Tag Archives: Tumbleweeds

Nov18

Flower of the Day/ Kammie’s Oddball Challenge: Tumbleweeds

Posted on November 18, 2021 by Andrea R Huelsenbeck

I took these photos in August, when everything was still green due to the monsoons we had. Don’t they look a little like baby’s breath?

Walking along the canal after a very windy day, I found these folded up tumbleweeds with their undersides exposed:

Here in the desert, we get prolonged hot and dry days, and by mid-September the weeds lose their green color, dry up and turn brown, and the next strong wind snaps them at the ground line and they roll away.

When we first moved to Arizona, our neighbor told us not to freak out if a tumbleweed blows onto the road. Don’t swerve! If you run it over, it will crumble like a toothpick structure. The worst that could happen is you get a few thin scratches. Whereas if you swerve into another car, you could get a bent fender.

More Flowers of the Day; more Oddballs.

Apr4

NaPoWriMo2021 Day Four

Posted on April 4, 2021 by Andrea R Huelsenbeck

Standard

Today’s prompt is to “select a photograph from the perpetually disconcerting @SpaceLiminalBot, and write a poem inspired by one of these odd, in-transition spaces.” This is the photo I chose:

When Tumbleweeds Took Over the Town

Where do I go from here?
How can I navigate the barrier
That separates me from the mountain?

The obstacle is taller and wider than I.
I can’t see its boundary.
Does it stretch for feet, or miles?

Who will free the houses’ inhabitants?
Are they forever trapped?
Are they doomed to perish?

Will the trash cans ever be emptied?
Or when the truck comes, 
will it be forced to back out,
beeping warnings to ears that can no longer hear?

Must we wait for these thorny balls of twigs 
to crumble like cathedrals made from toothpicks?
Is this how it ends, humanity smothered by dead vegetation?

©ARHuelsenbeck