right under my nose

By mew

October 10, 2009

Tags: awareness, Beauty, enlightenment, grateful, Ipomoea batatas, Ipomoea batatas 'Black Heart', Mission Monday, noticing the details, ornamental plants, paying attention, practicing gratitude, sweet potato vine, sweet potato vine in the kitchen garden, the Victory Garden

Category: Blog challenges, Foliage, Life Lessons

1 Comment »

This is Ipomoea batatas ‘Black Heart’, reflecting a sprinkling of rain.  (Although, just as an aside, I really don’t think anyone has a black heart.  And I work as part of the criminal justice system for my day job, hearing about vicious violent crimes and everything else you can imagine.  I still don’t believe it.  I won’t go into the details of my philosophy on that just now.  For the garden journal, suffice it to say that certainly no plants have black hearts.)

This heart looks deep royal purple with burgundy highlights to my eye, anyway.  It’s a leaf of a beautiful ornamental sweet potato vine, planted in a pot about 10 feet from the other sweet potato vine I talked about before.  The two vines have grown those 10 feet and more, now intermingling freely on the ground in front of the window I can look out of as I type these words.

Brandi Reynolds over at the Joy Rebellion invited us to appreciate what was right in front of us for this week’s Mission Monday assignment, and I’ve just written about all I found to appreciate in the last four days over on my other blog.  Lots of pretty pictures.  Feel free to check it out.

The funny thing about appreciating what’s right under your nose is that it may be the simplest little thing.  A sight just outside the window your working desk faces.  And you may have been completely blinded to it because you were stuck inside your head, with worries, and to-do lists, and self-recrimination, and reliving conversations from several days ago, so that in the imaginary conversation you don’t come off looking like such a dork.

Or maybe that’s just me.

Anyway, that’s how I felt when I saw this beautiful, but slightly damaged leaf — really saw it — lifting a handful of raindrops up to the sun.

How much we miss when we are stuck in our heads!

I send you a blessing for the weekend:  may you get out of your head and into this moment — and experience with childlike wonder all the beauty to be found there!

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