Ordinary Grace

Today I am celebrating

Ordinary Grace

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I find myself gob-smacked by the beauty of the world. And I discover ordinary grace in someone else’s back yard or on a walk in the neighborhood. This morning I took a walk before the rain began. I noticed that the wood ducks are gathering in the pond that lies across the street and down the hill. Their eerie calls this morning were beautiful and haunting. Soon I imagine that they will be migrating south.

I haven’t seen the hummingbirds at the feeder for a couple of days now. Perhaps they have begun their migration south. This morning I looked up information about fall migration patterns for hummingbirds. I learned that the male hummers begin migrating south as early as mid-July and that adult females migrate sometime in August. It is the young hummingbirds who are making their first migration that stay around until September or later. In the days before they begin migrating they eat enormous amounts. I have been seeing them at the feeders more than ever during the past week or two.

They will feed often and intensely for days in a state called hyperphagia. Hummingbirds start feeding as early as forty-five minutes before sunrise and keep eating until dusk. Fueled by the nectar, they double their weight as they prepare to fly hundreds or even thousands of miles.

   — Fall Migration is Underway

Good News

I consider it good news that the coots have not yet arrived on Medicine Lake on their southward migration. They are usually a sign that colder weather is on it’s way. Though I love see them bobbing up and down in the waves on the lake, I always feel a little bit sad when I see them because that means that the season is turning colder and winter is not far away.

Some trees in the neighborhood have begun turning bright orange and red and the cottonwood tree in our backyard is dropping more and more yellow leaves. I can feel fall in the air and see it in the way that the squirrels are gathering food for winter. I see them carrying acorns from a tree two houses down into our backyard and burying them. Who knows whether they will retrieve the acorn at some later time, or whether an oak tree might sprout up from it?

Fall

the black oaks fling
their bronze fruit
into all the pockets of the earth
pock pock

they knock against the thresholds
the roof the sidewalk
fill the eaves
the bottom line

of the old gold song
of the almost finished year
what is spring all that tender
green stuff

compared to this
falling of tiny oak trees
out of the oak trees
then the clouds

gathering thick along the west
then advancing
then closing over
breaking open

the silence
then the rain
dashing its silver seeds
against the house

   — Mary Oliver

Do you also feel the ordinary grace of these days, with the shortening days, and the changing slant of the sun? I strive to stay in the present moment enjoying the beauty of this and this and this rather than dreading the winter to come.

May you walk in beauty.