Father Sky stuck to his regular pastel sky sketches this morning, summer blue sky, fluffy white clouds, bright yellow sunshine. I love watching him sketch the clouds and run the colors together. I ate breakfast perched in the swing. Tried to enjoy it as the starving, never fed dog of mine gave me the sad puppy dog face. I went in the house to get her piece of dog bacon and she swallowed it whole and kept up the begging routine. I perched in the swing until the heat index got to be 104 in the afternoon. Even with the fan the porch was just too hot. I had taken Penelope in the house after I ate breakfast and left her inside. Just too hot for her these days.

If the lawn mower men don’t come tomorrow, I’m gonna have to buy a herd of goats to chew down my grass. It’s been so dry and crunchy, the mowers haven’t been coming regularly, but with all this rain brought on by my rain dancing, my yard is looking straggly. It’s beautifully green and beautifully overgrown.

All my struggling tall sunflowers had finally stood back up yesterday but Mother Nature stormed through the garden last night and knocked them down again. A crayon yellow male goldfinch sat on one of the blooms around dusk today, plucking out the seeds in the yellow pedaled dark bloom, a wonder to see. So beautiful to see all the birds’ colorful plumage contrasting with the beauty of the yellow sunflowers. I love sunflowers and so do my songbird friends.

The sunset is lovely tonight, a cut glass goblet of pink champagne, the champagne’s bubbles rising on the horizon and turning the overcast vanilla clouds into pale pink wonders. Just heard a mournful freight train whistle. The train is rocking and squeaking down the track, it’s whistle echoing in the humid, thick southern air. Trains horns always sound sad to me, when they sound in long, lonely wales. The older steam engine trains, chugging down the rails, happily puffing smoke from their smokestacks, had a cheerful carnival train whistle. Today’s diesel engines sound loud and deep and forceful, serious in their whistling.

I remembered a quote I loved about trains, had to search for it. The quote from Walden by Thoreau is about how life runs on a set of spiritual railroad tracks. The quote reads, “Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito’s wing that falls on the rails. Let us rise early and fast, or break fast, gently and without perturbation; let company come and company go, let the bells ring and the children cry, — determined to make a day of it.”

How wonderful it would be to live as nature just accepting the days as they come — enjoying the sunshine with the thunderstorms, patiently waiting for the winter ice to thaw, smiling through the oppressive heat waves, not worrying about the mosquitoes and yellow jackets. I think some of us do let a tiny mosquito wing ruin our day, a minor distraction that should just be ignored throws our day into disrepair. Makes me think of what Chief used to tell me, when I’d complain about the children running around too loud and squabbling. He’d say, “Mama, just be grateful they are heathy enough to carry on.” He’d just keep on reading and I’d keep on refereeing. I think he understood mosquito wings and nutshells.

Life has a way of making its own path and things don’t always line up like we’d want them to but we learn to keep going. We stumble over the nutshells that drop in our path and look for God’s guidance as we travel. Insignificant and mindless distractions take away from the beauty of the day if we let them. Guess Thoreau was trying to tell us, in a literary way using the train as a metaphor, is that life is a glorious train ride if we just take each day as it comes and accept the beauty in that day. Course they won’t always be sunny days ‘cause life has clouds and rain. But acceptance is the key to living content.

We need to learn to accept what happens and make the best of it. As my mama would tell me, “This too shall pass.” Nutshells and mosquito wings cannot derail a train and they should not derail us. We need to set our priorities straight and live our lives deliberately and intentionally with God. Don’t waste a precious moment of life on mosquito wings and empty nutshells.

“I don’t have to chase extraordinary moments to find happiness — it’s right in front of me if I’m paying attention and practicing gratitude. Brené Brown