A Simple Smile Equals the Universal Language of Kindness

Six Word Photo Story Challenge: “Nature Art”

On par with my drawing skills

I’ve always admired those who can draw.

My skill lies in drawing lopsided smiley faces, a top-heavy tree, a flower and a stickman with an oversized head. They’re all relatively simple and cartoon-like.

The secret to learning to draw is to practise, but I’m not hopeful practice will help me. I can’t draw a straight line. Nor can I cut a straight line (there’s a reason I’m not a hairdresser!) And I don’t have much depth perception.

Still, I wish I could draw … maybe one day.

For now, I’ll stick to arranging blossoms into smiley faces. In itself, that was quite challenging — perhaps it was the circumstances.

Rotto was happy to sit and munch on some dried kangaroo while I collected the blossoms and leaves. But he knows that it’s happy snap time when my phone comes out. By then, he just wanted to get back to his Rott-trot.

Luckily, I captured the shot the first time because Rotto wasn’t hanging about to let me take a backup photo!

🌸Blossoms (to the best of my knowledge) come from the Corymbia ficifolia, also known as a Flowering Gum Tree.

🌸These gum trees flower in a few colours — soft pink, deep pink, red, vibrant orange and white.

🌸Birds that feed on nectar love them, as do bees. There is a young 2-metre tree on our regular Rott-trot with some vibrant pink blossoms covered in bees. I love the colour but have to be ever-so careful as Rotto is a bee-eater. Aside from the declining number of bees, it's problematic, as Rotto has a bee allergy.

🌸Flowering Gums grow between 5–7 metres.

More Six Word Photo Stories from Sandi:

Sandi Parsons is an award-winning school librarian with over 20 years experience working in educational libraries. She lives with her favorite husband and two problem puppies. One day, she’ll attempt to learn to draw properly … one day.

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