Bottlebrushing my Attention

I have no way to know how many times I’ve walked the short stretch of Thune Ave. It’s so close to our street that I may walk one direction or the other as many as four times in one day several days of the week.

So of course I’ve seen the ginormous bottlebrush tree. And yet if you asked me, “Is there an entire hedge of bottlebrush trees on Thune Ave?”, I would have responded with a blank stare. Maybe? Not sure?

Today I not only saw the bottlebrush hedge, I also commented on it: “We don’t see many bottlebrush trees anymore, do we? I feel like I was surrounded by them as a child. Have they gone out of fashion? Was it a 70’s and 80’s thing, or a SoCal thing?” Dave and I had a whole conversation about bottlebrush trees.

Later, I went out for another neighborhood stroll, a fabulous benefit of a work-from-home day. And wouldn’t you know it? I saw a recently replanted curbside stretch of yard with low-growing bottlebrush shrubs. I may have passed them several times recently, but I noticed them today because of our morning conversation.

As I turned towards home, I stopped at the bottlebrush hedge. I leaned in and out and up; I took pictures. I listened to the buzz of bees, who apparently have a thing for bottlebrush, and yay for plants that attract pollinators.

I came home and did a quick Google search. Bottlebrush hail from Australia. They are low maintenance, easy to grow plants, and they’re heat and drought resistant – which also explains why they may have been everywhere in my San Diego childhood (coastal desert and prone to drought).

All this to say…it’s one thing to glance at something – it’s there but it doesn’t mean anything, so it might as well not be there. It’s another thing to notice it, and then to have a conversation about it. Which leads to noticing the same, or similar, thing elsewhere. Which piques curiosity, which leads to information-seeking and -sharing.

Paying attention matters, and where you direct your attention has the potential to shape what else grabs your attention.

What have you noticed recently? Where have you noticed more of the same/similar, or the dissimilar, because that could also be interesting? What has piqued your curiosity, and what have you learned?