I love museums.  When I travel I attempt to check out the local treasures stored in these buildings.  I have strolled through every kind imaginable; folk, photography, classical, paintings, sculptures and crayons.  It doesn’t matter to me if the artist is a Picasso or a third grade class, you will find me close to the artwork trying to figure out how they did that.  On a recent trip to the Anniston Natural History Museum when I exited I wandered through their gardens outside the building and took this photo.

        As I looked through the camera at this gorgeous flower I was drawn to the golden tip of the Stigma (It receives the pollen during fertilization).  Like a neon sign it blazed its signal and proclaimed “Free Happy Hour” to the birds and the bees, “Come and get-it”.  And it was irresistible to Mother Nature’s helpers, drawing them like an invisible magnet tugging at their taste buds.  As I look up I notice all the other flowers standing at attention and competing for their share of sunshine and the affections of those who would help her spread the sweet and life giving nectar. 

        The pageantry of pollination is wonderful to behold; it’s the Creators way of ensuring that we will always have flowers to enjoy.  He lovingly gives us seeds and wherever we wish, we can bring beauty by simply planting a seed.  The miraculous potential of a single seed is beyond calculation.  The creation of a thousand forests can be found in one acorn.  Think about it; all the flowers of tomorrow are seeds today.  If your world is not full of beauty, don't complain, plant a seed.  And from that single seed you can create a beautiful garden.

        Where most men see nothing but withered leaves, let us see sweet flowers growing.  We can change our world today, by planting a seed.  Let us beautify our world by sowing seeds of kindness and good cheer.  If we don't like the world we live in let us choose to improve and enhance it by sowing seeds of forgiveness, compassion, acceptance and joy.  Good deeds bear good fruit, selfish deeds bear bad fruit—and man is his own gardener.  Choose to plant something good into the lives of those you meet today.  Happiness is a choice; start to beautify your world today; plant a seed.

Something to think about:

• Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. Let me learn from you, love you, savor you, bless you before you depart. Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. Let me hold you while I may for it will not always be so. One day I shall dig my nails into the earth, or bury my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky, and want, more than the entire world, your return.

• I cannot change yesterday. I can only make the most of today and look with hope toward tomorrow.

• What a wonderful world this would be if we all did as well today as we expect to do tomorrow.

• Procrastination is the thief of time, but it is much more. It clutters up our lives with an appalling number of half-done things.

• Tomorrow must be the longest day in the week—judging from the number of things we are going to do then.

• Be kind today because there may be no tomorrow.

• The kindness we resolve to show tomorrow cures no headache today.

• Tomorrow will be a better day if we begin today to improve it…Giving your best today is the best recipe for a better tomorrow.

• Happiness held is the seed; happiness shared is the flower.

Thankful for the seeds sown in my life by loving friends
Rickey Moore