A Beautiful July 4th

Summer has definitely arrived in Salt Lake City. On July 4th (one of my favorite holidays), I woke up early and made myself a cup of coffee while the Lovely Sharon was still fast asleep.  I put on a tee shirt and some golf shorts that needed to be washed but no one would see them on me this early morning but me. I walked barefoot to the driveway to pick up the newspaper - not a cloud in the sky.  The sun had not quite made it over the beautiful Wasatch Mountains which are right above our house.  The grounds keepers at Hidden Valley Country Club, which is directly across the street from our house were already mowing the green of the Valley 3 hole. I sat down on our front porch with my coffee and the paper and read the paper and enjoyed the morning solitude. It was just me and a humming bird that kept coming back to one of our garden feeders for breakfast.

After rummaging through the paper, I sipped my coffee and thought about the day.  Independence Day.  The United States of America. Our Constitution. Equal Protection for all.  The right to live where and with whom we want and to love whom we want.  The right not only to dissent but the right to publicly announce and demonstrate our dissent.  The right to go to whatever church we want or to no church at all.  We are white, brown and black. Ultimately, except for the Native Americans, we are all from immigrant backgrounds whether that be Europeans, Africans, Asians, South Americans or some Heinz 57 mixed.  I am from a mixed background of Swedish, English and Scotch-Irish. The Lovely Sharon's family roots are from Luxembourg and Czechoslovakia.   America is a mixed bag of folks but together we are Americans.

I thought about about the Lovely Sharon asleep in her bedroom thinking how lucky I am to be married to her and to have her boss me around. I need bossing.

The sun finally made it over the peaks of the Wasatch Mountains and the sunny morning almost took my breath away.  I went down to the Bud Cave and found my camera.  Our front yard looked like the definition of summer and it needed to be photographed in all of its glory.  Here are few photos of our front yard with Hidden Valley Country Club across the street on this beautiful July 4th morning.