The Beauty of Nature

For years I’ve played a little game with Mother Nature. If the sun comes up before I’m up, then she wins. If I’m up before the sun, then I win. It’s so easy to win when the other “person” doesn’t even know there’s a game going on!

I truly am not a morning person. Ideally, I’d stay up til 2 or 3 a.m. and then sleep til noon but in my old age, I’ve learned that getting things done as soon as it’s light enough to be outside usually means I won’t be having a heat stroke and can get 4 or more hours of outside work done before it gets too hot to work outside.

When I was a kid and would spend as much time as possible with my grandparents, I remember thinking . . when I get old, I am NOT going to bed early and I’m NOT getting up at the crack of dawn. I had it halfway right. I still don’t go to bed early but most mornings, I’m up early, which means 2 or 3 days a week, I sneak in an early afternoon nap.

In the summer, when it gets daylight so early, Mother Nature wins some days, but during the fall, winter and spring, I almost always win . . I’m up before Mother Nature is.

Yesterday morning we had to leave home before daylight. There’s hardly a morning when I see the sunrise, or an evening when I see the sunset, that I’m not in awe of the beauty of God’s creations.

I was not driving but the photos were taken through a dirty cart window and they’re still beautiful.

The sky changes so quickly and each glimpse is more beautiful than the last.

I am thankful for the beauty that surrounds me and I am thankful that I notice it . . it hasn’t always been so . . and I hope there’s never a time when fail to see the splendor of my surroundings.

You might notice a few things in the above photo that weren’t provided by Mother Nature. The windmills bother Vince but there’s something about them I find kinda mesmerizing. I’m not sure I would want them in my back yard but, on the other hand, I’m not sure they would bother me. Off in the distance, with the sunrise as the backdrop, I see a bit of beauty in them too.