Rewards of a Simple Life

Center of Labyrinth

Red sassafras three-lobed leaves are on the ground now - other two shapes will fall later, I suppose.  (one or two-lobed, mitten-shaped).  Mother always protected any sassafras tree from getting cut down and I, too, love their colors and different shaped leaves - even on the same branch at times.  One stands just behind my mailbox on the edge of the pasture......This is my second day walking in the opposite direction on my road and both days I filled my plastic grocery bag before I even got to the stop sign!  Still at least one more bag there.   It seems I've found a perpetual opportunity to "walk the Earth softly."  What kind of person throws onto the roadside bottles, cans, styrofoam boxes and cups, cigarette boxes - I didn't even know they made Camels anymore! - and many more pieces of trash for Mother Earth to mulch? When I began this project, I never dreamed it was a lifelong daily endeavor on less than a half-mile stretch of my part of the world.  As I'm climbing in and out of the ditches I often think erroneously I've completed the work when I bag even tiny pieces of styrofoam.  But no, there is always more.  And then, I do what I'm doing now - sit on my porch and watch the surface of the Pond ripple toward the rising sun coming up over the trees and I'm glad I have found a way to do something that makes me feel good.  After all, that's everybody's hope - to feel good, to be happy -  I do and I am.