JOY ALONG THE WAY: A DAY TO FRAME, HANG

Some days are so fine one wants to put a frame around them and hang.

I suppose on the walls of the mind.

Such a fine day came along recently. It started with a morning cool enough to resume having breakfast on the porch. While the coffee perked its familiar tune, I stepped out to the porch to greet whatever was up and about. There was a cricket fiddling in the autumn clematis being answered by another one somewhere in the thicket of phlox. They'd been up all night, I supposed.

Having filled the bird feeders the day before, there was a rosy breasted house finch on every foot rest of the cylindrical feeder and 10 or so lined up, almost army-like, at the troughs of the big feeder.

The finch are early risers, as am I, and their breakfast is thus uninterrupted by the late sleeping squirrels.

A little breeze from the south brought the fragrance of the phlox and something else too. It took me a second or two to recognize it to be a milkweed vine blooming somewhere. I try to keep this vine from winding around my bushes, but they are good hiders and when their fragrance reached my nose I was glad one, at least, had evaded my search and destroy. I decided to let this one be until the pods are formed. Even then I can't resist opening a pod to feel the silky splendor of the seed floss inside and thus let some escape.

For a while my mind is snared by the countless ways seeds are formed and sometimes encased until ripened. I am constantly rearranging in my mind my favorites. Poppy seed cases are way up on my list with their little round cases sporting a scalloped flat-top cap. Underneath the caps are little windows that open in due time so that the wind or even a human can shake, pepper and salt-wise, the tiny seeds onto the receiving soil.

Then there is the little carousel of the hollyhock seed~ wrapped in a corn shuck-type covering with a twist at the top like a Hershey's Kiss.

The milkweed, too, is a study in fairy finery. When the floss is released by some sun-owned key, out it comes with a small brown seed attached.

My seed reverie is interrupted by a little neighbor coming down the walk. She is wearing a pink, Hallmark-like crown with the glittery number seven on it.

"It's your birthday," I exclaim.

She nods affirmatively and smilingly but is quick to tell me that there's to be no present. Recent instructions from Mom I suppose. We agree that a cookie and some juice won't be considered a present, so we sit in the swing and talk of sundry things -- beetles and bugs and coming school duds.

Then, as if for her birthday, and my intense pleasure, too, here comes a ruby-throated hummingbird to its particular kind of feeder. First one I've seen in two years. We place a hand on each other as if in a silent pack there will be no more talk until Rubythroat flies away. When it does we smile big at each other, knowing we've seen something special.

As if that weren't enough, here came a big yellow and black tiger swallowtail butterfly to flit among the flowers.

The pleasant hours rolled on -- the surprise lilies bloomed, surprising me. The afternoon tea was well attended. I had as my guests Emily Dickinson, Willa Cather and Pearl Buck!

A mockingbird sang at sundown. The stars came out in their familiar places and illuminated so delightfully the picture of this fine day that already hangs in the parlor of my mind.

REJOICE!

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and a longtime columnist of the Southeast Missourian.