She walks in beauty

This summer, I was feeling a little overwhelmed with life and a little underwhelmed with our new house. In case you didn't know, our new house is a single wide trailer. We hope to build in a year or so, but for now, we have a single wide. It wasn't spiffed up before we moved in, so there were copious amounts of dog hair/cat hair as well as a sprinkling of mouse droppings. I really didn't think I could deal with it. (The phrase "I literally can't even" went through my mind a thousand or so times.) I loved our old sunshiney house. I still love it actually. But we really wanted land, so we decided to buy this land and live in a trailer until we could build another sunshiney, lovable house. 

Clover came up and tackled the trailer with me and cleaned it to a far-thee-well. Justin and I repainted everything to make it shiny and clean looking. It isn't too bad. (I still stress about the mice though.)

What I am trying to say is, I was feeling kind of whiny this summer. So I decided I should take a picture every morning on my walk of something beautiful. Some days I took more than one. Sometimes I forgot. But it worked. I started feeling lucky again. 

And instead of "I literally can't even" the phrase "She walks in beauty" started going through my mind. 

There is so much beautiful for me to walk through. 

(These were all taken by my phone, so they aren't really high quality.)

Sunshine leaves 

Sunrise down our road

Amish snooks

Queen's Anne Lace and valley farms

Morning fog

Foggy sunlight behind the Amish barn

Windmill

Fog burning away

Morning clouds

Looking down into the creek from the steel deck bridge.

Sunrise

This is an Amish tedder or rake for hay. Whenever I saw it I thought "Life is real, life is earnest..." (Apparently this was the summer for thinking in first lines of poems.) But really, if the horse jounced you particularly hard, nothing good is going to happen. There is no where okay to fall, no seatbelt, no back guard. You are on your own here. 

Another sunrise

I like the windmill

Summer storm sky

Wild grapes

It is pretty rare to see the Amish on horseback, so when I heard a horse pounding along, I turned to look. And there was a 10-12 year old Amish boy smiling to beat the band as he thundered up the hill to pass his neighbor with the milk cart. 

We all need to feel alive.

Geese

 

Sunrise

Terrible picture, but I think I saw a Golden Eagle one morning. It was a huge bird and the crows were all screaming at it and chasing it. 

Same barn, different sunrise.

The day after I saw the golden eagle, I stepped onto the steel deck bridge and there was an explosion beneath--a blue heron flew out and up this creek. Of course I didn't get a picture of it, but it was pretty incredible.

The steel deck bridge. The Amish buggies make quite a racket going over this thing.

Pine needles and maple leaves

I took a walk in the evening last week

And things were just as beautiful

Morning sun

Sunny spiderweb

This dog ran out to make sure I had no evil intentions against his sheep.

Grape leaves and burdock

This gentle land

Morning glories on the corn stalks--natural trellises

The one left standing

I think this used to be a church or a schoolhouse

Down the line

This is the prettiest little Amish stand around here. They have morning glory blooming on it, and since the sides are open, the morning glory climbs in and pretties up the inside as well.