A Small Ray Of Hope Teeters On An Original Thought

The rather ordinary seesaw (above) at my local park got me thinking about a faraway seesaw teetering on a rare original thought worthy of praise for its designers, Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello. Their creative thinking at a US/Mexico border barrier gave not only joy to me but more importantly made some kids in a difficult situation happy for a time. If you've lost faith in humanity, look for a small ray of hope HERE.

This post is linked to My Corner Of The World.

Creepy Plant Creatures Keep On Growing

“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” - John Muir

A television program about plants caught my attention recently. Time lapse cinematography sped up their growth and exposed the plants as living entities reaching for the sun and driven to survive. The film unmasked what at first glance appeared to be harmless leafy limbs with pretty petal faces. A closer look showed most foliage is ferociously determined to propagate. This is certainly true of the morning glory (top left) I spotted at Crescent Beach. The cone shaped flower that I wrote about earlier grows on vines by the hundreds of thousands. Not just in my neighborhood, it overtakes unattended gardens with roots that stealthfully creep underground throughout our world.

The program gave me new insight into the dangling flower (above) that I held as it fluttered strangely like a captured exotic bird about to snap at my fingers. Whether a steely tangle of roots strangling rival species embedded in the soil or seeds hitching a ride on the slightest breeze to far off destinations, the spectacle of these living organisms (revealed by the film's quickened time frame) was breathtaking.

Formidable as any prehistoric beast or creature currently in the wild, plants are trampled upon by humankind and hacked to pieces yet they live on and thrive quietly adapting. Even a sliver of dirt on the pavement provides a nest from which to grow.

For the most part the marvelous transformations and survival tactics of plants go unnoticed. In the end, they crave what people need ... sunlight, soil, air and water. They grow, move, reproduce and eat.

We invite select plants into our homes. And while some taste good enough to eat, others like the aloe vera could even heal us.

See OUR WORLD to explore sights from around the globe.

Still the kid I used to be

Visit Postcards From Penelope Puddle and Penelope Puddlisms: BC Life Is A Whale Of A Ride to view more West Coast scenes.

Because the state of our planet is the most pressing issue of our time, link up and learn about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report.