Spring pictures.

Okay, enough with the depressing things for a bit. Here are some pictures I got while walking around. The National Geographic people may not come hammering at my door to buy them, but hey, I write novels, not picture books.

Here we have an example of the concrete worker's art, a planter apparently awaiting whatever plant will adorn it for the summer.

I guess they put the pebbles around to keep it upright, but I think it looks a little silly. Tell you the truth, the first thing I thought of that it looked like a spittoon for the Thing from the Fantastic Four.

"Reed, will you please speak to Ben?  He keeps missing the spittoon and now there are pebbles all over the floor!"

"Ben, why are you spitting so much?"

"Because, Reed... It's SLOBBERIN' TIME!"

Speaking of elegant concrete sculpture, we also have this content and well-dressed chap, although a bit worse for weather wear. Yes, allow me to present Monsieur Grenouille Faux;

Fake frogs are okay, but with all the rain we had, we had enough of the real thing around here. In fact, the same day Nipper and I passed M. G. Faux in the morning, we encountered Monsieur Grenouille la Vraie in the evening:

I wonder if M. Faux and M. la Vraie have met?

We've also had plenty of wildflowers, some of which don't suck. I mean, most wildflowers are more weed than flower. This one was okay.

What that always puts me in mind of is "Fields of People" by an underrated English group, the Move. A friend of mine got me into their stuff long after their heyday had passed -- also after the heyday of Electric Light Orchestra, actually, which is what the Move morphed into. "Fields of People" is a cover of a song by Ars Nova. I like "Fields of People" a lot ("Fields of people... there's no such thing as a weed...") but I used to have more tolerance for hippie stuff. Now my home is a tambourine-free zone. Anyway, it's a fun song, from the album Shazam, but unless you really dig sitar music, bail after the main song portion. (Side note: The lead vocal by Carl Wayne was recorded on the street, the rest in the studio.)

Finally, we have a horse-drawn hay rake that has been turned into a planter.

I love this thing. I admit that I had to look up olde tyme farm equipment to find out what it was; I've explained this city slicker's knowledge of farming to you in the past. I think they family is a little optimistic; I don't know what's growing in the planter but it's overwhelmed by the machine itself. Still, I wouldn't care. I love old stuff and I'd probably just sit on the seat, wearing an Amish hat, chewing straw, whittlin', and making wise country remarks to people like an idiot all day. Good thing I don't own it.

That's what I've been seeing around this spring; how's it with you?