Passion Fruit and Chloe

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The other night we went to a friend's house for a teen game night.  You know these type of things, you never know exactly what to expect.  Is it formal?  Do people know one another?  Can we be loud?  Will we like them?  Will they like us?  Is there a SHedule we must follow?  Will they be offended when the kids won't eat anything?

Guess what?  It was GREAT!

From beginning to end, it was great.  There was the park time, the dinner, the fire and marshmallows, the games, the pictures, new friends, laughter...  Lots of great things. 

But my favorite moment of the day happened fairly early in the party.  We were at the nearby park hanging out.  Kids were scattered here and there doing many different things.  One of the girls, ten-year-old Chloe showed me something she had found in the bush along the side of the playground.  It was a passion fruit.  I was completely unfamiliar with a passion fruit.

I followed Chloe over to the overgrown area next to the park and explored the area with her.

We found very cool seed pods all over the place.  (It's cooler weather right now in Brisbane, technically winter, so seed pods around here are phenomenal!)  We also saw this cool spider web with a large spider sitting in the middle.  But the web wasn't your normal web, it was spherical and about two feet across!  I enjoyed exploring this area with Chloe because she has such an inquiring mind and she seems to be taking things in all around her all of the time. 

She found a few more of the yellow or green passion fruits and we carried them over to the table.  She opened one up, after asking her mom if she could, and started eating it's contents.  Inside was this yellowish-greenish goo with small greenish-brown seeds.  Chloe's mom Tanya is very cool.  She said that the contents could be eaten, seeds and all.

Before long Chloe is covered with the tangy stuff, licking juice that dripped down to her chin and all over the fruit.  For some reason I kept thinking of Opie from Mayberry RFD (a black-and-white tv show The Andy Griffith Show all about the good old days).  Watching her was like watching a golden moment of childhood.  Just GOOD.  Chloes of the world give me hope!  My apologies to the other wonderful children who were also there, mine included, but this brief moment was Golden! 

I tried the fruit and was pleasantly surprised.  Even though the goop inside looked awful, it was actually tangy, sweet, and good.

Someone had gathered up a collection of blossoms from around the park and I arranged them in this nice little still life.

I send many special Onyounghasayyo greetings to my Korean readers.

(well, I tried and I mean well.)

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