Here is an illustration of White Icicle Rashes:

***Please see correction in next post***
These are a variety of Daikon Radish, which are also called Chinese Radish, Oriental Radish, Japanese Radish, or White Radish. "Daikon is thought to have originated in the Mediterranean. It reached Japan, by way of China, about 2,000 years ago. Today, more land in Japan is devoted to the cultivation of daikon than any other vegetable. In one form or another, daikon appears at almost every Japanese meal. Its name is derived from the Japanese words dai (large) and kon (root)." -from http://www.bigoven.com/glossary/Daikon
Sakurajima daikon is the world's largest variety of daikon, confirmed by the Guiness Book of World Records. The biggest can be as heavy as 99 pounds!

Spaghetti Squash

Here is an illustration I did a few weeks ago in the midst of moving my mom into a new apartment, Spaghetti Squash:

An interesting fact about spaghetti squash: it is not a new world vegetable. It actually originated in China, which I learned from ehow here: http://www.ehow.com/facts_7342932_origin-spaghetti-squash_.html. This was a bit confusing to me since squash as a whole originated in the Americas, (in an area between Guatemala and Mexico), but after I thought about it, it makes sense that certain varieties originate elsewhere. Another variety of squash that was developed on another continent is zucchini, developed in Italy.

Greek Oregano

For the next few days I am going to have to post some older art ahead of time since I will be doing Thanksgiving with family on Friday and then heading down to Tennessee to live with 14 cats for four months, (that's right 1 more than 13 felines), and I am not sure that I will have computer access at first.
So here is the first pre-written post:
This illustration I did for SESE while I was in Crown Point, NY staying at a friend of a friend's cabin, (although I get to call him friend now), in exchange for a little work around the place. SESE's Greek Oregano seeds thank Odin Brudie for giving their future selves a place to be illustrated.

Here is a fun little paragraph about oregano's history from http://www.indepthinfo.com/oregano/history.shtml:

Oregano was first used by the Greeks. In their mythology the goddess Aphrodite invented the spice. Giving it to man to make his life happier. The word "oregano" is actually derived from the Greek phrase, "joy of the mountains". Just married couples were crowned with wreaths of it. It was also put on graves to give peace to departed spirits. Ancient Greek physicians discovered that the herb had beneficial effects and prescribed it for a variety of ailments. Hippocrates used it as well as its close cousin, marjoram as an antiseptic.

Happy Thanksgiving! Gourds!

Here is an ilustration for the SESE general Gourds seed packet, a perfect one for Thanksgiving day:

I am sure most people reading this know that gourds are native to the Americas, just like the turkey many people are eating right now! yay! It's a celebratory painting! and while I would like to learn something about gourds and post it here, I think some play time with my mom and Juneau is in order instead. It is a holiday after all.
Here is something really neat and fun to look at though, The Richmond Indigenous Gourd Orchestra; beautiful music, beautiful instruments: http://www.gourdorchestra.com/.

Seven Top Turnip Greens

Today's painting is of turnips greens, in particular a variety called Seven Top sold by Southern Exposure, of course:

As the SESE catalog tells me, these turnips are grown only for their greens as their roots are woody, but the greens are totally worth it because they are so good for you. An article from the New York Times tells me that in order to get the same amount of calcium from cooked turnip greens as you would an 8oz glass of milk you only need to eat 7.5 oz, (see the calcium equivalent chart here: http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/nutrition/calcium-in-diet/overview.html). They also have a whole bunch of other good vitamins and nutrients in them. You can see a nutrient chart and read up more about them here: http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=144
And it turns out turnip greens can make you sing. Here is a site with a list of ten songs, mostly country, mentioning these famous veggies: http://www.funtrivia.com/en/subtopics/Turnip-Greens-in-Song-259990.html

Green Grape Tomatoes

Since I was hanging out with my good friend, B Mann, in Oberlin, OH and then driving back to Indiana today, here is a painting a few weeks old of Green Grape Tomatoes

This is another illustration for SESE.
The other day my partner, Juneau, asked me where tomatoes originated. And I thought I remembered reading in some Michael Pollan book that they came from North America. To which he said, "I wonder what Italian food was like before the tomato." I wonder too. No pizza, no spaghetti, or at least they were very different than they are today.
Anyway, I was wrong about where they came from to begin with. Wikipedia tells me it was South America, and that they were brought to the rest of the globe by the Spanish after the colonization of the Americas. And for a long time European people thought tomatoes were poisonous, but my mid-18th centrury they were widely eaten in Europe... And now there is pizza :)
And now I get sleep.

Finished Rhubarb

Here is the finished illustration for SESE of Rhubarb:

I added a lot of veins to the leaves first with a razor, scraping away some of the paper. Then I added a lot of shading in the stems and leaves with colored pencil, blending a bit with the white colored pencil. And lastly, I added some bluish shadow with watercolor again.
I looked for some more interesting things to write about rhubarb on wikipedia and I am just going to copy and paste a couple paragraphs here that I thought were fun. Who knew that rhubarb was once as expensive as opium and saffron?

From wikipedia:
For centuries the plant, [rhubarb], has grown wild along the banks of the River Volga, for which the ancient Scythian hydronym was Rhā. The expense of transportation across Asia caused rhubarb to be highly expensive in medieval Europe where it was several times the price of other valuable herbs and spices such as cinnamon, opium and saffron. The merchant explorer Marco Polo was therefore much interested to find the plant being grown and harvested in the mountains of Tangut province. A measure of the value set upon rhubarb can be gotten from Ruy Gonzáles de Clavijo's report of his embassy in 1403-05 to Timur in Samarkand: "The best of all merchandise coming to Samarkand was from China: especially silks, satins, musk, rubies, diamonds, pearls, and rhubarb...".
The term rhubarb is a combination of the Ancient Greek rha and barbarum; rha is a term that refers both to the plant and to the River Volga. Rhubarb first came to the United States in the 1820s, entering the country in Maine and Massachusetts and moving westwards with the European American settlers.