Modern Magic

Sometimes, we truly are spoiled by the technology around us.  Oh sure...it's makes it tougher to really 'get away'.  I had to flat out ignore 4 phone calls yesterday.  However...I'll take the trade off, because it does make something's SOOOOOO much easier.

Research being a big one. Not like, 'I'm writing my doctorate' research(you have to take most of what you find with a grain of salt), but perfect for 'Hmm...I wonder what this is' type research. 

I'm heavily reminded of that after yesterday. I'm trying grow my own vegetables, but I am hardly a gardener, so I'm constantly wondering 'what's that plant?'  Yesterday, I had two cases of that.

The streets of Southern California, especially L.A., are lined with these trees with beautiful purple flowers.  And I had no idea what it was.  Most of them where bigger, but this is one I was able to get a picture of at La Brea. 

 

 

Then again, at the Museum of Natural History, I saw this one, that had both this pretty flower, which was also growing a fruit.

 





 

 

With the internet, I was able to do one search for 'pretty purple flowering trees', and find out that the tree is a Jacaranda Tree...which flowers twice a year for almost two months.  Amazing.

 

The bottom one, I searched for 'California fruit bearing vine'.  I actually had to scroll the screen, to look at more than THREE pictures before I identified this a passion fruit plant.

 

Will I be able to do anything with this?  Who knows...that's research for different time.  It's just that I am old enough to remember when this type of thing would have ended with me being disappointed after searching through color plates in the back of the Encyclopaedia Britannica that my dad paid $500+ for.