Heliotropic coffeespoons

I defy you to find a more inscrutable blog post heading than today's: Heliotropic coffeespoons.

A postcrosser from Japan, on a lovely sunflower-bearing card, wonders why the sunflower blooms in the direction of the sun. That's heliotropism in action. (Gosh, I love it when I get to use a swell word such as heliotropism!)

Another postcrosser, this time from Portugal, wants to know why the French move their coffeespoons to the left while the Portugese move them to the right. I figure it's because the French are following the sun, from east to west or from the right to the left.

See? It all comes together: heliotropic coffeespoons!

Do we ever really know what's good for us?

On the only card I've received from Moldova - and quite a lovely card it is - appears this question:

What association arises for you from the photo on the card?

At first, I felt the warmth of the sun as it touched the leaves and stem of the tulip. Then I wondered if the photo had actually been printed using a reversal process so that it appeared the way a negative would because the flower was bending away from the light. In life, wouldn't it bend toward the light?

And then I thought how much this little photo illuminates the foolish actions we sometimes perform when we turn away from something that is good for us and that keeps us well. Deep, I know. All from a little tulip.