A picture is worth a thousand words, right? This post is that thousand plus a few of my own.
Last summer in drought-like conditions, we were swarmed with mosquitoes. They buzzed and bit and mobbed en masse and made life miserable. This year, despite months of heavy rains, we had few. It could be due to the onslaught of frogs that convened on our property when a small pond formed in the lower southwest corner for a time. Their chorus kept silence at bay all summer — but it is possible their appetites took care of the mosquitoes too.
But now it is November and so dry that those deluges and nightly frog musicals are but a distant memory — except for the hickory nuts, which hit the roof of our house and ding our vehicles when we forget to park a safe distance from their trajectory. My husband hypothesizes that this boon in hickory nuts mirrors that of the rain we had all summer. A physical therapist with an eye for potential hazards, whenever my husband walks onto the driveway, he picks up the fallen nuts and tosses them over the garage into the Spanish bayonets beyond (the plants, not the weapon). These round nuts, camouflaged with the autumn leaves can easily turn an ankle or cause a fall. And they don’t seem to simply fall. When the tree branches shake these hickory nuts free, the nuts shoot like bullets or missiles — aiming for shiny cars or roofs over sleeping heads or simply breaking apart to leave a rusty residue that delights the squirrels and stains our cars.
These nuts do not delight me.
Until I see them broken, their hearts exposed and beautiful, and I am reminded of the Creator, who seems to weave a bit of wonder into everything He creates. He truly does make all things beautiful in His time — even annoying hickory nuts!
“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end” (Ephesians 3:11).
All Things Work Together 