Tickled Tuesday

Happy Tuesday, piglets! Today I'm going to hit on two topics. Flowers and music.

Sunflowers are my favorite flower, which watching Harold and Maude made me realized. As Maude would say, "They're so tall and individual!".

Since I mean for this blog to be (at least some what) educational, here are a few facts about this marvelous plant. Click here to go to the site I "borrowed" these from... hee.

-The sunflower is native to North America.
-Sunflowers have a lot of calcium. (If you haven't tried sunflower seed butter, please do! It tastes a lot like peanut butter, but better. You can get some at Trader Joe's for about $3.)
-Sunflower heads consist of 1,000 to 2,000 individual flowers joined together by a receptacle base. The large petals around the edge of a sunflower head are individual ray flowers which do not develop into seed.
-Sunflowers turn to face the sun through out the day, a phenomenon known as heliotropism.


I love looking through Van Gogh's sunflower paintings... they really show  so many different sides of this flower's personality.

Here's a picture I took last summer, of a sunflower next to my house.

Next Tuesday topic... music. Here is a great Patty Griffin song (ok, amazing) that is one of my personal favorites. It can always lift me up when I'm feeling crappy and beat down, and I was lucky enough to see her perform it live when I saw her last month. The words to this song are so powerful (as is with pretty much everything she's written) and usually make me feel like quite a bad-ass when I sing along. :) 

Enjoy!

(Here's a link to a live version. I posted the album one because the sound quality was better.)

"No Bad News"

Don't bring me bad news, no bad news
I don't need none of your bad news today
You're a sad little boy, anyone can see you're just a sad little boy
That's why you're carrying on that way
Why don't you burn it all down, burn your own house down, burn your own house down
Try to kill your own disease
And leave the rest of us, there's a lot of us, leave the rest of us
Who wanna live in peace to live in peace


I'm gonna find me a man, love him so well, love him so strong, love him so slow
We're gonna go way beyond the walls of this fortress
And we won't be afraid, we won't be afraid, and though the darkness may come our way
We won't be afraid to be alive anymore
And we'll grow kindness in our hearts for all the strangers among us
Till there are no strangers anymore


Don't bring me bad news, no bad news
I don't need none of your bad news today
You can't have my fear, I've got nothing to lose, can't have my fear
I'm not getting out of here alive anyway
And I don't need none of these things, I don't need none of these things
I've been handed
And the bird of peace is flying over, she's flying over and
Coming in for a landing