Purple Foxglove

My better half has a cold, she did not sleep well last night and while I told her to stay at home in bed and sleep it off, she went in to work. At midday I got an email to say she was going home - which is good in that she did go home but bad that she needed too.

My day was a bit better, I took some more pictures of yesterday's rose bush, it looks so happy in the morning. At work I got a nice prototype program working and resolved few minor issues. On my way home I got honey and some lemons to feed to my better half and took a few more pictures.

Today's blip is a close up on the naught bits of your common and my  garden purple foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) a natural source of the glycoside Digitoxin a close relative of the pharmaceutical compound digoxin. Both of them have a potent effect on hearth rhythm - slowing it down and increasing pressure. While it can be used to save your life it's more popular as a toxin to kill you in pulp detective novels.

I don't know why it's called foxglove the flowers don't look like gloves, for foxes or anyone else and even wikipedia isn't sure where the name comes from. My OED has nothing to say on the topic.

Time to finish my jam off, it's been sitting in the fridge soaking for longer than I intended, plus my office is too noisy as the CPU cooler on my computer is getting old and making far too much noise - I'll go to the kitchen for tonight and make jam, for the rest of the year I may need to get a replacement cooler.