Click on the LINK and you will be surprised !!
a b c d e f g h .......
The Simses of Old Greenwich, Connecticut., gather to read after dinner.
Their means of text delivery is divided by generation..
fat plants
Fat Plants I hear you mumble .... what the hell is she talking about ? Well they are literally a plant with a swollen, water-storing stem (caudex). They produce leaves and shoots when conditions are favourable, and live off water and food stored in the caudex during long dry spells.
Caudiciform plants can store water and survive many months without rain in hot, arid desert regions. They include some of the most remarkable and truly bizarre plants on earth. And I love the bizar :~))
The knobbly thing (above) has many nick names : turtle back, elephant's foot, Hottentots' bread. It's real name is Dioscorea elephantipes. It will live for approx. 70 years in cultivation, if it is looked after! Mine is about 2cm across but they grow to more than three meters wide :~))
With the onset of spring, Jatropha berlandieri (left)sprouts from a large, globose caudex. This is a caudiciform plant adapted to prolonged periods of drought. It belongs to the diverse euphorbia family (Euphorbiaceae). Adenia glauca (right) is a 'Pachycaul', with thick, fat stems/trunks with few branches. It originates from the southern Africa and Botswana, and can get op to one meter or more in diameter! It's a member of the passion flower family
My very favorite author and the first English cactophile is Gordon D.Rowley (90 this year!)
He lives in Reading, wears Hawaiian shirts and is the epitemy of wonderful British eccentricity :~))
Chunnel
There had been numerous proposals for a tunnel under the channel throughout the 19th Century including one by Napoleon, which was not constructed due to war breaking out (again) between England and France.
This was how they thought it might look in 1802
The first serious attempt to build a tunnel came with an
Act of Parliament in 1875 authorising the Channel Tunnel Company Ltd. to start preliminary trials.
Welsh miners started digging in 1880 at Folkstone... but yet again the British were afraid of being invaded by the French and work was finally discontinued in 1898.
The present day tunnel was constructed between 1988 and opened in 1994. It's the longest undersea tunnel in the world. The section under the sea is 38km long. The three tunnels, each 50km long, were bored at an average 40m below the sea bed, and link Folkestone in
This cartoon could have been about my mother. She was 100% anti-France and was terribly afraid of rabies reaching Britain !!
She should have been more worried about the threat of invasion... from killer CHIPMUNKS ......
The alert came amid fears the buck-toothed critters - which have wreaked terror in France - could make it through the Channel Tunnel.
Map . . . how rodents got from native Siberia to France
Tens of thousands were said to be marching on Calais and Dunkirk - as northern France battles a 100,000-strong plague. Tourists are warned not to be fooled by the cuddly image of these characters. Wildlife experts brand them VERMIN. The chipmunks carry ticks harbouring potentially fatal Lyme disease, and their bite can spread rabies.
However we seem to still be safe..... Rabies free countries 2010 (in green) :
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black holes ?
Coins, TV remote, phones, old sweets and biscuits.... You'd be surprised what is to be found down the back of a sofa...............it's a bit like Stephen Hawkin's Black Holes.
The average Brit usually have £1.61 in loose change down the back of the sofa, this means we could literally be sitting on £42.9million across the nation. More statistics about 'lost' money.
Apparently every year 1.3 million people in the UK report their phone stolen, then find it down the back of the sofa the following day.
Other weird and wonderful things found in between the cushions:
Pinny
Pinny" is a really silly word, short for pinafore.
It’s a sleeveless garment worn as an apron. Pinafores may be worn by girls as a decorative garment and by both girls and women as a protective apron
Nowadays long aprons are worn in posh bistro restaurants and look superb :~))
For a complete history of the pinny
Link to pattern to make your own
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