Marilyn's Photos - Oct 3 2025 - Live LIke Kings

 

If we lived like Kings then what? Well, on the toilet theme of the last few days, we would have a Groom of the Stool,  a high-ranking servant by our side.   In our age - a robot -  will attend to our private needs.   Monitoring the king's health was the key aspect of the job. This was done before our familiar flush toilet.  The first flush toilet was invented in 1596 for Queen Elizabeth I.  It turned out to be very loud and frightening.  It wasn't until the late 1800s that they were in regular use by kings and queens.  And of course, it is Queen Victoria who brought the separate room of the bathroom to the royal palace. So we might consider that we already live like kings and queens in this small but critical area of daily living.  And what pops up on the subject of toilets?  Prince William spent three months scrubbing toilets in Chile during his gap year.  He was working as part of a UK-based company called Raleigh International, which coordinates community and environmental projects in South America. Isn't this a weird little factoid. But it isn't unusual it shows up.  Those Royals keep showing up time and time again in the news and in Pinterest feeds.  It must be that North America is fixated on them, as I don't do any searches to get myself this barrage of pictures and stories.   Here's something - Queen Anne's Lace - "gets its name from legends associating the flowers's appearance with Queen Anne of England who was known for her lace-making skills.  Common stories claim the plant's delicate, lace-like bloom and its often dark-red center, a single drop of blood, was a drop of blood shed by the Queen herself while sewing lace."

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Apr 6 2020 - James Bond Girls

Bond girls conform to a fairly well-defined standard of beauty. They possess splendid figures and tend to dress in a slightly masculine, assertive fashion, wear little jewellery—and that in a masculine cut—wide leather belts, and square-toed leather shoes. (There is some variation in dress, though: Bond girls have made their initial appearances in evening wear, in bra and panties and, on occasion, naked.) Nearly all of them are white; they often sport light though noticeable suntans (although a few, such as Solitaire, Tatiana Romanova, and Pussy Galore, are not only tanless but remarkably pale), and they generally use little or no makeup and no nail polish, also wearing their nails short... The best-known characteristic of Bond girls apart from their uniform beauty is their pattern of sexually suggestive names, such as Pussy Galore. Names with less obvious meanings are sometimes explained in the novels. While Solitaire's real name is Simone Latrelle, she is known as Solitaire because she excludes men from her life... Most Bond girls are apparently (and sometimes expressly) sexually experienced by the time they meet Bond. Quite often those previous experiences have not been positive, and many Bond girls have had sexual violence inflicted on them in the past which has caused them to feel alienated from all men—until Bond comes along...   The inspiration for all of Fleming's Bond girls may be his onetime lover Muriel Wright, who according to The Times: has a claim to be the fons et origo of the species: pliant and undemanding, beautiful but innocent, outdoorsy, physically tough, implicitly vulnerable and uncomplaining, and then tragically dead, before or soon after marriage. Wright was 26 and "exceptionally beautiful" when she and Fleming met in 1935. A talented rider,  skier, and polo player, Wright was independently wealthy and a model. She was devoted to Fleming, despite his repeated unfaithfulness. She died in an air raid in 1944, devastating Fleming, who called Wright "too good to be true". Queen Anne's Lace - one of our wild summer flowers - is native to Afghanistan.

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Funny Ha Ha and Funny Weird

The definition funny can be humour - causing laughter or amusement  or difficult to explain or understand, strange or odd. What kind of jokes are these? Are they funny ha ha or funny weird?  Or both? I have some good news and some bad news,” says a doctor to a patient after an operation. “OK, tell me the bad one first,” says the patient shakily. “You see, once we started operating, there were complications and we had to amputate both of your arms.” “Oh no! What’s the good news then?” “Do you see that stunningly beautiful nurse over there? She just agreed to be my wife!” Patient to his doctor: “Doctor, please help me. I think I’m a moth.” The doctor says: “I’m sorry, but I’m not your guy. You have to go see a psychiatrist.” The patient sighs: “I wanted to. But the light in your office is so much brighter!” A patient runs out of the operation room, screaming.  A doctor stops him and asks: “What on Earth is happening?! Why are you running?!” The patient breathes heavily: “I was about to be operated on, doctor. And then the nurse said: ‘Come now, stop panicking. You’ll manage just fine!’” The doctor shrugs: “Oh but that’s nice, no? Nurse being supportive to you?” The patient gets angry: “She was talking to the surgeon!”   Artery: The study of fine paintings Bacteria: Back door to cafeteria Barium: What doctors do when patients die Catscan: Searching for kitty Cauterize: Made eye contact with her Coma: A punctuation mark. D&C: Where Washington is Enema: Not a friend ER: The things on your head that you hear with Fester: Quicker than someone else Genes: Blue denim slacks G.I. Series: World Series of military baseball Hemorrhoid: A male from outer space The rest of the alphabet is HERE.  Carol asks what the blossoms were in yesterday's picture.  We see today that they are Crepe Myrtle.  The lily flower is Belladona Lily, followed by the familiar Queen Anne's Lace.

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Carrots and Carots

Five interesting facts today include the following:  before the 17th century almost all cultivated carrots were purple.   This turns out to be a tremendous year for Queen Anne's Lace - a wild carrot - Daucus carot   Growing along road sides and in unused fields, there are clouds of white everywhere. This is considered a companion plant to crops, and was introduced to North America, as it attractive wasps to its small flowers in its native land.  It is documented to boost tomato plant production, and can provide a microclimate of cooler, moister air for lettuce. Other times it is considered a noxious weed:  It likely is a noxious weed here, given the volume of it. The story of its common name in North America is that both Anne, Queen of Great Britain, and her great grandmother, Anne of Denmark, are taken to be the Queen Anne for which the plant is named. It is so called because the flower resembles lace, prominent in fine clothing of the day; the red flower in the center is thought to represent a blood droplet where Queen Anne pricked herself with a needle when she was making the lace. I didn't remember that is is an edible plant - and that the flowers are sometimes battered and fried.  And people ask if Queen Anne's Lace is hogweed and is poisonous.  They bloom at the same time, but hogweed is cow parsnip - Heracleum maximum.  And Queen Anne's Lace also looks similar to Angelica - which is Wild Celery. I recall one of our summer activities as children was to put the flower stalks in jars of coloured water and the white flowers would turn colour.