Touched With Gold

Once in a great while, when all the atmospheric conditions are just right, there will come a moment at sundown when the world is suffused with pink and touched with gold.  There was just such a moment last night, and when it happens, it's breathtaking.  We get many beautiful sunsets, viewed behind the silhouette of the pines on the hills to the west, and sometimes the sky seems on fire, but the magical, rare pink-gold glow must come from some refraction of light that transforms mundane objects into something beautiful.  No picture could do it justice.

Yesterday was a great combo of rest and work.  After barn chores, I picked up a new book.  I know better.  I should know by now that once I pick up a book, I've shot the day.  A guilty conscience finally gigged me out of my chair along about five o'clock and I went out to work in the garden.  Mr. L. Totem now has a Mrs. Totem, the two of them not happy that I planted more lettuce seeds in their barrel and then watered them in.  I also planted cantaloupe, pumpkin, cucumbers, bush beans, and more peas.  Did more weeding and watered everything.  It's late to be putting in seeds, but what is one to do when summer is so late in arriving?  If Crocodile Dundee were to see this dandelion, he'd say, "Now that's a dandelion!"  The puffball was bigger than Pearl's head.  (I asked her to pose for comparison, but she had other business to tend elsewhere.)  Feeling pretty satisfied with the gardening, I stopped at the rock garden in the front yard and weeded out a five-by-five-foot patch.  It's really quite pleasant to work outside as the sun's going down, a cooling breeze blowing, Bess Anne keeping me company, and the mourning doves calling to each other in the trees.  And the book was still waiting when we went back into the house.

Pearl and I have to come to a better understanding of the house rules.  I can deal with it when she opts to stay out for the night and hunt.  Her "pumpkin hour," however, seems to be at four-thirty a.m. when she comes to stand on the bench under the bedroom window and call in her raspy, broken-squeaker voice to wake me to come open the door.  It's not unusual for me to awake at that hour, but I really prefer to do it on my own terms.