Moon phase: Waning crescent
Weather: Hot and raining
The underside of a mugwort leaf (Artemisia vulgaris). Mugwort has a number of uses: it's a flavoring for meat and beer, it's used as an emmenagogue/abortifacient, and it's used to induce lucid, vivid, and prophetic dreams, among other things. It's a non-native plant, but I still love it.
More info from my herbs site.
Moon phase: Waning crescent
Weather: Hot & humid
Spiderwort flowers (Tradescantia virginiana).
Moon phase: Waning crescent
Weather: Endlessly hot & humid
Phenology: Black-eyed susans are blooming
A hawk on McKinley Street in NW. For a while there were a pair I would see around there occasionally, but I haven't seen them in a while. Based on the tail markings, I think it's a juvenile red-tailed hawk, but I'm far from an expert.
Moon phase: Waxing gibbous
Weather: Hot
The last photo from Assateague. I'm going out of town for a week, but when I get back I'll have lots of photos from Maine to go through.
Moon phase: Waxing gibbous
Weather: hot, humid, thunderstorming
Yesterday the Post had an interesting and sad article on a Wiccan army sergeant who was killed in Afghanistan last year, who ought to have had a memorial in his local veterans cemetery in Nevada, except that the US Department of Veterans Affairs refuses to recognize the Wiccan symbol, the pentagram. They gave his wife the option of having a blank memorial with just his name, but she decided to forgo a memorial there altogether. The VA recognizes 38 religious symbols — including one for atheists, an atomic symbol with an A in the center — but efforts to secure recognition of the pentagram in recent years have failed.
This is, of course, completely unfair and unconstitutional. I don't even see why the VA needs to recognize symbols anyway — shouldn't the veterans themselves have the right to decide what they want on their graves, without any of this bureaucratic nonsense? But I also think it's interesting to note that though Sikhs have an accepted symbol in the VA, there are (according to a quick Google search) only about 500,000 Sikhs in the US and more than 700,000 Neo-pagans (note that most Neo-pagans are Wiccans, and even among those that aren't, most use the pentagram as their primary religious symbol). That's not to say that there are necessarily more Neo-pagans in the military than there are Sikhs, especially since many Neo-pagans are pacifists, but it just goes to show that it has nothing to do with Wicca being a fringe religion or anything like that; it's all about prejudice. There's still a perception in our country that Wicca is equivalent with Satanism, and probably the VA just doesn't want to have graves with the pentagram on them.
Moon phase: First quarter
Weather: Hot
Phenology: Wineberries!
Another photo from Assateague.
Today I had the day off, and I spent an hour picking wineberries (Rubus phoenicolasius) which are the most delicious raspberry species. Technically, picking them where I did is illegal, but it really shouldn't be because it's an invasive species that the park is actually trying to get rid of, so they can't complain. Of course, I recall that last year there was a case in Montgomery County where people were picking mugwort in parks and the park officials were trying to stop them — and then bringing in goats to get rid of the mugwort. So parks are not always very logical in their rule-making. Anyway, I brought home about a quart and ate a whole lot off the bush as well. They're really best eaten right away; they're even a little warm from the sun.
Moon phase: Waxing crescent
Weather: Hot
The first in a series of pictures from my trip to the Maryland side of Assateague Island in April.
Moon phase: Waxing crescent
Weather: Hot, rainy, flooding
This is sweet cicely (Osmorhiza claytonii), a very pretty, delicate plant with delicious, licorice-tasting seeds.
Moon phase: Waxing crescent
Weather: Endless thunderstorms
Phenology: Purslane has sprung up overnight
Virginia bluebell (Mertensia virginica) is another plant discovered in Rock Creek Park this spring. I don't recall ever seeing it before, but I recognized it from various wildflower books. The day I took this photo there was so much the entire woods looked blue.
