what is, seriously, really, no kidding, honestly...more rare...?

A day in June, and it is only June 2nd. I'll sign up for this for as long as it lasts....

I walked around our back yard just a while ago. It is a riot of life. Bern has been nurturing it and loving it for so very long now. Purple flowers and red flowers and pink flowers and white flowers and cantaloupe colored flowers and black pansies--black, I tell you! Amazing...black flowers. And greens of so many hues I could never describe them, even if I had the words, which I don't.

On the side of the house is an area that has been taken over by ferns...half a dozen or so different kinds, eternally in the shade of the hemlocks. I love ferns. Once, when I was in college, I was the "Nature Boy" at a summer camp, since I swim not well and don't do crafts. I would take kids into the forest and point out ferns and fauna and trees. I was relatively good at it, I imagine, having grown up in the woods and knowing most trees by leaf and some by bark. But I don't know flowers, except pansies, especially black ones.

It is 63 degrees on our back porch at 6 p.m. The wind is strong out of the north east. I have on a long sleeve shirt. The sky is Carolina Blue with a few fast moving clouds. I could live, quite joyfully, somewhere it was always like this.

What is, after all, so rare as a day in June?

We had little steaks for dinner the other night. Yesterday I took the left overs and cut them as thin as I could a put them on non-gluten bread with mayo and onions and tomatoes and some cheese and decided to 'toast' them, as we used to say in my family. We had 'toasted cheese sandwiches' which are 'grilled cheese sandwiches' by another name. I sat down at the table to eat my sandwich and it kept falling apart. I was so annoyed and perplexed and upset.

Then, at some point, I realized, "If the only thing wrong with my life is my steak and cheese sandwich keeps falling apart, how lucky and blessed am I?"

Out the window of my little office, the trees are waving madly at me. It is probably still in the low 60's and the sun is out and the wind is blowing and God is truly in his heaven and all is right with the world.

What an idiot I am to worry about whether the onions are sliding off the bread on a steak sandwich....

I love my life. I truly do. And in abundance.

How joyful, lucky and blessed I am.

And it IS June, after all.

What could be better?

Well, I guess 'what could be better?' is if almost everyone loved their life the way I do.

That would be stupendous. Truly. What a moment devoutly to be wished.

I think I understand, this late afternoon in June, what the Native Americans mean by 'a good day to die'.

I could die happy today.

How rare....