2025, Fantasy, gardening, Kids, Mysteries

I’m Blooming Nuts

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Once, when YA was about five, she didn’t want to turn off the light in her bedroom – her reasoning being that she didn’t want her stuffed animals (a prodigious crowd) to be worried in the dark. 

I couldn’t really give her grief about it.  After all, she comes by this stuffy empathy honestly – she gets it from me.  I was quite active in the naming of all her stuffed critters and gave in to her desire to anthropomorphize them big time.  Heck I once carried my stuffed javelina Henrietta in my carry-on bag because it didn’t feel right to close into the suitcase!

It shouldn’t surprise you then to know that I am having a little trouble dumping my flowering baskets this fall.  I usually plant the baskets on Mother’s Day – sometimes a few days before or after depending on the weather.  Then when the blooms fall, I stack up the deceased baskets alongside the garage in the back of the yard.

Here’s the problem; it’s been a full six months and five of the fifteen baskets still have flowers on them!  I’ve been moving the baskets around, taking the empty shepherds pole away and storing them in the garage.  With the temperature below zero more than a few nights now, I was worried about being able to wrench the poles out of frozen ground.  But I just couldn’t bring myself to stack the baskets with flowers in the back.

So I set the baskets on the back steps (see the photo above).  The last basket is on the front steps, which is where its shepherds pole stood all summer.  Since it won’t be above freezing even during the day for a few days, I’m guessing the flowers are making their last hurrah but at least they will be making that hurrah on the back steps, being appreciated whenever I open the back door!

Are you irrational about anything?

33 thoughts on “I’m Blooming Nuts”

    2. “Irrational” is a judgement based on societal convention. What is considered rational varies with cultures and your animist impulses would not be out of place in many of them. Most of the choices we make, whether philosophical or religious or matters of personal taste would be better termed nonrational.
      What’s important, I believe, is to recognize that fundamental nonrationality we foster and maintain a humility about it.

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  5. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    I feel irrationally warm towards this adorable puppy who is partially paper trained, requiring vigilance and constant clean-up, and who bites my fingers hard as corgi puppies are wont to do. Yet he is so wonderful. Go figure.

    I am finding myself intensely concerned and involved in the state of our democracy, flawed as it is at its best. But I think that is rational and warranted. These people “in charge” are incompetent and unwell. And I do not mean just the felon, but his entire crew.

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    1. My hatred for Trumpism burns like the heat of a million suns. Some might call that irrational (TDS).
      My reply to them is believing anything said by Liar-in-Chief Donald is irrational.

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  6. When my son was 3 and 4 years old I would watch this nightly ritual that he carried out. The menagerie of stuffies would be arranged, then re-arranged nightly. This went on for several years. I asked him to explain it, because he clearly had a purpose.

    He said this, “I make sure I sleep with one until it knows I love it, then I put it with the others and choose a new one.”

    I was astounded. This 3 and 4 year old boy understood intuitively the psychological concepts of Object Constancy and internalization of parental love. I was in awe.

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    1. I just listened to a discussion about the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald on MPR this morning. The professor they interviewed had a lot to say about the song, most of it good, but he did say that there were details in the song that Lightfoot romanticized based on other incidents with other boats. For example, we don’t know if the cook really came running up on deck saying, “Fellas it’s too rough to feed ya.” This professor gave the song a lot of credit for raising awareness of the dangers of the big lake and the shipping industry. He said that if you ask school kids to name two ships that sank, they will name the Titanic and the Edmund Fitzgerald.

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      1. I say, “Hurray for folk music!” It’s great for raising awareness about all kinds of things. People listen to a great song like that and they feel like they learned something while enjoying a great song.

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  10. Is it irrational to talk to yourself? I often do this when I’m getting dinner, esp. if I have a glass of wine while cooking. I sometimes even have two versions of myself (personas?) in conversation. Heck, let’s party – there’s no one else to talk to. (Husband is usually reading or working a jigsaw puzzle.)

    You don’t have to spread this around…

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    4. Heck, I talk to myself all the time. It may be weird, but it’s not irrational. I do it to vent sometimes, think things through, remind myself of fundamentals. Ex: when I’m portaging in the BWCA and have my first minor stumble on the first day of the trip, my mantra for the rest of the trip on each portage is, “One step at a time, stupid! Walk heel to toe. Beware of those slippery rocks. Don’t step on the obviously loose rocks.” I do that for most of the portage length unless I get the rare flat, smooth section with no hazards to worry about.

      Chris in Owatonna

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  11. Yes, but I think I’ve become more rational with age. I’ve often made decisions based on my wishes and hopes, not on what is realistic. I’ve gotten much better about that because poor decision-making has gotten me into trouble. I’ve had to work hard to get my mind around the fact that the world is just not what I want it to be and never will be. I think I’ve said before that I’ve been accused many times of seeing the world through rose-colored glasses.

    My anger about the current state of our government is not irrational. I think it would be irrational to not be angry about the way things are going. My brother accused me of suffering from TDS. I said, “Good!” because I’d never want to think like a magat.

    Those baskets look very nice, VS! I’d have trouble putting them away too!

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  12. This is an addendum to my story. That night that YA didn’t want to turn the lights out I made a deal with her. I said “you can leave the lights on, but you need to stay in bed with your animals”. She agreed to that and fell asleep fairly promptly. That was the only time she ever asked to leave the lights on so the next night we were back to “normal“.

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  13. Is that a mandevilla, VS? It looks beautiful for so late in the season.

    Husband and I are irrational about plants, especially pansies. We get a bowl of them early every spring. They thrive until the dog days of summer, when the heat causes them to die back to a wilted mess. But we keep tending them and miraculously, they rebound in the fall and fill the bowl with blooms. They’re out on the deck with a few flowers still hanging in there. It will be difficult to throw them out.

    I’m irrational about used book sales. I have enough books in my “to be read” collection to last for years, but I can’t pass up a good used book sale.

    Like Ben, I’m irrational about spiders, but the bug that really sends me into an all-out panic is the one with a zillion legs.

    My dear departed kitty (not the new one) thought my reaction to being presented with a mouse in bed was irrational.

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