Ate my breakfast perched in the swing this morning, watching Father Sky draw beautiful clouds and hang them high on his blue sky canvas. I think he was giving art lessons, sketching all kinds of clouds, some of them round and fluffy, kissed pristine white on their crowns by the sun and brushed gray on their bellies by Mother Nature. Other were little cotton bolls, rolling across the sky and bumping into his line cloud drawings. As he kept teaching his art class, the clouds changed shapes and morphed into different characters as they floated slowly across the sky. With all the clouds to be colored, I was anticipating a wondrous sunset and Mother Nature didn’t disappoint me.

I have become so enamored with the sky and its clouds. I sat in the swing and watched the dark blue sky all day. Hard to think I never gave the sky and clouds a thought but sitting in a swing and watching them daily, I’ve begun to marvel at how beautiful they are. Even the colors of the white luminous clouds are breathtaking as you watch them be dyed with Mother Nature’s watercolors. The sky and the sun’s life giving light and warmth are something to be thankful for. As one of my blogging friends said, put your every day blessings in your grateful cup. My cup is overflowing today!

When sunset came, Mother Nature, picked up her art palette and filled it with pastel colors of yellow and orange and pink and turquoise and blue and white. She layered her paints in broad strokes and blurred where the edges touched. Father Sky took his finger and blended his pastel drawn clouds, tinted pale blue and pale pink, into the muscadine gold gleaming of the setting sun. Perfectly beautiful! Mother Nature helped the sun bed down her bright rays and Father Sky bent down to kiss her good night. The moon has successfully hidden from me for several nights. Tonight he and his starry friends are no where to be seen, hiding in the cloud covers not ready to wake up. I know the sun is sad without her nightlights twinkling in the sky. I’ll check on them later.

I had a little zapper of phoebes visit my oak tree today. Love that a flock of phoebes is called a zapper. They are insect eaters and flycatchers, guess they zap the bugs like those electric bug killers. One of them perched bravely on a bird feeder pole and surveyed the landscape. His other friends hid in the oak tree branches. They are pretty little plump birds, black and grayish brown, with gray smudges on their white chests. Guess they’ve been cleaning out their fireplace, getting ready for winter and got ashes on their breasts. I named him Pilario which means cheerful. They flitted around the oak tree branches and then were gone. Wish they had been here in mosquito season.

The oak tree was fully decked out in yellow today and sending his little ballerinas floating down dressed in yellow and brown leotards. The tree is soon be seen in his naked branches of winter.

After the phoebes flew away, I watched a large monarch butterfly flutter around my pansies, its orange and black wings larger than the pansy blooms. Mother Nature paints with such vibrant colors. I love her colors of fall best. I call them earth colors, rich and vibrant, like expensive jewels. She lays her jewels of color across the horizon’s sunset like an expensive bracelet, resting on a white cotton square and wrapped in a blue signature box from Tiffany’s. She strokes her brushes across the trees, too, and dresses them in quintessential quilts of countless colors. I’m grateful for her and her paint brushes.

I watched an interview with Dolly Parton last night and she said something that resonated with me. “If you have dreams you better put wings on them.” She’s right. If we wait around for the dreams to come to us we’ve got a long wait. I think God wants us to pursue our dreams using the talents he’s blessed us with. He’s given us everything we need. Our dreams change as we grow older but we don’t need to stagnate our life by settling or giving up on our dreams.

Our values in life and our faith in God, together with prayer and thanksgiving, help lead us to greater success. We all have great potential and God has equipped us with everything we need to accomplish our dreams. Life is a big adventure. Fear of failure holds us back but we all make mistakes. We have to brave and not worry what other people think. We miss out on life’s blessings if we refuse to follow our dreams.

Make a plan, work diligently toward your goals, and make your dreams come true. We are more likely to regret what we didn’t do than what we did. Some of us are probably living the life of our dreams but haven’t realized it yet. With God’s help you can turn your dream into a reality.

I think Mark Twain said it best, “Don’t dream your life, but live your dream.”

“The biggest adventure you can ever take is to live the life of your dreams.” — Oprah Winfrey