there really is no reason for it to be one way or the other? The doctor can't make it be an innie or outie when you are born by tying or cutting the umbilical cord a certain way. Actually, tying is a myth. They put a little plastic clamp on it after they cut it to stop any residual bleeding and then they just let the cord fall off on its own. This usually takes about a week or so, but it can actually stay put for 3 months or more! About 85% of people are outties but nobody really knows why)
• Etch a six pack on your abdomen,
• Enhance your calf with implants (Is the plural of that calves? Is that confusing to anyone else?)
• Shorten your second toe if it is bigger than your big toe (or if you just happen to think it's too long. Whatever)
  
• Implant hair from your head into your eyelashes
  
• Fork your tongue
• Make your ears pointy like an elf (also pin your ears back if you were born with pointy ones that stick out)
  
• Create dimples if you don't have them
• Bedazzle your eyeball (seriously, they implant a little jewel just under the conjunctival layer of the eye...because, you know, that wouldn't be at all irritating. Can you imagine allergy season? Ugh!),
• Create a permanent nose piece for your glasses!(This is actually more of a piercing but it was so interesting that I had to include it here.)

It is also possible to alter people's Asian eyes to make them look less "ethnic", which understandably upsets quite a few people, and fill in holes in your ears from piercing. I think I would have that done because I never wear earrings anyway as I am allergic to most of them. You know, if I had extra money lying around. So pretty much I am going to go through life with holes in my ears :) I can live with that.


I used to be very opposed to plastic surgery (At least for aesthetic reasons. Cleft palate repair is a different story), but now I am not so sure. I mean, I would still say that eyeball bedazzling and tongue forking are on my list of surgeries that should never be done, but I am somewhat less opposed to other procedures. I think this is because I just recently realized that one of my nostrils is bigger than the other. Really. It's kind of weird. I always hated school pictures because when I got them back it looked like I was flaring my nostrils, or you could see up one of them, or sadly, in one picture you could see a shiny rim of snot around the edge. I never figured out that the problem was with my nostrils and not the photographer until after I was out of school. Though if I had caught it earlier I could have avoided the head tilt they always make you do that just ended up emphasizing the larger nostril!

Anyway, after realizing this, I am more sympathetic to people who are self conscious about certain aspects of their appearance and I can understand their desire to change those things. I still don't know if I would ever change my nose, because I feel like it is a part of my heritage. My grandpa on my mom's side gave it to me and I have grown rather fond of it, large nostrils and all :)

But I do think that celebrities should be limited in the procedures they have, or be forced to disclose them. (Maybe not the embarrassing ones. There are lots of those and I have refrained from mentioning them here. But if you are curious look up labiaplasty on wikipedia.) Anyway, I think that this would serve two purposes. The first is that it would prevent things like this from happening:

(Love MJ, but the nose makes me sad.) The second reason is that it would prevent the rest of us from feeling bad about ourselves and our imperfections. For example, celebrities who have had children and sell ab workout videos would be forced to disclose their tummy tucks so that the rest of us wouldn't have such unrealistic expectations. (I'm sorry, but once your skin is stretched out like that, only one person in a million can go back to a flat six pack without the help of a surgeon. If you happen to be that person, congratulations, but don't try to sell me on ideals that I will never reach.)

So there you have it. More than you ever wanted to know about plastic surgery. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get my beauty rest. It's a lot cheaper than plastic surgery : )