‘There will be rejoicing among the hungry folks of Lilliputian.’
A Tomato Tale
On the top of a beige bench are from (lower) left to (upper) right: a pair of welding gloves, (only the fingers show in the photo) two small tomatoes, one, directly opposite the middle finger of the glove is a red globe. The two small oblongs of reflected light show it to be an un-even spherical shape. Above it, at about eleven o’clock and one o’clock are two tomatoes looking an awful lot like pumpkins. Actually they look, for all the world, like those pumpkin-shaped candy things from Halloween that are small, easy to eat and made from pure sugar. They inevitability cause the dreaded sugar burns, endemic during the holiday of The Free-ranging Calories.
To the right center is a cluster of yellow tomatoes. At least I’m being told that they are yellow tomatoes and therefore the color is on purpose. The largest in the bunch is also the yellowest and most regularly formed. The light creates the classic curved-window-pane reflection that tells us that it is a solid spherical object.
Finally to the upper right is a small paring knife. It has a dark gray blade that shows a lighter strip along it’s cutting edge. The handle is light brown with three perfect circles of the rivets that hold the wood (grip) to the metal blade.

Phyllis’ Chair
There’s a line in the first Chapter of ‘Almira’ describing the ward where Mrs. Gulch lay asleep (or unconscious),
“The chair was moveable and it was stable. When you thought about it, those are the only really essential qualities a chair required.”
The chair that Phyllis built follows that design philosophy.
The chair sits on a rise in a greenly wooded area. The lower level plants are green. If the trees are green, they are out of our view, only brown-grey trunks rise among the low brush like narrow volcanos, shooting up without the slightest implication of being concerned with ever having to return.
On this rise is the chair which simple is an arrangements of wood rectangles. The back are several pieces of wood (the wood used as decking on the previous bridge) side by side (no spaces between). They are that worn brown color of weathered lumber. Most of their claim to a color (grey brown it may be) lies in it’s texture which is smooth, yet worn deeply wood grain. The shadows between the ridges show as color.
The supports for the seat? Firewood! Or, rather, individual pieces of firewood, sixteen inches in length. Intended for the wood stove, they are running to earth in the hopes of avoiding a fiery if not noble end.

‘A dog, a carrot, a question.’
This photo shows Una’s opinion of the first carrot from the garden that is in the shape of her name.
For a photo of Una, not the most photogenic of canines, it is rich in detail. Provided of course, you enjoy appreciating how many shades of black are possible and still see anything.
Una is sitting in the center of the photo (a landscape format), on her hind quarters and is looking up at the hand the holds ‘the carrot’. Her face is quite visible. Her ears are relaxed back against her head, and you can see that her eyes are brown. Actually if there is a color called agate brown, I’d go with that. It’s a shade of brown that has a glow of gold beneath the surface, which is what stimulates that very distant memory of ‘playing marbles’ back in grade school. While marbles were available at the Five and Dime* there was always one kid who had more of them than anyone else and for reasons lost in time, his large collection was always in a very cool draw-stringed cloth sack. The top of the pyramid were pureies (sic) the colorless, clear glass marble. Within the ranks there were kingers and regular sized marbles. Cats eyes and agates were also in the taxonomy of marbles. There were games to be played, the prize? Marbles! And it was a high stakes game, at least until fifth grade.
Back to Una.
Mostly black, the variations in coloring tends towards the browns or what I imagine is meant by ‘sable’. She has two markings above her eyes… they would get noticeably closer together were she to frown. But Una has a temperament that puts ‘frowning’ in the category of an ambition reserved for Halloween.
In the photo her muzzle is showing grey. Just around the end of her mouth, but… ayiieee! how is this possible? It seems only a year or two that her driver dropped her off after picking her up at Logan and driving to our house!
Man!
*sorta Walmarts without the economic tentacles or people you trust need the money and genuinely don’t mind acting as ‘Greeters’. Which is, in and of itself an odd mutation of a once specialized social function. “On behalf of Sam Walton, may I wish you a pleasant shopping experience.”
What especially interesting in the difference a half a century can make, as kids we were on the alert for the people who would throw us out of the Dime Store (or Woolworths) for hanging around too long and reading the comic books.