BIRTHDAY TULIPS, ink and watercolor

Birthday Tulips, ink and watercolor on my art-notebook.

As I mentioned yesterday, I was reading THE BOTANY OF DESIRE by Michael Pollan. Chapter two: Desire: Beauty, is dedicated to the tulip. I learned that the word "tulip" comes from the Turkish: "turban", that it takes seven years before a tulip grown from seed flowers and shows its new colors, and that Jews and Christians alike discouraged flowers, believing that a devotion to flowers posed a challenge to monotheism. There were no flowers in Eden?!!!

KAWAII FOREVER, watercolor

Kawaii Forever, 7.5x 11 watercolor

I am reading THE BOTANY OF DESIRE by Michael Pollan. The first chapter refers to the desire: sweetness. It says: "Desire is built into the very nature and purpose of fruit, and so, quite often, is a kind of taboo." Apparently, the famous American Johnny Appleseed's real name was Johnny Chapman, who never wore shoes to be in contact with the earth, and had such a relationship with nature, that he would spend his own money to buy a lame horse to save it from slaughter. His kindness to animals was an outrage to frontier custom.