My perpetual Halloween costume: CamoClashMan.
For those who appreciate details: Blue Tiger-Stripe jacket, Savage Orange shirt, Rastaflage cargos, and Coffeeflage shoelaces.
Oh, and a Woodlandflage-colored shoelace serving as a keychain.
And make that CamoClashMan disguised as Rodin’s *The Thinker*. With spectacles.
CamoClashMan, circa 2006.
viola flowers (c) Maksim Shebeko, Fotolia #112358669. Licensed to Brad Sargent.
The old riddle goes, “If April showers bring May flowers, what do May flowers bring?”
The answer, of course, is: *Pilgrims!*
But where I grew up, May Day – May 1st – was when we delivered small baskets of flowers to neighbors who were older like the Neckstads and Mrs. Salmon and Mrs. Perry, our teachers from school and Sunday School, and family friends like the McCartneys and Vances and Olsens.
Sometimes we’d labor the whole week before to make the flowers and baskets ourselves. Our craft table would be strewn with construction paper and pipe cleaners and crayolas, scissors and tape and glue. Maybe the “basket” would actually be a sort of easy-to-make cone, for a cornucopia of construction paper flowers. Or it might be a more elaborate holder, woven from long strips of craft paper.
Sometimes we’d put a real live potted pansy or marigold in a basket we’d made, or curl a cone and fill it with a tied-up bunch of snipped-off violets or posies. Of course, getting real flowers meant a field trip to The Greenhouse …
It was only a few blocks away from us, at the end of the wide gravel road in front of our house. If the weather was nice enough, Mom would walk with all three of us kids the four blocks down at the end of our street. There at The Greenhouse, we’d each get to choose a small potted plant or two to give as May Day gifts.
And, oh! What a wondrous but mysterious place The Greenhouse was to me as a pre-schooler! It just felt magical, before I even had words to describe how and why. Now I know it was because it was a completely different world apart from all I was used to.
The quality of light was different, from steamed-up windows and frosted glass everywhere. And the cool, misty air from hoses and spray bottles and water drippers. And old wooden tables in really long rows, with all kinds of shelves and cans and bags and pots and plants on top and underneath them. And the most amazing fragrance – a mixture of shredded bark and sharp stemmy “green,” humid dirt but that’s not really mud, floral and citrus and bubblegum sweet. The entire place was a marvel: so much to look over, sniff at, dig into!
Over the years, different families operated The Greenhouse. But they all seemed to be people who were kind to us kids, and patient in helping us pick out our plants for May Day. After all, they offered so many choices – so many colors that only these greenhouse flowers seemed to have with bright yellows and oranges, blues and purples from light to deep, brick reds, magentas and maroons. How to choose when you have more flower colors than crayons?
But the people never seemed to be in a rush with us. It makes sense to me now. If you love plants and flowers, how can you not love people and their families?
And all this worked together to make May Day flowers after April showers one of the most special events of the year …
Stay tuned in — the story may continue …
[P.S. Thanks to Casey and Erica, who got this story started.]
[~ Click on images to see larger views of the shoes! ~]
Hey all y’all – I bought shoes! A friend sent me a gift for my birthday. I told them I’d do something fun with part of it (pizza, DVDs, books), plus something practical – like socks.
Well, it ended up that I bought shoes instead of socks. I’d completely worn through the soles of my previous set of Sketchers, and the add-on insert insoles from Rite-Aid were starting to go, too. After only – what? Like, only five or six years? Outrageous.
Anyway, I figure that you can’t get a reasonable pair of heavy-duty shoes for less than $50-60, so that was my budget guideline. Shoe shopping is torturous for me, as my feet are narrow, and it’s hard to find a fit. So, I always have to wear two pairs of socks – hence, my perpetually frequent need for socks – in order not to slosh around in my shoes all the time.
I like Fluevogs, so that was what I was going for. Continue reading
For the past few weeks, I’ve been reflecting on what 2012 was about, and also thinking about what it seems 2013 may mean for me. I know, I know … you’re supposed to do this the first week after New Years. But, if I’ve learned nothing much else the past decades, it’s that life – at least my life – doesn’t follow a totally predictable pattern. Continue reading
Well, it’s April 1st, 2012, and I’m finally entering into my 10th year of blogging.
Who woulda guessed that some old guy like me would have blogged his way into the final year of an entire decade?
And yes, I did officially begin my first blog – beyondposthuman on blogspot, to be exact – on April Fool’s Day of 2003. [Yea, verily, make of that what thou willt.] At the insistence of my friends Andrew Jones and Shannon Hopkins, and with the encouragement and well-wishes of Austinian friends and co-WabiSabians, I did.
And now here I am, at least 300,000 words later (not all of ’em necessarily worth readin’), and this my 300th post on my WordPress futuristguy blog, but glad to have been on this journey.
