Paraphernalia

the fable of the porcupine

It was the coldest winter ever. Many animals died because of the cold. The porcupines, realizing the situation, decided to group together. They were covered and protected, but the quills of each wounded the closest companion.

After a while, they decided to distance themselves, and they began to die, alone and frozen. So they had to make a choice: either accept the quills of their companions or disappear from the Earth. Wisely, they decided to go back to being together.

They learned to live with the little wounds that were caused by their close relationships because the most important part was the heat that came from the others. They were able to survive.

The best relationship is not the one that brings together perfect people, but the one that forms when individuals learn to live with the imperfections and admire the good qualities of others.

The Moral of the story:

LEARN TO LOVE THE PRICKS IN YOUR LIFE.

hot dog

Sausage is one of the oldest forms of processed food,
having been mentioned in Homer's Odyssey

Hot dogs are among America's favorite foods.
Every year, Americans consume on average 60 hot dogs!

National Hot Dog & Sausage Council

History and Legends of Hot Dogs

sunflowers...

It will soon be time to plant sunflower seeds.

From this handfull of seeds you can grow a whole forest of sunflowers taller than you are :~))

The sunflower is native to the Americas, where the Incas worshipped its image as a symbol of the sun god. At the beginning of the 16th century when Francisco Pizarro was first rummaging around in Mexico, Europeans discovered many gold figures of sunflowers, including in temples in the Andes, and American Indian Indians placed bowls of seeds on the graves of the dead.

Apart from being nice flowers for the garden, they are also grown for use as cooking oil, fuel oil, bird food, flowers pots and in the making of margarine.

If these kids can do it so can you!

Did you know that .........

The florets within the sunflower's cluster are arranged in a spiral pattern. Typically each floret is oriented toward the next by approximately the golden angle, 137.5°, producing a pattern of interconnecting spirals where the number of left spirals and the number of right spirals are successive Fibonacci numbers. Typically, there are 34 spirals in one direction and 55 in the other; on a very large sunflower there could be 89 in one direction and 144 in the other.This pattern produces the most efficient packing of seeds within the flower head.^[

roll on Sunday..........

Being the pagan that I am, the best thing about Easter for me is all the chocolate.....

Plus of course the fact that Spring is here and all the gorgeous bulbs are flowering.

The Easter Bunny was first mentioned in Georg Franck von Frankenau's De ovis paschalibus(About the Easter Egg) referring to an Alsace tradition of an Easter Hare bringing Easter Eggs (and the negative impact of too much egg consumption !!!!!!!!!)

Bringing Easter eggs seems to have its origins in Alsace and the Upper Rhineland, both then in the Holy Roman Empire, and southwestern Germany, where the practice was first recorded in a German publication in the 1500s (early 16th century). The first edible Easter Eggs were made in Germany during the early 19th century and were made of pastry and sugar.

Dyed eggs were shared and eaten at spring festivals in ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, Persia and China. Gradually these traditions made their way westward and were expressed in various forms – from dyed goose eggs to beautifully decorated paper mâché eggs in the 17th and 18th centuries. In the late 19th and early 20th century the ultimate Easter eggs – the Fabergé eggs made their royal appearance.

Do chocolate eggs come
from chocolate chickens?

Today’s European tradition of giving chocolate Easter eggs as gifts can be traced back to 19th century France and Germany. The first eggs were small and solid and made of a course, bitter dark chocolate. As technology improved and cocoa became more widely available, so did chocolate Easter eggs.

The first mass-produced chocolate egg appeared in England in 1873 when Cadbury debuted their first Easter egg. It wasn’t until the early 1900s that milk chocolate Easter eggs became available.

***** Five-stone, 168,540-calorie, Easter egg *****

********** and the BIGGEST one in the world **********

always look on the bright side of life........

Feeling under a cloud ??

Never mind Spring seems to have arrived with a vengence !

In fact it's more like summer than spring ATM :~))

And don't forget - it could always be worse !!!!!

forget the Galapagos !

Socotra Island, Yemen
Located in the Arabian Sea, far from any mainland, Socotra has evolved species that aren’t found anywhere else, such as the red-sapped dragon’s blood tree, seen above.

More than eight hundred plant species have been identified on Socotra,
and 240 of them are unique.

The only indigenous mammals are local bats.