I’m grateful for sprinklers of many kinds, and for the water they use to make plants grow to provide for insects and birds.
I’m grateful for the friend who gave me the Max sunflowers who grow like a weed when I water them, for the sprinkler that brings the water, for the pipes and tunnels and machines and people involved with delivering the water, for the bees and other creatures that derive sustenance from these fall-blooming sunflowers.
I’m grateful for the tomatoes that grew from tiny seeds planted with care and nurtured into seedlings, watered and trimmed and tended into astonishing huge vines full of luscious fruit: Pizzutello, Brandywine, Maritza Rose, and Amish Paste.
I’m grateful to have had the best UPS driver ever for fifteen years, and since the new guy doesn’t bring cookies, I’m grateful for the inspiration that struck me this afternoon to put a cookie for Stellar on top of any packages left by the gate. He’s very confused as to why there are boxes sometimes but no more cookies, and he looks for them. He struggles up from bed if he hears the UPS truck, but no longer bothers to announce it, or even go see what’s happening; he doesn’t understand why his friend Tom isn’t leaving him a treat. Now, Stellar can still believe til his dying day, because now there’s Santa Tom!