i put flowers on my bike basket. i have yet to put the basket on the bike, but that’s just a minor detail…

i started with a plain black basket. all function, no flair.

i plucked some of these off a leftover bunch of fake flowers…

the bright happy flowers had spent a few good years in my kitchen (you can get a sense for the colour-scheme of the kitchen here), but i gave them a second life last month when i used them to turn this…

into this…

recently, i used up the rest of them for my own bike basket. i plucked off the remaining flowers from the mossy base…

secured the wire around the little holes in the basket…

and here it is now:

see? much happier. the basket and i.

(tangent ahead, you were warned)

as i typed up “a tisket, a tasket”, i wondered what that even means. is it a nonsense term? like a “runcible spoon” in the poem “the owl and the pussy cat” …

They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon.

the full poem can be found here, where you can read about curious oddities, like “bong-trees” in addition to runcible spoons.

as for “a tisket, a tasket,” i knew that it came from a nursery rhyme that was later turned into a song by ella fitzgerald. (insert pause…happy sigh) ella fitzgerald pretty much introduced me to vocal jazz music. i’d like to say that she opened the door for me to discover other jazz greats, but nope, she pretty much closed the door, locked it, and swallowed the golden key. i fell in love with her voice, and that was the end of that. she sometimes lets louis armstrong in through the door, but he has to knock a certain way and say a secret password to be allowed in…

oh, but back to the nursery rhyme… it goes:

A-tisket a-tasket
A green and yellow basket
I sent a letter to my love
And on the way I dropped it

I dropped it, I dropped it
Yes, On the way I dropped it
A little girlie picked it up
And put it in her pocket

She was truckin’ on down the avenue,
Without a single thing to do
She was peck-peck-peckin all around
When she spied it on the ground

She took it she took it
my little yellow basket
And if she doesn’t bring it back
I think that I shall die
(Was it brown?) no, no,no, no,
(Was it red?) no, no,no, no,
(Was it blue?) no, no,no, no,
Just a little yellow basket

is the bolded line absolutely necessary? nursery rhymes always catch me off guard. they lull you with their happy upbeat tempo and then WHAM! out of nowhere, they throw in something really disturbing or heart-wrenchingly sad…

case in point:

rock a bye baby
on the tree top
when the wind blows
the cradle will rock
(*ahhh happy sleepy lulling numnums*)
when the bough breaks
the cradle will fall
and down will come baby
cradle and all.

horrific. i refused to sing that to my babies and use my own lyrics instead:

when the bough breaks
the cradle will fall
but mommy will catch baby
cradle and all.

(phew!)

and then there’s this one:

baa baa black sheep
have you any wool?
yes sir, yes sir,
three bags full!
(*wonderful! what a lovely black sheep*)
one for the master
(*wait for it*)
one for the dame
but none for the little boy
who cries in the lane.

isn’t it bad enough that the little boy is crying in the lane? i’m sure you could cough up a little wool for him. or at least ask him why he is crying. it’s as if this poor little guy is known to the whole village, just as the blacksmith, butcher and baker are… “oh yes, the little boy? yay high? the one who cries? yes yes, i know the one you mean guv’na. bloody cries all the time! in the lane of all places!” (note: there are other versions of this rhyme.)

brutal.

back to the happy flowers…

i shared this post on today’s creative blog.