Puddles and Lace

After the night's drenching rain, I knew my morning walk would present a few challenges. Everything was dripping wet - trees, grass, bushes, sidewalks, blacktop. I worried that there would be flooding like we encountered the week we moved in where half the parking lot was submerged with creek overflow. The parking lot was fine, but every indentation in the ground cradled a puddle. The sides of the road were highly decorated with little mirrors of water all along my path. I should have thought bugs would be rampant, but not a wing fluttered.

Not a leaf nor a blade of grass moved. Everything lay still and sleeping, exhausted by the night's storm. Even the weeds by the woods hung down weighted with water, nodding wearily in the aftermath of pelting cloudbursts. Purple thistles protruded from pockets of underbrush, their spiny faces stoic. Silence shrouded the landscape. Not a swallow or sparrow flitted or twittered. Not a single cricket, June bug or tree toad sang.

So it was that I came to the wooded section where the sun rarely shines. How peculiar to find such lush growth in the shadow of the overhanging trees. Suckers and saplings braced the base of every tree, thick with greenery. Blackberry brambles twined about trunks, hard green buds showing where berries would soon appear. Thistles forced their way out of the tangle, menacing passersby.

Halfway around the curve, a raft of Queen Anne's lace skirted the shoulder of the road, each white head bowed as if before royalty. Some of the delicate blossoms had curled tightly together, protecting its fragile flowers from the onslaught of wind and rain. I stooped to see them better, these lacy landscape decorations. I inhaled. The air smelled pungent and woodsy. As I sat still gazing, a tiny movement caught my attention. There on the thin green stem of the largest flower crawled a little lady bug, black and red, her pincers trailing behind, her mouth working steadily.

I watched for awhile, then suddenly, she opened her wings and flew off, just like that, into the underbrush. Even in the aftermath of a horrible storm, there are folks who quietly go about their business, unaffected by the devastation about them. I walked on, the strains of Kyrie Eleison ringing in my ears.