Tonight an owl came to visit

It's amazing! A few minutes ago I was out mixing up some fertilizer to water my plants with and from my peripheral vision I noticed something big flying close by. I looked up and this owl flew right up to a branch just about 15 feet from where I was stooped over. He or she perched up on the tree branch and just looked down at me. We did a little non-verbal communicating, well mine was verbal, and then the owl flew off. He or she was definitely there to visit. No doubt in my mind.

Wow. They definitely are watching us. It just could be that the owl who visited this evening is the same owl that was in the blog picture I posted yesterday. More synchronicity.

There is no owl in my picture today so don't strain yourself looking. It is just a place on our little road out here where Maggie and I stopped on our walk yesterday. It does have some significance though. It is where a ferry dock once stood. A ferry that carried people across the river when our community was first established. There's a lot of history out here.... and I can feel it.

Whooo's watching who?

We spend a lot of time watching the birds, our pets and the other wildlife that share our neighborhoods and homes but are they watching back?

I looked up in a tree to see what I could see

and lo and behold, an owl is looking back at me.

An occasional skunk must walk through!

I went out this morning to take an early morning breath of fresh river air and pee U. It seems Pepe le Pew must have made a pass. In everything wonderful an occasional skunk must walk through.

Would we really know how wonderful things are in life if we didn't have to some pain and misery to compare it to? Wonderful might get pretty mundane and we might take it for granted if we had it all the time. I even think that we often set ourselves up to experience challenges because we need to test ourselves.

I realized a long time ago that I wasn't real comfortable with being happy all the time. When life seemed to be going really great, I changed pathes. I don't think we can evolve to our fullest potential without experiencing some hard times and pain.

Where I work, at the jail, I see people everyday who must really need a lot of evolving. Some of those women and men seem like they could do well in the "free world" but after a short period on the streets, they are back. I ask them, why in the hell are you back? It's hot, the food stinks, the beds are hard. The most frequent answer is, "I don't know".

If you look very closely in this picture of a beautiful water hyacinth flower there is one of those lubber grasshoppers. They like to hang out near the river. They can devour all your favorite plants. Even in my paradise, there are pests to keep it from being too perfect.

I like to think of life as a kind of school. When it gets really hard I just think well I'm back in graduate school. Graduate school is an endurance test. You can get through it if you want to but you have to want to. It's a test, it's only a test.

People on the river are happy to give...

Yesterday, this little fellow asked me to borrow my boat to do some fishing from. I said sure, because ".....people on the river are happy to give."

Still waiting. Waiting for your ponders....

Take a ponder, leave a ponder

You know when you go to the check out at the convenience store there is this little dish that says take a penny, leave a penny? Well here at Southern Spice the policy is, take a ponder, leave a ponder. The universe needs for you to share your ponders here. You each have something important to share. Something we need to know.

Anyone interested in adding their ponders can send me an email and I will add you to the author list. I don't have a clue what I'm doing and it's fine if you don't either. It's more fun that way.

Camp yard friends

I would like you to meet Lizzy. She likes to hang out around the camp. Sometimes she's a bad girl and chomps down on a dragonfly. She did that yesterday. Oh, I just hate it when she does that.

Let me see...is that Lizzy or is that Clotel? Does she have a mole on her bottom lip? Lizzy has the cutest mole on her bottom lip. Lizzy and Clotel look so much alike that sometimes I just can't tell them apart.

Just a moment every morning

Every morning, if I'm up and go outside at just the right moment, I can catch this beautiful red sky. It's a gift. It doesn't matter if it's going to rain or shine. The sky, like us, has a lot of different emotions. I like seeing them all.