A Picture Perfect Day ~ My Column from Sunday's Paper

I cannot remember when blackberry winter lasted this long, but a welcome change came

this week. 
The sky was blue as a first-place ribbon with no clouds in sight. The sun was warm but a breeze out of the west made it feel like San Francisco.
Today I had to drive to Curry Ace Hardware to get parts for my chainsaw, and I decided to take the road less traveled. 
For me that meant driving through Sipsey, turning north on to Highway 69, and turning west onto the road that meanders by Smith Dam westward to Curry.
It looked as if everyone had recently mowed their grass. 
It seemed a shame to ride cooped up inside the cab of my truck, so I rolled down the glass and stuck my head out the window like a dog.  
After a cold wet winter, it felt good to let the wind blow through my hair….well, that’s not quite true, because I don’t have a lot of hair, but the wind felt great in my beard. 
Driving by the dam, I looked toward the water and there was a group of kids basking like turtles on the bank of the lake. 
Beyond the dam, there were lush fields with yellow flowers that reminded me of Ireland. I got a whiff of freshly mown grass and as I drove, I thought to myself, Walker County is a beautiful place on earth.
The hardware store had a crew of young guys working, and they scurried around and fetched the parts I needed. 
My chainsaw is fairly old, and I feared I’d have to donate a kidney to pay for the parts, but when I got the tab, I was pleasantly surprised, and I walked out of the store smiling.
When I got back home I quickly checked my email before settling in to write my column. When I scanned the subject lines I saw a note from one of my writing clients.
It said: Read This! No Seriously, Read This Now! 
Oh crap, I thought I’d been fired.
But when I looked further, I saw the organization had won 13 awards in the Alabama Press Association’s Newspaper contest, and I’d written three of the winning entries. I almost fell out of my swivel chair.
It’s great when my sister or my good friends tell me they enjoy my work, but to win recognition from my peers is something else all together. I’ve never had this kind of validation for my writing.
We keep a bottle of champagne in our fridge for special occasions and when I told Jilda the news, she suggested we celebrate this weekend.
Life is funny. This year has been a rough one here in Watsonville. I kept looking for locusts and pestilence to add to my trials, but then the sun came out, and good things started happening.
I’ve learned there’s a rhythm to life. Just when you think it will rain forever, a ray of sunshine breaks through the clouds and it’s like a harbinger signaling that good things are on the way. The trick is to weather the storms.