Woke up this morning to the glorious singing of the beautiful little songbird choirs. The day was gorgeously sketched by Father Sky. Using his box of blue pastels, he layered color from the horizon to the heavens, deepening the shades from pale baby blue to a deep cornflower. A few clouds stretched long and thin floated quickly through a sky dotted with turkey buzzards flying up the circular staircase of the wind currents. Noticed the Lord is letting his green colors blend in closely now. Can’t count as many different green colors in the landscape.

My pansies are begging for shade, their pretty purple little old lady faces turned down, fainting from the hot afternoon sun. When twilight sweeps across the neighborhood they’ll look up and begin their gossiping in the cool air. Leila Grandemange writes, “Sunshine is to the flowers what’s God‘s love is to the soul.” That’s a beautiful quote reminding us that just as the flowers need the sun to bloom and grow we need God’s love to grow spiritually with joy.

When I walked out to sit in the swing, my yard was like an aviary, teeming with male crimson cardinals and crayon yellow male American goldfinches. For several hours I only saw male songbirds. I wondered if all the girls were playing bridge, tea partying with petit fors, or sitting on their nests reading romance novels and keeping their eggs and babies warm. I can’t describe how beautiful to see these male birds, their plumage watercolored by God’s delicate paint brush, perch together on the bird feeders and bird baths. I always write it looks like a box of crayons. Late afternoon the girls arrived and brought some titmice, a few chickadees, and two doves dressed in their pink party high heels to join the boys.

Oldest brother drove up today with a truck full of garden goodies! I was so excited! He unloaded big bags of potting soil, beautiful tomato, squash, and cucumber plants for my large garden pots, and two rolls of pine straw for the pots and my flower bed. After he left, I tried to do a little gardening but I’m still stove up from that fall so youngest son took over and I supervised and listened to him say a thousand times, “That’s not the way daddy taught me!” Not to be left out playing in the dirt, I decided to broadcast the zinnia and sunflowers but I stumbled around in the tilled soil till youngest son helped me out of the garden and told me to sit. He planted three rows of California giant zinnias and a row sunflowers and a row of cantaloupe. I put pine straw around two pot tomato plants and I’ll finish the other pots tomorrow. Got to buy some California wonder bell peppers and some poppies and cosmos seeds then I’ll sit back in my purple yard chair and watch God and Mother Nature work their magic. My old ironing board lady scarecrow has passed to garden heaven so I’m going to ask dearest friend to craft me a new garden scarecrow lady. “God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures,” wrote Francis Bacon.

As I sat in the swing after supper counting my blessings, I watched Mother Nature watercolor a blueberry lemonade sunset. The sun rolled down the horizon as a ripe lemon and dropped into the crystal goblet of blueberry lemonade. As the twilight dimmed Mother Nature and Father Sky toasted the evening in a wash of pink champagne across the horizon. A beautiful ending of a happy day for me.

“The sun does not shine for a few trees and flowers, but for the wide world’s joy.” — Henry Ward Beecher