Another Chamber of Commerce Day

'Scuse this, all you Northerners. Don't get mad. I paid my dues.

Now, at 6:45 - sunset time - it's 74 degrees. Humidity's only 76%, not sticky. 63 tonight, 82 tomorrow, which is around where it was today. Sunshine pouring down on us, all day.

And oh I feel GOOD.

It took this long for me to warm back up from that cold spell. But I finally got there. Today I was full of energy and went to work on the back yard.

That's the first picture. Those dark red flowers along the fence? That's a glorybower. Great name, huh? Every butterfly and hummingbird in the neighborhood comes to visit it. Glorybower can get out of control and annoy people, but I never mind it one bit. It's worth it. My neighbors on either side have some butterfly attractors too. All day long the butterflies just stream by. They visit next door, then make their way across my back yard, finally fly over the fence...I call it Butterfly Central.

Maybe one reason I'm such a happy person is because it's really hard to stay anxious and depressed when you can sit outside in the sunshine and watch the butterflies go by. It might only be for a few minutes, but those minutes are gold. In the times when I'm too sick to do much - even too sick to go outside, when the pollen's bad - still, I can almost always bliss out on those butterflies.

And the birds and lizards and bees and little snakes and squirrels and possums and coons and all o' that.

Well. I can admire that glorybower all I want, but the fact remains, the back yard's a huge mess. The hurricane mess in the front yard gravitated toward the back. So the front's reasonably tidy now - not ANYTHING like FINISHED, okay? but it'll hold. Time to do the back.

So until I have the "after" pics, that's all you get to see of the back yard for now.

I worked. I blissed out. I got all dirty. I sweated. See the white marks on my shirt and boxers? Salt, from sweating. And l hardly drew any blood at all today, only one of my little boo-boos bled worth noticing.

The orchid tree, bare naked for several weeks after the hurricane, is completely covered with lush new branches and leaves. And, yes, with flowers.

They have this delicate heavenly scent. Petals like satin.

It's so very good to be alive.