With gas prices the way they are, my weekly trek into the northern hinterlands has gotten pretty expensive.  So I decided I'm going to ride the train whenever I can, which of course means conning someone into picking me up at the station, or riding my bike.

Today I walked, as the restaurant where my critique group met for lunch was only a couple of blocks from the station.  It worked out really well (despite the fact I took the wrong train and got there way too early).  I used my extra time well.  I went to the hobby shop next door to the restaurant and found some really cool stuff.

I found a Resurrection Plant!  At least, that was what they called it back when I was a little girl, and I bought one at Big Bend National Park.  It's also called a Lazarus plant, and now some genius is calling it a "dinosaur plant."  But it cost me about $8, and it comes out of the box this dried brown clump that doesn't look in the least alive.    But you put it in water, and very shortly it starts to unfurl and turn a beautiful green.  This is what it looks like after only a few hours in water.  By tomorrow afternoon it will all be bright green, and it will stay that way with only water.  Then after a few days or weeks, you take it out of the water, and it turns brown and curls up and looks quite dead again.

The cool thing is ... it can live without water for 55 years.  I remember being fascinated with the ones we bought on vacation when I was a kid.  Every once in a while, my mom would run across them stuck in the back of a cabinet, forgotten for years.  We would take them out and "resurrect" them for a few days, then dry them out again and stick them in the back of the cabinet.

I've been looking for one for years.  (I probably could have ordered one online--I never think to look, sometimes.)

I visited my friend Judy in the hospital with a broken arm.  She is doing much better and I hope will get to come home soon.  So, anyway, I did all this riding the train, and I got some reading done and avoided rush hour traffic.

Thanks for visiting,

Kara

P.S. I updated my website www.karalennox.com today.