A Lesson in Botany

This is a sunflower

More on that later. First, a few items of business. (Random information you probably don't care about knowing: Every time I spell the word business I pronounce it BUS-EE-NESS in my head, as in the big yellow bus. I do this because I used to have a hard time remembering whether it had one s or two. I also always say BEE-EE-AE-YOU-TIFUL when spelling beautiful, for much the same reason.) Anyway, the business.

Um, I have been a slacker. Every time I think about writing something on this blog it works up into such a monumental task in my head that I lose any sliver of interest I had. This wouldn't be so much a problem except that I have been doing it with many other things in my life as well. Such as communicating with my friends. If this is you (and it most likely is, because I think anyone who reads my blog is pretty cool and I would be your friend even if I don't really technically know you right now) then I apologize. I don't know why it is that when I feel most isolated and really need to keep in touch with people it becomes the last thing I want to do. Strange.

Anyway, I apologize and propose that as a partial solution we examine the name of this blog. That is, AskLinds. Now, if you separate the syllables in this name, you will see that it becomes two words: Ask Linds. Crazy, I know! But, in order to help me get out of this funk of slackerness and apathy, I propose that you the readers ask me some questions : ) (I know my track record for answering questions promptly is pretty poor but I think that the quality of my answers somewhat makes up for that, right? And I promise I'll try to do better) Anyway, like I tell people, I may not know everything (and definitely don't), but if I don't know the answer I'll make up something that sounds plausible to me :) So if you have something that you've always wondered about but never really gotten around to finding out, send me your thoughts and I will see if I can come up with something. I think it will be good for all of us.

That concludes the business portion of this post. Now back to these guys.

These sunflowers are about two feet tall and growing in my bedroom. This is due to a project that my dad conducts every winter to stave of his slackerness during the cold months, namely a mini-greenhouse. Being as how my bedroom gets ample sunlight from the two windows (which also allow ample cold in) the greenhouse is set up there. This has never really bothered me because I was always at school in the winter so I never saw much of it. This year, knowing that I would be living in the greenhouse, I decided that I might as well participate. So I decided to grow some watermelon.

This was a bit of an afterthought actually. My dad happened to notice some volunteer watermelon plants growing in the crack between our patio concrete and the grass. We figured maybe they had sprouted from people spitting seeds from the back porch. It seemed more sanitary than volunteer tomato plants and I don't like tomatoes anyway, so I brought them inside, visions of ripe watermelon in my head.

I was a little surprised after a few weeks to see that they grew straight up, rather than spreading like a typical vine, but I figured maybe they were trying to attach themselves to the blinds. But when they started to sprout big yellow flowers I suddenly remembered the bird feeder hanging from the back patio. The bird feeder which we stock with sunflower seeds.


Not exactly the juicy watermelon I had envisioned. Then again, it does brighten things up a bit. And maybe I'll get some roasted sunflower seeds out of it :)