May Flower Challenge - Day 15, Poppies & Snakes?

Nobody says you must laugh, but a sense of humor can help you overlook the unattractive, tolerate the unpleasant, cope with the unexpected, and smile through the day.
                                                                                   Ann Landers

I finally mailed off my completed May Artist Trading Cards today.  Our theme for May is May Flowers.  How appropriate for the May Flower Challenge.   I painted Poppies on two of my four cards.  I'm really happy on how they turned out, considering I did something totally different from what I would otherwise paint with my watercolors...

I've been meaning to tell you about my friend, Janet, who is also doing the May Flower Challenge.  She had a bit of an unexpected and real-life challenge herself, just a week ago.  She lives in California and got bit by a rattlesnake while she was in her garage.  She still took part in the May Flower Challenge that day and actually wrote about it on her blog, Tattered n Worn.  Throughout the following few days, our friends kept commenting on Facebook about what had happened.  One of the girls had worked in a hospital and had seen and heard one too many stories about snakes actually attacking a driver in a car, after the person had purchased a potted plant and put it into their car; not knowing a snake had burrowed itself within the soil.  This has happened not just in California, but Florida and other states as well.  I told Mr. Cottage about this and needless to say we'll all be a bit more cautious when buying from a nursery, especially the large box stores like Lowes and Home Depot where their plants come from different parts of the country.

This all leads me to tell you our own snake story.  Mr. Cottage and I have lived in our house for years.  The most that we ever saw in our yard were squirrels and rabbits; and we knew that raccoons would prowl around at night.  It was about 20 years ago when we hosted a huge gathering at our house after a golf outing from where Mr. Cottage was working at the time.  We had husbands and wives and everyone was gathering in our yard and on our two levels of decking.  Next things we knew there was yelling and screaming as this HUGE snake slithered across our deck (with all the people on it!).  Not wanting to gross anyone out, Mr. Cottage was able to transport it to the back of our yard and threw it across the fence.  A few minutes later, the same snake was slithering across our deck again!  This time Mr. Cottage took this snake and literally did it in without all the women having to watch the gruesome scene.  All the men agreed that this was a Blow Snake.  The funny part of this whole story is we've never seen or had another snake prior to or after this incident.  Hope this didn't gross many of you out, but I had to relay Janet's story and to tell you to put your purchased potted plants in your trunk and not directly into your car.