I paid a very low price for this fantastic New York Sirloin steak last week - $4.87 for 1.6lbs of beef.
That's because it had been packages and mislabeled as 'pork blade Boston butt roast,' at $2.99/lb, and I had luckily stumbled upon it. The other steaks in that section were marked at $8.99 per pound - I was delighted and quickly snatched it up. It tasted even better knowing I'd scored a bargain.
What a lovely late-blooming beauty the New England aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae) is! It's an important late season food source for songbirds and some generalist nectar-feeding insects.
Winter buds (also called turions) on aquatic plants are such ingenious adaptations, and yet their obvious simplicity always amazes me. Towards the end of the growing season, the plants begin storing all their energy into a mass of tightly sealed, ready-to-sprout leaf structures, which remain closed and ready, until spring warmth arrives. These protected cells contain the chlorophyll needed for them to begin photosynthesizing when the ice melts, giving them a head start in the short growing season.
Common bladderwort (Utricularia vulgaris) produces large green, tightly packed balls at its growing tip, which persist through the winter. They certainly stand out when you look down into the water column from a kayak.
