Sick day doodles

I was home sick yesterday with some sort of cough/cold/flu virus that made my brain very cloudy, and some prescription cough syrup that made my brain even cloudier. I wasn't getting much work done, and settled on updating my webpage (minimum brain power required).

After massive upgrades to annagroves.com (yay!!) and to a better Weebly site editor, I found out I could replace the Weebly "W" icon with whatever I wanted. If you're reading this in Chrome right now, the "W" would have been up on your tab next to "Anna Groves - Hysterical Contingency." It would also have been on your bookmark toolbar, since I KNOW you've bookmarked this blog for easy access in the future.

But it's not a "W" anymore, it's a pretty flower!

I perused some images of my favorite prairie and desert flowers for icon inspiration, and pretty quickly settled on Larrea tridentata, cresosote bush. This is one of the (two) dominant shrubs in a Mojave scrub ecosystem, where I counted some birds and shrubs in 2012 for the Great Basin Bird Observatory. You might recognize the top half of this picture if you've seen my Contact page. The bottom half is Mojave Scrub.

Creosote bush, Larrea tridentata (the greenish one)
and White bursage, Ambrosia dumosa (the whitish one)
June 11, 2012 near Lake Mead, NV

I didn't have any creosote flower photos from my trip, so I again consulted Google images (I particularly liked this photo by Walter Feller). 

I had a good time cartoon-izing the flower so it would make a good icon. As it turned out, I only ever needed the minimum amount of detail possible. It was quite a process of stripping out details, checking it as an icon, then stripping out more details. But it was a fun way to spend a sick day at home!

The final flower is the one you see on your browser! Voila! No, Larrea!

Don't forget your flu shot,
Anna