Lucky

The Luck of the Barn

Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known.

~ Garrison Keillor

Today’s Capture Your 365 prompt is Lucky, and the email suggested things such as horseshoes and four-leaf clovers and whatever might be lucky for you.  M and I keep all our superstitions on the barn.

Pennsylvania Dutch Hex Sign

Hex signs, of course, are meant to be kept on the barn.  In fact, some people think it’s bad luck to bring them indoors.  We brought our very first hex sign indoors many, many years ago, and had a run of bad luck.  I’m not saying it was due to bringing the hex sign indoors.  I have no proof of that.  But we moved it outside, and the run of bad luck stopped.

Shadows dancing on the side of the barn

That doesn’t mean we haven’t had any bad luck at all since we started keeping the hex signs outside on the barn where they belong.  Stuff happens.  But the barn hasn’t burnt down.

How the mighty (icicles) have fallen.

The barn is still standing.  The icicles, on the other hand, have all taken a dive and lie shattered on the ground.

Walking towards the back of the pond.

In the abstract, it might be tempting to imagine that irreducible complexity simply requires multiple simultaneous mutations — that evolution might be far chancier than we thought, but still possible.  Such an appeal to brute luck can never be refuted… Luck is metaphysical speculation; scientific explanations invoke causes.

~ Michael J. Behe

This chickadee flew so close to me that I was lucky to catch even this poor photo of him.

We have several hex signs on the barn.  M grew up in Pennsylvania Dutch country (Lancaster County, PA) so it’s a tradition from his side of our marriage.  I like them.  There are so many different types with a variety of patterns and meanings.

The buds on the trees have been lucky enough to survive the cold nights.  (And yes, the sky IS that blue today.)

The Tree of Life hex sign pictured in this post is one of my favorites.  The tree is laden with “fruit,” and each piece of “fruit” is a geometric hex design.  The eight-pointed star offers abundance; the rosette offers good luck; the hearts invite love and romance; the tulips are said to shower life with faith, hope, and charity; and the rain symbol promises harmony with nature.

A male cardinal sits high in a tree calling to his mate. Lucky guy.

Luck is a goddess not to be coerced and forcibly wooed by those who seek her favours.  From such masterful spirits she turns away.  But it happens sometimes that, if we put our hand in hers with the humble trust of a little child, she will have pity on us, and not fail us in our hour of need.

~ P. G. Wodehouse

A blade of grass leans towards luck

We have lucked into another gorgeous day here in the Bogs.  It’s the calm before the storm although I don’t think we’re going to have much of a storm here.  I could be wrong, but it looks as though those west and east of us have gotten or will get more snow than we will.  Lucky ducks.  I was looking forward to one last play day in the snow before spring arrives.

A lucky day

Learn to recognize good luck when it’s waving at you, hoping to get your attention.

~ Sally Koslow

Lucky flowers in the meadow

Yesterday (I think) I mentioned that a lot of the dried grasses and wildflowers in the meadows have fallen to earth.  I brought you an image to show you what I meant:

Flattened grasses

Not that you couldn’t have imagined it on your own.  But I do find it an interesting phenomenon.  All winter the grasses and dried flowers stand tall, even when weighed down a bit with snow, and then collapse in the spring.

Looking back towards the woods.

I guess that’s it from the Bogs for today.  Thank you for stopping by.  Fortune, in the guise of the sun, is still shining down upon us this afternoon.  The back porch (which is enclosed) is nice and warm from the sun, and a great place to sit and watch the sunset.  Maybe we should have dinner on the porch this evening.  Good food, a glass of wine, and a sunset.  Sounds pretty good, don’t you think?

Lucky shot

Have a delightful day, evening, night… whenever and wherever you are on the spectrum of time.  🙂

Two in a row! How lucky can you get?

A statement about luck is a statement about the mind, not about the world… We find what seems to have been the lucky break or the big mistake, and so we thank our lucky stars that we took the road less traveled or curse the fates that sent that little wavelet that flipped us on our backs.  With hindsight, we seem to see that everything preceding the pivotal point was leading up to it, tending toward it, and that everything following it grew from it.

To any observer outside the lucky one himself, however, luck is simply chance.  Chance is neutral.

~ Eric Kraft

Lucky us! The hyacinths are coming up!

But who knows?  Maybe today.  Every day is a new day.  It is better to be lucky.  But I would rather be exact.  Then when luck comes you are ready.

~ Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

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