Across the Way: Life Dazzles

Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Life Dazzles

First there was just a chain link fence, practical and needed but not exactly dazzling.

This summer there are two large butterfly bushes, two red maples, two brown-eyed Susans--only one now after two dachshunds chose one to uproot a chipmunk tunnel--various grasses and northern sea oats, and in the foreground two small cannas that will bloom yellow and a canna musifolia that should reach six feet that I ordered for its beautiful purple-green leaves.

That's one section of chain link fence that is now dazzling, admittedly it will disappear in winter but maybe it wouldn't be as dazzling if I could see it twelve months of the year.

But I am dazzled even more by the visitors to this section of chain link fence.

Black swallowtails.......

Eastern tiger swallowtails...

Sometimes so many that the butterfly bushes seem to twinkle with yellow lights.

Other creatures of more modest beauty join them.

Sometimes they feast together.

Each one doing its part to pollinate.

Right here, this morning as I'm writing this post, I can either close it out and let it be another beautiful example of the dazzling gifts of summer, or I can tell you what else is on my mind, knowing that you can't comment back.

And in this case that's as it needs to be because sometimes conversation just dilutes intentions.

I'm more aware this July of my life than I ever have been before of the simply glorious gifts of summer. Of things growing outside, from the holly bushes that really need pruning at the proper time--many would say rip them out but if they saw how many bees feast on the little flowers and then knew how many red berries feed the winter birds and how the bushes shelter new thrasher and cardinal babies all summer long, they might understand why I say no, at least until the proper pruning time and done very carefully--to the old established trees in this yard that I treasure, to the new trees that RH has planted and drug the water hose around the big yard to keep watered.

From the perennials that we have planted that give us beauty and the bees and butterflies their meals, to the herbs and various pepper plants that add a home-grown taste to our meals.

To the grass that needs mowing and the long hedge filled with blackberries that birds feast on.

All of it fills me with so much joy these July mornings that I can hardly bear it.

And yet that joy comes laced with poignancy.

RH and I can't help but wonder how many more Julys we'll be given to enjoy. We just don't take them for granted anymore. Each time, like this past Sunday, that he has dizzy spells and just doesn't feel well makes us wonder if a trip to the ER will follow or if it's just that again he has not been drinking nearly enough water throughout the day. One ER trip revealed just that.

Each summer when my annual skin cancer check is coming up I get nervous. After it being positive in 2003 and 2017, I just can't help having butterflies in my stomach.

Last week we attended the life celebration service of a beautiful woman, beautiful inside and out. A woman who lived with joy and a loving spirit, a woman who should have had many decades left ahead of her. A woman who left such a hole in the lives of her husband, children, family and friends when cancer returned.

And so from the time I pull the curtains in the morning and open the kitchen door to let BreeBree and James Mason out while I look at the pond--it looks different every morning to someone who really observes it with care-- and then drink my first glass of water in front of our big kitchen sink window while looking at the paradise RH has created outside...

to the time when I climb into bed at night, my reading glasses and a good book at hand, I am so thankful for another July day, a day when there have been wonders all around me.

Even a day when there are butterflies in the pit of my stomach. Because those July days are God-given too.

I want them to dazzle.

[added later]