First, I am sure I have mentioned that volunteering at the nature center here is pretty identical to the joy I had working at Greenbrier on the Cape. (Minus the paycheck I suppose!) It provides an excuse to romp about in nature with enthusiastic children, to share the thrill of discovering something new. Often, as common as the flowers or deer scat may be, these kids, although this is their home, haven’t noticed them before. Yes, deer scat is a dime a dozen, but going further to decide whether the producer was, buck, doe or fawn makes it more interesting.
Whether or not it is “hot out of the oven and steaming” or dried up to raisinettes is something else to take note of. So the joy I am having at “work” is one parallel I am overwhelmingly thankful for.
Because of all the rain, and we have had a lot of rain, praise God, the world is looking as green as Ireland. And the parallel here is the intense and beautiful green of the salt marsh in June is mirrored in these lush green grasses that are not only along the Guadalupe River,
but now in most any pasture that isn’t 100% limestone and caliche. (the local clay) My own yard, although mostly made up of these wonderful varieties of wildflowers, still has enough grass, trees and vines to look more like the Daintree forest of Australia than a Texas scene. And although I recently wrote that the “Air was full of Vultures”, the other day, while out gardening, I heard that familiar twittery chatter, looked up and saw about 30 swallows circling overhead.
Yeah! I still am not sure what type they are, I know who they are NOT, not tree, or barn, or martins, but maybe cliff swallows, the ones that congregate under a nearby underpass. For that matter, I was trying to identify them through binoculars as I waited at a red light, but the grayness of the day, and the worry that some impatient driver might not take too kindly to someone bird watching from behind the wheel, made me give up the quest, but I do think the ones over my yard are from the same crowd. And in a parallel to watching the tree swallows on the Cape, they have the same mysterious habit of being there by the hundreds one day, and all gone the next. I am not sure if they are nesting under the bridge. For the same aforementioned reason that slowing down to look for nests when the light has just changed would not be smiled upon. But if they have built nests than they seem pretty lackadaisical about their care. One last parallel and I will let you go. Right about now, end of March, early April, on the Cape I would be delighting in the return of chipmunks to the deck. I always used to put out sunflower seeds in a large conch shell for them right outside my kitchen window. They provided hours of amusing antics, climbing in the shell to eat, chasing each other around the shell etc. Without fail some one or the other would turn up one day with only a stump of a tail, clearly having escaped a near death experience,
and for the rest of the season it would go by the name of “Stumpy”, pronounced more like “Schtumpy” with a German accent. Well, no chance of a “schtumpy” here, or so I thought, for chipmunks don’t live here. But, what skitters across my path on the deck the other day, also returned from a season of hiding out? A lizard with a stump of a tail! 
“”Schtumpy” I cried out, “you’re here after all!”, just in another taxonomic category. How cool is that! And one of those things I instantly thank God for! Way to go! Little by little restoring to me so much of what I thought I had lost.OK clearly, as always, I could go on and on, but I write this just to express my thankfulness that once again, and against anything I expected, “The boundary lines have fallen in pleasant places for me.” Praising the parallels while they are here, for we all know, soon, the summer will arrive, and comparisons may be harder to come by. But on this day, which by the way is wonderfully misty and foggy, just like the Cape, I am filled with thanks. Hope your day gives you reason for gratitude too.
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