Sunday, yesterday, just before dusk, I was looking out at my 'garden' and felt content. It was a good day spent at the Farmer's Market, discovering new vegetables - well, old ones but I'd never tried some of them, so they're new to me - and making new acquaintances. I bought some organic Fingerling potatoes - mostly because they were so small and so cute. Tasted some of the best summer fruit I've had since childhood, when fruit tasted like fruit and it was a blast to eat.
Later, after putting away my farmer's market catch and sampling the plums again (over the sink, letting the juice run down my fingers and all over my hand, like when I was kid) I listened to some fantastic straight-ahead jazz (check out pandoraradio.com - seriously!) and did a little bit more work. Needing a break from work, I made a quick run to my Pilates class.
Back home again, I put on some more jazz. I stood at my kitchen door - content. Maybe it was the effect of a good work-out, I don't know, but gazing from my kitchen door, watching the day go from bright a sharp silver, to a gentle, shimmering gold, I reflected on my day and thought, it was really good. I realized I have everything I need, everything I'd been wanting for some time: a quiet home (okay, so I don't own it - so what), a yard, trees, a patch of dirt to grow flowers and vegetables, a variety of bird songs (instead of the constant, day and night of rubber on asphalt, and accompanying screeching and exhaust - and the fire engines). My street is quiet. Often, the loudest is the late afternoon exercised chatter of the birds; for some reason it always happens about four-thirty in the early evening. I don't know what that's about. I can feel the season in my present state of things.
That's what I was doing at my door yesterday, just before dusk, though lamenting the fact that hummingbirds seem to have stopped coming by. I hadn't seen one in over two weeks; I started considered taking down the feeder. Maybe they don't like the feed? Bad mix? Not sweet enough? Better feed or flowers in someone else's garden? What ever the reason, I really missed them in mine.
As I lamented their absence, a female hummingbird appeared suddenly, from out of nowhere, and headed straight to the feeder. She hovered about for a bit - the softening light of the sun dancing on her back. She had no idea I was just on the other side of the screen. If the screen wasn't there, and I was just maybe a little bit faster, I swear I could have touched her. Amazing - she had no idea what she just did for me. Yeah, I thought, I have everything I want.
Dusk. My favorite time of day. I feel more at dusk. I think it's because the softening sunlight softens me up, makes it so I can be still, clearer about the details of my day, able to reconsider nuances, blessings previously overlooked; a second chance. A gift - dusk is like that.
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