This Morning in the Backyard

There’s not much sun shining this morning, so the blossoms that were wide open a couple of days ago are mostly closed up this morning. I decided to set my depth of field quite shallow so that most of them are soft and dreamy.

This Morning in My Backyard

Yesterday, the last of the ice melted in the pond behind our house. (Yay!) And I’m enjoying watching the wood ducks swim gracefully through the pond. I feel so blessed to live in this place with pond and open parkland behind and beside the house, especially now that my world has contracted mostly to these four walls and this land that surrounds us.

“Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed.” — Mary Oliver

Yesterday our daughter and son-in-law bought groceries for us. We drove to Stillwater, where they live, to pick the groceries up. (My daughter and son-in-law are both working from home and helping their kids with their online learning.) When we got there, it was the hardest thing staying outside the house and waving at our granddaughter and daughter. Still, we are blessed to have their help and to be able to see one another now and then.

I am sending out deep gratitude to our healthcare workers, first responders, truck drivers, food stockers, store clerks, and all others who continue to bravely work to keep the rest of us safe and fed.

“There are so many ways to be brave in this world. Sometimes bravery involves laying down your life for something bigger than yourself, or for someone else. Sometimes it involves giving up everything you have ever known, or everyone you have ever loved, for the sake of something greater.

But sometimes it doesn’t.

Sometimes it is nothing more than gritting your teeth through pain, and the work of every day, the slow walk toward a better life.

That is the sort of bravery I must have now.”
― Veronica Roth, Allegiant

My work right now is not to be bravely out working the world. Instead, my work is to be here now and to find beauty and light worth sharing from this place in this time.

May you walk in beauty.

River Birch that we planted near the pond