I’m happily worn out from cooking and cleaning and setting places for 43 for my family’s Christmas dinner on Saturday. Tomorrow I’ll be making a caramel cake and a pecan pie and cooking the collards. I’ll make a quick trip to LaGrange to pick up the shrimp. Got a big ham in the fridge, too. I’ll get it fixed with its pineapple apron to place in the oven early Saturday morning. No new words today. Using a blog from this day in 2023.

Today is beautiful day the Lord hath made. Clear happy blue sky, cloudless as far as I could see. I picked up Penelope from vet brother’s clinic and we went on a long walk when we got home. She had to sniff every inch of the yard. I wonder what she thinks when she smells the grandchildren’s dog, Magnolia. I wonder if it makes her mad to come home and know another dog had claimed her territory for the weekend. She’s just too frisky to be have been around all the little children at our family’s Christmas dinner and not well behaved enough to stay in a room by herself. Magnolia stayed upstairs during the dinner and didn’t make a peep. She minds very well.

Chief and I left Penelope here at home once and went out to eat supper. One of my neighbors heard her crying and called us at the restaurant to tell us it sounded like a dog might be “caught on something under the house.” Miss Priss was just sitting on the back of the living room sofa looking out the window and crying and baying because she wasn’t invited to dinner. That little thing spoiled our supper ‘cause Chief insisted we go home and check on her. She’s spoiled.

Turned a chair around in the lady den late afternoon and sat down to enjoy the pageant of sunset. Mother Nature chose a palette today of peach and watermelon, painting the horizon in a beautiful wash of pure color. The sun walked down the horizon dressed in a gown of golden light, dragging her train along a horizon painted a perfect peach. Father Sky tucked the sun in her watermelon cloud covers and she turned the day to night. Father Sky finished the pageant as he hung the moon and pinned the sparkling diamonds to the navy sky canvas and the night music began.

Sat in the swing briefly this morning to enjoy the flock of goldfinches who have checked into my bird hotel. Could not ponder long, the wind was bitter, biting the wind chime pipes and my hands and cheeks. The gold finches are so pretty, little piggy round and fat, dressed in their yellow-green vests and striped coats of black and white. They are an odd color, maybe olive would describe them best. They won’t dress in their bright yellow coats till spring and early summer. They are very congenial, flying around in their little flocks. They always seem so happy to be alive, chattering and flitting around. Mr. Downy Woodpecker did not drop in for his suet breakfast this morning. He must be in the coffee club down the street. The goldfinches mingled with the other yard guests, the faithful cardinals, the timid titmice, and the cussing chickadees. Lots of bird solos in the yard symphony this morning.

There is so much music in nature. I love to sit on the porch and listen to the different symphonies Mother Nature plays. Guess we humans have been communicating through song for thousands of years. Nature’s music is different in different landscapes. When I went to the Blue Ridge Mountains I could hear the wind stroke the leaves on the tall trees off the cabin’s deck. The birds had a deeper toned voice and the sunsets and sunrises played their symphonies high over the mountain tops singing the beautiful colors of a rainbow’s spectrum.

In the summer with the windows open in my bedroom, I’m comforted and lulled to sleep listening to the crickets and the soft bird songs. The beach has the wonderful heartbeat of the waves slapping the sand softly, then beating a loud drum when the tides rushes back to shore. My bird friends serenade me all year with their love songs to their mates and their loud squawks of alarm to warn of intruders in the yard and sky.

Guess we are music, too. Born screaming a symphony of life then growing up through happy childlike melodies, changing to heavy drum beats as we transform into adults. Our life symphony grows and grows with a loud crescendo and when we reach middle age the music changes to a beautiful soft even toned melody of life. That melody stays with us till we leave this earth and join the harps of heaven.

“Be music always. Keep changing the key, tone, pitch and volume of each of the songs you create along life’s journey and play on.” — Suzy Kasseum