Fantastic Friday: No Such Thing as Boredom

I remember as a kid being bored once in a while. But mostly, I entertained myself. I remember waking up on weekend mornings. I knew it was too early to wake up because I didn’t hear my mom yet. So I would stay in bed and look at my walls and door. The walls were painted drywall, but they were done with one of those roller brushes and in glossy paint, so a tiny bit of a pattern was left as air bubbles in the paint dried. I used to spend hours staring at that pattern and seeing faces and shapes and making up stories about them. The door was even more fun. It had actual wood texture, and it was easy to see fantastical things in those knots.

As a “grown-up,” I find myself least happy when I forget to see the magic in the everyday. For some reason, the autumn always snaps me back into my imaginative self (I credit Halloween, my favorite holiday!). I thought I’d round out the month of October by sharing some of my favorite shots from the late summer and early autumn.

Late this summer, the humdrum task of mowing the lawn became interesting as I came upon two or three of these giant mushrooms. That’s my full-grown adult hand for comparison purposes! I half expected a Smurf to jump out and start singing 🙂

While rainy days can sometimes stifle a positive mood, I enjoy finding beauty in rainy nature while my daughter jumps in puddles.

The simplistic beauty of raindrops of pedals. Seems like I should write a haiku!

And speaking of flowers, I enjoyed finding these pollinators (and future pollinators) among the milkweek and Rose of Sharon while weeding:

The warm-cool mix of the summer-fall transition allows plenty of time for hiking and reflecting. I feel like a Transcendentalist finding inspiration in the mirror of a pool disturbed only by tiny gnats or finding artistry in the way sun filters through leaves to paint the mottled ground.

As summer dissolved into autumn, I found myself intrigued by the Halloween vibes of the landscape. Spider webs, frogs, and spooky old trees:

A spooky old tree at Ball’s Bluff. It reminds me of my favorite Berenstain Bears book.

A frog sitting on the path during a hike. The creepy time of year lets our imaginations run wild with thoughts of omens and witches brews.

And, of course, spider webs are everywhere. Mother Nature does the decorating for this creepy time of year.

And then there are the mornings when Mother Nature likes to pretend zombies are about to emerge from a field:

Or that time, while at a traffic stand-still, a crow happens to be reflecting in a puddle left from the previous night’s downpour.

Not to be outdone, humans compete with their own Halloween décor:

Pirate-themed cupcakes

A haunted porch caught while at a stoplight (at night, there is a fog machine and spooky lighting!)

Or that time a barn creates a perfect backdrop for a biking skeleton.

The amazing thing about the prevalence of cell phones today is that their camera functions are gaining quality with each new model. We have in our pockets the ability to never be bored again, but not in the form of Twitter of Candy Crush. Instead, we have a device that allows us to see the details in the world that we don’t want to forget–and then to capture them so that we don’t have to.