Pondering in the swing this morning. The sky is milky white. No blue sky, no fluffy clouds kissed by the sun. Read humidity can affect the color of the sky. Can’t say it’s not humid today! The sun is so bright. Almost hurts your eyes to look up at the sky. Once the cloud cover dissipated we had blue sky and cotton ball clouds. I stayed on the porch till about 1:30 and it just got too hot and humid. I headed inside and the weather app on my phone said the real feel temperature was 116.

One of my tomato plants just dropped her two biggest tomatoes off the branches this morning. Guess they were too heavy to hold up in this heat. My flowers are parched, too. I need to start watering them twice a day. I never use the hose pipe to water my pot plants but filling and carrying all the milk jugs is getting harder in this heat. Might give them all a hose pipe shower at twilight after their leaves have cooled off. The bird baths are drying up faster each day, too. I feel sorry for all the roofer and road workers. I know they are exhausted when they get home each day. We need to say a prayer for all the men and women who work outside in this heat. Their jobs are so pertinent to our daily needs.

The birds are missing all the bushes they used to hide in and perch on around the oak tree. They’ve been sitting on the bannisters waiting their turns for the feeders. I put my bottle tree out under the oak so they can perch on it while they wait for their reservations at the feeders. I put green apples and red apples on the bottle tree during Christmas for the birds on my back deck but Grandpaw raccoon beat the birds to the apples. I think he’s moved on since there is no greenery to hide in now.

Went back out at dusk to hose pipe shower the plants and vegetables. Wanted to shower myself before I finished! The Lord was painting a beautiful yellow and orange sunset with purple thunder head clouds gathering. He has such a myriad of colors on his palette and always paints a wondrous sky canvas. I’d love to have a box of his pastels and watercolors. Mother Nature sent a few heavy wind gusts to give the bamboo a dance lesson but no rain to cool off the Earth.

I watched some videos on the internet today and saw this cute little girl with her quote of the day. I loved the quote and looked it up and found it came from a short story titled, Three Men in a Boat. It’s a great quote and I’ve been thinking how it relates to life all afternoon.

The quote, attributed to Damian Barr, says, “We’re not all in the same boat. We’re all in the same storm. Some have yachts, some have canoes, and some are drowning. Just be kind and help whoever you can.”

The world really is a storm now. We can’t get along. We don’t know who we are or what we are. The yachts exist in their shallow waters trying to navigate the world, trying to control things with their purse strings. The canoes are battling the rapids hoping for calm water to eventually even out and slow down their world. Some are drowning in a sea of homelessness and poverty. We feed the poor of the world yet let our homeless and starving children have hopes of finding a shelter’s cot and a hot meal. We’ve lost the art of arguing and agreeing with our disagreements. Compromise is no longer an option. We can’t win every argument and everyone doesn’t deserve a trophy. Some of us paddle our canoe with one oar but are thankful for that one oar. That’s me!

We can compare our life to a ship. We need to pack it lightly and not weight it down with things that aren’t necessary. I’m sure we all have things in our life we’d like to throw overboard and forget, to lighten our burdens and lay our heads down at night without worries. Don’t worry about things you can’t control. Most of the things we worry about and lose sleep over never materialize. I know this from my own experience!

No matter what type of boat you’re navigating through life right now let’s all pledge to pack our boats with kindness and share this kindness with others traveling through the waters of their lives. Lend a helping hand when they lose an oar!

“Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need — homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink,” — Three Men and a Boat, Jerome K. Jerome.