Gratitude beats luck

The search for a new home has been maddeningly unproductive. Weeks of luckless shopping are wearing Bob and I down as we live in furnished rentals and move our cats and a few possessions from one short term space to another. About once a week, we find a promising property, only to find that it reeks of tobacco smoke, has a bad foundation or backs to a busy road.

To lift our spirits, we recently did a short trek near Conifer on a quest for calypso orchids. A couple of hours of hiking yielded nothing more exciting than clump after clump of grape holly until … I detected a tiny white flower I had never seen in the wild before: a fairy bell.  They’re not uncommon – I had just never seen one. Sighting a new species can improve my mood faster than one of Bubba’s lemon drop martinis and I went home happy.

Rough fruited fairy bell

I didn’t find what I was looking for but the universe put something better in my path that I didn’t even know that I wanted to see. Thanks, universe, for the reminder than leaning into experiences delivers better results than pining for what isn’t there.