Life is good

Since I had to postpone my walk yesterday due to rain (Oh, I still walked, in the afternoon, dragging the kidlet as she ranted and screamed--not really, but she definitely slowed my walking pace!), I checked the weather radar first thing this morning.  A small batch of showers had come through earlier and another blob of green, yellow and red would be heading our way in a few hours.

I took the window of opportunity that I was provided and went on my walk. It was a nice 72 degrees. The air was damp from all the moisture, and I saw the rebirth of springtime on this August day.

After two months of little to no rain, the last five days of cooler weather (Anything under 100 degrees is cool in my books!) and daily rain had wrought an amazing transformation in the Oklahoma landscape.

As I walked on my regular path, the watery sun peeped out from behind the eastern clouds. There wouldn't be much sun today as I looked to the west and saw that the sky was a deep indigo blue. According to the meteorologists, I still had a few hours before the rain hit provided the complex remained intact. The golden brown of the dessicated grasses had become mottled with green as the rain revived the Bermuda grass from its dormancy. Tiny wild flowers opened their buds, sharing their yellow or purple flowers with the world.

I crossed the burbling creek as it rolled over the rocks the city had used to line the basin and turned toward the favorite section of my walk. The deep triangular bowl sat in the middle of three expressways. This was the center of the interchange and it had its own ecosystem. As the path circled around the bottom of two of the three expressways, the third side barrier was the creek. And between the creek and the path, was a marsh.

Well, it's a marsh now with standing water, singing frogs, and happy little corkscrew willow trees.  The frogs had come out of their enforced hibernation to rejoice, sing, attract a mate, and splash happily in the shallow ponds nature had provided. The scissortail flycatchers were out and about, two families flocking together as four of them tried to sit on a sign. Cheeping and piping at me as they wheeled away when I came too close.

A goldfinch flew in front of me chasing it's mate. Yellow flashed against the dark blue of the sky. A flock of robins happily hopped and hunted worms along the mowed 30 ft. grassy verge between the path and the expressway. For the first time in weeks the worms were near the surface and the ground gave when they stabbed their beaks into the ground to pull out wiggly, juicy wormy goodness.

And you know what?

Life is good.