I love and enjoy plants because…
Good morning, August. I can’t believe you’re here.
I Love…
Category: photography
A Small Gift
It’s Monday morning. I’m dressed and sitting at my desk thinking about the day ahead. Last week I repotted a houseplant and brought it to live on my desk in front of the glass doors where it would get a lot of southern exposure. I noticed a large drop of water at the tip of a leaf. And then I saw that every leaf that was turned in the same orientation had a large crystal clear drop of water – the whole plant was decorated at the tips of these leaves only. The rest of the plant was dry. Such a beautiful thing… just sayin’.
The Desoto Date
We were challenged to go on a date every week for six weeks. The time is up now and we tried to remember if we had done that, done anything that was memorable, gone anywhere we could actually name. We came up with a few things.
But I decided we’d better do something quickly to add to the list. We went to a beautiful park we’d never visited before. It qualifies as a date because I walked slow and waited for the husband every time I got ahead of him. We read the historical information together. I took a picture of the husband. We connected with nature and each other.
Here are pictures of Desoto Park. It may have been the place where Hernando Desoto landed and started his trek to claim the New World for Spain. There used to be a local festival honoring him and his conquests – lots of men would dress up in conquistador armor and ride a float made to look like a sailing ship in a very noisy parade. Plastic beads and fake spanish coins would fill the air. I digress. Unfortunately the local native americans had a different version of that history and took offense at the festival being all about Desoto. Now it is simply called the Heritage Festival.
I love this park for its walking trail along the mouth of the Manatee River. Pets are allowed, boats pull up on shore while owners lounge in the water, there’s lots of shade over the path when it enters the mangroves. And if you have never seen a gumbo limbo tree, you will see one here – a very old and beautiful one. That does make it a date, doesn’t it?
Do Tell
The heavens do declare God’s glory, and I love to listen. I live in a flat land with lots of horizons, clouds, moisture in the air and water to mirror the sky. I am always seeing something that nearly takes my breath away, usually when I’m driving. I have to pull over and watch
A to Z Challenge: O for Orion Nebula
Many times the husband and I would look up at the night sky while taking a walk and notice three bright stars, quite close together. One of us would always have to say “There’s Orion in the sky.” I guess because it’s one of the easiest for us to see it’s a favorite. I thought you might like to know some fascinating things about it. It is beautiful.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOXm7W8f6wo
I don’t know why but the letter O has been the hardest for me so far. I’ve been thinking about it for days. O well…
F for Fingers
Fingers – think of all they do. Think of what life would be like without them… Think of how awesome it is that they obey orders that start way up in your head without you even having to think about it. We are wonderfully made! Have you ever really looked at the hands and fingers of the people you love? These are fingers from my family and friends doing what they do for fun and for making a living.
Something I Don’t Get to Do Every Day
Checking out a rubber manufacturing plant in Cambodia (please tell me you haven’t done this…)
On a recent trip to Cambodia, our small group of foreigners got to tour a rubber plant in Kampong Cham province. Not only was this something one doesn’t get to do every day, but we almost didn’t get to do it that day either. There were union protests taking place in the capital city of Phnom Penh and the guards at our rubber factory thought we might be coming to incite a riot. Fortunately our tour organizer was from that province and somehow knew the right things to say. We all paid $1 to get in. This was a very self-guided tour. This was the full extent of our supervision as we roamed the premises at will.
Rubber tree sap is white and really quite beautiful. It’s collected a little like maple sap used in making maple syrup. There’s the hole in the tree trunk, a little spigot and a pail. I’m not sure how they get the sap from the grove to the processing building but once there it’s put in long storage vats and a chemical is added. The sap solidifies. It looks a lot like cheese (mozarella).
The long flats of raw rubber go into a drying machine where they are chopped up and dried. I’m actually making this all up because there was no one to tell us what was really happening but we got a pretty good idea just by the looks of things. These are the drying machines.
The rubber is not as attractive when it is dried – yellow/brown and dense. It comes from the dryers, still on it’s conveyor belt and drops into a compressor where it’s made into blocks.
The blocks of rubber are trucked out to other factories where they are made into various rubber things. Rubber bands? I don’t know. This is where our tour ended. There were about eight of these long open buildings but this was the only one that was in operation at the time. It appeared to be off-season for rubber. This is a very warm climate and the buildings are open, as I said, and didn’t have fans – only natural ventilation. The workers were often shirtless, shoeless and definitely were not wearing hard hats or protective anything around the machinery. Evidently there aren’t a lot of lawsuits in Cambodia. We were free to walk around the machinery, through the plant, touching, poking and asking questions without interference. It was really quite interesting.
What things are still made with real rubber? Do you know?
A Bit Worried
I’ve been looking at multi-generational family photos recently and there’s something about them that has me a bit worried. It stands out so clearly that I couldn’t help but notice – the older generation is not smiling. I am already aware that getting older has its down side but could it be that old age is even worse than I had imagined?
There could be other explanations, and I’m considering them all. Perhaps, even though they appear to be looking at the camera and are surrounded by family members who are posing, they don’t know their picture is being taken? No one said “Say cheese”? Or perhaps they think they look scary when they smile, or maybe those muscles are tired and just don’t function anymore? They are all smiled out? Could it be that just being there for the photo requires so much of them that they don’t have energy left to pretend that it’s fun?
When I go back to the very, very old pictures I can totally understand the grim expressions. After all, they had to stand outside, in a lot of dark, heavy clothing, probably for a very long time to get that picture. Notice that no one has thousands of those pictures in their family albums. But we are in the digital age and have thousands of pics on our phones! We can delete them with a touch of the finger. If there’s a somber, semi-glaring face in there it must mean something.
And that is what worries me. Someday there might be a lot of pictures of old aunt/grandma/relative/friend Shirley out there and I would like to either be smiling or making a funny face in all of them. I want to know that it’s possible, no matter how tired I am, how much I hurt or how old I feel, to hide it from the “youngers”. They’ll find out soon enough how much fun it is. I’m actually practicing my smile variations, hoping that one of them will become so habitual that it will be there on my face anytime there is a camera around. It’s taking conscious effort but I’m just sayin’, I think it’s worth doing.
Tribute to a Barn
For several weeks I have been searching salvage stores, antique shops and other likely looking places for an old window with some character and hopefully glass in all it’s panes. I have wanted to use it as a frame to showcase pictures of one of my favorite old barns – Grandpa Roy Smith’s barn in Hayward. I only found a couple windows at one shop, priced over my budget at $50 each and they were missing glass. But last weekend I went north to visit Julie in Gainesville, wondering whether I might have time to poke around up there. It is not as much a shopping venue as our beach towns and it is within reach of more rural areas where old houses abound. On Friday I had time to myself and decided to investigate Alachua. I chose it because I liked it’s name. It’s about 7 miles from Julie’s house – an easy jaunt. However as I asked around, no one there knew of any places of the kind I was looking for. My last stop was a small garden/gift shop with Christmas decorations going up in the window. The owner didn’t know of any salvage stores either, but when I mentioned I was looking for old windows she said she had a couple at home that she would sell – for $15 each!! I could hardly keep myself from dancing around in front of her. She agreed to bring them the next day and I promised to return for them.
Julie and I did go back and I ended up buying three wonderful old windows – just the kind I had been praying for. They have distressed paint in several layers, glazing that’s missing in places and so much character. I can only imagine the faces that may have peered through them in the past. I chose this one in particular to display my barn pictures in because it has red paint showing through on the frame and a curious paint on the glass. The paint is white on the outside but on the back side of the glass it is a pale greenish gray, and that is the side that I have showing. (Whoever painted the outside last was very messy but I love the way it frames the pictures.) The wood in my barn pictures has some of the same hues of red and green as the window frame. They go together so well.
I hung it above my desk. I LOVE looking at my old window and the old family barn that I remember so well
I Just Have to Say... 