Pacific sedum is a perennial herb native to California and the Pacific Northwest. It is a low creeping succulent plant with flat basal rosettes of leaves usually coated with blue waxy powder. The yellow flowers have five pointed petals.

It grows in rocky outcrops, often in shade, from coastal cliffs to alpine. Plants with many different leaf colors have been selected for gardens. Many sedums are cultivated as garden plants, due to their interesting and attractive appearance and hardiness.

A large genus of flowering plants containing over 400 species, sedum are found throughout the Northern Hemisphere. Sedum reflexum is occasionally used as a salad leaf or herb in Europe and has a slightly astringent sour taste.

Sedum can be used to provide a roof covering in green roofs, where they are preferred to grasses. Green roofs serve several purposes for a building, such as absorbing rainwater, providing insulation and creating a habitat for wildlife.

Gratitude, thankfulness, or appreciation is a positive emotion or attitude in acknowledgment of a benefit that one has received or will receive. The systematic study of gratitude within psychology only began around the year 2000, possibly because psychology has traditionally been focused more on understanding distress rather than understanding positive emotions. However, with the advent of the positive psychology movement, gratitude has become a mainstream focus of psychological research. The study of gratitude within psychology has focused on the understanding of the short term experience of the emotion, individual differences in how frequently people feel gratitude, and the relationship between these two aspects.

Gratitude is not the same as indebtedness. While both emotions occur following help, indebtedness occurs when a person perceives that they are under an obligation to make some repayment of compensation for the aid. The emotions lead to different actions; indebtedness motivates the recipient of the aid to avoid the person who has helped them, whereas gratitude motivates the recipient to seek out their benefactor and to improve their relationship with them.

Gratitude may also serve to reinforce future prosocial behavior in benefactors. For example, one experiment found that customers of a jewelry store who were called and thanked showed a subsequent 70% increase in purchases. In comparison, customers who were thanked and told about a sale showed only a 30% increase in purchases, and customers who were not called at all did not show any increase. In another study, regular patrons of a restaurant gave bigger tips when servers wrote “Thank you” on their checks.

A large body of recent work has suggested that people who are more grateful have higher levels of well-being. Grateful people are happier, less depressed, less stressed, and more satisfied with their lives and social relationships. Grateful people also have higher levels of control of their environments, personal growth, purpose in life, and self acceptance. Grateful people also have less negative coping strategies, being less likely to try to avoid a problem, or deny there is a problem, blame themselves, or cope through substance use. Grateful people sleep better, and this seems to be because they think less negative and more positive thoughts just before going to sleep.

Furoshiki are a type of square Japanese wrapping cloth that were traditionally used to transport clothes, gifts, or other goods. Although possibly dating back as far as the Nara period, the name, meaning bath spread, derives from the Edo period practice of using them to bundle clothes while at the public baths. Before becoming associated with public baths, furoshiki were known as hirazutsumi, or flat folded bundle.

Eventually, the furoshiki’s usage extended to serve as a means for merchants to transport their wares or to protect and decorate a gift. Although there are still furoshiki users in Japan, their numbers declined in the post-war period, in large part due to the proliferation of the plastic shopping bag. In recent years, furoshiki has seen a renewed interest as environmental protection became a concern. They are still commonly used to wrap and transport bento lunch boxes and often double as a table mat for the lunch.

Modern furoshiki can be made of a variety of cloths, including silk, cotton, rayon, and nylon. Furoshiki are often decorated with traditional designs or by shibori, a method of dyeing cloth with a pattern by binding, stitching, folding, twisting, or compressing it, known in the West as tie-dye. There is no one set size for furoshiki, they can range from hand sized to larger than bed-sheets.

Each year billions of plastic bags end up as litter; reusable bags, such as furoshiki can help reduce the impact to our environment. Its versatility allows you to wrap almost anything regardless of its shape or size. In March 2006, the Japanese Minister of the Environment, Yuriko Koike, created a furoshiki cloth to promote its use in the modern world.