Good morning from Lake Ann, where we have cloudy skies and warming temperatures. Oh, what a glorious Spring . . . she is trying to show us her face even before her time.

It’s a kind reprieve for us, where we feel the warmth of spring for this short time, allowing us an early warm-up, jonquils and hyacinths blooming! Maybe, as my parents did, we should call this time an indian summer!

My research shows that Native Americans referred to a warmer time in the middle of autumn or winter as ” Indian summer,” and the English used the name “second summer.” Many places around the world have names for this same reoccurring phenomenon, like Scotland’s “goose summer,” Sweden’s “badger summer,” or France’s “summer of ferns.”

My husband and I have lived here, along this glorious Ozark ridge, on a high hill overlooking beautiful Lake Ann, for 4,915 ever-changing days and 55 ever-changing seasons, as I am counting now.

Our Arkansas home has four distinct seasons in a year, each about three months long. I know we are in February, the last month of our winter. Right now it feels like spring or summertime, a warm spell. Then afterward even in spring, we might have a cold snap and get snow even in March.  Seasons, forever ~ ever-changing—really never the same from day to day or from hour to hour! It is always amazing how simple life is when we take time to pause and see even small things . . . wind, air, breeze, sunlight, warmth and cold . . . to be one with nature and ourselves, to see each other!

My morning write:

What can I see and sing right out loud?

I try to hear a new melody in my heart ~ redemption? . . . a forever moment!

looking over the water and off to the eastern limestone bluff

great windfans spark with light

ride the waves moving toward Bear’s Point

far away sounds are true of only one-lone-old-dog barking

red birds flutter through winter evergreen branches

out on my old-time rustic wood porch

a hanging wind chime plays in full melody

far away, now winter

all of the remaining browned fall leaves ~

who have certainly stayed attached, way past their due ~

but still held, now rustling in the winds

near me, a groundhog moves downhill to his home
plowing through a ladden hillside covered deep

in a two-foot-deep
mighty oak and hickory oak leaf fall

a male bald eagle

flys straight over the main channel

glorious views forever
a single day
a single moment ~
unsung
until now!