High in this October moonscape watercolor soars a squadron of migrating sandhill cranes. Look closely and  use your imagination to reckon where their flight began and ends.  All through the month of September I saw smaller flocks of Canadian geese flexing their muscles in V formations flying very low.   Their flights gave my days on the golf course a special dividend (when my golf score wasn’t PGA notable!)  I found myself sending up a Deo Gratis for the clear skies, a good soaking rain that preceded these golf days, a pleasant breeze, a special measure of good health, my American freedom, our troops, and a lone monarch butterfly headed southward.  Now in retrospect, I muse, small wonder that my golf score would betray my state of mind.  How can one focus on hitting that little white ball perfectly with so many distractions out there in God’s great big beautiful wonderful world?  Too, a whirling, wheeling, diving, soaring flock of starlings waltzed their way into and out of my line of sight from horizon to horizon.  Was I hearing the Vienna Philharmonic playing Strauss?  It helps to be a little bit demented to play golf, don’t you think?  Laugh here.

            Now is the time to “put away summer” and prepare for the coming winter.  The water hoses are brought in, the outdoor faucets are drained, the house is secured with caulking and insulation, the gutters are cleaned, the bird feeder is up and filled.   Observing closely, the bed of annuals are becoming more intense in color, or so it seems to me.  The reds become maroon, the oranges more red, the pinks a deeper pink, the yellows deepen to gold.  It is as though they wish to announce to the world that life is more precious as the end draws near, as indeed it should be.  “At the end of life’s summer, why should we not join with the forest that surrounds us to let the glory out?” 

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