Another beautiful day.  I don't know why this happens, but some days you find more of one particular kind of shell, and today I found a lot of one of my favorites, the comb bittersweet clam.  Usually I find one or two, but today I found over 30!

I like how each one is unique, each pattern different; even the tiniest shell has its own individual design. Beautiful things are not always symmetrical, predictable. And often even what is not "beautiful" can still amaze and impress us.  As I reflected on this I thought of Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem, "Pied Beauty."

GLORY be to God for dappled things—

  For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

    For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

  Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;

    And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

  Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

    With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

                  Praise him.