An Unexpected Joy

Today is the perfect Autumn day.
The air is cool and crisp, the sun is high and bright in the periwinkle sky, and the fall leaves are rusty orange and sunset yellow.
Today I step out into the Autumn glory with my white plastic washing basket. It is filled with damp clothes and I begin to hang them on the line to dry.
The washing line is perfectly hung between a group of large birch trees with stripy silvery bark and the edge of my covered porch allowing me to rescue my clean laundry from an unexpected rain shower without ever having to get wet.
It is stunning to me that I can find such complete joy from something so simple as the perfectly placed washing line. Even more stunning is the bliss I feel to be doing laundry on this sunny fall day.
I pick up a large cream sheet and inhale the scent of my freshly washed bedding. Knowing how it will feel slightly coarse on my skin tonight when I first slip into bed but that it will give way to a smoothness as my body warms it and that I will be soothed by its airy aroma.
The moist material feels cool against my skin and I pause for a moment, deciding how to maneuver the large piece of cloth so as not to let it touch the ground. Once wrangled onto the line, I snap a few simple wooden pegs in place to secure my sheet and use the pully to dangle it out over the garden.
The dogs are playing and running across the large expansive lawn, darting between the trees and running down the trail that leads from our garden into the woods. I see them turn and race each other back towards my place on the deck, jumping and knocking at one another to try and get an advantage and win their race. As if my laundry were the finish line they barrel towards it, panting and bright eyed. I see them take note of the flapping fabric that snaps in the air like sails at sea and I wonder for a moment if they will jump at it and pull it down onto the rather-to-long grass. But no, the laundry is saved by both a gusty breeze that pushes my sails into the sky and by the chattering red squirrel that has become the immediate focus of the two curious dogs. They rush forward with new vigor and bark at the bottom of the tree that is protecting the squirrel who teases the dogs by jumping from branch to branch and chattering incessantly at them.
I hear a voice in my head chanting 'You can't catch me, tweedle deedle dee.'
I laugh at the scene of squirrel versus dog and then take a final look at this piece of heaven before me and my basket head inside to continue our day.
A five minute task, a chore most would say but for me it is such an unexpected joy, a welcomed yet unexpected joy.