Mysteries

The wrap up:  116 people have taken the quiz - I don't know whether to feel pleased or alarmed by that.  I was hoping that at least four or five people would click the link and answer the questions, but I see you are a curious (or bored) bunch.  And here are the results, which does seem to resemble the distribution in an actual garden.  Ish.

Okay, florascopes.

The purse!  ish.

Dahlia:  What I remember about the moon landing is this:  the rest of the family was in the family room (is there still such a room or was that only in the 60's? Oh.  I just looked it up.  First mentioned in 1945 in this cool book).  Meanwhile, I was upstairs in my bedroom gluing rhinestones onto a big ugly purse.  It was a craft kit that my grandfather's wife, whom I only met once, gave me.  (I guess I met her twice if you count the time she was still living with husband #7, but I don't.)  They lived in a strange senior citizens mobile home park in the desert near LA, and we had to get special permission to visit because children weren't allowed.  It was the first time I had been in a house that had a license plate on it.  Anyway, she gave my sisters and I and each a kit to make a cardboard purse with a plastic rhinestone peacock on it.  (Can you get any more fake than rhinestone?  YES!  Imitation rhinestone!)  My sister's purses were turning out exactly like the picture, but mine was gloppy with glue; the fake jewels slid down the side of the purse to create a jeweled glob of shiny plastic disappointment.  I decided to use the time when everyone else was occupied with the lunar landing to try to catch up and see if I could make mine look like a real peacock.  So I missed the moon landing.  I've seen the movies though.  Dahlia, don't miss out this week!  Stay tuned.

Indian Pipe.  So many mysteries!  Here's one:  I received another mysterious package, this one with a honey bee theme, a sweet but anonymous note, a small china hutch, and 5 tiny beer cans that seem denser than most substances on this

planet.  I've set up a little white trash doll house situation (tiny cans of beer in a tiny china hutch isn't something that occurs in nature).  Oh wait -- maybe there was something like that in my grandfather's mobile home in the desert; I don't remember.  I gather there's a message in all of this, but I'm not sure what it is.  One of my friends thinks the sender is a reader who lives in his/her parents basement, and this blog is his/her only contact with the outside world so it's taken a bizarre importance in his/her life.  I don't really know whether to find that comforting or creepy, but I'll go with comforting.  From one lonely basement dweller to another, sans the basement?  Another theory is that the recent package is a copy cat, someone who followed the example of the sender of the steins (SOS).  Of course, that idea appeals to me, because it would mean more packages for me....

Kalmia.  We're going to use science to solve this mystery, because that's what we do.  But before I go on, can we all take a moment to love science together?  It's the only discipline in the galaxy that is both humble and curious, never dismisses information, never assumes beyond the data, and ultimately, gets to the bottom of things in the most elegant, proveable, repeatable way.  Oh, science, how we love thee.  Here goes:

Let me know your theories, Kalmia.  We'll put on our gloves and get out the bunson burners and Erlenmeyer flasks and start researching!

Columbine.  Here's another mystery:  I found a long strip of bark in the garbage can right in the middle of town.  Who does that?  As I was searching the can for clues, a neighbor walked up; I think he assumed I was looking for a new wardrobe or something, but nope.  I went in to the flower shop to see if the proprietor had seen anything suspicious, but nope.

It's a rainy day here, which is good because it will give my bees a chance to be housebound with their new queen and see if they can grow to love her.  I'm not supposed to look in there for a bit but I like to imagine that they're in there, a bit restless, playing monopoly and eating crackers with their little tiny bee mouths.  Maybe building a fort.

I guess that's it.