Gino Covacci was walking peacefully by the sea on December 9, 2012 when he found this gigantic, monstrous eye still oozing blood. He contacted police and then the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation. Eventually the mystery was solved that it was a swordfish’s eye. Covacci’s find became known in the media as the Big Blue Eye.
Flash Fiction Challenge
Mondays Finish the Story is a flash fiction challenge by Barbara W. Beacham. The story requires 100-150 words. Here is my short story for this week’s prompt based on the first sentence below and the picture.
The Nightshade Escape JK.Leahy Short Story©
“The team employed the use of Nightshade to get the information they wanted from their captive.”
Viola smiled to herself as she finished the paper and her coffee. “Nightshade”, her ‘weapon’ was right next-door, she thought. All this time, her plan to make his death appear subtle, wasn’t working.
Wearing her garden hat Viola strolled to her neighbour’s yard, pretending to tidy her garden beds. Her blood roses were peeking at her, but she won’t pick them today, the day was fading fast and in a few hours, Greg arrives.
Crouching, she reached through the fence and cut a few shoots and flowers off her neighbour’s nightshades. A dog barked loudly and so close that Viola leaped, dropping her hat and all the cuttings. She ran back into her house. Shaken, she watched the large doberman sniffing where she sat, seconds ago.
Oh well, if that dog is going to guard the damn nightshade – the rat poison will have to do, she decided.
Photography can be easily addictive as most of you that take pictures know. And, when you have an interesting subject of beautiful colours, it is hard to stop shooting. I have been shooting aloes in my garden with the Nikon D5200 and thinking of ways to make the pictures more interesting because the flowers are narrow and tall.
I find the aloe itself fascinating for many reasons. The most important reason is that it is a medicinal plant and we all have come across the Aloe Vera commonly eaten, drunk and used in skin products. I used the juice when I was pregnant with my boys for skin-care and digestion. These days, we use the aloe vera for cuts and itchy skin. Aloes are part of the Liliaceae family. There are about 500 species of aloes in the world. They are a perennial succulent and their medicinal uses are traced back to 1500BC where it was known as “plant of immortality”. Read more here.
Aloes are very hardy plants and like the cactus – they can grow in very tough conditions. The amazing thing about Aloes are their beautiful flowers, many are intricate and often not what you expect to see.I have a few varieties and each one of them have their own unique bloom. See other colours here.
Thank you to all my readers
I like small wins. Here, my blue iris bloomed for the first time in almost a year. Perhaps it was because I moved her from the edge of a small pond to the shade of a gum tree – I’m not sure what happened to her, but she came back. That makes me happy.
The other win was that this blog hit the highest number of visits per month ever. I had over 3000 visitors in July and the top performers were;
Australia
Papua New Guinea
United Kingdom
I appreciate ALL readers and visitors and look forward to your continued support. Thank you!
TM
Tribalmystic Stories 