A Constant Adventure

I wish I could somehow show you all the marvelous wonders that are happening here at our new house out in the countryside. --One after the other like the plagues of Egypt... only... the opposite, wonder after wonder, day after day.

Well, it started with an ugly looking, pink trellis that is built over one of our courtyards (yes, we have courtyards). No colour coordination, just a random bright pink structure sticking out of the ground like a sore thumb covered with vines. Then the vines bloomed, and guess which colour the flowers were? An exact match. We began to realize that this place might have more surprises to it than immediately met the eye.

Every once in a while we will wake up in the morning and find that a new colour has burst out of the green chaos of plants and trees surrounding us, as one by one the dormant shubbery comes to life. Red has bloomed. Then a deep violet. Then orange sliced through the foliage. What will be next?

***

A rain storm. Blankets of rain dousing everything for miles around--including a few half naked guys running around the soccer field, screaming. The lightning couldn't scare us off! The thunder didn't dissuade us!

The hail did.

So we swept inside to regroup and a few hours later when we checked back outside, we were actually snowed in. Opening the door pushed back a swathe of hail that had piled up against it like a snowdrift. And everywhere, as far as you could see in the dark, the ground was covered with little glistening balls of ice. Think Mexico, desert, cactus! --Snow, freezing, ice! Pretty cool, huh? And it was still warm.

On further inspection, we found that, besides tons of ice cold... uh... ice... --besides that--our entire yard was peppered with millions of specks of random colours from the flower petals that the hail had taken to the ground with it. In every direction, a carpet of rainbows, a sparkling mosaic of splattered shreds of colour. Like a giant display of contemporary art, clashing hues haphazardly splashed onto a giant canvas by a Painter who knew exactly my tastes. And there was still plenty more colour in the trees for tomorrow!

The next night a another strange phenomena happened. Maybe it was just a time of year thing, like the June bug. Or maybe it was some kind of chain reaction from the storm that made the firefly larvae multiply and explode in number (the lightning that spawned the lightning bug). Now our yard is lit up from end to end with waves of flashing neon, yellow-green lights--literally like a massive Christmas tree. You've seen swarms of mosquitoes probably, maybe flies or gnats around your garbage. But have you ever seen literally hordes of lightning bugs?

We run through our soccer field like a city in the distance with a million tiny windows. The kids capture them by the hundreds and put them in jars all over the house. (They also found that if you squish one while his light is on, the light will stay on and you can rub it all over your clothes or on your face!)

I am enjoying this.

I wonder what will be next!

Love, Joe.