Beauty...

... from chaos.
The older I get the more I appreciate hindsight and the more tolerant and philosophical I have become of chaos--- even when in the thick of it.
Three summers ago we endured

country road maintenance.

The "staging area" was the farmer's field directly across from the house. 6:30 every morning the workers would arrive with their pick-up trucks clanking and grinding. Loud, manly voices would travel across the lawn, up the wall and directly into our bedroom window. By 7 am the giant road eating machines would fire up. At 7:01 I would close the front facing windows keeping out a good amount of the dust and dirt but barely muffling the ten hours of mechanical cacophony.
It felt like months... it might have only been weeks.
When it was all done the road appeared only slightly wider and was filled and flattened. It was not "real" paving that topped up the surface, but what was applied kept most of the dust down and needed not to be sprayed with that gooey and odorous gawd-knows-what-black-muck-paper-processing-by-product-carcinogen that was used in the past. Brand new good-sized culverts were installed and Skeeter added a new mischief to her repertoire-- Culvert Crawlin'. Most disturbing was the frightening depth of the dug up gutters. I figured them to be deep enough to swallow up a Smart car. In the end, really not worth all the caffufle... or, so I thought...

Now I have what I have appreciated driving down other country roads in The County...


...wild day lilies in my gutters!! Those ominous, Smart car swallowing gutters!!!


All the grinding and moving had created the most lovely no-maintenance garden for me and all who travel down our road to enjoy from the end of June to the beginning of August.

Isn't chaos grand?