Sweet Gum Balls and New Visions

They are all over the yard. In the flower beds, in the driveway and under the porch.  Gum Balls are one of the annual rites of spring.  Until now they have been something of a blight on my springtime.  These round spiky things fall from the trees covering our front yard.  They create a virtual field of land mines that can be quite unpleasant if you step on them with bare feet.  That's another reason gum balls are not well received in our yard. Everyone wants to be able to enjoy warm, fresh, new spring grass with bare feet and these little spiky balls are a rather effective deterrent.
But a strange thing has occurred this year.  I've found myself growing interested in them.  Fascinated I suppose, by how they fall from our huge trees and drift down to the ground, covering the front yard in a folk art styled, Polk-a-dotted pattern.  They are actually kind-of pretty.
My husband counts them as one of the top ten things he hates about landscaping.  More probably they are number one at the top of the list of ten things he hates about landscaping in Georgia.
But I kind-of like em.  This year I've taken to collecting them.  My spring has been different from any other spring before so it falls to reason that I would take a different view of these guys.  I've collected them in bags, I've taken them and dried them out, I've spray painted them and I have made things out of them.  Now I'm picking them up and deposited them around flowers, potted plants and lawn art.  I don't know why.  For some reason, this year I'm seeing beauty in them.
They are beautiful.  They look like little star bursts.  Some of them are a caramel brown and just feel warm with raised edges and spikes, others are chocolate brown with deep holes.  They seem cooler and smell of dried leaves and springtime, the spiky things are gone but they still remind me of stars.  Still others are fuzzy and worn down by weather and other elements.  But all of them are fun.
I don't know, I don't know what it is.  Seeing beauty in things that maybe no one else sees beauty in.  Suddenly I've gotten it.  Its hit me.  They are beautiful and I guess that is kind-of like a lot of things out there that we take for granted and look at every day and never really notice.  There is a lot of beauty out there.  I've missed it for years.  So I am going to take a different approach.  I am going to look for beauty in those things that I did not think were so beautiful, not even attractive.  I'm going to look for beauty.  It just feels right.  Feels healthy.  A different view.  Yep, I'm gonna take a different view.
Looking for and finding beauty in life, in nature and in my front yard.  In gum balls.