A friend, years ago when plastic was first coming into its own, gave me two of his early flock of flamingoes when he left Milwaukee for Sequim WA. I cherished these antique creatures and proudly displayed them on holidays within the back fence enclosure where they were not apt to be stolen by the omnipresent flamingo thieves, lurking.Alas, one of the fragile-necked birds got broken, decapitated. Not wanting to let a perfectly good flamingo of that vintage go to waste, I took the head of the old flamingo and crossed it with two gourds that grew near the flamingo's pronged site when it was whole.
This was years before affiliating with the Zeta Chapter of the American Gourd Society. I am not sure if there is any proscription against such mixed media breeding, but at the time I certainly felt no constraint. Given the windings and threadings and paintings and puttyings of the gourds I see in the newsletters, I think I am within bounds.
The bird, we contend, 'hangs together' as a unit just fine. Surreptitious painted bands around the joints where one piece joins another established that, hey, this is one thing, a natural phenomenon. Probably born that way.
No comments:
Post a Comment