A Year In The South

I was sitting on my back deck earlier in the North Carolina evening.  The afternoons are hot, but mornings and evenings I sit watching the small brook behind my small condo, watching the towhees who remind me every morning to drink my teaaaa, and watching the cardinal couple who live nearby.  Watching the robins and catbirds who fluff their wings in the brook over and over.  A hummingbird who comes by now and then to sip on the peculiar fluffy pink flowers on the tree behind the fence.  If it is after dark, I squint at the possums who scurry along the treeline.  The dog stands nearby at the top of the stairs and watches it all too.  The cicadas buzz so loudly in the night that I can't hear the water trickling over the rocks below me.  We are wrapped in the perfect warm blanket of the south before daybreak - or after.

I sat and watched and felt it all this evening and I reflected on the fact that I've been in North Carolina for just about a year.  And I thought, "This is it.  I did it.  No matter what else happens in my life from now on, I lived someplace beautiful on my own terms for a year; my body didn't take this one from me."

It feels important to me.

The Flowers the Hummingbird Loves