The Lord has blessed us today with a beautiful summer morning. The earth is quiet and still, so green and alive after the rainy days. Yellow butterflies are all over my yard, drinking from the flower blossoms, flexing their wings on the colorful petals. The sky canvas is azure blue. The clouds are vivid white, floating along by themselves, each individually drawn with curvy tops and pale gray bottoms. Looks like a sky painting in a child’s picture book. The birds are flitting around the feeders. Mr. Nuthatch is back walking around on the trunk of the oak tree waiting for a suet basket snack. The cooling breeze has a feel of fall, blowing so gentle I can hear the individual pipe notes in the wind chime symphony. The swing chain is singing and I can hear the humming birds revving their little engines as they fly through the porch. I love these kind of porch pondering mornings. Makes me thankful to be alive.

My lawn mowing crew just drove up so I’m off to the reading chair and Gone With the Wind. Scarlett is now thinking about the clothes Rhett Butler wears and talks of a white satin jacket with pink rose buds embroidered on it. Can’t imagine Rhett wearing that coat, much less the checkered trousers she mentions. It amazing what sticks in your mind when you’re reading a book. Now I’ll see Clark Gable decked out in his rose jacket when I think of him. Just doesn’t suit him. Anyway, guess if Scarlett can dress in green velvet curtains, I shouldn’t worry about Rhett wearing a rose embroidered jacket.

Went out at dusk and watched the sun set. The sun had a new color on her palette tonight. She retired on the blue horizon as a bright yellow ball and painted the bottoms of the dark purple rain clouds golden. She usually paints the tops of the clouds but tonight she drug her brush across the bottoms of the purple clouds and made them have a golden glow. So pretty! I was too fascinate by the sunset to think about taking a photo.

Went out on my deck to hang some clothes on the clothes line mid-morning and noticed the large chestnut tree in the back yard is dropping her spiked burs and the squirrels are enjoying the nuts found inside. I was so careful walking on the deck, constantly watching for the burs, and I still stepped on one prickly piece. So hard to get those bur splinters out. Growing up we had a row of chestnut trees down the front of our yard and walking barefoot was like walking in a land mine. Even months after the burs had fallen, my brothers and I would think it would finally be okay to walk barefoot in the yard, and we inevitability would step on piece of a bur.

The squirrels have chewed some of the burs open, not waiting till they turn brown and split open to reveal two nuts. I don’t know how they can chew through those spikes. I know they have to chew to keep their teeth filed down. They had already chewed several green burs open on the deck railing. Maybe the wind blew these off the tree but the nuts were mature. They kinda taste like peanuts. My family never ate many chestnuts. We were just tortured by their burs.

I’m thinking we could all learn a few things from the squirrels. They certainly have pertinacity. They never give up. They may run away in their zig zag patterns and hide but they’ll be back once the coast is clear. I think we sometimes give up before we’ve really tried to accomplish our task. We always think we can’t but with persistence we can. Just watch a determined squirrel find a way to eat from a bird feeder. They don’t give up easily.

Anything worthwhile doing requires courage and conviction. If everything was easy to accomplish it wouldn’t be as meaningful. I know I’ve given up sometimes and had to pep talk myself to finish the task. Sometimes just doing a little at the time gives us courage to complete the job. We need to be strong and adaptable, sticking with it to accomplish our goals. A little squirrel hides 10,000 acorns only to forget where 74 percent of them are hidden. But its determination keeps it storing the acorns. Squirrels don’t worry about not being able to find all their acorns. They just keep gathering and hiding. Even stopping to bite some of the nuts open so they won’t sprout and grow. They build a cozy nest and weather the storms nature sends. They are intelligent and adaptable. So are we!

The wonderful thing about being a human being is we can accomplish anything if we work hard. Life throws us all sorts of struggles and hurdles along the way but if we’re persistent and determined we’ll be rewarded in the end.

Peter Pan said, “The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it.”