I hope you will click on the photo and open it up in a new window and really look at it.

When I saw it my jaw dropped.

I go out at night and take a lot of pictures and I share them here. I share the pictures with my angel orbs because they move me so deeply. And I especially share a lot of photographs of the trees with whom I share this piece of property, or better put, they allow me to live here with them.

I took a lot of photographs earlier in the evening, just after the dogs ate their dinner. There was a special quality to the air, a kind of gentle softness. The air was really cool but not quite what I’d call cold. It was like a breath against my cheek. I leaned against my favorite tree and photographed all around me leaning back. I walked the perimeter of the property photographing this and that. I always shoot up into the sky because the trees against the sky are so lovely. There have been lots of wonderful photographs this week because of the full moon through the trees but when I came in and saw this one I was just awestruck.

When you take a lot of photographs at night you are never really sure what you’ve gotten until you come in and look. There are always shots that you think might be interesting and turn out to be nothing, or a blur, or not enough light. And then there are these.

GRACIOUS!

I’m sitting here writing, it’s just past midnight, and all of a sudden CRASH, a deafening crack of thunder out of nowhere! I had no idea it was going to rain. Delilah is asleep in my lap but that thunder was so loud all of the boys shot up out of their beds from sound puggerly snoring sleeps and howled out almost as if in pain. Little Tanner shot out the dog door howling at the top of his lungs and then back in so fast I was laughing out loud. He went out to chase the thunder straight into a sudden torrential downpour. Lordy Moses it’s raining hard out there! And.The.Dogs.Do.Not.Like.The.Rain.

It’s times like these that I start bargaining with God. Thank you, so much, God, for letting this not start before the dogs went potty before bed, and it’s okay if you let it rain mostly tomorrow but could you let it stop a little first thing in the morning so I can get them outside? And, uhm, maybe a little break here and there throughout the day?

My dear old beloved Moses, the lab-doby mix we adopted at the Humane Society as a little puppy when my son was about 11, and who lived with me here until he died a year and a half ago at 18 1/2, would hold it until Kingdom come and I would worry about him. Pugs, well, they don’t so much hold it. Ahem. They kind of pee pee everywhere which is why I have gradually had all the carpet taken out of the house. The whole back half of the house has bright sunny yellow linoleum, and the front of the house has laminate flooring and I still cringe when it rains because while Delilah will make little puddles one boy lets loose with the River Nile. And there are 3 boys. Righto.

WOOOOweeeeee, THAT’S what I call LIGHTNING!

This is a very odd blog post. I honestly planned to carry on waxing poetic about the pretty trees against the sky but when you write about mindfulness, and being present, and living fully in the moment, you can’t help but shift gears when a huge thunderstorm blows in out of nowhere, shakes the house to it’s foundations and sends sleeping  pugs flying in every direction around you!

This is why when I teach and I give my students a 10 minute timed writing starting with “At this very moment…” and they think it’s just a mundane little exercise I tell them, “Oh no, you just wait, whole worlds shapeshift in every moment, you never know what might happen.”

My poor baby Tanner, my four year old, is very afraid and so I’m going to stop here so we can go snuggle on the couch. The newsletter will go out in the morning. He hasn’t been right since the godawful night, New Year’s Eve, when someone in the area starting shooting off fireworks at 8 p.m. until after midnight. I thought we’d all  have a nervous breakdown that night but poor Tanner kept rocketing around the place going nearly insane and hasn’t quite been himself since. I need to take care of my baby boy, but do, please, take a few moments to appreciate the beauty of the trees. In that very moment they took my breath away…