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To live and enjoy every day to its fullest, use my gifts to help others, I travel to wherever passion finds me.

What Will She Paint?

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Showing posts with label rejuvenated lipstick plant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rejuvenated lipstick plant. Show all posts

Friday, March 12, 2010

COUNTING SMALL...1, 2, 3

Some things may seem small to you, but they're big to me. 
For instance I always was interested in fossils and archeological finds. 

Before going into my own story,  some differences between the squid and the octopus.
They are both related to the snail. The squid has a stiff  structure, which is called a pen, and acts as a flexible backbone. The octopus has no remnant of a shell.
They are different in appearance. A squid has 2 tentacles and 8 arms. An octopus has just 8 arms.
They are different in size. An Octopus can range from 1 cm. to 5+ meters long, but a squid can become 20 meters in length.
They each have different living conditions. A squid lives first in schools and becomes solitary later in life and lives in an open ocean. An octopus lives solitary and lives in a den on the sea floor. The latter sea creature can inject poison to its prey, causing paralysis.

On one of the last few visits to San Diego we went to the harbor to take some photos of the Star of India, which is a large sail ship. I saw a man with a wide rim hat at the board walk, sitting at a table full of pendants. I have been looking for pendants for a long time, but most of them "don't speak to me." I like to have something meaningful, if it's hanging around my neck:)

When I came closer and heard the conversations going on from the people standing around, I overheard that they were fossils. He had a few bigger ones that were squid fossils. I decided that they would be too heavy for a pendant. Then he asked me if I was looking for something particular. When I responded that they were too big, he pointed out this smaller one to me. 

It looked like a perfect symmetrical cut of a squid. When it came to paying, I discovered that I had to go back to my car for my purse. I hurried since several people were huddled around the table, intent on purchasing. 

When I came back a lady who had been standing there the whole time, told me that there had been two other people who had picked it up, wanting to buy it, while I was gone! You can imagine that I was now even more delighted! We chatted a while with this well-traveled man who was once a university biology professor. He seemed more pleased that we were interested in the fossils than my purchase. 
I ordered beads from Fire Gems to show off this unusual pendant.

Another small thing but nonetheless very important to me is that one of my lipstick plants had been decimated by a pest to two lone branches last year. I didn't want to throw it in the trash -just thinking about it made me sad. 

By blogger friends I have been told that this plant grows in the wild in Africa. Latin name: Aeschynanthus, and there are about 35 varieties. Oh wonder, It survived the house move last year summer, and  has grown back  within a year to this. 

Great was my surprise that a saw some tiny little buds a few weeks ago, and now there are two branches  blooming. I couldn't be more thrilled about the little (BIG) wonder of nature! 

About the third little blessing I decided to do that in one of the following post, so this one doesn't become too long. Adieu my friends and have a nice weather weekend.