What? Again?

How can anyone ever get tired of such beautiful days? I certainly don't.

The tree I look at every day I sit at my computer, the one that was "pruned" last year into a two-fingered salute, is blossoming with frilly, ferny leaves like yellow-green feathers at the end of the spindly branches. The confused little squirrel who spent most of last year humping everything that passed his way, and getting smacked around for it by the other bigger male squirrels, and especially Chubby Squirrel, has been rubbing his furry cheeks against the cut where a strong bark covered arm once pointed to the mountains in the distance. Today the sky is so clear I can see the lodgepole pines on the upper reaches of the mountains beneath the arching canopy of a Wedgewood blue sky. A few translucent puffs of clouds are caught on the canvas of the sky without a wind to push them along. The clouds slowly drift into new shapes, massing briefly and then dissipating into wispy flares of white, as they hover near the horizon.

The once bleak winter landscape has exploded with color and sound. A bush on the other side of the Lon Chaney house next door is loaded with bittersweet orange berries and little spears of green thrust up through the soft turned earth in the flower beds in the front yard. A few brave bright yellow tulips cup a cluster of velvet black stamens, mirroring and following the golden ball of the sun as it tracks across the heavens. The chill breeze of this morning has warmed with the rising sun and stirs the furry branches of the tree across the way, waving and bowing gently with the wind's whims and games.

I wish I had a digital camera, or any camera, so that I could capture some of this transient beauty on film. But then I'd probably have to get a bigger place just to keep all the pictures, or a bigger hard drive for my computer to hold the digital images. At least I can still capture them in words to keep the memories in my mind fresh.

The clouds have drifted away like an ambling herd of white deer. All that remains is a faint sketching of white above the mountains. The street is weekday quiet and most of the cars are gone. Time for me to get back to the grind for a while and then my lunch date with the park.