Crafty mom...

Crafty mom...  A few weeks ago I shipped my mom a couple small boxes of teasel seed pods.  She's been turning these into little decorations: Santas and a variety of animals, as at right.

Locals here hate teasel – it's a pernicious weed that's hard to get rid of.  They organize “burn the teasel” weekends to get rid of it.  When they saw me “harvesting” the seed pods, then discovered that I was shipping some seed pods back to my mom in Virginia, they wondered what I had against Virginia – though one fellow immediately saw the benefit of teasel-bombing D.C. :)  My mom is going to send us a couple of these decorations, so I'll be able to show the locals that teasel actually is good for something.  I'm betting that they won't find the argument persuasive, though!