Like this one from Melissa of Tilly's Nest...
Honestly... is that beautiful or what? Be still my heart!
Melissa writes a chicken blog, but recently she's begun a new adventure with bees. (Next she'll probably get a goat! Homesteading is kind of addicting like that!) Her new bird bath is ready and waiting to serve as a drinking bowl for her small buzzing friends, complete with a little landing area right in the center (for bee safety of course - no drowning victims, please!).
Frugality in homesteading is always important, so of course, this should be considered when making a decisions. Kudos to Melissa for finding her bird bath on clearance at her local garden center! It makes her new bee waterer that much sweeter!
Now... compare her lovely watering pool to my own. I started with this pail of rocks...
While having rocks for landing on is good, I found that there wasn't enough landing area in this set up. So I added some smaller rocks to fill in the voids...
In this situation I found that the water level dropped below the rocks too quickly and then my little bee friends couldn't get to any water at all! The pail was just way too deep.
Finally, I used a water heater drip pan filled with rocks. This worked much better as there was lots of surface area for bees. I've since removed a few rocks and added some floating pieces of wood. It definitely does the job, but lovely? Not a chance.
Let's review... there's:
• beautiful, but not very practical
• practical, but not very lovely to look at
• beautifully practical in every way!
Given a choice, why not go for the beautiful AND practical? After all, we were created to enjoy beauty so that it would remind us of the beauty of our Lord and that we would not forget all beauty emanates from Him.
"... if the beauty we behold on earth has its root and origin in god, there must have been beauty in God from all eternity. What, then, is the beauty of God? ... God himself is the absolutely original pattern of all other beauty...
"Now how does this infinite divine beauty relate to our longing for beauty? I do believe that deeply rooted in every human heart is a longing for beauty... Is it not because we long to behold and be a part of beauty? We crave to be moved by some rare glimpse of greatness. We yearn for a vision of glory." ~ John Piper, Jesus Is Precious Because We Yearn for Beauty
"One thing I have asked from the LORD, that I shall seek: That I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, To behold the beauty of the LORD And to meditate in His temple." Psalm 27:4
So if you were a bee, which would you choose?
I thought so. Thanks, Melissa, for the inspiration and reminder that even in watering bees, we can reflect beauty!
Saturday... local rummage sale... I'm on the hunt!
