Sing the Thing: Kodaline

As I said before, this blog is a place to explore all different types of creativity and experimentation. I've been working in my life to go after all of the things that I'm curious about even if I may not necessarily be good at it. So... without further ado, here is an audio of me singing one of my favorite songs by Kodaline: "All I want." It is neither good nor perfect, but it's something I enjoy and that's what really matters :)

Learn Something: Cordyceps

The natural world continuously amazes me. I'm filled with a constant sense of wonder at how amazing and complex and frightening the world around us is. This weekend I was watching the jungle episode of Planet Earth and became soon fascinated by a fungus that it mentioned called cordyceps. Of course, I had to investigate!!!

Essentially, the cordyceps is a parasitic fungi that includes around 400 species. Many of these species are specialized to affect a certain type of organism. According to Wikipedia,
        "The generic name Cordyceps is derived from the Latin words cord, meaning "club", and ceps,   meaning "head"

When a cordyceps fungus attacks its host, the vegetative part of the fungi will begin to invade and actually replace the tissue of the host itself, taking it over and bursting through its body- resulting in, well... THIS

(All images found on Google)                                  

Isn't that insane? Insanely cool.
Some cordyceps also have the ability to affect their host's behavior to ensure survival. Many forms of cordyceps will cause their host to wander away from its home and find an area that is perfect for fungal growth. The insect will then climb a nearby plant and attach itself to the plant. It will then die and the fungus will send out its little sprouts as pictured above.

MIND. CONTROLLING. FUNGI.


Also crazy- many species of cordyceps are used medicinally today. Sweet, huh?

Concert Times

A couple weeks ago I had the awesome opportunity to go to a concert with two amazing bands. It was at Sammy's, a local restaurant. The performances were amazing! There is something gratifying about hearing music that is special to you performed live. I think it's because you can kind of feel the music physically as well as emotionally.

The first band was Brubmy. They were awesome! The guy with the long hair caught me trying to take a sneaky pic of it which was real embarrassing... But look at how luxurious it is. Can you blame me? Go look up their song "The Ballad of the Westwind Kid." It is most excellent.

The second band was the National Parks. I absolutely LOVE them, I have for a long time! Check out their entire album Young. It was amazing.

This Week's Tunes

I absolutely love Spotify for providing all sorts of music for me whenever I need it. These are some beauties I discovered through one of their radio stations this week that have kept me up and going through busy times!

The Head I Hold- Electric Guest

Something Good- alt-J

MoneyGrabber- Fitz and the Tantrums

The Wire- Haim

Marathon- Tennis

Tongue Tied- Grouplove

Fineshrine- Purity Ring

These songs are all fabulous! Look em up!

The Propagation Station

I've realized lately how much I actually love plants. I've started living in a sort of jungle room now, which is just how I like it! While I've been researching the plants I already own, I saw how easily a lot of these babies could be propagated so... I set up an official cute little propagation station in my room complete with Star Wars action figures to act as guards, as is only right. I am just so amazed by the fact that you can just stick a lot of different types of plant cuttings in soil/water and they will just start sprouting new roots. I love the fact that they just want to be so alive that they will put new roots out! I don't know. It's really amazing to me.

Here it is! I'm hoping to see some new growth on a couple of the ones I planted in water within the next couple of weeks. Wish me luck!

So far the plants I am working on are (from left to right:)

Zamioculas Zamifolia (ZZ plant, should take up to a year to see new growth)

Dracaena Braunii (Also known as the lucky bamboo plants. Should take a few months)

Pachira Aquatica (the money tree- unknown time frame)

Monstera Deliciosa (split leaf philodendron- already rooting!)

And... some sort of succulent. Still trying to figure out which one specifically. 

Edit: I just saw a little note on the identification tag of one of the plants I just recently procured that says "no propagation without permission" which kind of cracks me up. You could literally get in trouble for being a huge plant nerd.

No Good Very Bad Day

Not going to lie, this week has been a pretty rough one for me. Things haven't really been working out the way I wanted to and I was feeling pretty down.
My darling friend Angelina sent me this wonderful little list of things to do to start having a more positive, happy life. Even just reading it made me feel better.

It gives you a lot of tips on how to be kinder to yourself and focus on the things that are really important. I absolutely loved it!

If you wanna take a look, you can find the article here!

The Purple Passion Plant

Say hello to the newest addition to my plant family! (I will be doing posts about the others later on.)

I found it at a local Walmart and immediately fell in love with the velvety purple sheen on the leaves. They're also extremely soft to the touch.
I've been missing Halloween and this baby totally has a sort of Halloween look to it. Love at first sight.

Its common name is the Purple Passion Plant or Velvet Plant.
Scientific name : Gynura aurantiaca
Origin: Indonesia.

Information on these plants can be found here.

Learn Something: The Dance of Venus

I don't know how this happened, but I stumbled upon two really cool pieces of information about Venus in the space of a week.

First of all, when its path was traced across the night sky, it was discovered that Venus took a route that created an approximation of a pentacle across the night sky. You can find more information on that here.

Which leads us to our second point, also mentioned in the above article.
When scientists traced the relative pathways of Earth and Venus over an eight year period, the pattern resulted in the fibonacci sequence! This is actually how they got the idea that Venus traced the pentacle. Cool, huh?
Names for this include the Dance of Venus and the Rose of Venus. You can find a lot of cool jewelry made in this shape!

Hello!

Hello, and welcome to my new blog!
I'm working to create a space where I can store all of the things that interest me and are important to me. Creating a blog seemed like the perfect place to do it!
This is a project to bring more positivity and motivation into my life.
Let's see how it goes!