A Beautiful Start to the Day

It's not even 8:15 yet this morning, and already I want to share a few gifts that I've received today....

Prairiewolf woke me up early to see the moon - full and shining silvery on the undersides of a geometric progression of linear clouds that alternated with the black of the open sky, growing larger and brighter and fluffier as they got closer towards the center of the sky.

It was still fairly dark when I stepped outside to get the paper. A robin was loudly and melodically greeting the coming day. On the way back towards the house, I stopped at the car to get birdseed out of the trunk so that I could load the feeders for the early morning crew. As I hoisted the second set of bags, I looked up at some movement and saw a medium sized canine trotting swiftly along the cedar hedge, about 75' away from me, going from west to east. My first thought was to stop Becker, so I called out his name, then realized immediately that he was standing right beside me. At that moment I realized that the trotting canine was a coyote, totally intent on reaching its destination. By the time I'd made the connection, it was gone, but it left behind a little frisson of wild in the air.

Then, as I filled the birdfeeders, I noticed the moon again, setting in the west. The silvery color was gone; now it glowed bright, fresh orange against the deep lavender of the clouds.

And as I took our dear, old, blind Shiner out front for her morning potty break, the sun was finally coming up. First the sky glowed bright peachy pink, silhouetting a big old cottonwood behind our neighbor's home. While I stood watching, the disk of the sun itself came up above the horizon, burning flaming orange against the peach and lavender sky, as if the moon from the western sky had transitted around behind the earth so fast that it caught fire as it came above the horizon again.

The simple pleasures of life in the country....