Thistles

Went for a walk to the Starbucks nearest me, just to see how long it would take (15 min., door to door).

On the way back I walked over a patch of grass and saw some thistles. They have leaves the same shape as dandelions but covered with small prickles. How well I remember those from my childhood lawn - the feeling of a childlike tender foot coming down hard in that bed of pain, the tiny grey spines coming away in your foot.

In Australia they don't have thistles like this but they do have bindis. These are more like burrs - little round brown objects studded around with prickly spines that must have some kind of hook on them because they catch in clothes and beach towels and are very hard to get out. The plant is called bindii (pron. "BIN-dee-eye). The word has become known to the rest of the world not from the prickly plant but because Steve Irwin named his oldest child Bindi. She's now a rather talented presenter of wildlife programs, but might end up a rather messed up adult because of her childhood in the media and her father's untimely passing. She's not named after the plant, though, but after a crocodile. But that's a whole different story.