Photo Challenge #7: Strange Things In Nature

I have learned and finally understand that God has sense of humor. Just look at all the different and unique things in nature. For example...I have never ever seen a mushroom like this as long as I have lived or been digging in the dirt. Come along and see what Emmy, JP, Kathy and Leigh Ann have come up with on this strange category.

You can check out their blogs if you click on their names. I'm sure they would love the company and you could even leave them a comment.


Nature is the art of God. ~Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, 1635

Mountains

So I still don't have a working battery for my camera, yes, I know that I am lazy. So I went throuhg my pics that I took from the plane window on the way home Seattle last summer. I don't really know that it is really to strange but I so think it is pretty cool. I think that it looks like those relief maps that you have in elementary school, (onlya prettier)

Amazing Glories

I didn't think I would have too much trouble with this category. Oh, but yes I did. And I was the one that came up with this brilliant idea. Okay, strange things in nature. Maybe I should consider taking a picture of everyone in this family, including the dog. We are a strange bunch around here...just ask the neighbors...they will tell you.
One morning when I was walking the dog around the yard...our morning ritual when Mark is out of town or I am up and moving while he is taking Sarah to school...
I was checking on the status of the bottles. We had a little bit of wind the night before and I was checking to see how many bottles on the bottle tree had survived. And this is what I found.
There were several bottles with morning glory vines inside the bottle. I guess they were trying to keep warm and knew that if they went into the bottle it would be like living in a greenhouse. I really have no clue or understand the reason that the flowers grew and bloomed inside the bottle. Strange for sure. I decided not bothering them would probably be the best bet. Today after working in the yard, I went back to check on the bottles again. I counted five bottles with flowers blooming inside. Really...amazing.

Grody Beetle Thingy

For some reason I had great difficulty with this category. God knows theres tons of strange things in nature! I even considered snapping a picture of myself...after all I am a creature made by God. But lucky for me the other night in the church parking lot was something strange. Leigh Ann was even there to witness it in "real life". And she can vouch for its gross-ness and strangeness. In fact, she was the one with the handy camera in her purse to help me out with this entry. It is very strange...I have no idea what it is but it did get crunched by our sweet youth standing around looking at it after our little photography session with it. In the car as we left Nathan asked Aly (who contributed to the bug crunching fun) "What did that little thing ever do to you?" Okay it wasn't little and it was so nasty. But guess he has a point...it is one of God's creatures...just like us.

"It's not a bug - it's an undocumented feature.”

spiders are our friends (?)

this is a category i'm sort of prepared for. i'm always seeing something in nature that i find interesting or amusing or amazing or breathtaking or even disgusting..and, yes, even strange. God, the Creator, only does things all the way. so there's always something to discover Him in. and it seems to me that even if i've seen a thing a thousand times, it can be new - can be seen in a different light. the past month or so i've been watching a spider outside my dining room window. i'm not a big spider fan. usually when they're around me they end up smashed or flushed. my aunt linda always says "spiders are our friends"...i guess that's true, but i'm not in love with them. i've left this one alone, though. it has fascinated me. busy busy busy all the time, building and rebuilding a web connected on one side to the edge of the roof of our screened in porch and on the other end to my grandmother's rosebush. spinning and spinning over and over again. gives it a place to be. gives it a way to get what it needs to live. sometimes there's nothing stuck in the web. sometimes it hits the jackpot. this picture was taken on a jackpot day....it had whatever the green creature is (looked like a grasshopper to me) and some daddy longlegs to wrap up for later. after that it was back to work, repairing the rips in the web that its sustenance had caused. it's interesting to me that the very thing it needed is what tore down what it had been working for. hours of labor taken down by what turned out to be a blessing. spiders seem to take it all in stride - they're just doing what spiders do. if my 3 boys were reading this right now, at least one of them would be saying, "i know, i know...there's a spiritual lesson in this."....guess what? they'd be right!! so now i'm asking myself if i live my life like that. do i just do what a leigh ann does? work and labor and build on this life i'm given. some thing or some circumstance or some one flies in and tangles things up. instead of seeing it as tangles...as inconvenience...do i look at it as a blessing? or at least try to find the blessing in it? if i can't recognize the blessing, do i at least see the lesson? God has a reason for it all, good and bad. so i believe there is something to learn from everything that comes my way. everything that flies into the webs of people i love. doesn't mean i have to like it. just means i need to pay attention and learn. this is not a new lesson for me. but i seem to need reminding. maybe spiders (at least this one) really are my friends.

Strange Things in Nature

Jan's choice this month is Strange Things in Nature; I had a hard time with this one. Maybe it's because I'm in California and everything is strange, so I'm just use to it.

This beautiful grass, has always struck my as odd.

How often do you see blue grass.

And how about this tree?

It's leaves are never green, just purple, then dusty purple.

Then, here is a tree that has a green trunk, not brown, or mottled bark color, green.

These examples are from my neighborhood!

It's not exactly like Mr. Roger's neighborhood, but it's a good one, too.