For the love of . . .

. . . a journey,

one by design and one a leap of faith.

A parallel journey of two thousand miles that began being carried by the breeze.

"All glory comes from daring to begin." - Eugene F Ware

Once upon a time . . . several years ago in a galaxy far, far away I bought a milkweed plant and patiently waited. Now, our mosquitoes get so bad here that sometimes in order to go out and tend to plants in the garden I would have to use a mosquito fogger. Little did I know at the time, but there were two caterpillars on that milkweed . . . they died . . . I felt horrible. And that was the end of that for that summer as I couldn't find any more milkweed.

Fast forward to last year when my metals instructor gave me some cuttings of her milkweed to root and then to hopefully plant. I had put them in some water in a bucket and crossed my fingers. I kept checking on them but no roots, and they weren't looking very good. They had become infested with aphids and so I had decided to just pitch them and go buy some milkweed from my nursery, when I discovered to my surprise, two monarch caterpillars. A couple of more plants, complete with a few more caterpillars and some eggs and I had the start of a new journey.

At about the same time our family would begin a different journey when our son became very ill and eventually diagnosed with a form of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. The caterpillars weren't a coincidence, but a reminder that I don't have to travel two thousand miles to be transformed. . . I just need faith, and it only need be the size of a mustard seed.

I have loved everything about this process, this journey . . .starting with this seed and the beautiful way it was designed to blow in the breeze. To be carried away from the plant and to multiply. And, grow they will where they land.

{kk -revolution and just a touch}

Once a flower on the plant is pollinated it will go to seed and grow a pod. This plant definitely had some pollinating visitors. It's important to leave the pod on the plant until the seem opens up or they may not be

viable seeds when planted. The pod will start to change color and texture, but you will want to watch closely

unless you don't mind seeds blowing and growing everywhere. 

They produce their seeds in follicles that are arranged in an overlapping manner. When the seeds mature the pod will begin to open and as the silky white filament-like hairs become more dry, the pod will explode and the seeds . . . carried away by the wind.

  

And from that seed this beautiful plant will grow. There are more than 100 species of milkweed suited for different growing conditions. Here in Texas the Asclepias Curassavica is the species that I get from my nursery, also known as Tropical Milkweed.

When life throws those curve balls, and we know it does, we need to be able to go with the flow. More times than not, these milkweed seed will find themselves quite a distance from where they started, but will grow where they land anyway, because the monarch depends on it.

And often, when we find ourselves in chaos, far from where we started and our lives will depend on being able to grow where we land. And I don't know about you, but sometimes my first reaction is to find a way around the chaos when really, going "through" it is where the real growth is.

Sometimes going through it is the shorter distance than trying to find a way around it.
That, and a leap of faith the size of a mustard seed.

Stay tuned, next up more about the plant and an egg. . . here.

Happy Tuesday,
Love, Kim


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Random five, or so . . .

"Why is that when you wipe up dust it's called dusting but when

you wipe up a spill it's not called spilling? Just something to think about."

- Ellen DeGeneres

Kind of like why is an orange called orange and a banana not called yellow.

We'll never know....

Yes, that was totally random, which is the point of my post today, AND I may even have more than five random things by the time I get to the end.

My milkweed is exploding . . . the seed pods that is, and I'm obsessed with taking photos of them.

I mentioned that I am participating in a Focus on a photo a day - a 365 day project. Can I just say, what the

heck was I thinking? Now, I take a lot of photos every week (I have thousands of monarch photos to prove it, because you can never have enough of those), but one a day, posted to a group...now that feels a little like a commitment. And it's not that I can't commit or anything like that, but I'm just sayin' that yesterday I was already using some curse words because not only was it cloudy but it was only one shade of grey, the yucky shade of grey. AND it was windy and it's hard to take a picture of something when it won't stay still. And because it was so overcast there was no light in my house....it made me grumpy! :) 

But in between wind gusts I did manage to get this one, for my 365 project and for a 50mm project class I'm taking. And after several light freezes and our recent hard freeze two nights in a row I can't believe this rose bush is still blooming. In case you are wondering, it's called "Belinda's Dream" and it smells like heaven.

I walk the beach a lot in the summer, and I find a lot of shells and in fact you can probably see that some of them are imperfect...my favorites. They are the ones that have stories, the vulnerable ones ready to let the world see them in their brokenness. And, that glass bottle top, it's going to be in a necklace one day, I'm just not ready to take it out of my treasure bowl just yet...I like the way it looks in there.

Yep, I blew some bubbles this week. And you know, it's really tricky to blow them yourself and then chase them down before they hit the ground. And with our temps in the twenties (yes that is very cold for us here) the bubbles have been turning these beautiful golden, magenta, blue colors. It would seem that by the time I got done blowing that last bubble out everything had blown away or popped. So I was pretty happy to get at least two in the same picture. Had to resort to bubbles because we don't get snow, at least not unless we've had a hurricane the previous summer.

This was our first sunrise of the year last weekend, and oh the colors and that lone little cloud. Can I just say that I love google sky maps app...so helpful in telling me where to point my camera. 

Can't believe it's almost time to take our girl back to her dorm...so great having her here over a long Christmas break. And yes there was a cake, a two layer cake with one cake mix for each, chocolate butter cream middle, and regular on top. It didn't last long....

Getting excited, my metals class starts next week!! I love the sound of sawing and hammering...

The last of my monarch butterflies from this batch are emerging, but had an epic fail yesterday. One just couldn't quite get out and his wings were crumpled and one of her legs were broken...sad panda face!

I am starting to see some new growth on the plants again though.

Well I think that's random wrap, ya'll have a great rest of the week,

Love, Kim

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