Walking through Spring

The weather has been gorgeous lately.  Springtime in the desert is long and beautiful. The temperatures hover in the 60's and 70's under clear, blue skies.  Or, on a happy day, under dynamic skies painted with clouds in all shapes and sizes.  My children know I love the clouds... why, just days ago Carson came running in from the backyard and said, "Hey mom!?  Wanna come out and see a really beautiful cloud?"  He knew my answer would be yes, and I plopped the raw chicken down and washed my hands just as fast as could be to go and take a look.  I do love those days.

But, cloudy or clear, springtime is just perfect for family walks.

And when I look hard enough, I can see that life is growing just fine.

I do love the way the sunshine peeks through the branches and shines through the baby leaves on a newly sprung tree.

One day as we were walking down the road, we saw a big dirt spiral out near the mountains in the distance.  It was quite remarkable, actually, and rather beautiful, too.

Traveling along that same road, we approached the backside of our back fence and found there to be a small tower of bricks precariously placed so that a child might use them to hop the fence into our backyard.  A small smile crept across my face and I felt happiness in my heart at the thought of the children building such a tower for the purpose of coming in and out.  Occasionally from my windows I'll see a small neighbor's head pop up over that back fence.  That small head is checking to see if there are any children at play back there, you see, and if the answer is yes you can be sure that the precariously placed tower of bricks will be used to hoist another body up and over.

I thought about re-stacking the bricks... or even buying a little stepping stool with which to replace them.  But in the end, I feel like the precarious tower of bricks is too much a part of the beauty.  Beauty in the thought through solution of a child's problem.  A beauty, in general, of childhood.