Dear Reader:

This is a wonderful “mantra” for those of us lucky enough to live in the lowcountry of South Carolina. I noticed Thursday night that the moon is getting fuller and brighter… ethereal in its beauty. And, as far as the sun goes, we have already seen so much of it and we aren’t even “officially” into the summer season. Hot! Hot! Hot!

I love “sunshine” as an accessory too…but lately there has been a lot of sunshine… with no rain. I have been watering and watering and watering!

*I think I need “rain” as my new favorite accessory.

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*Sorry for the interruption but I had just typed that last sentence when it grew dark as pitch, the wind picked up, and oh boy are we getting rain….lots and lots of rain!

(“Ask and you shall receive“-It must have been that crazy rain dance- I even embarrassed myself dancing yesterday in the garden-that did the trick though!)

I started this blog around 3:30 yesterday afternoon and soon I was typing in rhythm to the raindrops falling on the roof.

My Ginger Shell plant was so happy and so was I…finally after weeks of no rain in my neighborhood….it started raining right here on Rainbow Road. Bless you God! I and my water bill thank You!

When I came across this message. “I am a day dreamer and night thinker” I thought now that is the true me. I do my best thinking at night and dreaming during the day. I get the big picture of the creative project going during the day, but it is at night, in bed, when I am able to solve the problem of the infinite details involved to turn the dream into reality.

I remember a lesson my class once did on Columbus Day. The students had to read a short biography on both Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci. By the end of the discussion they had to answer the question: “Why is our country named “America” for Amerigo Vespucci instead of “Columbus” for Christopher Columbus?” 

It all came down to one fact. Columbus was a dreamer and Vespucci was a doer…a maker of dreams come true and most importantly a “documenter.”  He didn’t just stop with the dreaming component of finding a new world but he continued with all the written infinite details necessary to make it a reality.

In the end….his role played larger than Columbus’s with the name of our great country.

“Christopher Columbus might well have had the new world named after him, had it not been for two shortcomings. The first was that Columbus was under the mistaken impression that he had found a new route to Asia and was not aware that America was an entirely new continent.

The second was that he never wrote publicly about it so the masses were not aware of his discovery. Had he done this, Mr. Waldseemüller and his colleagues might have named it Columba! As it happened, Vespucci did write about it and was the first to call this land the “Novus Mundus” (Latin for “New World”).

To sum it up: Dream first, document second….dreaming gets one nowhere unless discoveries are documented in written form. a lesson for all of us dreamers.

Columbus, the explorer, and Vespucci, the navigator, used the sun and moon to guide them on their explorations….so in a sense, they, too, both: “Lived by the sun and loved by the moon.”

So until tomorrow…Every morning when we rise to the sun and every month when we see a full moon (or moon flower bloom)….we should be filled with gratitude for life…beautiful, crazy, unpredictable life.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

*Happy Birthday to Rutledge! Isn’t it wonderful that Rutledge let Sir Paul McCartney share his birthday? He is such a generous, kind-hearted little soul! Has it really been three years? ( For Paul….74 and counting…but who’s counting right? It’s Paul!)

A special day deserves a special event….Anne’s moon flowers bloomed last night ( I am sure) in honor of Master Rutledge’s special day….Three of them bloomed in fact. Happy Birthday my precious three year old Rutledge!