Brightening your day?

Saturday morning I headed out to work and found myself following a white pickup truck with a window box full of red, pink, and white vinca.  What was wrong with this picture?  I know, I know, I'm long overdue for a visit to the ophthalmologist.


The pickup was not going very fast.  When I pull alongside at a stop light I could see the flowers were not growing in an automotive window box.  The nursery flats of flowers were sitting atop the metal truck tool box.  Alas, I couldn't reach my camera.

As little kids in the Sixties, we always drew window boxes full of flowers when we made pictures of houses.  There were required standards and conventions not all that different from the restrictive covenants of today's homeowners associations.  Never mind that there were very few Eastridge homes with window flower boxes, and none with red brick Santa chimneys.  

The drawing traditions handed down from Big Kids to Little Kids were strict.  There were standards to uphold that went far beyond mere coloring inside the lines!  All trees must have apples year-round.  All trees must have a hole in the trunk for an owl.  


All vehicles must have shining yellow headlights, day or night, even though the smiling sun is always drawn in the upper left-hand corner of the paper,  What if all pickups had window flower boxes? All cars, too?
  


What if all Sundays had a gift of tomatoes, and a page-turning murder mystery set in Chicago? A mental health lunch at Corner Bakery with a good friend?  Wandering in World Market and riding shotgun through the carwash?  Making hummus and pesto?  What a wonderful world that would be!   


© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder