Still more of the Cotton Pickin' Fair....

Well, these are not in the order I took them - not that it really matters to anyone but me being the stickler for details that I am. I don't know how to turn the top one of Rhett (without Picasa's help).

Rhett, the southern Rebel. The good thing about having kids is you can tell them, "Stand right here while I take your picture..." and he does it! He's a ham and a half.

The magnolia evoked old childhood memories for me. We used to have two magnolia trees in our yard. One in the front and one in the back. My mom hated them due to the leaves she had to rake and all the bugs that swarmed around them, often coming inside the house. I carried on about the bugs like a girl. The one in the back yard was lower to the ground. We would hear noises underneath it at night. My mom always felt like there could be someone standing underneath it at night so she had it cut down, but blamed it on the leaves and bugs.

I loved playing with this part of the tree that I took photographed. I would pull out these red seeds and pretend they were berries or food. I loved the white piece of silk like string that formed a tail when you removed it. One day, the boy down the street and I picked almost every form of berry we could find. We put them in one of my tiny pots I pretended to cook with. He put some water in it. He had a Creepy Crawler machine so we used the heating unit to cook them on. They were made out of sturdy metal unlike the plastic ones today because Rhett has one of the new versions. We went on to play other things or swing or something, forgetting we were "cooking". When we did remember, the water had boiled out and it was a hardened mess in my pan. Instead of trying to get it out of my pan, I felt it was hopeless so I told him to just throw the pan away. I had more of them anyway. We never told our parents what we did. Its a wonder his play house didn't catch on fire!

Those red berries in the magnolia would serve as another memory for me. When I would grow up to wear red nail polish, my ring finger nails would look similar to one of the red seeds. Of course my ring finger now is a lot different from your's because I have rings on nearly every finger; sometime 3 on one!

I sent this out as an email. It brought back wonderful childhood memories for my friend Bob. He thanked me for letting him remember a good memory from his past. Glad I could help, Bob.

And last but not least, I couldn't resist snapping the Chocolate O'Hara sign in honor of Rhett's name.