In my most recent post I was looking forward to beach combing in Sidney. It’s such a treat! I love to go there to look for beach pottery for our mosaics. And also for the calming atmosphere of the ocean at low tide, blue skies, the sound of the waves,
pilings with drying cormorants,
sailboats with Mt Baker in the distance.
Of course, there’s lots of beach glass too, but I tend to ignore it… unless it’s really special. And the occasional dead crab, this one was so beautiful surrounded by flowing seaweed.
And I’ve got lots of pottery now, too. What I was really looking for was spark plugs. Spark plugs on the beach? Well, yes, they do turn up, but only very occasionally. And to me they are precious. They stand out in a mosaic of beach pottery and I know I must have some for a mosaic sculpture, already imagined, that we’ll start on this summer.
Oh how I wish I was on the Thames sometimes “mudlarking” and finding clay pipes, so lovely as texture in mosaics. But I am on Vancouver Island, not in London, and I am quite ecstatic at the discovery of a spark plug. A spark plug long ago thrown out in the ocean dump (what were they thinking?) to wash up on shore hidden in the seaweed and rocks.
And though I found lots of pottery and a bit of garbage too, like the plastic fork,
and an odd little glass dome, the size of a thimble,
I wandered up and down the beach, for hours, searching for spark plugs. And then, standing still, staring vacantly at the beach at my feet, I found one! And then I turned and found another! Oh thank you low tide!
It doesn’t take much to make me extremely happy! A Two Spark Plug day will do it.
