The pink bloodroot bud is finally open! All silvery pink petals except one, and they are translucent. The pink gene appears to have infiltrated many of the bloodroot plants in the woods, several of them show one or more pink petals, and some have more than the normal eight, but are not fully double. Very curious!
This one is half pink!
Diversity is not all in plants, either. As rockhounds, we have brought home loads of rock and mineral specimens from all over the US, and those that are just pretty or interesting, or can't be cut for jewelry, wind up in our dry creek. Agate, in the quartz family, is one of the more common stones and has so much unbelievable variety and color that it is one of my favorites. It cuts and polishes wonderfully, and shows up in everything from rings and necklaces to bookends, floors and countertops. But it doesn't stop there. Stones can be precious gems like diamonds, rubies and emerald, semi-precious like turquoise, malachite, tigers eye, and hundreds more. They can be granite, sandstone, quartz crystals, or minerals like sulphur, iron, copper, silver, gold or lead. They can even be petrified wood!
Lots of pretty colors! All of these are in the dry creek.
red and white agate
banded chert in the center, agate nodule bottom right
Lava rock (Basalt) upper left, sandstone formations
The pink rock in the center is Mozarkite. Lots of diversity in Missouri rocks.
The red rock in the center is red jasper, the metal looking thing upper right is native copper.
Some people believe that various stones have metaphysical properties and can affect a person's state of mind, or health, or help them develop their psychic qualities. It may be true that stones and minerals have "wave lengths" or "vibrations". They do contain lots of energy. It is a fact, for example, that the characteristic purple color of amethyst is caused by electrons bouncing around in there. If amethyst is heated, or sits in the sun for a long period of time, voids open up in the stone, the electrons escape and the resulting color will be kind of a pale, washed out gray. It is also true that quartz crystals will have faces that attract, or repel each other. This effect can actualy be felt if you take two large-ish crystals (small ones won't have enough strength for you to feel it) and bring the flat faces close to each other. If you have them oriented right, they will act much like magnets and you will be able to feel the attraction or repulse. It will be slight, but it is there. Do crystals have an attraction to an individual psyche? Perhaps. If you are looking through a flat of crystals, picking them up one by one, and you find yourself examining and holding the same one over and over and feel somehow reluctant to put it down, it could be "attuned" to your own mental or physical vibrations. Perhaps that may also explain why, when sometimes you may pick up a particular rock on a hike, or on a beach and put it in your pocket for no reason that you can think of, it becomes "your" rock, and you might keep it for years.
Looking down the dry creek in the woods
Polished stone, agate, wire wrapped crystals, Turquoise is in center, bright orange on left is fire agate. Bead at top right is carnelian, other stones are various agate.
Missouri has a lot of native rock, also, from lead and zinc in our 4-States mining area and all the associated minerals that go with it, calcite, pyrite, Smithsonite, et al, plus there are just "rocks" (leaverites--'yeah, it's a rock. Just leave 'er right there') with a lot of character, that make wonderful garden rocks. There are "holey" stones, rocks that are packed with fossils, rocks with "faces" (sometimes you have to use your imagination), flint and chert that early native Americans used to make tools, and our Missouri state stone, the pink/grey Mozarkite, a type of agate. I've seldom met a rock I didn't love!
"Mother's Milk"
"Mother's Milk" Handbeaded necklace in seed beads with pink agate centerpiece.
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