Thursday, May 19, 2011

5-19-2011



I mentioned the other day how I've recently (and painfully) been made aware of the existence of Stinging Nettle. Since I hadn't previously known, about or what this evil plant looked like until it was already jabbing needles into my hand, I figured I would warn my three loyal readers about it (even though one of you is Nicole, and she witnessed my first, and almost immediate second encounter with said plant). These seemingly innocent looking leaves (and stem) are covered with hollow little hair sized barbs that inject histamine into you. Now I'm not going to pretend that I actually know what histamine is, but I do know that allergy medicines are "anti-histamine," so it's pretty obvious that you don't want a leaf full of needles shooting it into your bloodstream. If/when that happens, you're in for instant pain and poison ivy-esque itching. I flared up in some rad looking bonus hives which took a day or two to go away too. So long story short, if you see leaves that look like the picture above, don't pet them. Also regarding the picture above, I like it when I take a shot of something, then come home to find an unintentional surprise about it. This one made me jump out of my chair a little when I saw it full size. (Hint: top left corner)

So yeah, mushroom season still isn't quite over yet, but on our hike tonight instead of more mushroom pictures I made sure to take some "wow nature is so pretty," clothing company lookbook looking pictures.