One of the plants

that the Master Gardeners gave out at the Northside Branch of the Lexington Public Library was anise hyssop. I'm not sure exactly of its uses as an herb, but it's a great pollinator. Every day I see various bumblebees laden with pollen, along with butterflies and moths, and other insects.

[Edit: Apparently these are the uses:

Culinary Uses: Flavouring teas, lemonades, and cocktails. Chopped fresh into green salads or fruit dishes. Baking into cookies, cakes, and shortbreads. Infusing into honey, syrups, and jellies.

Medicinal and Traditional Uses:

Respiratory support: Brewed into hot teas by Indigenous tribes and herbalists to soothe coughs, reduce chest congestion, and ease symptoms of colds or bronchitis.

Digestive aid: Taken as a warm tea or tincture to calm upset stomachs, ease gas, and relieve mild nausea.

Topical application: Crushed leaves are applied as a poultice or compress to help soothe minor burns, insect stings, and skin rashes.]

The plant is absolutely beautiful anyway, with its purple spikes and broad leaves. There are always visitors of some sort when I walk by. It was quite a small plant to begin with. It's taken over much of the container. There is a rosemary trailing over in front of it, a bell pepper behind it, and a small chamomile to the left, which hasn't bloomed yet, but it has dominated all of them.

Almost too tired to blog tonight

1. 'Grimm' was very good tonight. I think Juliette is losing her freaking mind.
2. I start allergy shots next week; my phials are in. This means I will be adjusting my workday schedule slightly so I can go in and leave early two days a week, get my shots, stick around for 30 minutes at the allergist's, and then go on about my business.
3. A panicked when a bee flew into the car earlier today. He almost sat in my lap. Fortunately we were at the gas station at the time and I wasn't actually driving. And I got gas with the Kroger points for $1.99 a gallon. It cost $29 to fill a car from having the gas light on to full. Of course, the gas went up about 40 cents overnight, so if it hadn't of done that, it would have been even cheaper.

That's it for now. Good night.

Now that's a science project

8-Year-Olds Publish Scientific Bee Study

A group of British schoolchildren may be the youngest scientists ever to have their work published in a peer-reviewed journal. In a new paper in Biology Letters, 25 8- to 10-year-old children from Blackawton Primary School report that buff-tailed bumblebees can learn to recognize nourishing flowers based on colors and patterns.

“We discovered that bumblebees can use a combination of colour and spatial relationships in deciding which colour of flower to forage from,” the students wrote in the paper’s abstract. “We also discovered that science is cool and fun because you get to do stuff that no one has ever done before.”