Unexpected Gifts

If you know me, or have been visiting here for a while, you know that I have a thing for butterflies, particularly Monarchs. Well, last year I also had Swallowtail caterpillars visit my parsley, so I decided we'd put one in the bug box and watch it do its thing. Within a couple of days it had gone into the chrysalis stage and we expected to see it come out a few weeks later, just as the Monarchs do. But we waited... and waited...and waited, and it didn't happen. I figured that something had gone wrong, and I really intended to clean out the box, but somewhere in the chaos of life the box got pushed into a corner and lost behind some other stuff.

A couple of weeks ago I came across the box and thought "Ugh! I never cleaned that out!" but again, something else got my attention and I didn't do it. Imagine my surprise a few hours later when I went back to the task and found THIS!

We took it outside, hoping to take some close up shots as we took it out of the box, but it was ready to go and off it went. Pretty amazing.

Isn't that how life works sometimes? You're sure something is going to happen and you wait... anticipation fueling your excitement, only to feel disappointment when what you thought would happen seems destined to never be. But then, WOW! The unexpected happens and you realize that some things are just out of your hands, they happen when the time is right for them to be. The simplest things can teach us so much.

The other cool thing came to me one morning recently when I came into the kitchen WAY earlier than I had planned. The dogs wanted out, and they wanted out NOW...didn't matter that I was sleeping. But again, what an unexpected gift:

Rainbows on my table! If I had been even 10 minutes later I would have missed it.


I love surprises...