I know this is really off topic and I know everyone has been touched in some small way (if not a big way) by Hurricane Katrina - but I just wanted to take a few minutes to share an observation and hopefully, share a thought/feeling with you
I'm sick, I'm tired and I'm still trying to maintain my daily requirements and help with our local families - so, I stepped out on my front porch to sit and take a break for a few minutes..... and I noticed......
I was almost dive bombed by two hummingbirds, racing to the feeder (they just showed up here on Thursday). I was treated to the most beautiful show of a butterfly, HUGE, black with blue sections and little yellow dots all along the edges of his wings - having a field day all over my pentas which are in full and amazing bloom despite suffering heat stroke for the past 5 weeks. There is a gentle breeze today and the normally hot, humid Gulf Coast where we live, actually has a humidity level of 55% currently. There is a nest of Cedar Wax Wings living in the tree on the side of my house. They don't usually nest here, so it's a rare treat. They have been annoying me the past few days with their incessant shrill cheeping. God, they are beautiful birds.
If I didn't even count the house I live in, the food I took out of the well working freezer to cook for dinner tonight, the air conditioning that is relieving the heat outside, the choice of shoes I have already been through today, same with the pajamas, house dress after hot showering and now shorts and t-shirt that I am wearing.... I'd have to say that I am so overwhelmingly blessed and have so much to be thankful for.
I would be lost if I lost my home, my A/C, my clothes, my shoes, my freezer full of meat/food, my hot and cold running, healthy water.....
but I would miss just as much - my front porch. My flower beds, disheveled and wild as they are, my flowers, the trees in my yard that are full of big bushy limbs for squirrels and birds to nest in and the rope my son climbs on to get to the tree house - my daughters rose bushes that make a great perch for the hummingbirds.
These may seem like little, trivial things in the grand scheme of life as it is at the moment around here. But they remind me that much more, of all I have to be grateful for and how much more others have lost. Not just their homes, their food, their cars, their clothes - but the little enjoyments of life, like having the time and the place to go sit on their front porch, take a break in the breeze and watch the butterflies and hummingbirds enjoying the work of their flower beds.
It is these little things in our lives that we take for granted. Like having extra fabric to fondle, a sewing machine that works, much less two or three - a friend who cares enough to send you a squishy - a cat who loves you enough to keep your place for you while you are trying to cut fabric.......
How long will it be, before that grandmother from New Orleans has a porch to sit on again, a sewing machine to make her grandbaby some sundresses, not to mention the fabric to sew - or the strength, faith and hope to be able to just appreciate the butterflies?
Tina