I wouldn’t fault someone for doing nothing but watching the clouds all day long. On my way to the post office, the clouds dangled intriguingly in the southern sky. And twenty minutes later, they same clouds, in the same spot, had transformed into an enormous ring around the sun.

If clouds can pull a feat like that in twenty minutes, imagine all the wonderful things you’d see if you watched them all day long. You’d never get bored.

Spending an afternoon gardening with ducks releases more stress than a season’s worth of therapist sessions. There are too many therapists, not enough ducks in people’s lives.

Duck’s feet are captivating with their intricate patterns. I could see a duck saying, “She had a pretty bill, wonderful colors on her feathers, but it was the patterns on her feet that did it for me.”

Spring is unfolding. The sun is moving north, the days are getting longer. The swans are fattening up to fly north, gathering the strength to take off and maybe never come back. Any week now, when I go down into the valley they will be gone. If they’d only fly by to let me know they are on their way north, it would mean a lot. But I mean nothing to them. They will never come say good bye to me. And they will never know how much they mean to me.

The crocus and daffodils are opening. The first of so many flowers to come.

Moonlit clouds at night show how fleeting things are. Everything changes second by second. Every time I venture out, enough things change so that I may as well be traveling down the road I’ve traveled for years as if it were the very first time.

I run into so many mysteries, at times I wish I had an office full of private investigators I could send out to solve these puzzles. Not too long ago I was biking from the Bow Post Office to Allen and saw Brussels sprouts along the side of the road. Not just one or two, but several miles of them, one, two, or three every so often. Where did they come from? A modern Hansel and Gretel dropping Brussels sprouts as they walked along so they could find their way home? Naughty children in a car, tossing Brussels sprouts out of a grocery bag so they wouldn’t have to eat them?

The most likely explanation is that they fell off a truck hauling a harvest of them, only there are no fields of Brussels sprouts nearby. How many detectives would it take to solve the mystery? What would the people who lived along Chuckanut Drive say when someone knocks on their door to ask, “When did you first see the Brussels sprouts on the road?” They would want to hire their own detective to find out why this mysterious person appeared at their door asking about Brussels sprouts.

Most of the mysteries I encounter will stay mysteries forever. Maybe unsolved mysteries are the cause of old age dementia. Perhaps unsolved riddles keep piling up in the brain until it short circuits. One mystery was solved today. I saw the first Robin of the season hopping about. It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve seen the first Robin of spring. It’s as exciting as ever.

A soft snow puts spring on pause and turns the lane into a poem.

Snow covered branches turn the forest into a modern abstract canvas. Though is it modern art? People thousands of years ago saw these very shapes and forms.

Snow turns the pile of discarded tires some thoughtless person threw away in the dead of night into something beautiful for a day or two. Who do you call to get rid of thirty truck tires tossed onto a vacant lot? Who has thirty truck tires? It’s a mystery with possible connections to desperate and shady characters I’d rather not meet. Maybe someone has whispered something in your ear about these very tires.

Someday in the future, we’ll be able to take a photo with our phones and it will be able to analyze the DNA it sees on such tires instantly and tell us everyone who ever touched the tires. But will we want to know?

Walking home is like walking through a poem.

Every time I make a tofu delivery to the Anacortes Food Co-op, I look forward to the trip home. What will I get to see this time? A few weeks ago I discovered a spot along Padilla Bay where snow geese congregate.

Yesterday panoramas of blue, winter sky, clouds and mountains made me stop a number of times to pause and enjoy the view.