One of the simple gifts, a gift that doesn’t always seem like a gift but sometimes a drudgery, is waking up every morning. The weekend wake-ups are best, of course, unforced and un-alarmed as they are. But even the weekday ones, rushed and bolt-upright, are proof we wake to live another day.

A good thing? It doesn’t always seem that way. But mornings are the exception even when there’s general gloominess afoot. There is something about a morning, and especially this crystalline one I’m experiencing right now, that makes me glad to be alive.

I’m not going to analyze this too much — or second-guess myself for being a soppy optimist.

I’m just going to enjoy it.

(Morning light in the garden, late June. Alas, the coneflowers aren’t looking this good now.)