The Most Peaceful Time of the Day

I'm writing this during the most peaceful time of the day. In the spring, that's around 7 pm to 7:30 pm. The sun is fading, the birds are calling their last calls, and any close neighbors (I don't have too many) are either inside eating dinner or running their kids to sports practice. I happen to be alone, which is peaceful enough. But closed up inside the house is not the kind of peace I'm talking about. I'm working at the computer with my office door open onto the outside porch, and I am hearing only nature. That's so much more peaceful to me than even pure silence. I hear the cry of the owl-monkeys...uh, pileated woodpeckers....it's a joke name we give them around this house because their cry sounds like something in the Amazon jungle.

After the unpleasant activities of the early afternoon - paying taxes online and finding a collection agency for clients who don't like to pay - I started to unwind with a little springtime planting, adding cucumber and sweet red peppers to the vegetable gardens. And a WHOLE BIG BUNCH of impatiens to the shady deck. I noticed the clematis were looking lovely on the trellis.

JT, my baby, did a little farming on the tractor.

Did you buy that? (A) My "baby" is not allowed to plow the field at his tender age, and (B) Doesn't this look suspiciously like a tractor from about 1920? It's actually a photo from our field trip this week to Biltmore House, the nation's largest house, in Asheville, NC. It was one of the few things he was allowed to touch there.

Anyway, I digress. If you need to decompress, grab yourself a glass of iced tea and head outside to sit on the porch around 7:30. Your blood pressure will drop a few notches.

Take a load off -
Love,
TCB