Decked out in feathers and diamonds

for Six Word Saturday

A girl’s best friend

I love milkweed, seeds and pods, and their role in providing food for monarch and other butterflies.  But there’s much more to this plant.  The silky floss has good insulation properties and its fibers are used to clean up oil spills.  On the darker side, many natives in Africa and South America use the poison on the tips of their arrows, while milkweed is toxic to animals when taken in large amounts.

Often the floss of the milkweed flies in the wind, like a head of blonde hair. But in the case of the seeds I found in the park not long ago, each strand was adorned with a plethora of tiny, frosty diamonds.

 

 

 

Diamonds in the fog

I woke to a fog-wrapped morning, damp and chill.  A fortifying breakfast, some time on the computer and I grabbed my iPad heading out for some solitary walking time.  The trail in the nature preserve felt as damp as if it had rained, the silence broken only by the muted calling of various birds, the dampness making the leaves soft enough to allow me to imagine myself an Indian treading soundlessly along the trail.  Ghostly figures of ducks inhabited the lakes, their bottoms popping comically into the grey air as they ate their fast food breakfasts.  Moisture coalesced enough to rain on me and I could feel my hair curling as I walked.  A lovely feeling of solitude wrapped me as closely as did the fog and reveling in it, I almost missed the spider web bejeweled with diamond droplets, a necklace fit for a queen.  Priceless.

Shapely

Diamonds