A few months ago, inspired by The Enchanted Earth blog, I had the bright idea to take pictures of heart shapes I found as I went through my daily life, blog about it and call it “Hidden Hearts.” Since then, how many heart photos did I take? Exactly zero. It seems I didn’t see heart shapes around me. Maybe my vision was faulty--I am terrible at those puzzles where you’re supposed to find the pictures within the picture, and not once have I ever seen the image embedded in one of those optical illusion posters. 

Still, I wasn’t quite ready to give up. Remembering this post, I decided to give it one last shot. I took my camera out into our yard. If I found some hearts, great. If not, I’d give up the idea and move on.

As I stepped out the back door, I realized there’s a heart shape hidden in our outdoor table and chair set.

That was OK, but what I really wanted was to find hearts in the natural world. And then I saw this one:

And this one:


And this one:


And this one:


(I also discovered a face in our grill controls:


...but that’s beside the point.)

Now that I was completely focused on them, it took me only a few minutes to find all of these. Well. Is there a take-away lesson? If you know me, of course there is: You find what you look for. Looking for good in others? You’ll find it. Expecting your feelings to be hurt? They will be.

Looking for love? It’s all around you.

Happy Valentine’s Day—may your life be filled with love.

Bonus heart: