wildflowers in wild places

Today when I left on my walk the sun was obscured by a light fog, but look what greeted me from a ditch beside the road.

A friend once told me that if you just show her a yellow flower on the side of the road it will make her happy. She loves yellow that much.

If you show me any flower on the side of the road it will make me happy. I love wildflowers that much.

But if you show me a flower in a ditch, that will make me really happy.

Flowers in a ditch make me feel closer than a few eons away from that time that "God said let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself...."

I imagine the seeds that have laid in the ditch waiting through drought and cold and flood for just the right conditions to grow and blossom are descended from the original "herb yielding seed."

All the roadside flowers that grow without any cultivation, fertilizer, irrigation or even notice from humans make me happy because they thrive where it's surprising to even see a plant at all.

It reminds me of the familiar saying "Bloom where you are planted."

Which, if we remember who the Gardener is and what He can do, should give us confidence that we really can.