Stone Fruit Loop

Do you need a low stress way to include seven minutes of creative contemplation into your week? Consider this your helpful nudge towards a slightly more creative life. If it helps, come back every week for a quick hit of creative contemplation. Each week I’ll share a new nudge. It will include a Thing (T), a Place (P), and a Sense(S) for your focus, a TPS creative nudge.

Welcome back from last week’s grab bag of creative tricks using chip clips. Did you rock a new line of Frito Lays inspired accessories? Perhaps there’s a symphonic creation of yours living in the cloud or shared in an Instagram Story. Even if your singular creative accomplishment was finishing all the Fritos and hiding the evidence, congrats! You found a way to bring several minutes of creative contemplation and creation into your routine.

Ready for our next creative nudge? For this week’s selection, we're turning our focus to a seasonal delight that’s abundant in Riverside right now: stone fruit. Nectarines, peaches, plums, and more are ripening and falling from trees, offering a bounty of creative possibilities. My apricots have come and gone, but my daughter finds a few plums each morning that the birds and bugs missed.

Stone fruits, with their vibrant colors, juicy textures, and sweet aromas, invite us to engage our senses and explore the joys of nature’s harvest. Let’s dive into the world of stone fruits and see how they can inspire our creativity!

Cut/Taste: Whether it’s a peach cobbler, plum jam, apricot tart, or a refreshing nectarine smoothie, let your culinary skills shine. Notice where those flavors land on your palate. Share your creations with friends under the canopy of fruit trees.
Fruity Body: Use the vibrant colors and unique shapes of stone fruits to create a piece of visual art. Arrange the fruits in a still life composition and paint or draw them. Alternatively, you can carve the fruits into intricate designs or create fruit sculptures. Display them in natural light to capture the beauty and detail of your creations.
Feel A Peel: Spend time outdoors among fruit trees, engaging all your senses. Feel the texture of the fruit’s skin, inhale the sweet fragrance, listen to the rustle of leaves. Write a sensory diary or a poem that captures the essence of your experience. This activity encourages mindfulness and deep appreciation for the natural world.
Fruit Fantasy: Write a story or a series of vignettes inspired by stone fruits. Imagine the journey of a peach from tree to table, or create a mythical tale about a magical plum orchard. How do the fruits’ flavors, colors, and textures influence your narrative? This exercise invites you to weave nature’s bounty into your storytelling.
Slice of Life: Capture the beauty of stone fruits through photography. Take close-up shots of the fruits’ textures and colors, document the process of picking or preparing the fruit, or create a photo series that follows the life cycle of a fruit tree - consider creating a photo album or a digital gallery to share your work.

As we immerse ourselves in the world of stone fruits, let’s celebrate their abundance and the creative inspiration they offer. Stone fruits are not only delicious and nutritious, but they also connect us to the cycles of nature and the joys of seasonal harvests. Embrace the vibrant, the flavorful, and the artistic, and let these activities carry you through the week with a fresh perspective.

Did you know that stone fruits have been cultivated for thousands of years and were prized by ancient civilizations for their sweetness and health benefits? The process of growing, harvesting, and enjoying these fruits reminds us of the timeless connection between humans and nature.

Together, let’s continue to explore the world with curious minds and fearless hearts. Here’s to finding beauty and inspiration within our daily routines, and to the endless creative discoveries made possible by the things we feed; and the things that feed us.

This column was written with the help of a customized GPT from OpenAI. If I can make one, so can you!