First Anniversary of A Wandering Botanist Blog

It was a year ago that I started this blog.

It has been great fun and I've learned a LOT!

dandelion, Taraxacum officinale, from Hagi, Japan

It encouraged me to build a website A Wandering Botanist 

And then to create videos for the website. Link

Both blogs and videos need pictures. There's always the picture that you don't have that would be nice as an illustration. I had been taking pictures of dandelions when I saw them on trips, because they were familiar plants in a strange place and I've always liked tough cosmopolitan weeds. (Dandelion blog). So for that and a variety of other posts I had the pictures. (Stored somewhere--no matter which way I organize things, I always end up searching many files for something I remember.)

buffalo grass along the sidewalk

But for some plants that I wanted to write about I did not have many pictures. Buffalo grass and peppers, for example. So even trivial trips have offered photo ops.  Walking around the block, for example,

red peppers in a grocery store

or in grocery stores.

Dyed with old fustic, dyer's mulberry

Then there were the illustrations that became projects. Dyeing cloth with old fustic is an example. The picture to your right required ordering the powdered wood from a natural dye supplier and an afternoon with pots of dye on the stove.

Varnishing a Brussels sprout stalk was a project that evolved. First I saved the stalk. Then I let it dry. Finally I worked open an old jar of linseed oil and varnished it. I didn't know that project would work until it did.

Brussels sprout stalk and linseed oil

To talk about peppers (upcoming video), I tried to get photos of the same pizza and salad with and without peppers and pepper products. Taking exactly the same picture after changing something is not easy. I failed a lot, eventually got very close.

green salad with avocado

green salad with avocado, peppers
and roasted red pepper dressing

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All kinds of mini-projects!

What am I planning next? Blogs on Christmas cacti, Osage orange and Tierra del Fuego.  I have a bunch of Crossing signs I am planning to pull together into a blog. And of course whatever else strikes my fancy. If you have a question, please ask!

warning sign from Hawaii

I have some signs from last fall's trip to China in a photo album on my Facebook page: check those if you haven't seen them.

Comments and corrections always welcome. I put the references at the bottom of posts so if you want to read what I read, you can. 

Kathy Keeler

More at awanderingbotanist.com

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