I think fall has arrived this morning. The sky is overcast with intermittent gun metal gray clouds and they just rained down a soft shower. The day is cool. Penelope and I took a walk during the shower. I’m ready for some hot days of summer. Good porch pondering weather.

Maybe I’m getting old but I tried to sit in the swing and eat breakfast and felt like I needed a blanket. Even thought about my feeted pjs! So I came back in the house. Returned later when the morning had warmed up. The fighting finches had already eaten half the seeds in the tube feeder and the cardinals were working on cleaning the seeds out of the others. My pansies from my urns that I planted in the yard are really needing some sunshine. Don’t know if they’re gonna live. The sun finally broke free of the clouds in late afternoon. The flowers and vegetables were enjoying the sun’s warmth till the clouds gathered together and shut her out. Hoping tomorrow will be a sunny day.

I saw three hummingbirds today. I don’t know how they flap their wings so fast. Read they normally flap 50 to 60 times a second! They flap even more if they are chasing or being chased. Their little wings’ breeze make the million bells’ blooms sway. Takes five hummingbirds to equal the weight of one chickadee. Birds are awesome creatures. Y’all know by now I love watching them.

Saw the neatest thing on the internet today. An owl in Eureka, Illinois, picked up a child’s stick horse, some people call them a hobby horse, and was flying around holding it. Looked just like a witch riding a broom when it flew around in the sky. Photos show the owl sitting on a limb holding the horse. You can watch a video of it flying around, too. It was a few weeks before Halloween. Wish I could have seen that. Maybe I need to leave one out in the yard for my backyard owls.

I’m so proud of my little garden of pots. The cucumbers and tomatoes are blooming. I walk out everyday and inspect them and talk to them. Can’t wait to eat a tomato sandwich and some cucumber slices. My squash and peppers are budding and almost blooming, too. When I was taking photos of the blooms I was pondering how we can relate growing a garden to growing our lives.

When we are born we need nurturing. We plant our roots early in our family unit. Beginning our lives, we are dependent on others to tend to our needs. Just as our gardens are all different, some flowers and some vegetables, our families and circumstances are different, too. Our gardens are dependent on us to nourish them with good soil, fertilizer and water. We choose the seeds we plant just as we choose our paths throughout our lives. We watch the plants grow and mature and harvest their fruits. As William Wordsworth said, “Your mind is the garden, your thoughts are the seeds. The harvest can either be flowers or weeds.”

Just like the gardens, our lives have beauty. We nurture and grow relationships with family and friends. We have to watch out for the negative thoughts and influences that keep us from thriving just as gardens have to be watched for weeds and insects. We should be mindful of who is tending our life’s garden. We have to be prepared for stormy weather and protect our gardens when storms threaten. We’ll have the heat of the summer and the cool of the fall. Our lives will have sunny spring days with smiles and cold days of winter with despair. But with Mother Nature and God’s grace we will thrive and mature and bear our harvests.

“The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just the body, but the soul,” — Alfred Austin