rustypants speaks

as a boy, our backyard contained a myriad of flowers and plants thanks to my parents’ green thumbs. one gorgeous flower we had is known as the 4 o’clock plant. it looks like this:

but the seeds were what were fun to my little brother and i. they looked like little hand grenades and to get to them you had to squeeze the pod of the plant and it would pop open! way cool! the seeds look like this:

we loved to go into the yard and frolic and play, popping 4 o’clock seed pods and pretending they were grenades, throwing them at each other and our friends.

it was all in good fun until the day one of the seeds blew up in poor ralph’s hand.

cruel mother nature.