Right now the wind is blowing up a noisy gale outside.

It was just getting going this afternoon when Mr. Glad and I were taking a walk in an old neighborhood in a nearby town.  We like to look at the gardens and the houses, like this one that seems to have been a church at one time.

When we left the restaurant where we’d eaten a lunch of doner kebab and Turkish coffee, we crunched through leaves on the sidewalk, and took pictures of a tree we didn’t know.

Its graceful branches and smooth bark, holding up bright yellow leaves and pink flowers, put on a multi-layered show for us.

Mr. G. especially liked the door of this little white house…

…and I liked the way the tall green hedge in front of a large brick house had been trimmed so neatly as to frame the entrance like a picture. So I took a picture.

And that purple plant bordering the sidewalk…I think we have that at church, but I can’t remember its name. It’s the perfect complementing color.

Leaves began loosening from branches overhead and falling down on us, as the wind lifted my hair and stirred it into the mix. I had to watch my steps as we picked our way over frequent humps in the sidewalk caused by roots of trees with giant trunks, maybe older than the old houses.

On the drive back to our town the thermometer in the car told us it was 71°! My husband stopped by a store for a few minutes and I stayed in the car. I pulled out an old Bible that I keep stuck between the seats for times like this, and opened randomly in the Psalms, where I read,

Tremble, thou earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob;
Which turned the rock into a standing water, the flint into a fountain of waters.

Return unto thy rest, O my soul: for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee.
For Thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling.

And it seemed that God was speaking from His written Word to elaborate on the exuberance of His presence in the wind and the trees, to remind me that the same Mover of winds is the keeper and Lover of my soul.

At least four poems, songs, and passages from books crowded all together in my mind, all about blowy days, leaves “falling down and down and down and down and down,” and Wind as a playmate.

That wasn’t the end of my windy mental explorations, but before I write any more on the subject I’ll make an effort to gather my thoughts from the corners of my mind and bookshelves and the winter skies.