A Chilly Morning to See

It was a chilly morning this morning–cool enough to wear long pants, a fleece, and a windbreaker.  The dog and I walked our usual morning route.  I noticed how the new mullein plants were growing alongside the road.  Mullein or Flannel Plant is an introduced biennial from Europe.  The first year the plant grows only the soft gray basal leaves.  The woolly leaves have been used as wicks for torches, lining for socks and moccasins to insulate from the cold, as diapers, as a balm to soothe sunburn, and as a tea to treat colds.  The plant will overwinter in this state.

The second year, the flower stalk grows two to six feet tall with a spike of yellow flowers.

It then dries to a dark brown at this time of year so the seeds can disperse for the next year’s crop of velvet-leaved, first-year plants.

I saw a grasshopper on a milkweed plant, sluggish and slow moving in the cool air.  I noticed he was missing a leg.  Perhaps the dog had grabbed at the hopper on a previous walk and caused the mishap, since catching grasshoppers seems to be her new preoccupation.

The spotty-leaved red twig dogwood was beginning to show its color, as was the poison ivy.

Then as I looked past the clover patch that I walk by every day, I thought, “What the heck–is that a boat in the grass down there?!”  Through the camera lens I could see an old rowboat.

Why had I not noticed that before?  It was on the bank of a small drainage pond that was now filled with cattails.

I realized that someone had probably been able to float it in June when we had so much rain and before the cattails grew tall, but it certainly looked out of place now.  Out of place in a lovely kind of way.

I consider myself an observant person, but I realize that we often see only what we want to see.  I ‘see’ nature everywhere I go–tiny details to movement to the big picture, but I couldn’t care less about ‘seeing’ fashion.  When my oldest daughter was in kindergarten, she would come home and tell me exactly what the teacher wore to school that day–and she still ‘sees’ and loves fashion details!

Sometimes we don’t see things that are in plain sight.  Now granted, our brains have to filter out many things that are right before our eyes or within hearing distance or touching our skin just because we would be overwhelmed by stimuli if it did not.  But often we put our own filters or blinders on what we see and know.  And that can be a deterrent to living a full and wonderful life.

So I’m going to be open to ‘see’ more things in my life.  Maybe seeing the boat this morning did that for me.  And now that I think about it, I did see a pair of brown leather boots that I liked in the latest Eddie Bauer catalog!

“One way to open your eyes to unnoticed beauty is to ask yourself, ‘What if I had never seen this before?  What if I knew I would never see it again?’ ”       –Rachel Carson