Why Botanical Illustration Is Obscenely Cool

Posted on June 8, 2013 | 7 Comments

My mind is a miniature gallery of weirdly specific interests, and one of my biggest affections is for natural science illustration (particularly botanical). If I see a dingy framed print of a plant sketch, I will scurry to it immediately, and ooh and aah and whisper the genus-name to myself. Let me try to explain why this is.

One reason I’m interested in natural science illustration is because things like this exist in the world:

Hodgsonia heteroclita, which grows in India, China, and some other parts of Asia. (By Cathcart, John Fergusson (1802 – 1851) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)

Yes, that is the wild wobbly-petaled confetti flower. It seems fantastical, like something out of Dr. Seuss, but it’s real.

If you tried to document the same bizarro plant through photography, you might capture a torn flower, or get a good shot of the shape of the leaves, or opt for a close-up of the bud—but likely not all of these. They might be exquisitely-composed photographs, but they can rarely be quite as effective at showing the whole plant, with all its botanical aspects, in all their life stages. It’s the difference between glimpsing a pretty autumnal forest through the window of a speeding bus, and living in that forest in a tiny cabin for fifteen years (to get over-exuberantly metaphorical).

Don’t get me wrong — I love plant photography, and engage in it often. It has its own unique merits for a detail-oriented botanist. It’s just a whole different kettle of fish.

For instance, here’s a photo of a cute little Cerastium arvense (“cuernecita” to its friends) whom I met in Chile. This elegant little bugger was making its living on the side of a mountain in Patagonia, which is one of the less forgiving places for a plant to grow. The flower probably bloomed for a few days at most; perhaps the plant itself didn’t even survive the following winter. This is a Portrait of the Cuernecita as a Young Caryophylle, a moment in its fleeting life.

Cuernecita, or Cerastio (Cerastium arvense). Photo by Tehhen (CC BY-ND 2.0).

Cerastium arvense. Photo by Tehhen (CC BY-ND 2.0).

Compare, if you will … this botanical illustration of Cerastrium arvense. Whether it’s an average of many specimens or whether it was drawn based on the artist’s experience of a single cuernecita, it’s an archetype which transcends the cuernecita’s life cycle. It’s springing from the seed at the same moment as it’s blooming at the same moment as it’s falling into fruit and seed.*
(*Can you tell that I’ve been watching too much Doctor Who?)

Cerastium arvense, by Johann Georg Sturm, Painted by Jacob Sturm, published by Kurt Stüber [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Cerastium arvense, by Johann Georg Sturm, Painted by Jacob Sturm, published by Kurt Stüber [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The other primary reason for my love of botanical illustration is because it can bridge the gap between science and art so very effectively. The scientific illustrator must figure out a way to show a plant’s entire life cycle — while including such generally unphotogenic elements as seeds and stamens — in a way that is accurate and instructive, and possibly also beguiling and artistic.

Some botanical illustrators seem to take more of an approach of “screw it, I’ll just lay out all the flower parts in an orderly way, and call it a day” (which leads to some magnificent, restrained art, in and of itself):

Fritillaria meleagris, which is a lily whose petals are checkered. Checkered, you guys. (By Johann Georg Sturm (Painter: Jacob Sturm) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)

Fritillaria meleagris, which is a lily whose petals are checkered. Checkered, you guys. (By Johann Georg Sturm (Painter: Jacob Sturm) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)

 Meanwhile, some scientific illustrators just go mad with it, combining perfect scientific representations with wild, joyful plants and a disdain for tidy white space. (Ernst Haeckel, whose work is displayed below, is one especially good example of this.)

Various types of Nepenthes (pitcher plants), by Ernst Haeckel [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Various types of Nepenthes (pitcher plants), by Ernst Haeckel [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Botanical illustration is a celebration of the unabashed weirdness contained within the world’s biodiversity. It’s a mode of learning, a mode of appreciating, and a way to give due attention to tiny, gorgeous details. Although it tends to be an art form with rigid parameters, its subject matter is so varied and flexible that the parameters become supports rather than fetters. Do you see?

Now go forth and admire plant art.

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Posted in Musings, Nature

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On the Interweaving of Book-Reality and Life-Reality

Posted on March 25, 2013 | 9 Comments

When you read a particularly engrossing book, do the lines between its plot and your reality ever blur?

If you asked me about most of the books I read, I’d be hard-pressed to remember where I was when I read them, whether I was basking in the sun or curled up in a chair, or how I felt during the days or weeks of the book-encounter. However, through some whim of memory, a few books have nestled their way into my experience and recollections in a more concrete, mingled way.

On one road trip through the southern Californian deserts, I listened to the entirety of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man on audiobook. Over days, as we drove and listened, the story slowly became intertwined with the surroundings—with all the tans and duns, with the spindly Joshua trees and wrinkled hills. In particular, the narrative of the sharecropper Jim Trueblood became tangled up with the desert: although I knew full well that his part of the story is set in the American South, to this day, a part of my mind always expects to see his log cabin far off on the low desert horizon, shimmering under the heat.

I can think of dozens of other examples, too: I remember that when I was reading Isabel Allende’s Eva Luna, I wandered about in a haze, dreaming of and fussing about the characters’ fates; that I read Sarah Waters’s chilly Victorian Affinity while wedged in a plastic chair on a Chilean sun porch; that the quiet, frozen, ominous isolation of Hedeby Island in Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo loomed over my bed every night as I fell asleep; and that the pages of my Alfred Hitchcock murder anthology have a musty smell that still evokes the homey motel where I first read it.

I’ve tried to figure out why it is that some books take up residence in my place-memories and some do not. My best approximation is that it happens more often if I’m traveling in a new place with a new book. However, since books may just as often seep into my everyday, routine locations, this guess is incomplete. Perhaps I ought to ascribe it to book-magic and leave it at that.

I’m curious: have you experienced this too? Do scenes and characters from the books you read colonize the corners of your geographical memory, and why do you think that is?

Red page from 50 flores nativas (Zona Central de Chile).

Red page from 50 flores nativas (Zona Central de Chile).

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Lazybum Recipes: Basic Crockpot Anything

Posted on February 20, 2013 | 2 Comments

There are days when I use my crockpot as a portal of discovery for new and delicious recipes and flavors. There are other days when all I want is for it to provide me with adequate dinner nutrients (exciting culinary discoveries be damned!). On the latter type of day, I improvise crockpot meals using a very basic formula, and the result is almost always edible.

Sounds convincing, eh? Maybe not, but if you start with this formula and adapt it to your needs, you will, at worst, use up some unloved foodstuffs, and at best, create a magnificent new dish.

Basic Crockpot Anything

Ingredients:

  • Vegetables (e.g. baby carrots, sweet potatoes, onions)
  • Meat (especially a roast or other large, cheaper cut)
  • 1/2 – 2 cups liquid (broth, condensed soup + water, apple cider, whatever sounds good)
  • Seasonings

Instructions:

  1. Slice vegetables to be under 2″, if necessary. Place vegetables in bottom of crockpot.
  2. Brown meat in a pan (optional). Place meat atop vegetables.
  3. Pour liquid over vegetables and meat. (For best cooking, crockpot should be about 1/2 – 2/3 of the way full.)
  4. Turn on the crockpot and walk away. You may either cook it for 1 hour on High and then 5-6 hours on Low, or just 8-10 hours on Low. Check it a few times during cooking.
  5. Add seasonings, if desired. You can also stir in more delicate food elements at this time, like tomatoes, greens, cheese, etc.
  6. Serve. (If saving leftovers, store them in a new container, not the crockpot.)

Note: Be cautious when putting frozen meats in the crockpot. Because of the slower, lower heat of the crockpot, they may defrost dangerously.

Here’s an example of this delicate art. For this one, I used 4 boneless pork chops, a bag of baby carrots, a container of condensed cream of mushroom soup, and a splash of water:

This isn't the best photo, but you get the idea.

This isn’t the best photo, but you get the idea.

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Posted in Food, Lazybum Recipes

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Important photos of a wading anteater

Posted on February 2, 2013 | 4 Comments

In mid-November, I went to the San Francisco Zoo. While there, I gazed joyously at their impressive variety of lemur species, ooh-ed at the many exotic flowers planted beside the pathways, and, as always, took far too many photos.

Then, I got caught up in the hubbub of the holiday season and entirely forgot to share these enlightening photos. However, my blog just feels incomplete and pointless without wading anteaters on it, so I am finally remedying this tragic lack. Aren’t you relieved?

Tentative anteater.

Tentative anteater.

Majesty!

Majesty!

While I’m at it, here are two lemurs & an amiable capybara (click to see larger):

(You can also see a few more SF Zoo photos on my Flickr.)

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Posted in Ordinary Things

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Bookzest Day, Jan. 20: Great success!

Posted on January 21, 2013 | 6 Comments

My first ever Bookzest Day was a rousing success (and by “rousing,” I mean “very quiet and placid, but gratifying”). For ease of book selection, I began the day by sorting my Book Mountain into four more manageable Mini-Mountains: one for nonfiction, one for fiction, one for magazines, and one for miscellany (books of poetry or quotes, books of photography or illustration, etc.). This is what they looked like:

From left to right: Miscellany, Fiction, Nonfiction. (Magazines in foreground.)

From left to right: Miscellany, Fiction, Nonfiction. (Magazines in foreground.)

I mostly focused my efforts on the Miscellany pile, and got through 1 full-length graphic novel, 2 illustrated books, 3 photography books, and 1-3 articles apiece from 9 magazines.* Although some of these were shorter reads, I figured they were a good place to focus my energies this time, since their hefty covers make them less conducive to casual bedtime reading.

I ended up reading for ~10 hours, which means that I both met and exceeded my goal of spending 2/3 of my waking hours ensconced in books. Hoorah! Of course, my reading quest will never be done. Near the end of the day, my housemate wandered by with a pile of her old college books, and asked if I was interested in any of them… so I accidentally added three new books on Central American indigenous mythology/history to my Nonfiction Mountain (but how could I say no to that?).

I find it a little sad and strange that “reading all day” has become such a rarity/novelty in my life, but I’m glad that I’ve found a coherent way to confront the issue. Henceforth, I am going to try to start doing a Bookzest Day on a monthly basis—or perhaps even twice monthly, if I get ambitious. (Do you have a spare day? Try it yourself! At least one friend of mine joined in this time, and she was very successful.)

Happy reading!

 

*Complete reading list, for the silly folks who like details (in chronological order, no less): How to Tell If Your Cat Is Plotting to Kill You (Matthew Inman); ZooBorns (Andrew Bleiman & Chris Eastland); Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama (Alison Bechdel); Nonsense Botany & Nonsense Alphabets (Edward Lear); Rare: Portraits of America’s Endangered Species (Joel Sartore); Katharine Hepburn: A Life in Pictures (Pierre-Henri Verlhac); and then assorted articles from my backlog of issues of National Geographic Magazine, Nature Conservancy Magazine, Audubon Magazine, Curve Magazine, and Paste Magazine.

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Posted in Musings, Ordinary Things

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Bookzest Day (AKA Read ALL the Books)

Posted on January 17, 2013 | 9 Comments

Hi. My name is Molly, and I’m a bookoholic. I love books, and I collect them nigh-obsessively. As such, I have rather a large backlog of books in my house. Although I am very excited to read every last one of them, I adopt books faster than I can read them. My Book Mountain currently looks like this:

IMG_5071

On a normal day, I’ll wake up and immediately jump on my computer. This is not an unproductive thing to do, as all my freelance work is done through the computer, and I do also spend a good amount of free time reading enlightening articles online. However, productive as this can sometimes be, it does not help to diminish my Book Mountain.

Thus, I’m going to try something new. I am going to wake up… and I am going to read. And I am going to spend the whole day reading, like I did when I was younger and less computer-dependent. How much of my Book Mountain will I manage to work through? Only time and perseverance will say. (My very first Bookzest Day was January 20, 2012; others will follow whenever life allows.)

Here are my rules:

  • I will spend at least 2/3 of my waking hours reading.
  • I can break for food and furtive email-checks, but I may not accidentally while away the whole day online.
  • I’m free to read anything—fiction, nonfiction, magazines, maple sugar catalogs—as long as it’s not on the computer.
  • Since this is an effective and enjoyable way to delve deeper into my Book Mountain, I will try to repeat it monthly or bimonthly.

If you also suffer from a case of the Book Mountains, why don’t you join me? Or if you’re busy on an Official Hermitina Bookzest Day, why not block out a free day on your calendar right now, and institute that day as your own Bookzest Day?

(P.S. “Read ALL the books” is an allusion to Hyperbole and a Half’s very funny This is Why I’ll Never be an Adult post. If you haven’t read it, it may benefit you.)

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Posted in Musings, Ordinary Things

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Lazybum Recipes: Pavlova

Posted on January 8, 2013 | 3 Comments

This recipe really shouldn’t count as lazybum, as it’s a little bit more complex than my usual preference… but it’s also much easier to make than you’d expect a fancy meringue dessert to be, so that counts in its favor.

Pavlova is my very favorite dessert ever. It’s a giant meringue: a crisp and crunchy meringue shell on the outside, and a soft and marshmallow-textured meringue interior. It’s usually topped with whipped cream and whatever snazzy fruits are in season. As an added bonus, it’s naturally gluten-free, so it tastes exactly as sublime as it should.

If your meringue cake cracks during (or after) baking, never fear! That’s what the whipped cream and fruit are for. They will cover it up perfectly, and none shall ever be the wiser.

Pavlova

(Recipe adapted from Smitten Kitchen; when I first made pavlova, years ago, I upped the proportions for no sensible reason that I can recall—pavlova voracity? perhaps an excess of eggs on hand?—and I have made it that way every since. The instructions come from Smitten Kitchen too, with alterations based on my experience, errors, and equipment.)

Meringue Cake Ingredients:

  • 6 egg whites
  • 1 pinch salt
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons white vinegar
  • 2 cups castor sugar or superfine sugar
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 3/4 tablespoon cornstarch
  • parchment paper

Topping Ingredients:

  • 2 cups heavy whipping cream
  • 1 tablespoon granulated white sugar
  • 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
  • 1-2 cups sweet fruit of choice (blackberries, strawberries, or peaches work exceptionally well)

Instructions:

  1. Preheat oven to 250°F (130°C) and place rack in center of oven. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
  2. Pour the vanilla and vinegar into a small cup. Stir the cornstarch into the sugar in a small bowl.
  3. Using an electric hand mixer, whip egg whites and salt. Start on low, then increase to medium speed until soft peaks/trails start to become visible, and the egg white bubbles are very small and uniform (roughly 3-5 minutes with the hand mixer). [If you have a heavy-duty mixer, consult Smitten Kitchen for more apt instructions.]
  4. Increase speed to medium-high, and slowly and gradually sprinkle in the sugar and cornstarch. A few minutes later, pour in the vanilla and vinegar.
  5. Increase speed to high; whip until meringue is glossy and stiff peaks form when the whisk is lifted (4-7 minutes, although your mileage may vary).
  6. Gently pour the meringue onto the parchment paper in a circular blob. Smooth its edges and top with a spatula, form a small well in the meringue-center.
  7. Bake for 1 hour 15 minutes (or until the outside is dry and takes on a very pale cream color).
  8. While meringue is baking, prepare the whipped cream and fruit. Whip the cream in a clean bowl. When it starts to thicken, add the sugar gradually and then the vanilla, beating until the cream is firm. Wash and slice the fruit into small pieces, as necessary, and put both cream and fruit aside.
  9. Check on meringues at least once during the baking time. If they appear to be taking on color or cracking, reduce temperature 25 degrees, and turn pan around. After ~1:15, turn the oven off, leave the door slightly ajar, and let the meringue cool completely in the oven.
  10. Once the meringue is cool, gingerly move it from the parchment paper onto a large plate or platter. Spread the whipped cream generously all over it, and then elegantly arrange the fruit atop that. Serve! (It will last a few days in the fridge, covered, although it begins to soften slightly as soon as the whipped cream is added.)

Some photos:

Baked, unadorned meringue cake.

Baked, unadorned meringue cake.

IMG_4938

Baked and adorned pavlova!

IMG_4946

Such a pretty dessert.

IMG_4952

And an artsy one.

 

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Posted in Food, Lazybum Recipes

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The Philosophical Cats of Summertime

Posted on December 11, 2012 | 4 Comments

As Davis’s sweltering summer overwhelmed my household, I accumulated a large collection of photographs of melting cats. (This cat-melting is a natural phenomenon that happens in very warm climes; they safely revert to normal cat shapes by nightfall.)

None of my melted feline pictures seemed worthy of a post all on their own, so I saved them all up … but now that the cats have switched over to tunneling behavior instead of plaintive melting, I believe it is now time to share them with the world. To spice things up a little, I’ve also paired each summer cat photo with a relevant quotation.

“What will it be like to die? What is on the other side? Only night and silence?”
— Isabel Allende

“Should I perhaps peruse a thousand books to learn
that people everywhere have suffered,
that now and then someone was happy?”
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (in “Faust I”)

“Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet. They are what we call civilization.”
— Barbara Kingsolver

“There is a certain peace that comes with the realization you aren’t ruining anyone else’s life but your own.”
— Alina Simone

“Don’t you see, if only I could live the rest of my life in some new way! If I could only wake some still, bright morning and feel that life had begun again; that the past was forgotten and had vanished like smoke. Oh, to begin life anew! Tell me, tell me how to begin.”
— Anton Chekhov (in “Uncle Vanya”)

“Imagine an escape. Imagine that your own shadow on the wall is a perfect door.”
— Sherman Alexie

Thus, I leave you enlightened and encattened.

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Posted in Ordinary Things

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Sweet Comments from Spammers

Posted on December 6, 2012 | 1 Comment

I get rather a large number of comments from spammers on this here blog. I do use reCAPTCHA (the thing that makes you type weird wavy words before you can comment) to minimize spam, but every week, several spunky spammers fight their way through the anti-spam filter, leaving me a few pages of advertisement-ridden comments.

Usually, I just skim and delete these comments, but now and then, one of them catches my eye with a pearl of wit and wisdom (or a dose of odd, amusing phrasing). Here are a few of those, carefully compiled over months:

  • “I as well am an aspiring blog blogger.”
  • “Around the globe you most likely are a single person, and yet to specific you most likely are the globe.”
  • “And lastly, I am at all times happy with all the attractive creative ideas you give.”
  • “So keep your eye on the loaves of bread.”
  • “Adore is almost certainly fallible in the birth and labor, having said that it stretches healthier as we grow old when it’s successfully provided with.”
  • “Thanks a ton for transmitting this convey, the coat is really what we envisioned.”
  • “Contentment is known as a perfume.”
  • “If you happen to may sustain your secret by means of an opponent, show the item will not a mate.”

Also the name of my favorite brand of fondue.

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Posted in Ordinary Things

Lazybum Recipes: Crockpot Winter Vegetable Soup

Posted on November 19, 2012 | 7 Comments

Do you know what I like? I like crockpots. They allow me to put in a mere 5-30 minutes’ effort in the morning, and then I feel like the most magnificent of chefs in the evening when there’s a delicious dinner already hot and prepared.

Here’s a very easy crockpot pseudo-recipe that I like to do during wintertime. It evolved from this recipe for Slow Cooker Winter Vegetable Stew, but in its current state, it has diverged away from its stew origins into a very simple, relatively nutritious, big ol’ splash of soup.

This is not a recipe of “use exactly these proportions upon pain of death;” instead, it’s more of a recipe of “go find some nice vegetables and then put them into broth.” Every time I cook this, it’s almost entirely improvisational. Are there no leeks in the store? Is there a nice winter vegetable not listed in the recipe that you think might be good for soup? Then ignore or modify the recipe freely.

Crockpot Winter Vegetable Soup

Ingredients:

  • 4 medium waxy or all-purpose potatoes, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
  • 3 stalks celery, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
  • 4 carrots, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
  • 2 parsnips, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
  • 2 leeks, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
  • any other vegetables that appeal to you, cut up small
  • 12-18 ounces chicken or vegetable broth
  • Other ideas: 1 onion, 1 can pinto beans, 2 sliced tomatoes, a mess of kale or chard … or anything else you like.

Note: Remember, improvise freely! Add in sweet potatoes, or subtract the parsnips, or use twice the amount of carrots specified. Go wild with veggies.

Instructions:

  1. Slice up all of the vegetables into little bits. Put them into the crockpot to wait.
  2. Once all the vegetables are prepared, pour in the broth.
  3. Turn the crockpot onto its Low setting. Let it cook on Low for 8-10 hours.
  4. To serve: ladle into soup bowls, possibly with some nice gluten-free crackers to dip into it. For leftovers, once soup gets boring: try spooning it over cooked (GF) pasta, or mixing it with tomato sauce.

Sliced veggies, ready to be made into soup.

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Posted in Food, Lazybum Recipes

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