Tiny Orb of Sap

   When out meandering about the place, I am always on the lookout for anything that has changed since the last hike.  With life as it is, entertainment has to be found in oddities instead of people.  I am good with that as I have long avoided much social contact.  I do not see the need for all the drama that comes with interaction with society.  I prefer to live my life with limited access to the "outside" world.  Occasionally, however, the need for new ideas makes me long for some sort of entertainment.   That is when I search the place for any oddity that can fill the imagination.

  Yesterday after finishing my chores, I trudged through the mud near the marsh edge.  Surely. my brain would be jostled enough by something besides mud!  Just as I was thinking mud was to be the high point of the hike, the sunrays hit upon a tiny speck on the pathway.  A spark of brilliant blue was to be seen on a gnarled root.  Hmmm...that was a bit interesting so, regardless of the knees of my jeans getting wet and muddy, I dropped down to inspect the tiny blue orb.

  Resin!  Or as we call it, pine gum.  Hurricane Zeta had obviously scraped a pine root bare and marred it enough to cause the pine sap to rise in a tiny ball.  This gum was now hardened on the outside creating the perfectly clear (although yellow as it was only blue by reflecting the sky) orb.  The sunrays were hitting it in the right position to allow me to see the reflection of the bright blue sky and surrounding oak tree tops in the orb's surface.  Ok, so that was fascinating!  

  The finding of the pine gum brought the brain around into a circle of things from how to remove the sticky stuff from clothing to needing to make some salve.  The salve is more important than fretting over a smear on the jeans so now the brain is in high gear of remembering the concoction...pine gum, oil, beeswax...hmmm...time to do some pondering and some searching for pine gum. I will need a good bit more than that tiny orb! Setting and keeping goals are good entertainment...at least for me.

The Blue and Purple Orb of Peaceful Information!

  While photographing my daughter's place the other day, I decided it would be a grand thing to take a picture of the adjacent wooded area. This is just opposite of the fenced yard and across the driveway.  I did not think much of it at the time but once I started looking at the photographs, I noticed that this particular picture looked a tad strange. Right smack dab in the middle of all that green was a large blue and purple blob!  Ok, so I must have tilted the camera wrong and caught a bit of sunlight which caused an "orb" to appear in the picture.  Without much other reason for an orb to appear, the sunlight explanation would have to do.  Then I started looking at that picture a bit more.  It seemed weirder and weirder with each glance.  Now, I am not one that has a lot of technical knowledge so I cannot do much to enhance the photograph to give me a better look but with poor vision and lots of imagination, I have come to believe that I see a face in that orb! (Granted others will most likely say that I am daft but that claim has been made before!) To me, faces in orbs are exciting! Or at the very least confusing.  

  I tried to find a reasonable explanation for the phenomenon but none really made much sense to me.  My son once told me that I live in my own little world called "Imagination" and I guess he is not too far wrong.  I do.  Still, that face intrigued me and I blame my granddaddy for that. Back when I was a tot, he had me looking for faces in everything from flowers to tree bark so it only stands to reason that I can find them in photographic orbs!  In fact, this orb was more like a whole string of the things all lined up in order. That, too, was fascinating as, at best, I only capture one or two flitting about the photograph at any given time.  Plus!  This bunch has two bright teal colored buttons!  Ok..so the imagination flew around a bit there.   Still,even the colors of the orb tell me something.  According to color charts, blue represents protection, bright (teal) blue means tranquility and purple stands for information.  So, if this was to all be tossed together into some ethereal phenomenon, my orb has come to tell me that it is protecting this peaceful place!  Way to go, Orb!  It is good to know that you are on the job!  (It is also great to be able to let the imagination run amok occasionally!)

The "Great Blue Orb of Tranquility"!

  Call me crazy if you like, (most folks do) but I have a great interest in the "unexplained".  I like weird and wonderful things!  If something occurs that is a tad unusual, I want to explore why it happened in the first place.  Son says that I just can't leave well enough alone but, then again, he readily has an answer for all of my questions.  (I love having kids that are smarter than me and, well, all of mine are!)  Anyway, if I come across a bit of quirkiness in nature or if I do something that has strange results, I am thrilled.  A lot of these oddities happen with my poor attempt at photography.  A lot of happy results are nothing more than huge mistakes!  

  My latest "happy" happened when I was trying to photograph an extraordinarily bright sunset the other evening.  There was hardly a cloud to be found and the sun was most gleaming!  I have no idea why this appealed to me so since I seem to be drawn more to the more colorful sunsets.  Give me a western sky filled with reds and oranges and I am one happy camper!  Still, this captivated me!  Out came the camera and I started snapping pictures.  Once inside, I viewed my efforts in capturing the beauty that had been set before me.  While the photographs fell into the "ok" category, one blip in the pictures intrigued me.  I had captured an ORB!!! Whoopee!  An orb!  Now don't get me wrong. I do understand that orbs can be just reflections but this one seemed different somehow.  This orb was brilliant blue AND had the upside-down scene of the yon tree in it! Well, now!  That was different!  If only there was a way to enlarge the "orb" so I could view it even better!  I am sad to say that my skills at computers is even more lacking than my skills in photography.  I could not enlarge the orb to the size that I wished.

  This is where my son, Michael, came into the whole scenario. "Obviously, you managed to photograph a dust mote, a bit of moisture or even a fleck of pollen that reflected an inverse image of the tree behind you and not the one between you and the sun."  Huh?  "Check out the picture in the "orb". It is upside-down alright but it is not the same tree as the one in the photograph and most orbs are just bits of something floating in the air and not a true orb." Well, that just sounded far too logical to be anything that I wanted to hear so I decided that a bit of imagination sounded far more fun!  Nope!  This is not a dust speck!  I refuse to believe that!  It is a mystical orb floating about the marsh and I read somewhere that blue orbs are special! They usually are signs of peace and calm but this was no ordinary orb!   This, my friends, was The Great Blue Orb of Tranquility and it reigned over the Bayou and all of its denizens!  The Orb was there to mediate all squabbles between the herons and egrets.  It was there to soothe the feelings of the otters when the nutria rats are feeling quite territorial. It was there to mediate between the pelicans and gulls. It was there to bring peace to all.  The Orb needed my help, though, as the trees were harboring ill-will...specifically the tree it was depicting. Since trees do not respond well to the efforts of the Orbs, it was my job to placate the feelings of that particular tree and ease its worry.  I had to find a way to mollify the anger of the Tree!  When I confronted the Tree, it told me that it was angry at the Smilax vines.  The evil vines were using the tree as support but were strangling it.  The Tree would soon die if they did not let go.  Aha!  That was most easy to fix! I told the tree that I fully understood its predicament and that I was there to reason with the Smilax.  All would be well with the tree and peace would once again be found on the Bayou!  The Great Blue Orb thanked me profusely and declared that I was official Smilax Soother! 

  Ok, ok, so none of this is true but you have to admit that my story was a lot more imaginative than the logical response that I received about my orb!  The only purpose that the story served, though, was to remind me that I really need to get down there and chop out some more of those pesky vines!  I do think it is far more fun to photograph blue orbs!