Blood Red Feathered Fantasy

#NatureTwinning Part 53

Unknown Pink Flower in Demonstration Gardens--Monday, 4/16/18

Brown and pink is a lovely combination, and this outfit was marvelously simple perfection, topped off with such a neat overhand-knotted scarf.

I like to experiment, force my hand, and generally push myself just a bit into the new with my outfits, but man, when something is easy and right, that's it's own joy.

Outfit cost per wear (OCPW): $9.84

Google identified this flower as a peony, and I think that's right.  According to Wikipedia:

The peony is named after Paeon (also spelled Paean), a student of Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine and healing. When Asclepius became jealous of his pupil, Zeus saved Paeon from the wrath of Asclepius by turning him into the peony flower.

Missouri Botanical Gardens

Flamingo in the Food Trough--Tuesday, 4/17/18

Black and white and a pop of color is kind of spectacular when that pop of color is a nearly-neon salmon-pink skirt.  I'm also enjoying the lovebirds blouse with silver feather pendant as a bit of matchy-matchy goodness.

OCPW: $16.40

Let's face it--it's a little hard to look dignified when you're a flamingo...especially when you have chosen to stand in your food trough.  I laughed when this guy walked over to the trough and put himself in there, but on reflection, it's not as strange as it first seemed.  He is a wading bird, after all, so standing in a few inches of "dirty" water probably feels very right to him.

The word flamingo came from the Portuguese/Spanish "flamengo" for "flame-colored" or from the Greek, "blood red-feathered."  As you probably know, flamingos are pink-to-red because of the carotenoid pigments in the food (in the wild: algae, crustaceans; in the zoo: pellets enriched with carotenoids) they eat.

Surprising flamingo fact:  "Living flamingos demonstrate substantially less body sway in a one-legged posture [as opposed to standing on two legs]."

Indianapolis Zoo

In other news...One of the best fantasy-novels-for-adults that I've read in the past few years is The Secret Chord by Geraldine Brooks.  Yes, she got the idea for writing a historical fiction about the biblical King David from the Leonard Cohen song "Hallelujah" which her son played on the harp at his own bar mitzvah (which strikes me as strange AF but okay).  The end product was compulsively readable, even though many/most/all of the main plot points will be recognizable or known in advance to readers with a basic knowledge of the Bible. 

Of course, Brooks doesn't frame her story as fantasy, but it worked for me extremely well conceptualized in this way.  Reading this book as fantasy really pointed up the limitations in most fantasy fiction, the primary one being the lack of moral complexity in the protagonist--in their person and in the world they create/support.  This is not something lacking in the story of David.

Here are a couple very different reviews of the book that I enjoyed reading.