gardens!
Today was a lovely fall day and our local Garden and Sculpture Park was having an herb festival, so my mum and I went to see what there was to see. I enjoyed the food samples, she enjoyed the goat milk soap and lecture on "green cleaning." And we both enjoyed looking at all the fall flowers! I made heavy use of our camera (I love the guilt-free picture-taking-ability of digital cameras). We also saw this weasel-ish creature but it was trying to get away from us and we saw it first thing so I didn't have my camera at the ready yet... but I did get a picture later of a fuzzy caterpillar! Yay!!
On the way back we were driving through downtown (to the health food store) and a little after we left the health food store we had a little adventure that highlighted, for me, a difference between my mum and I. Two guys were running across the street with an armful of something and they hopped into a car and sped away. My mum immediately started repeating their license plate number until I got tired of hearing it and just wrote it down for her, and then she turned around to get the attention of someone who had been chasing the other guys and give them the info. Apparently they'd stolen a stack of shirts or something from a clothing store. As we drove away, mum kept talking about what she could have/should have done differently, how she could have been a citizen-hero if she'd driven in front of the car to stall them, called the police right away, etc etc etc.... I told her what was done was done and she couldn't do anything differently now, and what she had done was perfectly legitimate considering the situation (we didn't actually know if the guys had stolen anything, or if they were dangerous, or anything like that). But I think she still couldn't get over the "should've/could've"s because she still kept bringing it up after we got home.
And it made me think about how I myself stop thinking about things as soon as they're done. Because worrying about the possibilities once it's too late to do anything about it is a wasted effort, as far as I can see. I've usually noticed this about myself with taking exams, writing papers, finishing artwork but I guess it can also have an influence on random occurrences like this... I think it allows for a less stressful life, but I guess some people might see it as rather careless or even callous (depending on the situation, of course). So it also makes me wonder about those people who write in to Dear Abby and say how they know someone who saw a hurt person in the road and stopped to see what was going on, and how some hundred people before them had seen the person but done little or nothing about it... and I certainly hope I'm not one of those hundred other people. Am I a result of our modern culture that prizes convenience and selfishness and a fast-paced running-about lifestyle? Eek! But maybe I'm just thinking too much (again)...
Anyway, the gardens were lovely. Here, some pictures!
Pumpkins and mums! Yay fall!! They did this cool thing with the pumpkins-it looked like they had been cut into while still growing so they formed a scar over the wound (rather than just rotting in a week like what happens when you cut pumpkins after they've finished growing)
I ♥ bugs. This one reminded me of my cat (same colours, fat and fuzzy...)
Zinnia and that cool purple-grass!
A rather sculptural bird bath (it had lily-pads and all sorts of cool lookin' stuff all made of bronze or whatever)
I liked how the gourds were growing in a yew bush. And all the other leaves and colours and textures together~ :D
Some rather pretty cabbages (?) and cherry/grape tomatoes-they have a Five Senses garden, and these of course come from the taste-section. We visited the Gardens earlier this year and ate some of the ripe tomatoes.
Flowering maple! It looks like hibiscus! I love hibiscus! I love flowering maple!
(I had to take the picture from below, because the flowers all hang down. It's pretty neat)
There was a (new? visiting?) sculpture. You can see me in it, really small.
And then I decided to sit in the same pose as it.
This just struck me as a nice scene. I think it was the super-smooth tree bark.
MUMS!!
And the flower I almost-share a name with, alyssum. I liked how the leaves/stems had gone purplish for fall.
In conclusion, there's something rather lovely about even dead and dying flowers. Today, I am feeling very thankful for the Michigan fall.
(even though yesterday I had to wear 5 shirts (3 with long sleeves) and wrap up in a blanket all day to stay warm)
On the way back we were driving through downtown (to the health food store) and a little after we left the health food store we had a little adventure that highlighted, for me, a difference between my mum and I. Two guys were running across the street with an armful of something and they hopped into a car and sped away. My mum immediately started repeating their license plate number until I got tired of hearing it and just wrote it down for her, and then she turned around to get the attention of someone who had been chasing the other guys and give them the info. Apparently they'd stolen a stack of shirts or something from a clothing store. As we drove away, mum kept talking about what she could have/should have done differently, how she could have been a citizen-hero if she'd driven in front of the car to stall them, called the police right away, etc etc etc.... I told her what was done was done and she couldn't do anything differently now, and what she had done was perfectly legitimate considering the situation (we didn't actually know if the guys had stolen anything, or if they were dangerous, or anything like that). But I think she still couldn't get over the "should've/could've"s because she still kept bringing it up after we got home.
And it made me think about how I myself stop thinking about things as soon as they're done. Because worrying about the possibilities once it's too late to do anything about it is a wasted effort, as far as I can see. I've usually noticed this about myself with taking exams, writing papers, finishing artwork but I guess it can also have an influence on random occurrences like this... I think it allows for a less stressful life, but I guess some people might see it as rather careless or even callous (depending on the situation, of course). So it also makes me wonder about those people who write in to Dear Abby and say how they know someone who saw a hurt person in the road and stopped to see what was going on, and how some hundred people before them had seen the person but done little or nothing about it... and I certainly hope I'm not one of those hundred other people. Am I a result of our modern culture that prizes convenience and selfishness and a fast-paced running-about lifestyle? Eek! But maybe I'm just thinking too much (again)...
Anyway, the gardens were lovely. Here, some pictures!
Pumpkins and mums! Yay fall!! They did this cool thing with the pumpkins-it looked like they had been cut into while still growing so they formed a scar over the wound (rather than just rotting in a week like what happens when you cut pumpkins after they've finished growing)
I ♥ bugs. This one reminded me of my cat (same colours, fat and fuzzy...)
Zinnia and that cool purple-grass!
A rather sculptural bird bath (it had lily-pads and all sorts of cool lookin' stuff all made of bronze or whatever)
I liked how the gourds were growing in a yew bush. And all the other leaves and colours and textures together~ :D
Some rather pretty cabbages (?) and cherry/grape tomatoes-they have a Five Senses garden, and these of course come from the taste-section. We visited the Gardens earlier this year and ate some of the ripe tomatoes.
Flowering maple! It looks like hibiscus! I love hibiscus! I love flowering maple!
(I had to take the picture from below, because the flowers all hang down. It's pretty neat)
There was a (new? visiting?) sculpture. You can see me in it, really small.
And then I decided to sit in the same pose as it.
This just struck me as a nice scene. I think it was the super-smooth tree bark.
MUMS!!
And the flower I almost-share a name with, alyssum. I liked how the leaves/stems had gone purplish for fall.
In conclusion, there's something rather lovely about even dead and dying flowers. Today, I am feeling very thankful for the Michigan fall.
(even though yesterday I had to wear 5 shirts (3 with long sleeves) and wrap up in a blanket all day to stay warm)