Another beautiful day the Lord has made! Robin egg colored sky, bleached white fluffy clouds basking in the bright morning sun, lazily moving across the sky, joining with cigar smoke colored clouds to veil the sun late afternoon, keeping the sunset from my curious eyes. The sun was standing on the stage in the overcast cloud cover. I could see her sterling silver jeweled gown gleaming behind the thick cloud curtains, but she could not find an opening to step into view with the clouds holding hands so tightly.

Mother Nature conducted her sunset pageant behind closed curtains but picked up her watercolors long enough to brush pale champagne light across the skyline so Father Sky could see to escort the sun down the horizon. Twilight gathered around the landscape and Mother Nature’s watercolor brush strokes faded in the gloaming of the darkening horizon. Father Sky kissed the sun goodnight, as she turned off the day’s light, and went to wake the moon and stars. He found a skinny Waning Crescent Moon tonight, illuminating himself at three percent, so the stars will need to sparkle like the Crown Jewels to help the moon wake up the night in its darkness. They’ve got some cloud cover, too. I love watching the night sky come to life. Sometimes it seems the night struggles coming awake, but it’s glorious when the heavens light up.

Been sitting here thinking of the colors of the night, the navy blues, and purples and blacks, intricate shades of gray and white and black in the darkness of the light and dark shadows, the milky white of the luminous moon, the sterling silver gleam of the twinkling stars. “I often think the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day,” Vincent Van Gogh. He could be right. When the weather gets warm I’m going to study the night’s sky like I study the day’s sky.

One of my cousin’s sent me a great quote today. Haven’t stopped thinking about since I read it. “I am pieces of all the places I have been, and all the people I have loved. I’ve been stitched together by song lyrics, book quotes, adventures, late night conversations, moonlight, and the smell of coffee,” Brooke Hampton.

I, myself, am pieces of all the places I’ve been and visited and my life has been changed by the people I love. All the people we love, who come and go through our lifetimes, leave parts of themselves in our hearts and souls. Some of the places where I brought home memories for my heart were South Dakota, California, Texas, England, Scotland, Georgia, just naming a few. Saw for the first time the actual beauty of the western landscape in South Dakota, watching out the plane window as the Black Hill mountains, beautiful in their earth colors, undulated as we flew over them. Loved the shades of Scotland, the landscape and the mellow brick colors of the small villages. I love quotes, always scratching them on scraps of paper, and I have had many late night conversations with my dearest friend. I love looking up song lyrics and reading them as the beautiful poetry they are. I’ve had adventures and heart stopping moments. I’ve had heartbreak and shared tragedy and great love with a man I dearly loved. And I’ve had moonlight, so much moonlight, and cups of coffee with Chief.

Everything in life that we experience helps to shape our lives and make us who we are. We collect bits and pieces of our worlds as we travel through life, storing them in our hearts and souls. Sometimes we experience things that seems trivial but if we look back we’ll see it’s a defining moment in our life. Don’t let life run you so fast that there’s not time to dance in the rain, make love in the garden, walk hand in hand, sit on the porch swing, watch the sunset, drink another cup of coffee, talk on the phone without looking at your watch, have a picnic, learn to crochet, sing in the choir, occupy a pew in church, tube down a river, get a dog, take a trip, plant a garden, call a loved one, say I love you, say I forgive you…. Tomorrow always comes but don’t let tomorrow be too late!

“Accept what is, let go of what was and have faith in what will be.” — Sonia Ricotti