Secret Beauty

With the bumper crop of apricots ripening on my tree I’ve spent most of the last two days preserving literally hundreds of them. You can imagine my surprise when I discovered a laybug tucked behind one of the stones of an apricot I was pitting.

Now, I’ve come across tiny ants inside of many fruits I’ve pried open, but only with the overripe apricots with a noticeable gap that are also dimpled and bruised. Somehow, this ladybug found her way inside this particular apricot without any apparent hole! Upon close inspection, I was and still am astonished by my discovery.

I took her outside and set the apricot out on my patio table, telling her she needed to fly away home because her house wasn’t on fire, but was about to be made into a compote!

Beauty is hiding in places we often don’t expect to find it.