Sunny Garden

    Some ducks fly by, plop into the water in front of us. It's now or never.
    Hey, isn't that the Anas gibberifrons? I say, sounding like more of a whiny tight-throated rayon-clad fake than I could possibly have expected.
    The what?
    The Anas gibberifrons, I say again, still far from assertive, wishing she'd waited till some other day to bring me out here. Some miraculous day when I remembered to know everything I needed to, and to bring my confidence along too. Some clear-headed day, preceded by two days' notice, a good night's sleep and a total lack of revelations. (p. 241)

    You know, I'd never given brown that much thought before, Naomi says. But you should, shouldn't you? It's everywhere. So birds have forty-eight shades of brown, and none of the regular ones?
    Practically none.
    How about we give them some bread? The grey teals.
    Yeah, good idea. I think they like bread.
    And this, I tell myself, is the kind of mistake I should stop making. The kind of bogus bird info that's safe ninety percent of the time. But I'm more likely to end up using the dangerous ten percent. I only work that out after I've broken a few pieces of bread into my hand and tossed them to the birds, and they've treated them like a handful of rocks and staggered like hell back to the water. (p.246)

Continue with the 48 Shades of Brown tour.

Excerpts from 48 Shades of Brown are © Nick Earls and are used with permission.

All virtual tour photos are © Liz Perkins and may not be reproduced without permission.

Disclaimer:
Sunny Garden is designed, written and maintained by Liz Perkins, in cooperation with Nick Earls and Penguin Books. Any questions about Sunny Garden should be directed to Liz

All original contents are © Liz Perkins.