The day is so pretty! The clouds are bleached white and fluffy, hurrying by on the horizon. Some of the clouds have smokey gray middles. The sky, shyly peaking through the cloud cover in several places, is painted a light blue. A slight breeze is making the smallest of my wind chimes whisper. Only the tops of the old magnolias across the street are being brushed by the breeze. My Uncle Jim Shaffer told me once when only the tip tops of the trees blow in the wind a bad storm is on the way. Don’t see a thing on the radar yet except in Tennessee. Mother Nature has a forty percent chance of rustling up a storm today.

Just noticed the clouds are floating along in different directions. On my left, the big fluffy cumulous clouds are floating north and on my right, the thick layered nimbostratus clouds are drifting south. The atmosphere is like a big cake with layers of different wind speeds and directions. So if you’re a cloud, whatever layer you’re in on the cake determines your direction. Little cloud lesson today for me and y’all.

I am so enjoying these juvenile cardinals with all their vibrant feathers in rich muted dark browns and blacks. Everyone of them is dressed differently, even their are beaks are dissimilar. Their breasts are covered with little downy feathers, all fluffed up in tan and orange and reddish tints. Some not yet feathered as male or female. So beautiful when they all perch on a feeder together. Trying to capture their colors in a photograph today.

Went outside to watch the sun set and enjoy the cardinals at dusk but the lightning bolts ran me back in the house. It’s thundering and blundering. Penelope is under the bed, that’s a good indication of a storm. We need the rain so I’m not complaining.

I was wondering today if we get our childlike sense of wonder back when we are older. I know I’m not really old at 67 but I’ve just noticed I’m enjoying things that I haven’t noticed in years. Guess as we grow up and age we push the wonderment of childhood back down. It’s always there, just waiting for us to discover it again. Maybe retirement brought mine back since it slowed down my pace of living and gave me all this wonderful free time to enjoy a calmer life.

If you lose the ability to wonder and see the beauty in the world you lose your imagination and creativity. Take a walk with a small child and you’ll see all the wonder in the world — bugs, sticks, acorns, animal tracks, mud puddles, rocks, leaves —simple things that make a child pause, slow down and stop to take a closer look. I had never noticed all the beautiful tiny wildflowers till I stopped and looked down at the grass. I was always just walking to tend to Penelope but when I stopped and noticed the world around me I saw the small delicately colored butterflies, the miniature wild flowers, the muted beauty in a female cardinal, the raspberry clouds, and the magnificent sunsets. I heard the cicadas singing, and the hummingbirds’ wings beating, and the insects buzzing, and the soft breeze whisperings of the wind chimes, and the quiet rustling of my bamboo forest. Wonders all around me! I just didn’t have the time or inclination to notice them before. If you can’t find happiness in the simple things of life, I don’t think you’ll ever be happy.

If you need a little wonder back in your life first find a reason to be curious about the world. Then put down the phone and go outside and take a closer look. Slow down and be a traveler in Mother Nature’s beautiful world. The planet Earth is wonder on her own.

“If I had influence with the good fairy… I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life,” — Rachel Carson.