And lizards and frogs and spiders and bugs.

This winter, here in Florida, I wiped ice from my windscreen, and watched as all the lovely brilliant color faded from the front garden.  They survived the first days of frosty chill, and then collapsed a week or so later as a new blast of cold blew in.

But it has been warming up. Life has reset.

In that same front garden, bees danced around the azalea bush, and birds sang in rich, bright notes among the still naked tree limbs. Lizards lounged on lawn chairs and bugs rushed their little bodies in zigzaggy ways through the air, trying to stay a step ahead of a determined Little Blue Heron.

An interesting spider showed up in the back garden with its weed-covered mulch – dead weeds, of course.

Tonight, there is an enthusiastic chorus from the Frog Section, and the wild weeds have wilted themselves to bed.

It is all heartening, and I am grateful, grateful, grateful in my despair. I am using this gratitude to right myself, to anchor myself – to find the hope during this long long swift march towards an inevitable end.

Gratitude 4: Wild, wild, wild life.