I have been walking past a house nearby with the dog, waiting to see the owner out in the garden. They have these little patches of flowers (it looks like a fairy garden in the evening sun) and I wanted to know what they were, as they looked like little daisies. As it turned out, they were little daisies, called "lawn daises" - which I have never heard of before. She offered me some that I could start growing, but as I was with the dog I gratefully declined and went on my way.
We do have some daisies growing that randomly come up around the place, with the one in the picture a solitary fellow standing near the driveway. I was wondering about that "Loves me" using daisies game and decided to search for it, finding out that it was French in origin (of course) and is more than "loves me, loves me not". Apparently, it cycles through five options, and the last petal is the "truth" about their feelings.
Effeuiller la marguerite
Un peu (A little)
Beaucoup (A lot)
Passionnément (Passionately)
À la folie (Madly)
Pas du tout (Not at all)
Superstitions and fortune-telling are funny things, because I think that we all have some attraction to them, even if we are not believers. My daughter is born on the 13th and has recently found out it is unlucky, and it annoys her. However, all numbers are probably unlucky, depending on the cultural filter. Thirteen is unlucky likely for religious reasons based on Judas being the thirteenth guest at the last supper, and in Norse mythology, Loki being the uninvited thirteenth at a banquet in Valhalla that caused chaos and killed the god Balder.
In China, 4, 14, 24 are all unlucky. 8 in India. 7 in Vietnam and Thailand. And 39 in Afghanistan - because it sounds like dead cow.
Humans are silly.
But no matter how logical we believe ourselves to be, if we pay attention, we will often find little signposts indicating our illogicality. We play little games, like "love me not" or avoid walking under ladders, or avoid breaking mirrors - or somerthing. Likely, we all at times do something, believe something, or wish something based on two otherwise completely unrelated events. Like wishing on a shooting star, a fallen eyelash, a birthday candle or a wishbone.
Not that we expect it to come true.
But we secretly hope it would.
Imagine what the world would look like if people were granted a significant number of their wishes. It would be pretty chaotic, with far too much materialistic creation, as well as a lot of unnecessary deaths - I wish you were dead - kind of things.
I once wrote an article here positing the idea that our wishes can come true, but when selected it is like a lucky dip into a pool of all the wishes we have made. And like me, I would say that we use "I wish..." for a lot of things that if we actually had a genie to grant, we wouldn't use the wish for.
I wish it was warmer
I wish I was taller
I wish it would rain
I wish I had a new car
I wish I hadn't eaten that last cookie....
A million wishes in the hat, so that if one is actually selected, the chance of it being anything significant is very low. But it does explain some of the highly random events that have happened, where out of the trillions of wishes, some crazy ones occasionally get selected.
I wish I was president...
I wish I was a trillionaire...
Anyway, I thought it was nice that the neighbour offered some flowers to me, and I kind of feel bad I didn't take them, because I think it would have made her happier than me. But, at least now when I walk past and see her in the yard, I can stop and have a chat about something, and bring a little bit of community back into the world.
I wish....
Taraz
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I'm entirely superstitious, I have fish socks (koi, whaleshark and some shark ones that are currently in the repair cupboard) to my boys' comps for good luck XD
Also Youngest firmly believes in the seven years of bad luck thing because he broke a mirror when he was younger and has coincidentally been having small bouts of bad luck ever since (usually bad dice rolls or card draws or bad rng in games) which coincidentally seems to have eased off about seven years later XD
He also freaks out when I walk under ladders but I assure him that it probably didn't notice me because I'm short.
And once upon a time I had four black cats simultaneously.
Also also 13 is a great number, it's one of my "lucky" ones XD (the other ones are 3 and 7)
Do you do a lap with the dog? Could you double back past that neighbour's house for the daisies or drop by later without the dog to collect some?
Bringing community back in the world is theoretically easy, making other people care is hard. We have always had some kind of community built around sports but there's pockets that get very tight knit where the parents (and the kids if they've been there long enough) will jump in to help any way they can either enthusiastically from the outset or after they've been around for a while and started to learn how things work and figure out where their particular skills and abilities can slot in, and meanwhile everyone else is floating around expecting to gain all the benefits with none of the effort because they paid some money and that's more than enough and it's a grave insult to ever ask anything more of them.
Well this is a first! :D
When I got ill as a teen, I was wondering if it was because of mirror breaking a few years earlier. It was just the corner of it, and it was an accident... but still, broken.
Four black cats? I would call that lucky :)
Yeah I could, but I feel like an idiot. However, I am planning on getting some to plant in "the right" season. It matters a lot here.
Sport is a great way to do it. I would like to see a future (since our jobs will all be replaced by robots and AI) where communities develop around local sports again, fitness, wellbeing, doing good....
Yeh that's a bit overkill for a corner of a mirror.
The four black cats were probably counterbalanced by the one grey one XD I did not find them bad luck in the slightest, occasionally annoying but that's all pets and people.
Why would you feel like an idiot? o_O And even so that's the perfect preface for the next time you see her. "So I was an idiot last time and it didn't enter my head to ask if I could come back for the flowers after I dropped the dog home, do you still have extra?" XD
I had a goal once upon a time of building communities around community gardens. Unfortunately I don't know the first thing about community building (even after existing in a job whose secondary purpose is community building for a few years) and am generally terrible at people so now I'm planning on getting everything re-established here and then seeing where we can encourage people to plant more food gardens.
there is a small part of me that wants to revisit one of my uni options of urban design/landscape architecture as it is probably quite different from architecture which I got foever put off by watching my cousin doing his final year but it's one of those things that will remain a dream
You should definitely get some ! Then Smallsteps can made daisy chains with them 😀 We used to do that growing up, making bracelets, necklaces and crowns of chained daisy flowers. It was a challenge to see how long we could make a chain before it all fell apart.
That is a good idea. She has a lot of fun finding four leaf clovers too. She gets so many of them - abd barely even trying.
That would definitely be quite different. It would probably make us think a bit more about what we are saying before we say it. We were going to plant some sunflowers in our side garden, but I kind of forgot, so now we are looking into just separating and moving some hostas.
Probably a good thing these days.
(Sounds like my tulips)
Are they easy to grow? I have always wanted to grow some, since they aren't so common in gardens here. I know they do grow though. Have you tried before?
No, I have never tried to grow those before. I think they grow pretty good though. They get super tall. That's part of why we wanted them so they would block the view from the neighbors a bit. If it wasn't so invasive I'd do bamboo. That would be cool, but I don't think I would be able to keep it from spreading.
Daisies are my favorite flower! As a child the pasture across from our house was filled with them and I picked bouquets for all my favorite ladies in the neighborhood!
I was born on the 11th and have always considered that my lucky number. Tell smallsteps that 13 is her personal Lucky Number
I can't remember them being a thing when I was growing up - I don't think we had them at our house at least. They are pretty flowers though, as they are structured and uniform :)
Legs 11!
There used to be so many lawn daisies growing in the fields when I was a child, and we used to play the "loves me, loves me not" game with them.
The neighbour mows around them, so there is nice green grass, and then the flowers.
Did she love you?
I am not sure I did it for someone or something 😄
My neighbor across the street gave me a few flowers that are now happily growing in my backyard. He also got rid of all his grass so he gave me like four bags of grass fertilizer and it took me a couple years to use that up...
Did the fertiliser actually help the grass? I have never done ours, and it might look like it :D
It definitely did help, it keeps it nice and green if you water it :) Last year I decided to let it go natural and it all burned out without the watering...
Reading about Smallsteps interacting with the flowers filled me with nostalgia and joy. Little girls have a special way of becoming part of the garden. My daughter Sofía was just the same; sunflowers were her whole world and she loved dressing up in them to play. It’s those moments of simplicity that really stay with you. Blessings.
It is strange how culture has tried to take away the influence of genetics, but little girls all over the world generally act in the same way.
It's true some people believe in mysticism and superstition. From my experience, ancestral tradition determine auspicious days. Javanese weton (birthdays) and so on. These calculations are then relayed to the extended family. The problem is that most weddings are held in a building. If the wedding date is set, and someone else uses the building. Thank you.
Thanks