Putz. Dunce. Dunderhead.

I knit yesterday between chores and various adventures around the house.  My hands felt good and all seemed well.

Through the whole day, I knit 5 or so rounds  on the top.  Not a lot of knitting, but it seems it was too much.  My hand hurts again this morning.  

I am entirely convinced it isn't the knitting but rather the hand brace problem that is the root of the issue.  I wear thumb and wrist braces every night and it makes a huge difference to the ongoing health of my hands. Lately I have been taking them off at some point during the night. The braces are irritating to my over sensitized hands and off they go in apparent wild abandon.  I wake to find them scattered around the room.   The velcro isn't holding as well as it did at first too and the slightly too small wrist brace isn't making it easy. It is just a kind of muddle.  Still, I have to do better for my sanity.  Call me putz, dunce and dunderhead. 

On the cheerier side of the world, right outside my bedroom window is a sour cherry tree.  This variety of cherry,  the Evans Cherry is very hardy for prairie climates.  The fruit is good for eating fresh and for canning and freezing.  It is more tart than the BC cherries you get in store but they have their own delicious identity.  I love them.  Can you tell?

All spring, I have been watching the tree.  I watched as the tiny buds formed, tight packed and closed.  I watched the green covers slowly crack and burst into full bloom from the bottom of the tree to the tip of the tallest branches.  At any moment in time, it is surrounded by a flurry of busy buzzing bees as they gather nectar for their hives and pollinate each blossom. I could watch it for hours.

No matter the travails of the day, there is still so much wonder if we look for it. A bee buzzing a blossom.  A bird picking up a stick or some fuzz to fly off to build it's nest.  The shape of clouds.  The winds whispering through the trees.  Some of the wonders of the world are huge, like mountains or waterfalls or the churning oceans or the mysteries of volcanic activity.  More often though, the wonder of nature is is the mundane, the small, the things we don't often focus on, but they are there if we but stop and look for them.