Plodding Ever Onward

 Sitting on the front porch Sunday morning, it was a treat to see blue skies again after a few grey, rain-sodden weeks. In spite of dire warnings from the weathermen, there was no hurricane, no awful flooding such as Europe has seen. And now China. Is there anyone left who still thinks climate change is not at least a partial cause of all this? We were relieved to hear that our German friends, H&D, were not affected by the flooding but it is heartbreaking to hear of all the people who were, who have lost their loved ones, their homes, everything. Here in the U.S. temperatures are heating up again out west and we're hoping like mad that we won't have a repeat of last year's fires. 

But for now, on the porch, all was peaceful. 

This tiny orchid bloomed last week. It's been with us for at least five years and has never bloomed before which goes to show you should never give up on an orchid, no matter how dead, lifeless or gone it looks. There's likely to still be life lurking deep within, just waiting to reward those with patience to wait...and wait...and wait!

A movement catches my eye. I have visitors.

(This seems to be either mama or papa. I had pics of all three but can only seem to load this one. Such is the life of the technologically challenged.)

 Three sand hill cranes, busy foraging for breakfast in the grass out front. Beyond the birds, I see our neighbor, D, standing in his driveway, watching his son, T, glumly plodding along behind a lawn mower. D recently came to the conclusion that it was foolish to be paying a landscape company to mow his lawn when he had an able-bodied, if a mite too chubby, teenager on the premises. I chuckled to see that the "Make a Man out of T" program had begun. An all round win-win situation - D gets his grass cut, T sweats a little, loses a few pounds, takes a few grudging steps towards manhood. Except I don't think T sees it quite in that light. At least not yet. Maybe in a few years.

Meanwhile, back to the birds. I watch with interest as they continue their bug search. The two adults are going at it with gusto, vigorously wresting bugs from the soil with their long beaks, unfazed by the proximity of a mere human. The third, a scrawny teenager (no red feathers on his head yet), is just standing around, looking dejected, making no effort to find food. I wonder if he is sick? Or maybe sulking because mama and papa are not feeding him but acting like he's a big boy now and should find his own breakfast? Trying to make a man out of him?

Speaking of manhood, a condition that seems to have fallen on hard times, we have a couple of grandsons on the brink of it this month, born within a few days of each other seventeen years ago. Both, unfortunately, living in other states, but we had dinner with one last week when he was here on a visit.....

..and spoke to the other by phone on his birthday. 

Sweet boys. Maybe in their lifetimes manhood will become popular again.

Where does the time go? I ask myself this so often I bore myself. And up from some recess in my head comes a quote - "For life moves not backward, nor tarries with yesterday."

And so we plod ever onward, hoping that those just on the cusp of adulthood will be equal to the job of

cleaning up the mess we seem to be leaving them.

At least those handsome boys are smiling. If we all make a concerted effort to do our bit for the environment maybe they'll have reason to continue to do so.