Am I in heaven here or . . .

Greetings from Maryland on a crisp, chilly October day. As I write this, the clouds have moved in so rather than take my Kindle outside to read a bit, I decided to stay in and actually write a post . . . something that’s been long overdue. Because here’s what I think:

Thank God for this blog.

When I am feeling down, which thankfully is not all that often, I can go back and read about happier times. It’s also a resource for photo storage. What I mean is that I’m one of those people who detests filing. And my photos are filed by month and year. This has been working for me, especially since I have this blog – because when I forget when I took that one certain photo that I’m searching for, I can run a search on my blog and voila – the date of the post shows up and when I hover over the photo, I now have the image number. Unfortunately, all too often it’s a photo that was lost in the Great Hard Drive Crash of 2011 – what I call what happened when I lost 85% of the photos I’d taken since 2006.

When that happened, I was pretty upset but was going through a difficult time with my husband’s illness which overshadowed the photo issue. Besides, I had some key pictures saved on what I thought was a cloud with a company that I will not mention (because it’s not their fault). Unfortunately, last month all of these key photos were lost – deleted – from said company. Why? Because I didn’t purchase something from them in the time frame stated on their policy.

I actually cried when I found out. My husband’s cardinal – the female cardinal in snow – that he took and I edited and sold so many copies of – was gone. I contacted my gallery and told them I didn’t think I could do this anymore (to which they said that they hoped I would change my mind). I closed down my etsy site (because all of my photos for sale were on said company’s website and were now gone). The company told me to simply upload them all again. But I couldn’t . . . because they were lost in the crash.

 

Or so I thought.

 

I found the cardinal this weekend. I remembered that I’d e-mailed it years ago to a publication for cancer patients. The full resolution size was in my gmail account! And my bluebird . . . and my mourning dove . . . and my hawks . . . all found because of the blog and my filing system by dates. I still don’t have all of them but that just means I need to start taking pictures again.

 

These were all taken over the weekend using my iPhone 6 and edited with Photoshop for the most part. It was beautiful this morning and most of yesterday and I took George for a ride in the car to run errands, taking the long way through beautiful countryside.

I saw a starling murmuration (see example at end of post) and slowed down to watch, noticing that several other cars had done the same. It was like watching a graceful ballet with thousands of little birds all synchronized in flight and it was absolutely stunning.

 

I took this one coming up the driveway this morning after a trip to a grocery store a few towns over.

 

One thing I love on a weekend morning: If the sun it out, no matter how cold it is, I like having my coffee outside. I will wrap myself up in a blanket and wear a coat, hat, and gloves if I need to – but it’s really nice just listening to the birds and watching them go from tree to tree. The distinct sound of a pileated woodpecker, geese flying overhead, nuts falling from the trees and squirrels scampering about.

 

Hello, my friend.

For supper I’m making a roast pork loin and some butternut squash soup which I plan on packing for lunches this week. I’m making an apple crisp for dessert and will probably take some to work tomorrow. If I leave it here, I may end up eating the whole thing.

And life is good.

Hope you are, as well. Thanks so much for stopping by to visit.

A Starling Murmuration

Post heading is from Hold On by Sarah McLachlan.