https://ceenphotography.com/2016/06/08/flower-of-the-day-june-8-2016-clematis-2/
Honeysuckle: Flower of the Day June 9, 2016
9 Replies
Monthly Archives: June 2016
Rainy Weather
I think the rainy season has started with a vengeance. Driving rain, lightning that lights up the entire sky, thunder that sounds like the end of the world and Mariah-like wind whistling in around the door cracks. Frida has slunk in to be near enough to her mom for protection but just far enough away so I can’t easily reach her with the grooming brush. And––that true indication––a leaky roof. As usual, it is around the skylight far up on the dome. I had to move the couches and end tables and both the handmade paper spiral lamp you can see in the background and the handmade paper bowl I made are sopping wet. That’s okay.. they were wet when I made them, so as long as they are undisturbed, they’ll dry out tomorrow.
The ceramic vase in the shape of a woman that my friend Julie made looks askance at the sodden paper bowl. The heart shaped rocks and other precious objects it was filled with sit drying out on the counter. The rain pounds and abates, pounds and abates, but we are all safe, electricity is still on, Pasiano won’t have to water the plants tomorrow. All’s right with the world.
Red-faced in Reflection
I can remember telling two “most embarrassing” stories in past prompts. Here is one: https://judydykstrabrown.com/2014/10/10/coffee-with-no-ceremony/
and here is another: https://judydykstrabrown.com/2015/09/09/that-sinking-feeling/
Extra Service: Cee’s Odd Ball Photo Challenge 2016, Week 23
The Customer is Always Right
This photo would not be oddball except for the story that goes with it. I was in the same store that had the life-sized horse lamp with the lampshade on its head. Remember that? (A party horse, I surmise.) I could get through a year of oddballs on just photos from that store, but this particular photo is more about the subjects than the photo itself. I saw a woman who had been carrying her somewhat heavy and fussy child around the store for some time. Finally, as I waited in line to make a rather large purchase, (not the horse) she walked up and held the sleeping child out to this man, who had been helping me to buy the table and chairs and who did not look any too pleased to be taking charge of his son. His stance was awkward and his arms extended in a manner that showed very little connection to the child.
“Is this your son?” I asked, smiling fondly at the child who was cherubic in his sleeping state.
“No,” he answered.
“Do you know the mother at all?”
“No,” he answered, “I just work here.”
The mother, hearing our interchange, broke into the conversation. “I have been holding my son for a long time and my arms are tired, so I gave him to this man to hold for me.”
This may not be as funny in the telling as it was in the viewing, but this man in no way volunteered for babysitting duty and neither did he look at all adept at it or interested in continuing to serve as “baby-check” boy. It struck me as funny, and still does. How much of this story can you see in the photo?
https://ceenphotography.com/2016/06/05/cees-odd-ball-photo-challenge-2016-week-23/
Bougainvillea: Flower of the Day June 7, 2016
Is one bougainvillea starting to look like all the others? If so, I’ll give them a rest for awhile, but could’t resist snapping another flower within a (seeming) flower.
https://ceenphotography.com/2016/06/06/flower-of-the-day-june-7-2016-dahlia/
Connections: dVerse Poets, Jan 20, 2021
Internet Appetizers
Casting our nets wider,
we gather matching minds and hearts
like small silver fish–
just a tiny bite, each one,
trying to fill a big appetite.
No big fish
to struggle to land.
Just nibbles,
one after another,
taking the edge off our hungers.
For dVerse Poets: Connections
At Play
Drop the handkerchief. Remember this circle game?
“Ring Around the Rosie” for my sister’s birthday & a backyard production of “Cowboys.”
At Play
“Annie I Over,” ” New Orleans.”
In shorts or dresses or cutoff jeans,
we ran and threw and played and shouted.
our pent-up energy thus outed.
“Send ‘Em,” “Ditch ‘Em,” “Cops and Robbers.”
“Poor Pussy” turned us into sobbers.
Do you remember these childhood games?
All vastly varied, with different names?
Before TV or internet,
games were as good as one could get
for transport from reality.
Back when we were cellphone-free,
“Drop the Handkerchief” we knew well
along with “Farmer in the Dell.”
“London Bridge” went falling down
each birthday party in our town.
All the long-lit summer nights
“Cowboys and Indians” staged their fights.
“Cops and Robbers” led to searches
of school ditches and behind churches.
The whole town our playing ground,
each chid lost, each child found
in hours long games of “Hide-and-Seek.”
Count to one hundred. Do not peek!
In childhood games of girls and boys,
imaginations were our toys.
Does such magic now reside
in minds of children safe inside
their cushioned worlds of rumpus rooms,
sealed safe within their houses’ wombs?
For dangers real now lurk in places
that formerly hid playmates’ faces.
Safety dictates different measures
for insuring childhood pleasures.
But oh, I remember so well
joyful flight and heartful swell
of friends pursuing through the dark
back then when life was such a lark.
Now children seek play differently
on cellphone screens and Smart TV,
scarce imagining a world
with internet not yet unfurled.
Our world had not yet been corrupted
with connections interrupted
with wireless servers on the blink,
for we needed no further link
than friends pounding upon our door
to come outside and play some more!
Stylish cowboys Karen Bossart and sister Patti.
Canna Lily: Flower of the Day June 6, 2016
The cannas are at their very best right now and I took dozens of shots of them yesterday, but this is my favorite. Hopefully they weren’t all battered by tonight’s wind and rain.
Death by Wonton
I’m not quite sure whether people really consider reality shows to be real or not. Hard for me to believe they would, although taking the present presidential elections into account, I have lowered my expectations of people a good deal. In my house, however, there is no need for the diversion of viewing other people’s lives, be it Honey Boo Boo or the Kardashians. There is plenty of unexpected activity from day-to-day to keep me as entertained as I care to be.
Take yesterday, for example. I was all ready for my masseuse to arrive for my massage when I realized I had the time wrong and he wouldn’t be there for three more hours. Too long to wait for lunch as I was already hungry, so I put a bit of hot and sour soup on the stove that was left over from dinner with a friend the night before. It was meant to have wontons added and I thought instead of boiling them in the broth as I usually did, I’d prepare them as my friend had advised–browning them in a bit of oil, then adding a small bit of water and putting the lid on to steam them. The problem was that once they were browned, they were so nice and crispy that I didn’t want to limp them up again, so I put them on paper towels to drain the grease off and poured the soup into a bowl. I’d float a few in the soup and put the remainder of the wontons on a dish to the side.
I tasted one. Yum! As I moved the others to the plate, however, one rolled off the large slotted spoon and landed on the floor. No problem, I thought, as the floor had just been washed. Perhaps I’d just dust it off and eat it anyway, but as I leaned down to pick it up, I saw a slight movement. It took a minute to register that lying as close as possible to the wonton was a cockroach, now on it’s back with feet up in the air. It was then that I realized that when the wonton had fallen, it had fallen directly on the cockroach, knocking it for a loop. It was just now that it was starting to regain consciousness and its legs waved a bit in the air before I administered final rites by stepping on it. I then picked up bug and wonton for simultaneous entombment in the garbage can.
It was then that the utter absurdity of death by wonton hit me. Did it seem an appropriate death? It was not usual for a roach to venture out into the light of day. This one must have been led to its sad demise by an overwhelming love of wonton–its aroma as it bubbled in the hot grease just so irresistible that it overrode the roach’s usual schedule of secretive midnight meanderings. It died considering doing something it loved to do––namely, to mount and have its way with any food it might find in its path, making it useless for human consumption. What irony that in its final act of culinary terrorism, for once the food got the better of it.
Death by wonton. Not a bad way to go.
Collaborative Collage
A year or so ago, I began sticking the labels from bananas up on the blank ugly white side of the cupboard near my sink. Over the past year, I’ve added interesting liquor bottle tops with their sides cut to sunburst out around them, beer bottle caps and a little virgin plaque my friend Judy gave me. Imagine my surprise when I looked up yesterday and saw that Yolanda had decided to cut out a cane of Caffeine Free Diet Coke from the side the the carton of it I had in the fridge! A friend I told about it didn’t see the humor of it but I loved it. She certainly knows me, and all those rum bottle caps just didn’t cut it without a bit of Caffeine Free Diet Coke to add to the mix! At $2 a can (if and when it is even available in Mexico) the Caffeine Free Diet Coke is by far the most expensive thing up there per serving, which certainly adds an air of the exotic.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 