APPLEBOMB

  
August 11, 2011 - Last night, we arrived home from the Cape, where we'd been for a couple days celebrating my daughter's birthday.  Yesterday morning, while walking the Shining Seas Bike Path along Buzzard's Bay, I couldn't help but notice branches packed with brilliant berries in multiple shades of red, each depending on its ripeness. 

Then at one point, I decided to see how many different kinds of wild flowers I could collect.  There must have been a dozen, and remembering the nature walks taken long ago with my mother, I recalled the unforgetable names - Butter and Eggs, Queen Anne's Lace, Jewelweed, and Goldenrod.  My wild bouquet almost covered the full spectrum of the rainbow, blossoming in all shapes and sizes - such an amazing variety.  
 
It is no small wonder that flowers inspire everything from carpet designs to dress fabric to china patterns.  I recall the china Gram used for special dinners.
 
  
 
Searching to identify a few of the unknown flowers in a nature book, I found a clipping about trails in a place called Beebe Woods and made a mental note to go check them out sometime.
 
This morning I was back at home and walking my regular circuit when I found a Natural America Spirit cigarette box and then a bunch of BBs spilled all over the ground at the corner of Ridgefield Drive and Middle Road.  The box was perfect for scooping up a few BBs.  If the BBs hadn't been lying there in such a thick pile, I would not have noticed them; they were the size and color of berries.  I thought about the recent "skirmish."  Hmmm. 
 

 
On Balsam Drive I picked up a Totally Light (Go-squared) Energy Rush packet, featuring a chemical called "Taurine," and on Hemlock I picked up a couple of apple bombs that had dropped.  Apple bomb.  I immediately thought about the high school chemistry teacher back in the mid-70's - Mr. Applebaum.  This made me wonder about the chemistry of taurine, and, being a taurus, I wondered if the chemical name taurine has anything to do with bulls.  As it turns out, it did.
 
 
  
Continuing along Blueberry Drive, I found a feather, but wasn't sure if it belonged to a hawk or perhaps a mourning dove, because it had a softer, more downy edge to it than the hawk feather from the other day.  The Native American icon on the cigarette package was smoking a peace pipe with a feather dangling off the end, while a black thuderbird icon spread its wings across the lid of the package.  Curious.
 

  
Did you happen to notice in my photographs that I also picked up an empty Goldfish package?  Well, when I got home and started to look at THAT more closely, I found a five-legged daddy long-legs skittering around the surface of the bag, just as nimble as can be.  Clearly, the spider had been in a battle and it was making the most of what it still had.  Now, that's resiliance!  Go Daddy!
 

 
As I watched the spider, it kept scuttling back to one particular section of the bag.  What was this spider asking me to read something?  I read the bag...
 

 
Swim in your own direction.  The spider then retreated up and over to the inside of the bag... 


 
...and it sat that there on the foil lining, as if to say to me, "Reflect on all this!"  Swim.  That made me think of the storybook I have in production with the printer.  Reflect.  That made me think of the audio story project I'm working on this afternoon with my friend Donna.  So many individual pieces.


   
Puttering around the kitchen after my walk and emptying the dishwasher, I accidently dropped a white china teacup.  It shattered into four or five or six big pieces.  Pieces.  HA!  I thought to myself... Taurus... I'm just a bull in a china shop... and then I recalled a silly headline that formed in my mind the other day.. WHITE ELEPHANT RAM-PAGES THROUGH A BLACK MARKET.  Just my wild and crazy imagination!
 

   
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS FOR THE NATURALLY CURIOUS
COMBINED WITH CREATIVE ACTIVITY

What do you get if you google search each of these terms: "White Elephant," "White Elephant Sale," and "Black Market"?  Write or simply tell a fun story about the kind of image that conjures up.