Saturday, June 1, 2013

Top o' the Morning to You!

The Blessing of Early Morning

Be pleasant until ten o'clock in the morning and the rest of the day will take care of itself.”
                                               Elbert Hubbard

As I've said before, I am a morning person. This time of year, the sun is up well before six, and I bring my cup of coffee and my laptop to the porch to write. As I sit here now, a million birds are singing, a freight train is rattling the tracks, low-whistling in the cleft under the viaducts down town, the sun is breaking through low, puffy clouds and all is well with the world. I know people to whom one does not speak until eleven, because they so hate this time of day it makes them mean and snappy. I believe they are alien creatures from some dark planet light-years away. How can you not love morning?

Liza loves it too. She patrols the porch corner to corner, looking for chipmunk action. She's a little put out with me at the moment because I had her legs trimmed of their funky-fur. She had become a walking dust mop, coming in every day with a load of oak flowers and leaves which were deposited throughout the house over the course of the day. She looks embarrassingly naked with bare legs.

My porch sits about 16 feet off the ground, even with the first branches of surrounding trees. Yesterday morning, a squirrel jumped out of a tree on one side, ran across the porch and leaped into the tree on the other side right under Liza's nose. She was so shocked she couldn't even react dogishly. She looked at me wide-eyed as if to say, “What the....!” I wondered whether the squirrels have devised a new game called 'flummox the dog,' as a break from 'can you get across the street before the car flattens you.' Squirrels are the Evel Knievels of the animal kingdom.

Morning is the most blessed time of day. I hope wherever you are this morning, you are up, watching the glorious sunrise, and listening to the symphony of birdsong. Start your day this way, and I guarantee that the rest of it will go much better. In the words of Jeb Dickerson, “Morning is when the wick is lit. The flame ignited, the day delighted with heat and light, we start the fight for something more than before.”

                                             In the spirit,
                                                 Jane



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