I hope for a beautiful coming year, and so I spent part of this week just looking at pretty flowers.
This flower below jumped out at me as I was walking on Valley Road. It resonated for several reasons.
For one, it is gloriously perfect. For another, it is a zinnia – and I’ve been maintaining a dislike of zinnias since I first met them … not very noble I know … so this is a clear case of “get over myself.” And then, after I took the photo, I noticed my neighbor waving to me from her porch – I was so enchanted by the flower that I was ignoring the gardener. Oops! (I believe there’s a metaphor here, for those of us from a religious persuasion!)
SUMMER CROP
Bindi (a.k.a. okra) is in abundance. Akka got this sack load from a neighbor for less than ½ the market price (about US $10 worth). He was so proud of his haul, he wanted it memorialized. Some of it is in our bellies already, and the rest is in the freezer.
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That’s it for the pretty stuff. It’s downhill from here.
GET OVER MYSELF, TAKE TWO
Spanish moss – NOT native here. Austin has gotten it to grow on a few trees, both at the house in Suva and here on the farm. Ick. Makes me think of driving through unfamiliar creepy places to the far south from the mountains I was raised in. Well, I complained about the hanging moss one time too often. Just this week, Austin told me that Spanish moss reminds him of Wilmington, NC where all his grandparents were from. Going to Wilmington was the best part of his childhood, and the moss always meant “welcome home” to him.
(I think that’s how some Englishmen felt about rabbits when they moved to Australia – but I’ll stop voicing my objections any more)
MONICA’s FIND
I asked daughter-in-law Monica if she’d seen anything interesting around the farm. Yes, she had. I was going with her to see it, but realized it was going to be hard to get where she was going. It was down this hill, more or less where I drew the arrow. She took my camera, but couldn’t get a good photo of the item of interest….. so she ended up pulling it out of the ground and hauling it up for inspection.
It is the weirdest pineapple plant she has ever seen. (Me, too). Instead of leaves, topped by a pineapple, topped by a crown … it is leaves, lots of crowns, a long stalk, and a pineapple with even more crowns at its base and a skewed one on top. A crown can be planted to make a new plant – but this pineapple went reproductive crazy.
Double checking this week’s info with Austin, he informs me that pineapples and Spanish moss are closely related. So I just picked my way over to the moss for a close up…. And I don’t see a relationship. He says I’d see it if I saw a Spanish moss flower – oh, he hasn’t seen it flower – oh, it must not be able to flower here – aha! And that’s why Spanish moss is not taking over. Well, that’s good.
WEIRDNESS IN POULTRY
There is an odd chick in the box. See him? He’s looking upside down.
Here he is in close up. His brain must have been wired wrong. He must have been seeing the world upside down, because he absolutely would not hold his head normally, even though his neck was flexible.
Thinking about the human experiments with wonky eyeglasses where the subjects’ brains accepted the change after a week or two, Austin put a collar on the chick in hopes that his brain will rewire itself.
Sad update: The collar came off and the chickie drowned somehow. Nature is not kind.
Most of the rest of my photos for the week are also on the grim-or-grisly side – not what I want to share on January 1. So I’ll fast forward to my two happy shots.
A splendid sunrise.
And a reason to stay up.
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May 2015 be a wonderful year for each of you, all of you.
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