Learning something new every day

I'm two days through a three day weaving class, but it's not the class I want to talk about. It's this plant. 

The flower, with its little curlicues 

The spiky seed pod

And the cool looking purple-ish stems

It is growing outside Find Line Creative Arts Center where my class is and I have become a little obsessed with it because it's so cool.

I didn't know what it was, so I did what I always do... send a picture to HC, my daughter-in-law, who knows a lot about plants. It turns out that this is thornapple (or jimsonweed) and it is incredibly poisonous. And invasive. And also has unpleasant hallucinogenic properties. It's also been tied to witchcraft in previous centuries. But it's still a really cool looking plant. 

I couldn't figure out why it looked so familiar even though I was sure I'd never seen one before. And then it came to me. This flower is on the cover of our Georgia O'Keefe book of her paintings. Evidently I am not the only one to be smitten by it.


One more day of class where I'm leaning to do an inlay technique.



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