the extraordinary!

Aleida writes elegant stuff and reminded me this morning that nothing is pedestrian except our our perception. I had to laugh at the synchronicity! On my walk, I noticed that I was appreciating very ordinary things, the inflorescences on the tall grasses, weedy ditches, rose hips on the dog roses, gnarled old fence posts...I have revised my self-appraisal by being reminded by Aleida that nothing is ordinary! We can become blind, maybe because of our everyday busy-ness and concerns, to the extraordinary in the glorious world around us!

Earlier this summer, on one of our walks this summer to the park, Granddaughter was joyfuly picking dandelions.

"They are also called weeds!" she told me.

"Yes, some people do call them weeds." I agreed. "But Mother Nature did not make any weeds. Every plant has a purpose. People call many plants weeds, but people are sometimes wrong."

One of my most glorious memories is from my childhood. We had arrived in Finland -- home for my parents, a very strange place for me. Walking about the campus of a small college which in my memory was in a rural setting, we found ourselves in the apple orchard. The neatness of rows upon rows of apple trees pleased me, and I was thrilled by the lush green grasses. But what took my breath away was the ground under the trees carpeted with dandelion, millions and millions of dandelions! The exuberance of so many dandelions! (I think my Daddy laughed at me too.)

Yellow is my favorite colour!