Storefront on Valentines

This phone blooms into a flower

Toss that old cell phone into the dirt and you may return a few weeks later to find a flower. Scientists say they have come up with a phone cover that will grow into a sunflower when thrown away.

Some 650 million mobile phones will be sold this year, and most will be thrown away within two years, burdening the environment with plastics, heavy metals and chemicals, scientists say.

Scientists say the environmentally friendly casings will ease strain on landfills now bulging from more than 100 million handsets discarded each year, according to co-developers the University of Warwick, biodegradable-plastics maker PVAXX Research & Development and No. 3 handset manufacturer Motorola.

"It's a totally biodegradable and non-toxic plastic," Pvaxx spokesman Peter Morris said of the material that makes up the phone case.

"This is the first product that we've made public. We're working with blue chip companies and will introduce several products next year," he said, adding it would be used in electronics, horticulture, ammunition and household cleaning.

Many consumers buy cheap and interchangeable plastic covers to personalize their phones.

Reuters contributed to this report.
source - news.com 

Storefront part 2

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The Fairy Tulips

Once upon a time there was a good old woman who lived in a little house. She had in her garden a bed of beautiful striped tulips.

One night she was wakened by the sounds of sweet singing and of babies laughing. She looked out at the window. The sounds seemed to come from the tulip bed, but she could see nothing.

The next morning she walked among her flowers, but there were no signs of any one having been there the night before.

On the following night she was again wakened by sweet singing and babies laughing. She rose and stole softly through her garden. The moon was shining brightly on the tulip bed, and the flowers were swaying to and fro. The old woman looked closely and she saw, standing by each tulip, a little Fairy mother who was crooning and rocking the flower like a cradle, while in each tulip cup lay a little Fairy baby laughing and playing.

The good old woman stole quietly back to her house, and from that time on she never picked a tulip, nor did she allow her neighbors to touch the flowers.

The tulips grew daily brighter in color and larger in size, and they gave out a delicious perfume like that of roses. They began, too, to bloom all the year round. And every night the little Fairy mothers caressed their babies and rocked them to sleep in the flower cups.

The day came when the good old woman died, and the tulip bed was torn up by folks who did not know about the Fairies, and parsley was planted there instead of the flowers. But the parsley withered, and so did all the other plants in the garden, and from that time nothing would grow there.

But the good old woman's grave grew beautiful, for the Fairies sang above it, and kept it green - while on the grave and all around it there sprang up tulips, daffodils, and violets, and other lovely flowers of spring.

An English Folk-tale

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Flower Brings Cheer to Nursing Home Residents

 A local group brings holiday cheer to residents at a Boardman nursing home.

Members of Poinsettia's For a Purpose, in collaboration with Walgreen's on Route 224 in Boardman, showed up at Briarfield of Boardman nursing home to surprise all of the residents with poinsettia's. This is the fourth year the group has provided the flowers, and they pick a different nursing home every year.

The group's founder, Matthew Severn, said he started passing out the flowers in 2007 after he brought flowers to his grandmother while she was living at a nursing home.

"When I brought her the flowers, everybody in the nursing home was asking if the flowers were for them and if I was their grandson.  So, a lot of people hadn't seen somebody my age in awhile, so I started doing that every year.  My goal was to get poinsettia for everybody in a nursing home," said Severn.

The group handed out about 60 poinsettia's to residents at Briarfield. 

 http://www.wytv.com 

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From Japan, a flower that flatters

From Japan, a flower that flatters

Those of us who talk to our plants are used to one-way conversations. Now, thanks to the Communication Flower from Japan's E-Revolution, the human-horticulture rapport is about to get more reciprocal.

The gizmo is a small box with a speaker and 200 words and phrases in its memory. Touch the flora and a little guy sitting atop the cube spouts the preprogrammed sentiments randomly. We're having a little trouble extracting the nature of the phrases from translated Japanese promotional materials, but one blurb explains that you can expect to hear "the word which gives vigor to you, encourages."

Hey, we'll take validation wherever we can get it!

The gadget, which comes in green, white and pink, will be out at the end of December for $36. Don't be baffled. We at Crave understand that sometimes it's best to take the Zen approach to gadgets: just breathe and accept. 

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