This week’s 100 Word Challenge is Starved. What follows is my take on that challenge.
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In late October a blanket of white settles over my hometown, Alaska. As far as the eye can see nothing but white. Even animals take on white as camouflage; snowshoe hares and ptarmigan, for example.
Winds cause the unmentionable stuff to skitter across roadways in hypnotic dance, occasionally causing temporary blindness in those without sunglasses.
Is it any wonder that when the first dandie appears my color starved soul delights? My neighbors do their yearly battle with potions and mowers while I bend down, pick a golden yellow flower and hold it to my granddaughter’s chin.
“Do you like butter?â€
I remember my mom doing that too! I kinda like dandelions too.
My son has been checking my chin with buttercups all week. It is cold here too, in the south (giggle — Vancouver). My kids dream of days at the beaches and outdoor pools but that reality remains distant.
My eldest, 8, picks me handful after handful of yellow dandylion. I have grown to love them too.
Well played. Even the hardiest lover of winter rains (me) is yearning for spring.
Aw, I love that little folklorish tradition of holding a dandelion under someone’s chin. 🙂 Though I’ve come to really hate winter because I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder, there’s nothing, NOTHING, like Spring after winter. Not as dramatic here as it must be in Alaska, so I can only imagine how much more powerful the effect is.
[…] Direct us to one blog post of yours that we shouldn’t miss reading. Hmmmmm – I sometimes write ‘em and then forget ‘em. I love to tell people about Alaska living, maybe you will get a bit of sense of who I am by reading this one: Starvation […]
This is great. I have a friend who lives in Alaska and gave my son the book “Mama, Do You Love Me?” It was my first encounter with the ptarmigan. As a fellow sufferer of SAD (Velvet Verbosity), I also don’t handle winters so well. Alaska could well do me in. 🙂 It’s lovely to read about though.