Opened the door this morning on a beautiful blue sky day and there was Fatty, hanging upside down on a bird feeder raking in the seeds as fast as she could. She scampered off when she heard the door shut and I promptly greased the pole again. Ordered some squirrel food that looks pretty good, kinda like trail mix, so maybe she and her friends will concentrate on eating that.

Today is a good day to porch ponder and bird watch. A nice breeze is blowing and the clouds are moving quickly across the sky. I’ve got three different kinds of wood peckers visiting this week — three downy woodpeckers, I think they are a family because they sometimes feed the little one; a huge red-headed woodpecker; and a red-bellied woodpecker. The cardinals are enjoying my new feeder because it has a comfortable perch for them. Fatty has stayed off the feeders while I’m sitting in the swing.

Ran around all morning thinking it was Saturday! I’m going to Peachtree City Sunday to my oldest grandson’s confirmation service at their church and I could not find the iron to iron my linen shirt and I was telling myself I had to go to bed early to leave early Sunday morning. Called oldest sister-in-law and went up to her house to use her iron. I get up there all flustered and she says, “Lane, it’s Wednesday!!” I swear I would have bet my life that today was Saturday. I have managed to keep my time telling ability but since I’ve retired I never know what day of the week it is. And no, I don’t ever look at my phone to see the time or the date. I am currently filling out the application for Shady Oaks and will prepare a place for all my friends who are coming, too. Get ready!! And yes, Chief’s watch that I wear has the day of the week and the date. I’m just getting into my dotage years. And thank God for GPS and Maps or I couldn’t find my way to my grandchildren in Peachtree City!

The sunset was so beautiful tonight in its simplistic elegance. The sun was the color of an old silver coin beaming her rays straight across the evening’s horizon. Father Sky was dressed in a formal tuxedo in the color of a copper penny as he escorted the sun down the pageant runway. As the sun stepped on stage where the backdrop of vanilla cream and pale blue clouds hung, Mother Nature stroked her watercolors in soft wildflower honey across the landscape and painted a low burning orange wildfire that softly blazed across the landscape as the sun rolled down. When the sun turned out her lights, twilight began to creep across the neighborhood and the wildfire of sunset burned itself out leaving a soft scattering of the sun’s rays, magical in its beauty, hovering over my neighborhood. Father Sky waked the moon and the stars and hung them high in the inky blackness of the night sky. The day says goodbye and the night says hello.

If you’ve ever just sat and watched twilight tiptoe across the landscape you know what a beautiful thing it is to witness. The sun drops down behind the horizon and a quietness descends on the land as the day quietly sheds its light. Twilight is defined as the soft glowing light from the sky when the sun is below the horizon, caused by the refraction and scattering of the sun’s rays from the atmosphere. I just define twilight as magic. The time of day when the fairies and lighting bugs wake and the trees are silhouetted in dark blackness against the horizon. The birds leave the feeders and the street gets quiet. A few hoots from the old neighborhood hoot owl and then darkness covers the land like a well loved quilt.

That’s when I leave the porch and come in to my desk. As I sit and began to write I hear the lone song of a lonely mockingbird singing for a mate in the bamboo forest. Then the freight train wails a loud long whistle echoing down the tracks, chugging the night’s darkness with it. The day is bedded down. I’m thankful for the beautiful day and all of God’s blessings in my life.

God is with us as the twilight turns to darkness. He is safely by our side as we say our prayers and lay our heads down tonight. God is the “light of the world” and he will call us out of the darkness.

“In the twilight of life, God will not judge us on our earthly possessions and human successes, but on how well we have loved.” ― Saint John of the Cross