WE MADE IT OUTSIDE TODAY!

And we went to the museum. WHAT a beautiful day. I saw what was, without reservation, the tallest milkweed I've ever seen. One tall enough to look Evangeline in the eye is usual. To see Ana, okay. My height and taller? That's tall!

The SICM had signs on the second floor bathroom about the COOL NEW LIGHT SENSORS that will "reduce our carbon profile" - they turn on automatically! And off, too!

Except they *don't* - they aren't any different from the old on-all-the-time system. And anyway, lighting there is totally superfluous this time of year - they've got perfectly good windows. AND any good from the reduced lighting in the bathrooms would be totally offset by the fact that their porchlights were on all day. *sighs*

They also use plastic plates in the cafe instead of paper, they used bleached new paper towels instead of unbleached recycled ones, they don't recycle (Snug Harbor, for some reason, is exempt from NYC's strict laws about recycling), they have a very inefficient heating/cooling system (not really their fault, the building is what it is), and they just this week started using disposable plastic aprons during Kidz Cook - because the kids just need to use aprons. I guess.

So all in all, I'd call the light thing a bit of a wash.

I have the words (and the melody, but that's a distant second) to a particular verse head-stuck

There is a flower, I've heard them say
That's called heartsease by night and day

Which got me thinking about heartsease, which we used to have growing in our front yard, and which is the ancestor of modern pansies (that's for thoughts). I spent a (kinda brief) period in my life fascinated by my ability to identify plants, and so actually know a few variant names for plants such as, well, heartsease. Wikipedia says that there are more than 200 names for that plant, and I believe it. A quick google search gives me any number of alternative terms, the most interesting and nicest being:

Johnny-jump-up, of course (I love that name)
Jack-jump-up-and-kiss-me
Love-lies-bleeding
Love-in-idleness
Kit-run-in-the-fields
Cuddle-me
Godmothers-and-godfathers

Honestly, the names run together a bit. I've always wondered, really, at these phrase-names of plants - how did anybody come up with them, and did they really refer to these plants this way all the time? Poetic isn't the word for some of them!

At any rate, it's a good thing that these plants do have so many names - how silly would any song sound that ran "There is a plant, I heard them say, that's called kit-run-in-the-fields by night and day", or "cuddle-me", for that matter - cuddling is entirely the problem, and kinda why she's singing this depressing song involving green grass to begin with. (Now - is green a color of inconstant love because it's appropriate, or because talking about taking people where "the grass grows green" and being in your grave with the "green grass growing" is very alliterative?)