I'm not sure if it's because I never looked at the ground in Seattle, or if it was that our sidewalk was always a smooshy, unwelcome mash of crabapple remains, but it seems to me that, by comparison, the streets and sidewalks of our particular Houston neighborhood are aflourish with pick-upable goodness. So much so, that it can occupy a good hour, taking The Boy around the block with a pail and an eye for anything that can displayed on a dish or seashell or desk or brandy glass or makeshift frame of colored popsicle sticks.
The Boy sets his sights for flowers in purples and pinks, blue-gray bird feathers, and little red berries from a neighbor's tree ("You know these aren't for eating, right, Boy?" "That's right, Momma"). He glues them to paper or tucks them into boxes or picks out the purplest of the flowers to display in the letterpress drawer. Me, I go for the acorns and air plants. Air plants, because until now I'd never seen one in the wild, thinking they were only to be found glued to gnarly driftwood and sold for crisp Alexander Hamiltons at street fairs. The idea of freely picking up perfect specimens, pre-attached to bits of twigs and leaves, is a thrill akin to finding a Ming Dynasty vase amongst someone else's garage sale discards. And acorns because, having grown up in a rather flora-poor urban environment and then spending the last decade+ in The Evergreen State, I still maintain a cartoonish image of them, something to be wielded by high-pitched squirrels as ammunition against pesky felines.
So yeah, I've been collecting acorns and air plants, keeping them around for the sheer novelty of it. There's also a sort of Waldorf ideal to it, keeping track of what's going on outside by bringing a piece of it inside. And even I feel these little vignettes around our home are more than a tad contrived and overthought. But they make me happy, nonetheless.
Now, shortly after I took this photo, I discovered that at least one of the acorns had been harboring maggots, thick and grubby and blindly writhing. This made me considerably less than happy, and that batch was promptly chucked. But not wanting to give up on the acorn as a whole, I decided to embark on the craft cliche that is making little acorn replicas by felting little bits of wool roving. These things are everywhere in the craft blogosphere, probably because it's a satisfying little project, fun enough to tackle with The Boy, once you accept that when you put a 3-year-old in front of a bowl of warm soapy water, messes WILL be made. All part of the fun, right? Also, when you let the 3-year-old apply the glue to the inside of the acorn caps, accept that sometimes messes will be made there, as well.
So, we managed to bring in a little bit of the outside. Score one for nature. Then we de-natured it, because I have a strong distaste for bug-life. Whatever. I'm happy with my acorns again.
