From Trash To Treasure

At our house, Friday is trash day. Because we live in the country, the trash truck comes only once a week to empty our dumpster. Unlike those of you who live in the city and have to put your garbage on the curb the morning of your pick-up, we can haul our trash bags to the dumpster at any point during the week. If the resident critters want to investigate our discarded goods, they can crawl into the dumpster and have at it. (And I'm sure they do.) However, we do not run the risk of having our weekly garbage strewn across the neighborhood providing our neighbors with the opportunity to wonder if we really did eat three gallons of ice cream and twelve frozen pizzas in the last seven days.

Despite the fact that I can empty all the garbage cans and carry them out at any point during the week, I always seem to wait until Thursday evening. Or, as the case was this week, Friday morning. As it turns out, in this instance my procrastination paid off. During the terrible storms we had Wednesday night and Thursday morning, a strong gust of wind turned over our dumpster, possibly because it was empty? If I had been efficient with the emptying of the trash cans, I would have had to deal with the neighbors and the ice cream and the pizza boxes. It would not have been pretty. So don't you, my fellow procrastinators, ever let anyone tell you that you'll be sorry if you wait until the last minute. Here is proof that that may not be the case.

The upshot of all this is that early this morning I was running around trying to get all the cans emptied and carried out to the dumpster before I left for the day or the trash truck came. Boy we have a lot of trash cans! I made my way through the house muttering to myself that I seem to be the only one in this household that recognizes the fact that every container has a finite limit to what it can hold. The proof here is simple. If the trash ends up on the floor surrounding the trash can, the can has exceeded its limit and you should empty it. Why is this such a difficult concept to grasp? Anyway, after three bathrooms downstairs and a laundry room can full of dryer lint, because I have finally conquered the mound of dirty clothes that was almost eligible to be counted as a permanent resident by the census bureau, I made my way upstairs for one more bathroom can and the kitchen trash. As I rounded the last turn, I was struck by the view off of the deck.

My attention was drawn from my chores to the morning's beautiful sunrise. The early rays of the sun defined the few lines of clouds. These same beams of sunlight made the newly budding leaves on the trees look like they were glowing. Simply stated, it was an awesome image.

I am often guilty of saying "that would be an amazing picture" but not taking the time to go get my camera and actually capture the sight. Perhaps I was remembering my own pontificating in my last post about making time for the things that you really want to do and this morinig I did grab the camera and take this picture.

I will admit that being in the presence of this sight this morning was much more dramatic and much more impressive than this photograph suggests. You'll have to take my word for it. I am also willing to admit that I may have been drawn to the new day's rising sun as a not so gentle reminder that there is always beauty in our midst; we just have to take the time to look at it.

I am happy to report that even though I was sidetracked by today's sunrise and my taking its picture, I still managed to get everything to the dumpster on time. It is OK to stop and smell the roses or in my case, stop and watch the leaves glow.

A belated happy spring to all . . .