"COLLECTION" HOBBY

Collecting stuff is one of many hobbies which I started as early as when I was 5 years old. I started with pebbles as any other kid does. As I grew up, the collection went like this: stickers, flower petals, red beads, baby pictures, dog pictures, shells, stamps, coins...etc,. I treated my collectibles as if they were very sacred. As an adult, did the mania of collecting things disappear? No, it did not. I started collecting the souvenir spoons from different countries I visited. And couple of weeks ago when myself and my husband went to the Sanibel island, we spent hours on the shore collecting conches (see our collection in the picture below). Later, after our trip, we came across a bag full of conches for $10 in Michael's and Hobby Lobby craft stores ! However, the moment of collecting the conches on the shore between the waves was really interesting.



I have traces of my old collectibles except the red beads. This red bead bearing tree was in the Madurai Kamaraj University residential quarters for the professors where we lived for sometime. Myself & my kid friends used to compete with each other to collect these beads which were scattered under the tree, sometimes we even used stones and sticks to get the beads to the ground. It also gave great fun for my cousins who visited us for vacation from far away places. The bead collection augmented day by day ending up with 15 - 20 lbs of these beads! When we were moving to our new home, my parents threw them away without my knowledge. The red bead tree is also called the Saga tree (Scientific name: Adenanthera pavonina). I just read online that it is an ancient Indian medicine, the ground seeds are used to treat boils and inflammations! Below is a picture of the red beads which I found on flickr.

Originally uploaded by dinesh_valke