The art of observation

Remember last week's Blip about the course I am doing? In between 'operation guest room' I also had to find some time to read up on texts and do the assignments. The second assignment was again about taking something you had easy access too and truly observing it by making lots of statements about it, touching it, smelling it, eating it if possible, drawing it or recreating it in clay or photographing it from every angle possible :-) That's obviously where my Blip image of today comes from, I cut off a small branch of the shrub that is flowering under the living room window. I knew it was a Hypericum, a kind of St John's Wort, but thanks to the observations and the resulting research I now know that it is Hypericum Androsaenum or Tutsan (isn't that the most wonderful word?).

Next part of the assignment is to write a short paragraph about the most remarkable thing found out during the observation and research. I guess the explanations of the names of this shrub are the most remarkable. First of all 'Hypericum' comes from the Greek, hyper meaning above and eikon which means picture, this presumably because people used to hang branches/flowers of the plant above the door to ward off evil spirits. Androsaenum means blood of man, and indeed the name for the plant in Dutch is 'mansbloed' , literally man's blood. Why is it called that, well again presumably because the berries (which are poisonous by the way) have red juice which looks like blood.

Tutsan comes from the French Toute Saine = All Healthy and that name probably was given to it because of its healing properties. I'd better write it down properly for the course now ;-)

Meanwhile Operation Guest Room is going well, thanks very much for your lovely comments on yesterday's Blip !