Often, when I’m sitting out in my back yard, I see a bit of sunlight that’s at exactly the correct angle to show off just one leaf, or one frond, or one rock. My yard is surrounded on three sides by vegetation: tall trees in the mini-forest on the west side, the south neighbor’s tall trees and bushes, and the next-door bushes, and sunlight often comes in in tiny bits at different times of the day. Being that surrounded by trees, my yard is mostly in the shade for much of the day, so those little shafts of sunshine draw my attention.

The light just accentuated that one vertical leaf on my hydrangea. It caught my attention!

I also noticed the contrast on my Japanese Maple tree, to the right of the hydrangea.

In the autumn, the vine maple next door turns yellow-my tree is still in the shade, while next-door’s tree is illuminated. My tree’s branches and the crook of the bird feeder make very pleasing curves. Our chickadees and juncos like to perch in the tree and jump onto the feeder from there-it’s easy to see which stations are open and which are occupied by other birds.

Sleeping dog? That piece of rock showing on the water of the Skykomish River sure looks like one, doesn’t it? My friend pointed that out to me when we were up there on Wednesday. The rock that sticks out of the water looks just like a snoozing hound! The water there is very clear, too, so you can see the bottom.

Last October, the sunlight hit my big Japanese Maple just right to show off its vivid red color. Those leaves are all the same color, but the sunlight brightly illuminates the one little section.

The pinpoint illumination isn’t always in the yard! The Lady Kikyo was very fond of finding a sun puddle inside to lay in.

It’s just a mundane red pepper, but the sunlight shining through it made it glow!

So, readers, I hope you’ve been en-light-ened now!