Sprecher Root Beer

"Our No. 1 root beer, from Sprecher in Wisconsin, a wonderfully balanced and complex brew, uses a combination of corn syrup and honey...."

- NY Times (link here)

I love Sprecher.

St. John's Day

Today was St. John's Day.

If you harvest and burn St. John's Wort on this day, it is supposed to bring you good luck for the coming year.

We will see how that works out.

Dr. O'Grady

Dr. O'Grady, longtime resident of Hales Corners, passed away, and we attended the visitation at the funeral home this evening.

Many years ago, he gave us some red-twig dogwoods, and they have been a cherished part of the garden ever since.

Every day that I am out in the garden, I am reminded of Dr. O'Grady and his generosity.

Chocolate vine

Akebia quinata

Missouri Botanical Garden

Unicorn

A deer with a single horn in the center of its head - much like the fabled, mythical unicorn - has been spotted in a nature preserve in Italy, park officials said Wednesday.

- AP/azcentral (link here)

Have not seen any such unicorns in the garden yet.

Momordica balsamina

Bitter melon or Balsam apple.

Sounds like an interesting annual vine.

NC State University has a brief description of it (link here).

Beware tomatoes

An outbreak of salmonella food poisoning first linked to uncooked tomatoes has now been reported in nine states, U.S health officials said Tuesday.

- AP/Newsmax (link here)

Remind me to carefully wash my tomatoes when I harvest them.

Beware melted Crocs

An 8-year-old boy out walking with family members in Colorado Springs severely burned part of his foot on an underground patch of burning coal dust that had heated the ground to 800 degrees Fahrenheit.

The boy, whose name was not released, suffered second-degree burns as the fire melted his Crocs shoe.

- Denver Post (link here)

I wear Crocs in the garden all the time and they have not melted yet, but I guess I better be careful.

Beware Fake Moose Photos

The St. Ignace News wishes to clarify that widely-circulated emails of photographs purporting to show a moose calf born in Naubinway were not at any time printed in this newspaper, as the emails claim. Some of the e-mails fraudulently use the logotype of this newspaper. The calf and its mother are shown near the front door of a house. The information about the moose calf is not authentic, and at least one Web site uses the same photographs with a similar story about the calf being born in another state. This newspaper cautions readers that such hoaxes could be designed to transmit computer viruses.

- St. Ignace News (link here)

I still want to see moose while driving through the UP of Michigan.