The Black Oystercatcher is a conspicuous black bird found on the shoreline of western North America. It ranges from the Aleutian Islands of Alaska to the coast of the Baja California peninsula. It is a large, noisy bird with a massive long orange or red bill used for smashing or prying open mollusks.

It is restricted in its range, never straying far from shores, in particular favoring rocky shorelines. It has been suggested that this bird is seen mostly on coastal stretches which have some quieter embayments, such as jetty protected areas. It forages in the intertidal zone, feeding on marine invertebrates, particularly mollusks such as mussels, limpets and chitons. It hunts through the intertidal area, searching for food visually, often so close to the water’s edge it has to fly up to avoid crashing surf.

The diet of oystercatchers varies with location. Species occurring inland feed upon earthworms and insect larvae. The diet of coastal oystercatchers is more varied, although dependent upon coast type; on estuaries bivalves, gastropods and polychaet worms are the most important part of the diet, where rocky shore oystercatchers prey upon limpets, mussels, gastropos and chitons. Other prey items include echinoderms, fish, and crabs.

The Black Oystercatcher is a territorial bird during the nesting season, defending a foraging and nesting area in one territory. Some pairs have been recorded staying together for many years. Nests are small bowls or depressions close to the shore in which small pebbles and shell fragments are tossed in with a sideward or backard flick of the bill.

Strawflower is a warm-weather annual with daisy-like flower heads in yellow, pink, bronze, cream, purple or white. From late spring until fall, strawflower bears flowers on the ends of the branches. What look like ray flowers or petals are actually modified leaves surrounding the central corolla. The bracts are papery with a straw-like crackly texture, hence the common name.

Several species are grown as ornamental plants and for dried flowers. When cut young and dried, the open flowers and stalks preserve their color and shape for years. The genus name Helichrysum is derived from the Greek words helisso (to turn around) and chrysos (gold). Common names include immortelle and everlasting.

Helichrysum augustifolium is steam distilled to produce a yellow-reddish essential oil popular in fragrance for its unique scent, best described as warm, rich and buttery, with green notes of wood, spices and herb. Mentally, the oil is very supportive and comforting. It is believed by some to open the right side of the brain and improve creativity as well as increase dream activity.

The oil is antibacterial, anti-viral and anti-fungal. The literature and aromatherapy lists are full of anecdotal evidence of Helichrysum’s power when used on rashes or skin irritations. It acts by causing the blood to be reabsorbed into the tissue, alleviating the pain caused by pressure on the nerves.

Turmeric is a rhizomatous herbaceous perennial plant of the ginger family. It is native to tropical South Asia. Plants are gathered annually for their rhizomes, and re-seeded from some of those rhizomes in the following season. They are dried and ground into a deep orange powder commonly used as a spice in curries. Its active ingredient is curcumin which has a distinctly earthy, slightly bitter, slightly hot peppery flavor and a mustardy smell.

Although most usage of Turmeric is in the form of powder from the roots, in some regions the leaves are used to wrap and cook food especially when on picnic in a field but at homes as well. This obviously takes place in areas where turmeric grown, since the leaves are used freshly picked. This imparts a distinct flavor but has medicinal value as well.

In Ayurvedic practices, turmeric has many medicinal properties and many in South Asia use it as a readily available antiseptic for cuts, burns and bruises. It is also used as an antibacterial agent.
It is taken in some Asian countries as a dietary supplement, which allegedly helps with stomach problems and other ailments. 

In the latter half of the 20th century, curcumin was identified as responsible for most of the biological effects of turmeric. In 2004, the U.S. National Institutes of Health had four clinical trials underway to study curcumin treatment for pancreatic cancer, multiple myeloma, Alzheimer’s, and colorectal cancer. The British Journal of Cancer reported a study that showed that curcumin can kill esophageal cancer cells in vitro. Curcumin also enhances the production of the brain-derived neurotrophic factor which supports nerve growth.

Turmeric is currently used in the formulation of some sunscreens. Turmeric paste is used by some Indian women to keep them free of superfluous hair. The paste is also applied to the bride and groom before marriage in some parts of India, where it is believed to give a glow to the skin and keep harmful bacteria away from the body.

Bushtits are small birds common in shrubby and woodland habitats. They are a year round resident of the western United States, and do not seem to mind residential areas. Its high pitch twittering contact call is first heard followed by the appearance of a flock ranging up to fifty birds. Members of the group constantly make contact calls to each other that can be described as a short “tsit”.

They typically swoop into an area en mass, bustle around noisily while eating and socializing, and then depart for more insect rich patches of greenery. They glean the vegetation for insects often hanging upside down in their search, gradually moving through the area.

Bushtits build elaborate pendulous nests made up of soft plant material, cobwebs, and man made items like threads and string. They are one of the first birds described to have helpers at the nest, a term used in behavioural ecology and evolutionary biology to describe a social structure in which juveniles and sexually mature adolescents, of either one or both sexes, remain in association with their parents and help them raise subsequent broods or litters.

The birds successfully petitioned for a change-of name when it was brought to their attention that the word “common” had unsavory connotations, a circumstance made particularly agregious by the fact they already had a reputation as noisy little tits. Despite its name, the Bushtit is not a well-endowed member of a prominent American political family.

The kiwifruit is the edible berry of a woody vine distantly related to other fruits such as blueberry and flowering plants such as rhododendron. It was originally known by its Chinese name, Macaque peach. Also known as the Chinese gooseberry, the fruit was renamed for export marketing reasons in the 1950s. It was briefly known as the melonette, and then called the kiwifruit, named after the brown flightless bird that serves as New Zealand’s national symbol.

New Zealand exported the fruit to the United States in the 1950s. In the 1960s and 1970s, Frieda Caplan, founder of Los Angeles-based Frieda’s Specialty Produce, played a key role in popularizing kiwifruit in the United States, convincing supermarket produce managers to carry the odd-looking fruit.

Gold Kiwifruit have a smooth, bronze skin, a pointed cap at one end and distinctive golden yellow flesh with a less tart and more tropical flavour than green kiwifruit. It has a higher market price than green kiwifruit. It is less hairy than the green cultivars, so can be eaten whole after rubbing off the thin, fluffy coat. While the skin of kiwifruit is often removed before serving, it is completely edible.

It is a rich source of vitamin C, with a potassium content slightly less than that of a banana. The skin is a good source of antioxidants. It is often reported to have mild laxative effects, due to the high level of dietary fiber. Raw kiwifruit is also rich in the protein-dissolving enzyme actinidin, which is commercially useful as a meat tenderizer but can be an allergen for some individuals. Specifically, people allergic to latex, papayas or pineapples are likely to be allergic to kiwifruit.

Kiwifruit also serves as a natural blood thinner. A recent study performed at the University of Oslo in Norway reveals that, similar to popular mainstream aspirin therapy, consuming two to three kiwifruit daily for 28 days significantly thins the blood, reducing the risk of clots, and lowers fat in the blood that can cause blockages.

Ginger is a tuber that is consumed whole as a delicacy, medicine, or spice. Cultivation of ginger originated in Asia and has since spread to West Africa and the Caribbean. It is cooked as an ingredient in many dishes and can also be steeped in boiling water to make ginger tea, to which honey, sliced orange or lemon fruit is often added.

It is often used as a spice in Indian recipes and is one of the main spices used for making curries and other vegetable preparations. In China, sliced or whole ginger root is often paired with savory dishes such as fish, and in some parts of the Middle East ginger powder is used as a spice for coffee. In Japan, ginger is pickled to make gari, which is often served and eaten after sushi. It also acts as a food preservative and has been proven to kill the harmful bacteria salmonella.

Ginger is a stimulant to the digestive tract which aids in digestion. It may also decrease pain from arthritis and have blood thinning and cholesterol lowering properties that may make it useful for treating heart disease. Ginger compounds are active against a form of diarrhea which is the leading cause of infant death in developing countries, and has been found effective in multiple studies for treating nausea caused by seasickness, morning sickness and chemotherapy. When taken into the nostrils ginger causes severe sneezing.

Ginger beer was first produced as an alcoholic beverage in the 1700s and became very popular in Britain and North America. In Kenya and Tanzania, ginger beer is a very popular drink called tangawizi, which is the Swahili word for ginger. Stoney Tangawizi is a product of the Coca-Cola Company.

The Meyer lemon is a citrus fruit native to China, thought to be a cross between a true lemon and a mandarin orange or sweet orange. The Meyer lemon was introduced to the United States in 1908 by the agricultural explorer Frank Nicholas Meyer, an employee of the United States Department of Agriculture who collected a sample of the plant on a trip to China. It is commonly grown in China potted as an ornamental plant.

The fruit is yellow and rounder than a true lemon with a slight orange tint when ripe. It has a sweeter, less acidic flavor than the more common grocery store varieties of lemon and has a fragrant edible skin. All lemons are widely known as powerful digestive aids. The combination of high acidity and fiber are effective in cleansing digestion organs.

The white coating or inner rind of a lemon contains the highest vitamin content per volume of most any food. Some studies show that the white coating of a single lemon can contain ten times the amount of Vitamin C as an entire bottle of Vitamin C supplements.

A lemon battery is a device used in experiments proposed in many science textbooks around the world. It is made by inserting two different metallic objects, for example a galvanized nail and a copper coin, into a lemon. The copper coin serves as the positive electrode or cathode and the galvanized nail as the electron-producing negative electrode or anode. These two objects work as electrodes, causing an electrochemical reaction which generates a small potential difference.

In practice, a single lemon battery is incapable of lighting a light bulb. One would need about 500 lemons wired in parallel to light a standard flashlight bulb.

Parsley is a bright green biennial herb, often used as spice. It is common in Middle Eastern, European, and American cooking. It is used for its leaf in much the same way as coriander, although parsley has a milder flavor.

A type of parsley is grown as a root vegetable in Central and Eastern European. It produces much thicker roots than those cultivated for their leaves. Although little known in Britain and the United States it can be used in soups and stews. Parsnips are among the closest relatives of parsley, although root parsley tastes quite different.

Parsley is widely used as a companion plant in gardens. It attracts predatory insects including wasps and predatory flies to gardens, which then tend to protect plants nearby. For example, they are especially useful for protecting tomato plants as the wasps that kill tomato hornworms also eat nectar from parsley. While parsley is biennial, not blooming until its second year, even in its first year it is reputed to help cover up the strong scent of the tomato plant, reducing pest attraction.

Chinese and German herbologists recommend parsley tea to help control high blood pressure, and the Cherokees used it as a tonic to strengthen the bladder. When crushed and rubbed on the skin, parsley can reduce the itching of mosquito bites. When chewed, parsley can freshen bad breath.

Parsley should not be consumed as a drug or supplement by pregnant women. Parsley is high in oxalic acid, a compound involved in the formation of kidney stones. Parsley oil contains furanocoumarins and psoralens which can lead to extreme photosensitivity if used orally.