http://theliterarylink.com/mangostreet.html

I had my students do an assignment based on this free style poem. They did awesome jobs. It made me want to write one using the same criteria that I gave them. They were supposed to use this writing as model, and write about their names, how they got them, what they mean, how they feel about them, similes, metaphors and stories. Wow. I was impressed. I wish I had more time to think about it and write one now- alas, it is bed time.

I will however post about the bluebonnets which I wrote about over the weekend and didn't publish.

Pk and I went to take pictures of/with the blue bonnets a few weeks ago. Sadly, the blue bonnets were kind of anorexic looking at that time, while now they are looking rather robust. In years past, however, the blue bonnets have been known to curl up and die after a month- so we felt we had to act fast. They had started appearing two weeks before we went, we didn’t want to miss out on the event. We were pre-emptive.

We drove around looking for the best blue bonnets. We were sorely disappointed at the lack of blue bonnets at the Cedar Hill State Park. Although, since we were there already, we had a little look-see around. There’s an old farm on the park property. I guess it’s there to show all the city-folks how farms look . . . anyway- there are several barns, sheds, store houses- and other farmish architecture. What do I know- I never lived on an actual farm. I did briefly live with my grandparents in a semi-farm-like environment.

We read the sign about the barn, we went in the barn. The barn had been built during WWII and was constructed out of some older structures, a log cabin and an old one room school house. The sign asked if we could find the older structures within the larger structure- yeah sure, not that hard. The school house had a door at the front and a window on each side. The door was locked. The window on my side was closed but not locked. I decided to open it and peek inside.

Inside it was dark, very dark, even though the window on the other side was open. It was creepy dark. Being that it was so dark, and that I am so nosy, I stuck my head in the window to see more darkness. That’s when I heard it. It was a – well- defiantly a snort. A snort from something with a rather large nose. It didn’t register at first- I don’t know, maybe I thought PK did it- not that her nose is especially big, but when you’re all into the adventure of dark-school-house-barns of WWII . . . some things just slip by I guess. To punctuate the situation, IT snorted again. I got it that time.

SOMETHING was in the school/barn! I snapped my head out of there, closed the window and bolted it. I didn’t squeal until I heard IT shuffle around in there. How fast can Shannon get out of a state park barn? Dang fast!

PK and I discussed the possibilities of what IT might have been. A cow? It was a barn- but also a state park- would the state really leave an animal in the barn without any warning? The other window was open, maybe a wild animal got in there, maybe a crazy person was living in the barn/school! Strangely enough, it didn’t bother us much once we were out of the barn, except I refused to walk through the barn again on our way out.

As for the blue bonnets, we found some acceptable ones on private property a little farther down the road, just across the road from the pet cemetery. While we were in the area we stopped by to see who was at the cemetery. We saw But-But, Poopie Baby and Dumper. Some people name their animals very literally.