August Sunshine

This sunflower is growing at the edge of our rock garden. Not the inside edge but on the driveway side. It was "planted" by the birds eating sunflower seeds in the winter. Thank you, blue jays!
There are six other sunflowers scattered around our house that I dug up as seedlings out of our lawn. Two of them are on my mother's balcony.
You can never have enough sunflowers -- just look at its big yellow glory!

It's a good reminder that good things happen when you least expect it, and big, beautiful things grow from small seeds you may not even know were planted.

The expression, There aren't enough hours in the day, takes on a whole new meaning this August. I'm trying to cram an entire summer of creativity into two weeks!
The days start later so instead of waking up with the dawn at 5:30, I'm not getting out for my walk until twenty after six. That means my morning routine of feeding the animals, drinking coffee and eating breakfast, and doing a little reading gets bumped back an hour.

That's an hour I need now!
I've finally shaken my despair over the unnecessary death of the three baby ospreys and over the utter silence from the publishing world about my submissions. I've finally hit my stride with two new book projects, both related to growing up with a funeral director for a father and living above a funeral home for the first twenty years of my life.
I hit my stride just as my summer break from church writing and substitute teaching is coming to an end but the energy of a new and exciting project provides energy for everything. I know how to juggle all three jobs now and part of that is taking it one day at a time. And writing a To Do List every night before I go to bed.

And I don't want to rush the last week of August. It's Dwayne's birthday on Monday so we're going on a little trip to celebrate, and I have TWO art classes next week, plus some novels I can't wait to get into. So I might just take it easy next week, and make the most of the very last week of summer. There's a gazebo with the perfect reading chair right in my back yard...

I shall be like this sunflower next week: big and happy and glowing.
And when September arrives and work gets really busy, I will look at my new book projects and remember how this sunflower came to be: a seed planted "by accident" that grew into a big, beautiful thing.