"GOOD Happens"

On the way home from Traverse City yesterday, I saw this bumper sticker on a car ahead of me. It read, “GOOD Happens”. Now, we’re all familiar with the other version, and I thought, “What a refreshing turn around on this well known saying!” It got me to thinking about how our point of view can color our lives and that we can find good that “happens” if we just look for it.

In the past couple of days, some small good things have happened for me. On Thursday I finally made it out on another trail ride with my riding partners from the barn, and I had a fabulous time! The weather was perfect, there were no bugs, and no monsters jumped out at us. You could hear the tree frogs as we rode along, going in and out of the woods on trails so familiar. We walked, trotted and cantered for over an hour and arrived back at the barn just as dark was falling. It is such a cool feeling to ride up the driveway to the welcoming lights in the barn and then to look out at the twilight sky from atop the farm hill. That night it was a spectacular red.

This afternoon I ran up to Central Lake to take in an art fair (a rather sad little affair with very few vendors and only one painter), but I did have the opportunity to chat with one of the arts council members who invited me to display one of my paintings in a local bank. I also voiced my regret that there weren’t more opportunities for art shows for the artist members and a desire to have a meet and greet event for artists to get to know one another. She agreed and said she would bring both matters up at a future board meeting.

Both coming and going from the art fair, I took some side roads I’ve never been on and did a photo shoot. I was particularly looking for cows; dairy cows; and did find one herd although they turned out to be steers. Oh, well; with some artistic license, they can easily be morphed into cows.

Here are just a few of the photos I took today.

There was a long row of these sunflowers on both sides of the road at one spot where there is a very neat and prosperous looking farm.

Here are my Holstein "cows". I had the iso speed way too high so the photo is washed out, but I corrected that later.

At the very top of a hill on this road, I spotted this spectacular view. The nearest blue patch is Torch Lake, and beyond it is East Grand Traverse Bay and beyond it is Old Mission Peninsula (for those of you who are familiar with this area).

This horse lives on a farm on my way to Bellaire. I've long wanted to stop and shoot some photos of him. He looks to be an aged Thoroughbred, but I'm not sure.

Around the corner from this horse, on a new road, I found this wonderful stone house. I'm sure it's being lived in because it is so well kept.

These two horses live around the corner and up the road from me. They are two older Arabs.

When I stopped to take a photo of the bull below, I noticed how much color is in this maple tree. It won't be long before there's a lot more showing in all the trees.


This bull lives on my road. As I went by him, he reminded me of Ferdinand, the bull who preferred to smell the flowers in the field rather than fight in the bull ring. He looks so peaceful and content with a wave of his tail every now and then. Take it from me, this bull is HUGE though! One of these days I'll capture him when he's standing up.

Well, not literally of course!