Grateful Because

It wasn’t late at all that I went to bed last night. 9:30-ish. But when I came in our sleeping room and looked outside, I was stunned.

How beautiful the sky can be. How amazing the colors. What an exquisite soft range of colors. What a brilliant idea to have light refract. What an amazing concept to have one and the same phenomenon, waves, act as sound, light, and so many other things.

Thank You for the colors of the sky. 

I was up at 6:00 this morning. It hadn’t been my intention even though I had planned to wake up a bit earlier, but alas.

After a few minutes I had showered and a pot of fresh coffee awaited me.

The vice of a cigarette brought me outside on the porch in the morning sunshine. I was enjoying these three, the coffee, the cigarette, the sunshine, when I became aware of the singing of so many birds.

In Amsterdam, where I grew up, I was used to hearing birds year round but here, way up north, birds go away for the winter. I missed their morning sounds for a long time.

Every year it is a joy, a sensation, a blessing, to see and hear the birds backs.

Thank You for the birds and their sounds and songs.

* The beautiful photo of birds on a wire was taken by lumkness.

When I get up and I see the bright light of sun, it makes my day. It doesn’t need to be warm weather. Heck, it can be the middle of winter, but as long as I see that blue sky and some sunshine beaming into the kitchen, my day couldn’t have started better.

I think that it’s most of all the promise the intense light brings. “This is a new day!”, it beams, “This day is going to rock!!”

Our kitchen catches the morning the sun. In winter the sun is so low in the sky sometimes that you have to squint your eyes: excellent!

A cup of coffee, some breakfast, that morning sun streaming in, and the hustle and bussle of family life.

Thank You for the morning sun.

It was raining this morning and man… does it smell nice. It smells… fresh and special and… and it’s uncatchable. Sure, many products claim to smell like “fresh rain” but how many actually do? None, in my book.

Apparently it’s not even the rain itself that smells. If everything is right water doesn’t have a smell.

Instead the smell is produced by the Streptomyces bacteria. When it’s been dry a while they produce spores and those spores are what is released into the air when the rain hits the ground. And this is what we associate with the smell of rain.

It’s amazing how also in the process of rain everything works together and is at the same time as simple as a child can see and as complicated as a wise one knows.

Thank You for the smell of rain.

· The wonderful photo of rain hitting cement was taken by sneezypb