Beauty

When one is Up North in the Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes area, one is just engulfed in natural beauty. As we rode our bikes this afternoon, we stopped by the Crystal River just north of Glen Arbor. We also rode over the bridge and saw all of the boats anchored by the drop off on the Big Glen side of the bridge with folks enjoying a beautiful afternoon on the water. We also said hello to a raccoon that was attempting to cross the road and hadn't gotten the memo that raccoons are supposed to be nocturnal creatures.

As I later surveyed the gardens at our cottage, I also was reflecting on the nature of beauty. With gardening, I like to spend the winter months strategizing garden designs - we'll call this planned beauty. However, sometimes Nature has other ideas and we get unplanned beauty. The planned beauty is very gratifying - see the photos of the lovely yellow evening primrose and the flower bed. But then there's the viola (johnny jump-up) that reseeded outside of the lake stone border. This was a beautiful surprise.