This morning, I nearly did it again. I almost talked myself out of walking early when the breeze is cool and the birds are busy. “I’ll walk into town this afternoon for my meeting instead,” I told myself. “The walk will be longer. That would be good for me.”
But on this second day back from Colorado, a still, small voice urged me to resume my morning routine. Two steps down the road, and I was glad I’d obeyed that voice. The perfume of lilacs wafted my way. The blue sky peeked from behind green leaves of trees whose limbs were almost bare when I left home last week. Pink blossoms clustered on every branch of the honeysuckles. Columbines bloomed, and my neighbor’s tulips were a riot of color.
A small bird flitted across the road in front of me and perched on a low limb of a fading redbud tree. The neighbors had seen the bluebirds weeks ago, but this was my first glimpse of them. I fumbled for my camera, but before I could focus, the bird flew away.
I shrugged. Ah, well. The photo I took in Colorado of the small, blue bird with the black mask would do instead. Maybe I could photograph an Iowa bluebird some other morning. Before I finished consoling myself, four orioles swooped into the cedar trees. Just who was chasing whom, I’m not sure, but their turf wars were highly entertaining and more than compensated for missing today’s picture.
I finished my walk, warm and sweating by the end of it, my eyes and ears full of this Iowa spring morning. The rest of the day will be busy, so busy that it may become frustrating, confusing, disappointing. But whatever the day brings, I have seen a bluebird, lovely in the shadows of the fading redbud tree. I have smelled the lilacs and laughed at the orioles.
This sweet spring morning, I am truly blessed.
