Garden glories ;)

I love the colour contrast in the above and below picture...juts beatiful!

Oh this beauty would not spread its wings for me to take a picture. This is the best picture I could get of it. Its wings were a gorgeous yellow and black strips.
Out of my persistence, my dad put up a water lily pond for me. Something about water lily reminds me of my childhood and the song my dad used to make me sing (alli ambal...). This is the very first bloom.
After a heavy rain this unfortunate beetle got drenched and found its resting place in my rose bush. But look at its iridescent colour! Truly mother nature is wonderful.
This one was a bit difficult to take a picture of. It kept flying away when I approached. But finally got a click ;).
This is one of my favorites..simply because the colour of the butterfly perfectly goes with the white daisy flowers.

Sunlight between the palm leaves..pretty!
The pebbled pathway of our garden.

Red rose...my favorite...it is at its initial stages of blooming :)

Choices

Recently, I just remembered a beautiful story that I heard in a sermon in church one Sunday. It was about two boys whose father was a drunkard. Every night their father would come all drunk and mercilessly hit their mother while they bore witness to all these. The father spent every last penny of savings they had to buy alcohol. The family was going through a rough time. When the boys grew up, they got jobs. The elder one, like his father was a heavy drinker. But the younger one was a teetotaler. The priest who was actually telling this story, once visited their house for religious purposes. The elder one, intoxicated by alcohol, was present and so was the younger one. The father asked to them, why they had two different attitude towards alcohol. The young one promptly replied, my father was a drunkard and used to beat my mother in front of us. I learnt from him and swore to not be like him. While the Elder one said, my father was a drunkard and seeing him beat my mother like that made me so upset that I turned to alcohol for comfort. With God's grace, at least one child came out right.

This story exemplifies how we choose our own path - either we can choose good or we can choose bad. You can never move forward, if you blame other or the curbing environment where we live in. We make our own choices. We can can learn from the mistake of others and avoid the same. But most times, we just forget all that and blame the world for our misfortunes, when we clearly welcomed it with open arms. What I am trying to tell is this - we always have a choice - and it is out decision to choose the correct path. :)

Anyway, this story was running through my head and made me Philosophize :). Hope anyone finds it useful...including me :)