The green pepper I diced this afternoon for our Labor Day potato salad was just picked and still warm from the sun shining on our little garden out back. Just hours earlier, we were riding cresting wave after wave, collecting sun-bleached shells, feeling a little like eight-year-olds, and caring not one bit.

Happy.

The passage of time is guaranteed and one for-certain constant in this ever-changing world. Cycle follows cycle as seasons turns from one to the next. Tides rise and fall, always reaching and retreating, pulling, pushing, and steady.  I followed the flight of two Monarch butterflies across the sand today, wishing them well on their migration journey and thanking them for stopping for just a moment on mine.

One of these days soon, the green will go and the bluest skies I’ve ever seen will fade. But maybe the joy’s in the noticing what’s now. And just now, the sun’s setting almost down below the treetops, warming our garden for a few minutes more.

A few minutes more.

I may not be ready to replace the shells I’ve collected this summer with pots of mums on the stoop. But there’s that potato salad for dinner, corn on the cob fresh from the farm, and the lushest garden tomatoes to savor as their juice drips down my chin.

And I’m happy.

Here and now.