The backyard beckoned a beauty hunt.
I acquiesced as I fumbled for worn ebony flip-flops.Β
Once outside, our June breeze swings friendly combat, gives challenge to the muggy air.
The humidity wins and my t-shirt begins to cling to my back as the heavy air presses in on skin and the sun reappears in a hide-and-seek game among the clouds.
My phone greeted me this morning with the words “Storms possible tonight” beneath the 62Β° displayed on my home screen.
I can feel more tendrils of hair around my temples adding to the already messy askew.
Sweat beads as I turn toward the hydrangeas.
Bumblebees buzz, up and down among the flower heads.
Butterflies flit, lift, effortless and feathery.
They climb the air and disappear behind the fence into my daughter’s secret garden.
At lunchtime, my good farmer man leaned in, asked “Did you get everything accomplished this morning you wanted to?”
I’d pulled a face and answered “If you call it wanting to when there’s bills and bookwork and bank balancing, then, yes I did.”
I’d grinned then into his kind eyes.
Asked, “You?”
He smiled back, murmured something about readying the combines for our hovering-near wheat harvest, how the work never quite ends.
After he and our taller-than-us son return to the waiting combines, I settle into the afternoon routine, change out laundry, add to my grocery order, open my laptop.Β
The clock chimes four. The fan on the living room ceiling lifts the cool air, up, away, around.
My phone reports, “Some severe storms tonight” beneath the 80Β° numbered on the screen.
I fumble for the flip-flops.
As I press my camera shutter, focus on a frame, I edge out the bare patch among the grass.
Hope the sprouted weeds and unwanted elm seedling will end up obscured.
Pull in close to the lisanthus bloom & leave the soaker hose out of sight.
It’s a metaphor of life.
The never-ending entangled with the life-breathing.
The breathtaking and the mind-numbing.
Life can not be lived without both.
The humidity urges me back into the welcome air conditioning. I brush hair aside and close the door against the stifling stuffiness.
Bills to pay.
Combines to prepare.
The endless litany.
Hands to hold.
Beauty to behold.
The delightful daily.