Definitely caught the Paul Simon bug!

'Mountain passes slipping into stones
Hearts and bones, Hearts and Bones.'

Silk!

This morning I came across a list of the top 10 newly discovered species of 2011 while looking at Nature's news blog (which is pretty great, btw). Darwin's bark spider is first up, making the list because they can build a web up to 25 meters long (82.029974 feet, duh! ...yeah, definitely had to look that up) out of a silk that has been tested to be “the toughest biological material ever studied, over ten times stronger than a similarly-sized piece of Kevlar”. Which is awesome.

Also, just found this Ted talk about the possibilities of silk as a useful, sustainable material for several different innovations. This seems exciting to me!

Thought I would share.

Yes, thank you.

Listen!

Peace offering

The other day I saw my upstairs neighbor and asked her what she was growing. Her balcony area is scattered with flowers and hanging plants. Now, a little back-story.
This is a neighbor whom I have had to confront about noise more than once, especially before when she had a dog (which we aren't supposed to have) that would be tromping around very late at night and I was in the middle of studying for tests/finals. It got to the point that she was waking me up pretty constantly, as our schedules were obviously opposite.

So, I asked her about her flowers maybe 4 days ago. Today, I get home from reading in the park and sitting in front of my door waiting for me was a beautiful pink plant! It is a Bougainvillea that is wrapping its way around a stick of bamboo.

What a nice amends! This made my day.

The rose garden in Birmingham's Botanical Gardens is in full bloom! Spent my Saturday afternoon there, reading in the grass with Curry and Jake. It was awesome. And free to get in!

Go stick your face in some flowers.

If you have 20 minutes to spend, here's a good Ted talk about a pretty interesting teaching method!

Or if you only have a few, some Xavier Rudd to get excited about the Hangout Festival, which everyone should want to go to because I do believe it will be awesome. Music and friends on the beach, what more could a girl ask for?

I am quite happy about it being May. Got out of work today and had nothing pressing to think about, study, or take care of. It is awesome. Ah, and reading for pleasure! What book to start the summer with? Suggestions?

You gotta let your soul shine!!