Carol is hosting the round-up at http://carolwscorner.blogspot.com/
Happy Thanksgiving! Wherever and however you celebrated this special day for recalling our blessings, I hope your day was as nourishing to your poet-spirit as it was to your body!
Inasmuch as Thanksgiving might be considered the grande finale of the autumn holidays (at least in areas of the country that have seasonal vegetation), here is the third of the three autumn photo-poems I composed in response to Carol V.’s “Autumn Palette” gallery initiative.
Inasmuch, too, as Thanksgiving is one of our most cherished National family holidays, which conjures up thoughts and images of “home,” the backstory to this photo reminds me of the parallel aphoristic truth: “The grass always looks greener on the other side of the fence.”
Our family history includes annual Fall foliage forages to places miles away in search of the most breathtaking autumn nature sites. What is so amazing about the scenery in the photo-poem is that it was found in a totally unexpected place…right in our own backyard. A wooded backyard to which no back door opens…A wooded backyard, quite frankly, into which we typically do not enter or look. (Note. I had to invent a back door for the last line of the poem:)
But because some work needed to be done on the side of the house, my husband glanced to the back, and had his breath taken away. Not that the scenery was as spectacular as that photographed on one of the Fall foliage forages miles and miles away to a lakeside state park…No, but this was “our woods” that were ablaze with a variety of colors. And even though we hadn’t planted the trees which so gifted us, still, these trees were “ours,” and like a child who objectively might not be as good looking or as smart as someone else’s child, that child is loved because it’s yours…Ergo:
The grass is not necessarily greener, nor the leaves more brilliantly colored, on the other side of the fence….
And when the opposite is true, which objectively it often is, there’s something to be said for appreciating what is ours, even while aspiring for what truly is greener or more brilliant. Will we continue Fall foliage foraging? You bet! Will we remember to look for beauty in our own backyard, also? I certainly hope so!
Thank God we live in a land of options. May we exercise those options with thanks in our heart for all those servicemen and servicewomen who, along with their families, are sacrificing in the service of our freedoms. God bless America!
cbhanek 
A lovely reminder that what we seek is sometimes right before us in familiar places – thank you! And thanks for calling us to remember those in uniform, and their families, who must often spend their holidays apart. Have a great weekend!
Thank you so very much, Robyn, for taking time to read and to comment. I need your reminder-reflection, too!!!…Honestly, I can’t imagine what the American military family separation-sacrifices are truly like..Thanks for all your well wishes. Hope your Thanksgiving has been all you could have wanted or imagined. God bless you!
Your story makes me laugh, and your pointed 3-liner is probably more needed than we realize. Much gratitude to and for you….
What a nice reflection-blessing to receive from you! Thank you for reading and affirming. Thank God for you!
An apt parable to remind us that looking close is often as rewarding as looking far.
Thank you so much for reading and for rephrasing so poetically the familiar truth. Funny, aren’t we, that we can “know” a truth, and yet forget/ignore it, so as to be surprised by it!…I’m reading what you wrote so beautifully as if I had never known that truth before. Thank you! God bless you!
Oh, I’m so glad you got to see it. Maybe a couple of chairs will be planted out there next spring? And a little table? And perhaps a short stroll with a coffee cup will happen? Just think of the treasure you have discovered. And it was right there all along…as most of our treasures are!
You are so right about the unnoticed “buried” treasures…I need to outgrow allergies to enjoy that backyard from the outside instead of the inside! God bless you. Hope you had a treasured Thanksgiving!
I love this! I first developed a taste for appreciating my own back yard through L. M. Montgomery and Anne of Green Gables. Though she lived in romantic PEI and I lived in boring flat Saskatchewan, the way she noticed, appreciated and loved her surroundings started me taking note of my own. And I fell in love with boring, flat Saskatchewan!
Your enthusiasm is infectious! Thank you so much for reading and for making me smile with your lively explanation of how you started being attuned to hometown surroundings! Literature & Life…they really complement (or recapitulate) so beautifully! …God bless you. Hope you had a good Thanksgiving in “boring, flat Saskatchewan”–with you there, no place on Earth could be more graced or thoughtful!