Skeleton Flower

A while ago on Facebook I was tagged for a gratitude challenge--maybe I have the details wrong, but something like "for 5 days post 3 three things you are grateful for"--and I realized I am living in the gratitude phase of my life and might take up the challenge here, in my gradual, random, intermittent way. So today I am grateful for this skeleton flower, also posted on Facebook--grateful for its beauty and just to know of its existence. It reminds me that I am grateful, personally, that my own bones have not yet dissolved ("no change" on my osteopenia bone density scan lab report, sort of fun to see my backbone on the screen). Grateful that my car broke down (electrical system?) in a friend's driveway, not on the road, and that I had my cell phone on me, and that my husband saw the text on his phone to come rescue me. He and I have a similar impulse toward gratitude when these small annoyances or larger mishaps come at us: both times a neighbor's tree fell in our back yard, crushing the fence, it missed the house! It missed a person! Being grateful for one small thing leads to an endless list of things every time.

And now, to get back to bones and skeletons, I am grateful that my rehearsal this week, at Evergreen Cemetery, for the annual Discovery Walk, occurred on a beautiful day, and I'm going to hope for similar weather in early October for the 20th anniversary Illinois Voices Theatre--McLean County Museum of History Evergreen Cemetery Walk!

And you can learn more about this particular White Lady skeleton flower--from a Hawaiian burial ground!--at Firefly Forest.