My Beautiful World - Day 1

Beautiful things I saw today, in no particular order:

• Half of the sky was clear and blue with no hint of clouds. Half of the sky was dark and threatening. In a minute the clouds were gone and the sky was totally blue again. A few minutes later, there were dark clouds all around me and clear sky in the middle.
  
• At the beach, the sky to the south was blue. The sky to the north was, well, there was no sky to the north. A purplish black cloud bore down on us with a skirt of rain. I got so caught up in watching it, I neglected to run for the car, and got soaked.
• Sunlight filtering through a canopy of water oaks, dappling the sidewalk with light and shadow that looked like a Renaissance painting.
• A family of birds that looked like cardinals in my back yard. It is odd to see birds other than seagulls in the summertime. These poor birds must be lost. Their bright colors contrasted with all the shades of green in the back yard. At one point, one was sitting on the bird-of-paradise, one was on a branch in the lemon tree, and another one was pecking the ground in front of the back door. They all heard me walk out onto the back porch, I guess, and they turned to look at me. I stopped and looked back at them. They did not fly away. I don't think I ever made eye contact with birds before. I don't know if it was "beautiful" but it was very special.

Not bad for a day when I spent most of my time cleaning house and walking on the treadmill listening to Jimmy Buffet music. Maybe I should add that to my list of things. Not the treadmill part: that's a grind. Listening to Jimmy Buffett is a kind of beautiful thing that is in a class by itself.