In the years we have had this small potted cactus collection, which I might add is the only outdoor potted plant that has managed to stay alive here, this particular cactus has never bloomed.  Not once in over three years.  Yesterday, however, as water truck after water truck slowly filled the now thankfully-mud-free pool, I looked over to spy this gift from nature.  Perhaps it is a small guilt token to compensate for what it had wrought the week before.  Although I would have rather gone flood-free and done without, it is lovely nonetheless.

And although I had to carefully crop this photo to avoid showing the surrounding mud flats, the pool is full and cool and devoid of drool (weakly going for a rhyme thing here as I've lost a good part of my mind in the last 8 days a week, I loOoOoOove you).  The toddler, the teenagress, and Mr. Turtle are you-make-me-so-very happy as they float on by, float on byhuhy.  I'll shut up now as I have a problem with committment, as in I don't want to be.  Padding stirs up my allergies.