The leaves are just beginning to turn with splashes of crimson and gold here and there. I could spend all day in the woods walking, looking, listening, and loving it all. I think the hummingbirds have left us for the season, but I filled the feeder with a new batch of nectar just in case a few hungry travelers show up. 

We are in the midst of a statewide drought. I can't remember the last time we had a good soaking rain. Tropical storm Hermine gave us a lot of wind yesterday but only a disappointing bit of drizzle. I've never seen the pond so low. The lagoon is completely dry and turning into a meadow:

This summer, when my brother Steve came to visit and we walked at the pond, he found the "Kindness Rocks" tucked in a leafy bower near the old red bridge:

The kids and I have been gathering and painting rocks for the project ever since.

 

I was so happy to find a ladybug on my kitchen windowsill the other day, as I understand they are good luck in the house. (I wouldn't mind an infestation.☺)

Speaking of luck: Look how lucky we are with Lucky the rabbit. I had a good laugh when Indiana Jones sat on him the other morning. Lucky didn't seem to mind one bit. 

The day returns and brings us the petty round of irritating concerns and duties. Help us to play the man, help us to perform them with laughter and kind faces. Let cheerfulness abound with industry. Give us to go blithely on our business all this day, bring us to our restingbeds weary and content and undishonoured, and grant us the gift of sleep. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

This is probably my favorite quote ever. It is so easy--too easy--to indulge in melancholy and let gloom rule the day, but we do so at the expense of those who must endure our misery. On Sunday, Mother Teresa was declared a saint by the Church. She said, "Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless. Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person." Yes, and every time we complain or frown or speak with irritation it is the opposite. It is selfishness, an action of evil (an uncomfortable word that people don't like to use these days, even though avoiding it doesn't make it any less real). We are not always happy. In fact, perhaps we are rarely happy. But, that is all the more reason we should strive to be excellent to each other; that we should "play the man" and "go blithely about our business"; that we should establish cheerfulness and kindness as the rule of the day.

♥

Kortney mentioned Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac in her latest post, and it is a real gem!