The bright summer sun paints the garden with vivid colors. There is no sense of winter’s gloom anywhere today. Nothing but pure light and color everywhere I look. The sun is such an amazing ball of fire. You can sit in front of a wood stove and feel it’s heat in the room. Step back thirty or forty feet and you feel nothing. Think of the largest bonfire you can imagine. How far away can you feel it’s heat? Fifty feet? A Hundred feet? How big a fire do you need to feel it a mile or two away? What about a fire you could feel from a hundred miles away? It would be massive. Now imagine how big a fireball the sun has to be to bathe us in so much light and warmth from 93 million miles away. We are so lucky to live on such a wonderful planet, bathed in light and warmth.

Margaret’s chicks hatched today. I walked into the nursery this morning and heard her growl when I got close to her nursery pen. That’s a clear sign that a mother hen has chicks. She’s warning them that danger is near, and to hide and be quiet. Looking at the brilliant, sun like eggs the chickens here lay, it’s easy to see how these golden globes could turn into healthy chicks.

The morning is fresh today after a gentle overnight rain. What do the dogwood petals think of raindrops? Do they tickle when they land and bounce and drip? Do they sting? Do they quench their thirst? Do they wait for a stiff breeze to blow the drops away? Or do they lament when the sun dries out the soft drops?

It’s OK to be crazy. When I’m giving people change at Bow Little Market, I don’t want to be handing out dirty money. Paper money is easy to wash, dry, and iron, so why not wash it and hand out lemony-fresh change? Be crazy. Make the world a happier, zanier place.

Each week, I’ll wash the change with a different soap. No one will ever notice, but hey, I will. This week it’s lemon, next week lavender, the week after grapefruit. Maybe the store you visit washes their money. You never know. The world is full of crazy people.

I was weeding around the grape vines and ran into these brilliant leaves. Sometimes the weeds are so stunningly beautiful, I can’t pull them.

There are so many wonderful things just a few steps away from the front door. An hour doesn’t go by without seeing something that makes me smile. A dog sleeping in the grass, a scented geranium which leaves your fingers smelling like ginger and mint when you rub its leaves, irises blooming in the stream bed, fantastical flower buds, earthworms as long as my hand, and a husband who finds a tiny chicken egg. It must be from one of the chicks which hatched last December.

These are just a fraction of the wonders I encountered on a single day. It’s hard to stay in bed in the morning when so much wonder is waiting just a few steps away from the front door.