Unique Serving Platter

My neighbor and I went to an area nursery to purchase fall decorations for our yards. I have a scarecrow that I put out and I pressed several colored leaves to arrange under pumpkins. I wanted to have some gourds, but I know our Labrador Retrievers like to pick them up and carry them around the yard. Last year I was picking up gourds from all over the yard. I mentioned this to my neighbor as we drove to the nursery. She said that maybe if I put them in a container they would be less likely to pick them up.

I kept this in mind when we arrived at the nursery. They had many pumpkins, gourds squash and mums to choose from. The gourds and squash that were for sale were displayed in bushel baskets. They had several sizes of bushel baskets and also a variety of colors. The nursery had the plain brown bushel baskets that are used to gather vegetables in the field. They also had bright colored baskets that were more decorative. Their apples were displayed in bright red bushel baskets.

I the basket idea might work to keep the dogs from stealing my display. I asked the clerk at the nursery if they sold bushel baskets. She said that they had decorated ones in one of the green houses. My neighbor and I went to look at them. They were very nice. Someone had hand painted flowers on some of the baskets and nature scenes on others. The sign indicated that the baskets were coated with a weather proof seal. The baskets were quite high priced so I did not want to buy any.

I asked the clerk where we could buy plain bushel baskets. She said that I would need to ask the head of the field crew. The field crew leader said that they order the bushel baskets from a supplier in the metro area. I explained I wanted to use a couple by my scarecrow in the yard. He said that he had a pile of baskets behind one of the greenhouses that were going in the garbage because they were missing handles. He said that I could have any of them that I wanted. My neighbor and I found several baskets in great shape. We did not care if the handles were missing. On the way home we stopped at a garage sale. The home owner was selling several partial cans of exterior paint. I bought a can of yellow and a can of green. I painted the bushel baskets and then put them by the scarecrow. They were a great addition to my fall display. So far the dogs have left the gourds in the baskets.

When I was a little girl I loved going to the swimming pool each and every day of the summer. My mom was a single mom and she had to work, and that meant we spent our days with our babysitter. Her teenage daughter took us to the local pool each day and I would love to be there. In fact, there would be days when you could not get me out of the pool. When it rained we could not go swimming and I would be very disappointed. This went on for quite a few summers until my mom no longer needed to work all the time and we could stay home with her. Though I was a great swimmer, I was always scared of the diving board.

The pool in our town was small, but our town was small too. Though it was not the biggest one around, it was always clean, and when thinking about size versus cleanliness, I always prefer that something is clean. There were two diving boards there and one large slide. The smaller diving board was only about four feet from the water and though it took me a while, I finally got the courage up to use it. When it came to the large diving board, well that was a different story entirely. I was only eight then and that board seemed to climb up into the sky.

It took me a long time to get the nerve up to climb up on the high diving board and though thinking back, it wasn’t even very big. I finally got up there one day and had to climb back down. I never really considered myself to be afraid of heights because I loved to climb high up in trees. The thought of hurling myself down from that height was unthinkable. I love to be up high, but when I was in a tree, I never dreamed of jumping down, even when water was involved. This was just something I knew I needed to do, so I tried again.

I finally go the nerve up to jump off that high diving board and though it was not as bad as I thought it was going to be, it was not something that I ever did again. Even now when I am swimming I don’t really care for the high diving board. I guess there is just something scary about diving in head first from that height that I might never get over. Now that I am over 30, I don’t think there is anything that anyone can do to change my mind.