The days are still summery-hot while hikingin the sun, but I can sense a change in the cool mornings and evenings: July is gone; there is a sense of fall in the air.
Our roses are once again spectacular-almost as glorious as they were in the spring.
But it's the hummingbirds, that mesmerize us at dawn and at dusk; there must be 15 at times 20 of them diving, darting and sometimes simply sitting on the wire where 3 of the nectar feeders hang in the rose garden right in front of our porch.
We watch these impossible creatures in awe as they plunge down, across and up, soaring seemingly effortlessly until magically one appears in front of our face, hovering, for all the world as if to say thanks for keeping all of these feeders full.
I ponder frequently the mind of a creator who could conjure these creatures while keeping in mind the whales and the elephants...
and me.
And I wonder about that glorioustime when we had no need to speak, when all creatures communicated without the need of words- what must that have been like to be able to know the minds of all created beings? And I watch these brilliant summer roses in wonder at their perfection feeling sorrow when the petals begin to curl and brown.
Did even the roses retain their perfection in Eden? The magnitude of our loss is overwhelming; our curiosity or was it arrogance and its effect on the entire created world then and now, incalculable, incomprehensible.
But then, perhaps in heaven, the roses and the hummingbirds maintain their perfection, unsullied by death?