I love Erma Bombeck’s quote on the Fourth of July, “You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato…

Today was a sultry southern summer day, blue sky, white clouds. The sun was blazing and the air thick with humidity. My cucumbers and squash had a sinking spell and fainted in the heat. A few gallons of water revived them and the porch flowers. When I cleaned the bird baths, I couldn’t believe how…

I sat in the porch swing this morning watching the songbirds after Penelope and I took our morning walk. The sky was a morning’s deep blue with fluffy white cumulus clouds. The clouds looked like Father Sky had shaken Mother Nature’s crystal jar of cotton balls all across the sky. Cumulus clouds are the picture…

The sun was so beautifully bright this morning you could almost see its yellowness on the landscape. I gave all my vegetables, growing in the large pots, a gallon of water. As I talked to them, praising their beauty, thanking them for the vegetables, I could almost hear them thanking me for the water. The…

Another beautiful day today but what a scorcher. I got up and headed outside to walk Penelope and realized I had both my shirt and my shorts on backwards! Not even going to try to figure out what that might mean. At this stage in my life it doesn’t really matter, I guess. I filled…

Man, today was hotter than the hinges of Hell’s gates and hotter than a two dollar pistol. It was so hot the songbirds are wearing oven mints to pull worms out of the ground. I love Southern sayings and slang. Always makes me laugh when I hear someone use one in a sentence. Seriously, it…

Another beautiful hot summer day. I sat in the porch swing bird watching till the sweat ran down my brow and I gave up and came in the house. There’s a glorious breeze now making the bamboo I see out my window pull on their cowboy boots and begin to dance the Texas Two Step.…

Did my bird and plant chores this morning under Father Sky’s summer sky sketch, his blue sky and white fluffy clouds coloring a beautiful sunny day. When the real feel temperature hit 104 degrees, I left the porch and headed to my reading chair and my quote books. Ventured back on the porch at 7:15…

Walking Penelope this morning earlier than usual and I saw the moon was still up. He had stayed up later than usual. Mr. Waxing Gibbous Moon resembled a luminous celestial pearl, floating beautifully, hanging low in the dark blue sky canvas. I marveled at the different colors of white and gray I could see, so…

The sky is so pretty this late afternoon. I can see the pale blue sky through Father Sky’s thinly sketched white clouds. The sun is poised right on the peak of the horizon, bright white and blinding like the first taste of moonshine from a dirty Mason jar. As the sun met Father Sky, she…