Saturday, May 4, 2013:  the 10th Annual World Naked Gardening Day! So - what are YOUR plans?!Sweet, sane, still Nakedness in Nature! —ah if poor, sick, prurient humanity in cities might really know you once more! Is not nakedness then indecent? No, not inherently. It is your thought, your sophistication, your fear, your respectability that is indecent. There come moods when these clothes of ours are not only too irksome to wear, but are themselves indecent. Perhaps indeed he or she to whom the free exhilarating ecstasy of nakedness in Nature has never been eligible (and how many thousands there are!) has not really known what purity is—nor what faith or art or health really is. ~ Walt Whitman 

Saturday, May 4, 2013:  the 10th Annual World Naked Gardening Day! So - what are YOUR plans?!
Sweet, sane, still Nakedness in Nature! —ah if poor, sick, prurient humanity in cities might really know you once more! Is not nakedness then indecent? No, not inherently. It is your thought, your sophistication, your fear, your respectability that is indecent. There come moods when these clothes of ours are not only too irksome to wear, but are themselves indecent. Perhaps indeed he or she to whom the free exhilarating ecstasy of nakedness in Nature has never been eligible (and how many thousands there are!) has not really known what purity is—nor what faith or art or health really is. ~ Walt Whitman 

bible-garden: Rose-Shaped Map of Bohemia (1677) “A map that shows Bohemia as a stylised Hapsburg rose. The stem firmly connects the flowering Bohemian rose to the fertile soil of Vienna, the Habsburg’s political centre. The Latin text at the bottom explains: “’There grew a graceful Rose in the Bohemian woods, and an armoured lion standing guard next to her. That Rose had grown out of the blood of Mars, not of Venus. […] Do not fear, lovely Rose! There comes the Austrian. […] The Rose of Bohemia, bloody for all the centuries, where more than 80 battles were waged. She has been now drawn in this form for the first time.’”

bible-garden:

Rose-Shaped Map of Bohemia (1677)

“A map that shows Bohemia as a stylised Hapsburg rose. The stem firmly connects the flowering Bohemian rose to the fertile soil of Vienna, the Habsburg’s political centre. The Latin text at the bottom explains:

“’There grew a graceful Rose in the Bohemian woods, and an armoured lion standing guard next to her. That Rose had grown out of the blood of Mars, not of Venus. […] Do not fear, lovely Rose! There comes the Austrian. […] The Rose of Bohemia, bloody for all the centuries, where more than 80 battles were waged. She has been now drawn in this form for the first time.’”

Crepis virens (Hawk’s Beard, aka garden weed). Flora Batava (Plants of the Netherlands, 1877), Vol. 15.  Crepis Virens: “Crepis, Pliny, is from the Greek crepis, a kind of boot; and the second Latin name means green, fresh. It was called Hawkbit because the hawk was supposed to pluck it and smear its eyes with it to improve its vision.” ~British Wildflowers in Their Natural Haunts (1919)

Crepis virens (Hawk’s Beard, aka garden weed). Flora Batava (Plants of the Netherlands, 1877), Vol. 15. 

Crepis Virens: “Crepis, Pliny, is from the Greek crepis, a kind of boot; and the second Latin name means green, fresh. It was called Hawkbit because the hawk was supposed to pluck it and smear its eyes with it to improve its vision.” ~British Wildflowers in Their Natural Haunts (1919)

s e r e n d i p i t y  ORIGIN 1754: coined by Horace Walpole in a letter, stating that he formed the word “serendipity” from a Persian fairy tale, The Three Princes of Serendip, whose heroes “were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of.” The fairy tale dates back to a famous poem, The Eight Paradises, written in 1302 AD by Amir Khusro.  

s e r e n d i p i t y 

ORIGIN 1754: coined by Horace Walpole in a letter, stating that he formed the word “serendipity” from a Persian fairy tale, The Three Princes of Serendip, whose heroes “were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of.” The fairy tale dates back to a famous poem, The Eight Paradises, written in 1302 AD by Amir Khusro.  

thebonegirl:

As you probably know, today is international women’s day. So I’m going to go right ahead and tell you that Maria Sibylla Merian is one of my favorite badass ladies of the science/art world.

Born in Germany during the mid 1600s, Merian began her artistic career at a young age, painting her first observations of insects around age 13. She spent  most of her life studying and composing beautiful watercolor paintings of her observations of nature and is most noted for being the first person to clearly record the life cycles of moths and butterflies. She made a self-funded expedition to Suriname where she recorded a bunch of previously unknown flora and fauna, she invented a washable fabric cloth, and published several books. Mind you, this was at a time when oil paints weren’t considered lady-like, the western world believed that moths and butterflies spontaneously birthed themselves from mud, and western ladies were advised not to go into tropical climates because it was known that women would furiously menstruate themselves into a hemorrhaging death.


Please do yourself a favor and go read a book about this woman. Thank you for your time.

I’ve written a few papers on her, but I don’t have the time to go dig them up right now. I’ll suggest some readings for you when I find them.

(via scientificillustration)

Outdoor garden furniture made with basalt fiber (furniture can also be used indoors). The overall appearance is an open-textured, breathable lace-pattern. Basalt is an unusual material for furniture in that it is not only very durable and lightweight, but it also has the power to absorb ultra-violet, radio, and electro-magnetic rays. 

Basalt is the igneous (volcanic) rock formed from the rapid cooling of lava near the earth’s surface. Most of earth’s oceans are lined with basalt, but it is much less commonly found on the continents. 

Chairs by Latvian Designer, Raimonds Cirulis for Maffam Freeform.