Early Friday: The most striking roadside flower on my drive from Greenville to Quincy yesterday was the Thimbleberry. This member of the rose family, along with wild raspberry, cinquefoil, and the many different flowering fruit trees in the same family, got me to thinking about this traditional phrase. I think I'll search for its origin. Although the flowers put me in a good mood every time I go out looking for them, it seems ironic when I'm also inundated with ever-worsening news about the BP oil disaster. To add to the irony, as soon as I turned on my computer I'm greeted with Google's celebration of Jacques Cousteau's 100th birthday. A lot of his early exploration and research was funded by BP and for many years he was enthusiastic about our potential to exploit the ocean's resources. He couldn't be called an environmentalist until relatively late in his career. Photos of the rose family will be added later today.
Later Friday: The title of this post, according to my initial research, can be traced to the musical, "Gypsy," which hit broadway in my senior year of high school, 1959. That can be traced to an earlier musical in the late forties. However, I feel the phrase must be much older. I'll continue my search. Meanwhile, this first bacth of photos includes one of the Sierra Wild Rose, two views of Thimbleberries, and two of the foliage of Cinquefoil. Later, I'll post some photos of the blossoms, and also of some other members of the rose family. On yesterday's wanderings, though, it was the foliage that caught my eye. I'll be back....
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