Golden

I received a blessing today.  It was not a blessing of wealth or health or any worldly good.  It was a blessing of the heart, and it was given to me through the all of my senses; sight, hearing, smell, and touch.  It was a simple blessing to remind me of simple beauty.  And it went like this…

My husband and I went on a short rambling around our property today in search of wildflowers.  I can see a goodly stand of goldenrod and rudbeckia from my driveway but I wanted to see if the back pasture bloomed.  Last fall and spring the flowers were sparse, but in previous years there have been big shows of blooms.  We had to go by tractor because the area has not been mowed all year and I am afraid of snake bites.  I’m not really afraid of snakes, but I do fear a venomous bite.

No longer my job

After dealing with a dead tractor battery we finally got underway, husband driving, I sitting on the top of the front bucket, my usual spot.  We made it through the front pasture and came to a halt at the gate that separates the fenced middle animal pasture from the unfenced property.  I expected to be lowered to open it, but husband got off and opened it himself.  I guess that job is no longer mine.  Opening that gate has cost us over $3,000.00 since May, and we’re not done yet.

We cruised past the patch of okra that grows wild in an old garden we planted a few years ago.  Its dried fruit stands tall above the underbrush, pointing towards the sky.  I imagine it rattles when it’s blown in the wind, like I imagine the sound of reeds clattering in novels I’ve read.  From this point we usually travel through a natural gateway, over a sandy place where the creek washes in a heavy rain, but instead we turned right towards a place that has been deemed a burn pile.  Under the shady pines yellow rudbeckia and a pink skullcap grow thick and tall.  

We went left into the next area and I got a first glimpse of what was waiting for me on the other side of the creek, beyond the trees and scrub that make a natural border between the two tracts of land.  In this small meadow the rudbeckia was dense and mixed with other flowers, white and silver, I cannot name.  Butterflies flitted from one flower to the next and were too fast for my camera lens.  I treaded lightly in my leopard rain shoes because the grass was tall and weedy, a perfect resting place for the snakes I was trying to avoid.  And because they were rubbing old blisters from last weekend’s diamond hunt.

Onward we went, through the winding, shady path that leads to the bridge that crosses the creek to the back pasture.  Here is where I got off and walked.  Besides snake bites I fear plunging head first into the creek sitting atop a tractor bucket.  Every time I do this I think of my mother who refused to ride in a car across the Leaf River when she was younger.  She always got out and walked, too.

As I rounded the curve up the sloping bank into the pasture I was greeted with a sight to behold.  The entire pasture was covered with golden rudbeckia, pink skullcap and other flowers, silver and white, I cannot name.  I resumed my place on the bucket and my husband lifted it high into the air so I had a bird’s eye view.  Dragonflies, the pretty ones with thick, blue iridescent bodies, flew around me like fairies.  Butterflies were everywhere, yet always out of reach.  I held my hands out for them, just in case.

The sun was coming from the west, illuminating the yellow flowers from behind and setting them aglow like candles in a welcoming window.  

I got off the bucket to take some pictures and touch the flowers.  Cicadas and crickets buzzed all around me.  I still could not get close enough to a butterfly, so finally I gave up and just watched from my perch on the tractor.   

I just looked, and listened, inhaled and felt the day.  It was a wonderful, golden moment in time.  As I said, it was a blessing.

My chariot