A Weed Among The Roses...

 I pass our rose bushes almost every day. They're loving where we planted them, loving their little corner of our front yard. It wasn't until today that I saw it, sticking its head proudly above the blooming flowers...

A weed...as tall as me.

It's been there for months, hiding, We don't weed that section of the yard every day or even every week. The weeds don't flourish there, and when we spot them, we pull them. This one, however, it eluded us, evaded our detection all spring and summer, until it could no longer conceal itself as its growth forced it above everything else.

Funny...it's not just weeds that hide among the roses. Evil people have been known to do the same. They blend in. Now, I'm not necessarily saying all weeds are evil (even though they are...). People with evil intent pretend to be something they're not, even telling us lies about themselves. Sometimes we believe them. However, there are always those who can detect lies and they try to point them out. Those unbelievers scoff and hiss and say the truth-teller is the liar.

A tale as old as time.

The weed is no more. Actually, it's been pulled and tossed in the bin. Since the roses are doing so well, I'm sure there are other weeds, other evil people hiding, waiting for their chance to continue blending in, infecting everything around it. A healthy environment makes them easier to hide. 

I'll continue walking by the roses every day. Maybe next time...

I'll take a closer look.

Hiding In Plain Sight...

 Of course, the sunflower plant was there the whole time. I just didn't see it. Then, as if overnight, the sunflower plant exploded.

Now, it's almost the tallest thing in our backyard.

That's the thing about yard work...it's never ending. Literally. Each year we've been able to take care of more and more of the space that needs de-weeding. The goal is to have less work to do in the yard as time goes on. Thank goodness for the fabric ground cover to deny the weeds any light.

We have a garden in the backyard and that's where the sunflower plant grew and grew. We'd been trying to stay ahead of the weeds, but this summer, it was a lost cause. We had many issues that came up this summer...a wedding, a grandchild, you know...the basics. Every time I saw a weed get big, I'd pull it.

But, I missed one.

Personally, I love sunflowers. They're happy flowers, fun, in a word...sunny. For now, we're letting it continue to grow skyward. The flowers are now sprouting which is good for bees, and it looks nice. We will be taking it out of the garden when we take out all the plants in the fall, so it will be eventually go. I'm hoping next year I'll be more on top of things. Then again...

Since the plant was so sneaky, it's earned its right to stay. Well done.

Hiding...In Plain Sight

It's happened to you, before. Even though I don't know when or where, but I'm fairly certain it's happened to you.

And the worst part is, it'll probably happen again.

You're looking for something, something you know you've seen recently, so recently in fact, you probably were the one who last saw it, last handled it. So, there's no one better qualified to know where the thing is. But, for the life of you, you can't remember where that particular thing is.

You look where it should be. When it's not there, you look where it might be. Then, when it's missing still, you look where it should be, then where it never is. And still, it's unfound. 

Then, the frustration kicks in.

So, I direct your attention to the above photograph and ask, what do you see? There are many things to see, actually. It's kind of like a junk drawer for us, but in cabinet form. The biggest item is an orange juicer. We inherited it from my mom when she passed, so it's decades-old, maybe even older than me.

In the back, there's a couple of vanilla beans in clear plastic tubes. There's also a bowl with a packet of something I can't quite tell. Buried under the juicer is a meat thermometer and the thing-a-magiggy pointy thing you use to test the temperature of whatever you need tested.

Do you see the tea ball?

"Of course," you say. It's the round egg-shaped thing closest to the camera. And if I told you that we looked everywhere for our tea ball, you might be asking, why? It's right there.

But, did you see the other tea ball, the one in the back, the one attached to the thing that looks like a huge safety pin.

I'm asking because neither me, my wife, and several of my kids saw the second tea ball. And because we didn't see the second tea ball, we ended up buying a new one, the egg-shaped one. It wasn't until I washed the new one and as I put it away, I spotted the assumed-lost one.

I could blame it on age, but my much-younger kids missed it, too. The rest of my family has an excuse that I don't have--I was the one who put it away. No, it's just one of those things that happens to us because we're human. We miss things that are literally right in front of our faces. It happens. It's life. And it'll happen again. Might as well enjoy the ride.