daisy ventures.

I sling my bag onto my bike and swing onto the seat. My feet pump the pedals and I rattle down the fielded hill, feeling every pothole. I reach the quiet road and skim down the pavement, feeling the cool spring wind blowing my face. I pass daisies bobbing their heads to the beat of the breeze, their faces almost golden in the setting sun. I stop and grab my camera from its bag. 

A woman strolling by stops to ask me what I'm doing. 

"Taking pictures of daisies," I say. It sounds simple, and silly. But she smiles and gazes at the flowers before us in a rather wistful way.

"I used to make daisy chains with my sisters," she says. And I smile, too. 

I pedal down the road with a chain in my hair and petals on my wheels. I pass an old house with an old bike and an old cat in its front yard. The mailbox is surrounded by a tangle of greens, and I wonder what sort of letters it has held in the years gone by. 

I glimpse a man in the window, and I hurry by, embarrassed for stopping to stare. But I like to admire, and old houses are more beautiful than new ones. Their windows have souls.