Blue Pickerels, Bees and Small Blessings

  Meandering about the hillside today enjoying the warm weather, my sister-in-law and I noticed that most of the pond plants had met their demise with the recent cold spell.  The water hyacinths looked pretty bad indeed!  Their leaves were all shriveled and brown.  A few were obviously blooming when the temperatures dropped below freezing. The flowers were still there but were now a brown, slimy mess instead of the lovely purple that they usually are. Overall, the pond looks bad...really bad and smelled worse!  As soon as I get caught up on other chores, the thing will receive one last, good cleaning before I let it rest for winter. The dragonfly larvae will hunker down among the roots of the water lilies and hyacinths and ride out the cold weather.

  With all the brown in the garden, the lone blue pickerel bloom stood out like a sore thumb.  Why this plant survived is beyond me.  Granted it was a pathetic specimen of a bloom, it was still a bright spot in the midst of yuck! It was perfect for the occasion.  The flower was all that was needed.  On closer inspection, I found that Cynthia and I were not the only ones who found the flower.  A bee was working the pollen to find a bit to eat.  This brought up another question.  How did that bee survive the freeze?  

  These occurrences made me ponder the odds of coincidences.  That lone bee was out buzzing about the garden in search of a food source and came across the lone bloom.  How unusual is that?  It was sort of like it was meant to be.  God knew His critter would be needing a bit of nourishment and popped that flower into bloom.  Hmmm?  Yep, just like He knows when we need spiritual nourishment, it is always there.  We just need to look around. Blessings abound where we least expect.