Overenthusiastic Cart Pushing (Wordless Wednesday) and Words for Wednesday

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Linking up with Wordless Wednesday, BeThere2Day, and Sandee at Comedy Plus.     

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Words for Wednesday was begun by Delores and has become a moveable feast of word or picture or music prompts to encourage us to write stories, poems, or whatever strikes our fancy.    

This month, the prompts are being provided by Charlotte.      

For today the prompts are

Scarf

Flower

Shoes

Pick

A bevy of quail

Leaves

     And/or

Branches

Unlucky

Wind

Major

Gnome

Fingers

Also, Charlotte/Mother Owl has chosen Golden Yellow as the color of the month, if we wish to use it.

Lenhardt the GNOME sighed as he tied the laces of his heavy boots, wishing they were simple SHOES instead, and grabbed his PICK.  Some days, his job in the marble quarry of the King and Queen was not a burden, and at other times it hung almost like a chain around his neck.  

Today he felt quite UNLUCKY to have been born into a quarry family, as the evening before at the twilight gathering he'd seen her again.

She was beautiful, and her family were not quarry gnomes.  They had the much more delicate and refined, at least in his opinion, job of providing fowl for the royal table and for the seasonal gatherings.

To him, tending A BEVY OF QUAIL was certainly a more, well, elegant way to serve the realm than the hot, sweaty work of marble quarrying.

Her father was also designated a MAJOR, and his father was only a captain.  That gap might be overcome, especially if he worked hard and moved up quickly in rank himself, but, then, he was still a quarry gnome.

His thoughts were quite dark as he made his way to his work, even his mother noticed his absent minded attitude as he almost walked out the door without his lunch, something he never did.

She'd also noticed his furtive looks at the girl sitting across from him at the twilight gathering and she shook her head.  Young love.  She knew the girl's mother, they had many friends in common.  She wondered if she should put in a word with her, but thought she'd wait a bit and see if anything played out first.  No need to rush.

Approaching the quarry, he was dragging his heels both mentally and physically when he heard the sound of LEAVES rustling.  He thought it was just the WIND until he noticed BRANCHES bending, and then a baby quail popped out followed by a bigger one he assumed was its mother.  The mother was chasing the baby, and then she came through, which was what was really causing the bush to shake, chasing them both.

The chick ran up to his boot and tried to grab the lace, and he reached down with a cupped hand and gently scooped it, holding it toward her whilst the mama ran around his legs, pecking at his boots.

"She wants me to put it down, doesn't she?" he asked her, surprised at himself for talking to her, but the birds had given him an opening line and he wasn't going to waste the moment.

"Yes, but you'd best hand it to me so it doesn't try to run off again," she said, and he thrilled as her fingers touched his in the gentle exchange.  She had on a Golden-Yellow SCARF and there was a FLOWER in her hair.

"I'm Meena," she said.  "Lenhardt.  Nice to meet you!"

"I saw you last night," she said.  "My mama says she knows your mama, and papa saw you when he met with your father to talk about marble for the new part of the castle where the quail runs will be.  He said you were a hard worker and would go places."

Lenhardt took a deep breath to control his voice and simply said, "Thank you," not trusting himself to say more.

"I'd best get these two back to the rest of the bevy.  I left my little sister with them, but she tends to daydream, that's how this one managed to run off while we were feeding them in the meadow.  I hope I see you at the next gathering!"

"I hope so, too," Lenhardt said, and watched as she disappeared into the bushes.  Then he shouldered his pick with a much lighter heart, and headed into the quarry.

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Today is:

Different Colored Eyes Day -- people with heterochromia, celebrate!

Etch-a-Sketch Day -- the toy was first manufactured on this day in 1960, timed to hit toy shelves for Christmas that year

Independence Day -- Kiribati(1979; a/k/a National Day); Sao Tome & Principe(1975)

Kronia -- Ancient Greek Calendar (date approximate, a festival for Kronos, part of which included masters and slaves switching places for a meal)

National Pecan Pie Day

Orangemen's Day (a/k/a Twelfth Day) -- Northern Ireland (Battle of the Boyne commemoration)

Rainmaker Day -- Salem, Oregon (while it is understood that in Salem, you are more likely to rust than sunburn, from 1892 until 2006, no measurable rain fell on this date in this normally wet city)

Simplicity Day -- sponsored by www.doonething.org on Thoreau's birthday, highlighting the concepts in the book Voluntary Simplicty by Duane Elgin, and advocating finding sustainable ways to live

St. John Gualbert's Day (Patron of foresters and forest workers, park services and parks)

St. Veronica's Day (Patron of laundry workers and photographers)

Anniversaries Today

Henry VIII marries Catherine Parr, 1543 (the lucky wife who outlived him)

Birthdays Today

Erik Per Sullivan, 1991

Michelle Rodriguez, 1978

Brock Lesnar, 1977

Anna Friel, 1976

Kristi Yamaguchi, 1971

Lisa Nicole Carson, 1969

Rolonda Watts, 1959

Mel Harris, 1957

Paul Guilfoyle, 1955

Cheryl Ladd, 1951

Jamey Sheridan, 1951

Richard Simmons, 1948

Denise Nicholas, 1945

Christine McVie, 1943

Bill Cosby, 1937

Van Cliburn, 1934

Andrew Wyeth, 1917

Curly Joe DeRita, 1909

Milton Berle, 1908

Pablo Neruda, 1904

R. Buckminster Fuller, 1895

Oscar Hammerstein II, 1895

George Washington Carver, 1861

George Ohr, 1857

George Eastman, 1854

Henry David Thoreau, 1817

Josiah Wedgwood, 1730

Debuting/Premiering Today:

"Northern Exposure"(TV), 1990

"Family Feud"(TV), 1976

"Evening At Pops"(TV), 1970

"The Adventures of Sam Spade"(Radio), 1946

"Baseball's Sad Lexicon (Tinker to Evers to Chance)"(Publication date), 1910

Today in History

England is unified by Athelstan of England, 927

Saladin's garrison surrenders to Conrad of Montferrat, ending the two-year siege of Acre, 1191

Fray Diego de Landa, acting Bishop of Yucatan, burns the sacred books of the Maya, 1562

Ostrog Bible, the first printed Bible in a Slavic language, is published, 1580

The United States invades Canada at Windsor, Ontario, 1812

The Commonwealth Franchise Act, granting women's suffrage in Australia, is given royal assent and takes effect, 1902

Pune, India floods due to failure of Khadakvasala and Panshet dams; half of the city is submerged and the death toll exceeded 2000, 1961

A fire destroys the entire 6th floor of the National Personnel Records Center of the United States, 1973

Boris Yeltsin quits the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 1990

Israel invades Lebanon in response to Hezbollah's kidnapping of Israeli soldiers, 2006

A ticket holder in Britain wins the largest EuroMillions jackpot in history, 161,653,000GBP, 2011

The Rolling Stones, English rock band, celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of its first performance at the Marquee Club in Oxford Street, London, 2012

Malala Yousafzai addresses the United Nations, calling for worldwide access to education, 2013

A giant iceberg, about 6,000 sq km in length, breaks away from Larsen C Ice Shelf in Antarctica, 2017

Shrinkhar Chillal, holder of the world's record for growing the longest fingernails (909.6cm/29.84ft), has the nails cut off after growing them for 66 years, 2018

Netflix's drama "Squid Game," a South Korean series, becomes the first non-English series to be nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Drama, 2022