Recently, a blog friend, Karin, posted about all the beautiful wild flowers in her area . . in a drought stricken dry to the core area.

We’re still in the midst of a drought, though we’ve had more rain than we had last year, but it’s so easy to see the trees that are in distress or the brown fields or the dried up ponds, but there are still little flowers that bloom everywhere!  Mother Nature hasn’t given up.

These are cactus (along with a few weeds) in a bed here.  These bright, cherry red balls have been on top of them for several months now.  They certainly are a bright spot in that bed.

There are two types of flowers in this picture.  I thought the tiny little tan things were mushrooms but on closer inspection, they’re some kind of flower.

While out taking the pictures, I noticed the bantams were staring at me.  They were so interested in what I was doing!

I love seeing Vince’s chair sitting there, where he spends time with them every evening.  These little chickens bring him joy.  Roscoe with his beautiful tail feathers.  Thelma and Louise with their big, black eyes, Tiffany is light as a feather and she seems to just float with each step and . . goofy Otis!  It’s good to see Vince enjoying the beauty around him.  He sometimes struggles with seeing more ugly than beauty.  Maybe Living with Screwed Up People will do that to you! 

From comments left here and from what I read on Facebook, too many of us are not taking time to see the beauty.  It’s everywhere!  Yes, there’s sadness and ugliness everywhere too but we have choices.  We can concentrate on the sadness and the ugliness or we can concentrate on the happiness and the beauty.  I don’t think we often realize how much negativity we let into our lives.  We cannot stop bad things from happening but we can control how we react to it and how much time we spend obsessing about it.

When I first decided to use the Ruby picture for my ChipIt! palette, I kept second guessing myself.  All the oranges and browns and pinky reds. I definitely hadn’t done much research to see what’s popular or what’s “hot” right now and I still don’t know where those colors rate these days but now that I’m looking for them, they’re everywhere!  Vince even sent me an email this morning forwarding something he had received from Chili’s and he said “Even Chili’s is using your palette colors.”

It’s just like beauty and goodness . . when you take time to notice them . . really take note of them, they’re everywhere.  Sometimes when Vince and I are talking in the evening, we’ll say “What was the best part of your day?” and sometimes we say “What was the worst part of your day?”  I know . . my life is real close to perfect but a whole lot of days, I can’t think of anything bad that happened to me.  Really, bad is kind of relative.  Yes, being bit by a brown recluse spider and a black widow two days later . . that’s bad but that’s one thing that happened (really, two things that happened on two different days).  There were a million things that are good that happen each day.

Think about this . . I’ve been canning all week.  Every one of my jars has sealed.  That’s great!  I don’t think of it as a fantastic thing that happened but if even 10% of my jars had not sealed, I would think of that as terrible.  We need to celebrate the good things more!

Today . . and tomorrow . . and the next day . . don’t see the drought.  Don’t see the dead grass, the struggling trees, the dried up ponds . . look for the flowers!  Look for the positive things in life and concentrate on those things!

If you can change the negative that’s happening in your life  . . change it but if you can’t change it, make the best of it.  Find a reason to be happy.  You have 24 hours in each day to get through.  How are you going to go through your day?  Are you going to smile and bring some happiness to those around you?  Or, are you going to be grumpy and sad and bring down those around you?

It’s totally your choice – not necessarily the circumstances you’re in but how  you react to those circumstances!