a funny story

there is a funny story that goes with this photo. this is burdock. if you don’t know burdock by name, i am sure you know it by sight. look it up…while native to europe and asia, it has been introduced worldwide. i am guessing most of you have had an encounter with this particular plant. so, yesterday i noticed this beetle eaten leaf, and thought it might make a good STILL subject. so i bent over and snipped off the leaf which was close to the ground. when i got back to my car, my head caught on the roof of the car. and when i looked in the rearview mirror, i had a handful (about 8) burdock burrs stuck in my hair, and now stuck to the roof of the car. i tried to pull them our, but i only made the whole snarl worse. i stopped for coffee on my way home, and everyone at the coffee shop was speechless. when i got home, i sat in the front step for 30 minutes trying to get the burs out of my hair making exactly zero progress. i was thinking i may have to shave my hair. i begged steve to give it a go. he too made little progress, but he did realize that if he crushed the burrs into little pieces, then he could extract the pieces one by one. so that’s how we did it. one tiny burr hook at a time. by 3 in the afternoon (we stared at 10 AM) they were mostly out, and i was able to detangle the rest in shower with massive amounts of conditioner. in all the years of doing STILL, i have had very few incidences. no allergic reactions, no bug infestations, no rashes, no hives. so yesterdays mishap was probably over-due. and (perhaps as a result) it was a doozy.

beetle eaten burdock leaf (Arctium)