Today, I’m taking part in a blogsplash – sounds refreshing and fun, I hope you’ll agree.

The invitation to dive into this event (okay, I’ll stop with the water word association) came from Fiona Robyn from ‘Writing Our Way Home’  http://www.writingourwayhome.com/ Fiona is also the person responsible for the ‘A River of Stones’ project which I took part in during January this year and in 2011.

The ‘My Most Beautiful Thing’ Blogsplash – to celebrate beautiful things – is  inspired by Fiona’s new  novel, ‘The Most Beautiful Thing’ http://www.writingourwayhome.com/p/most-beautiful-thing.html .  Her book is free to download today and tomorrow – here is the link to it http://www.writingourwayhome.com/p/most-beautiful-thing.html Bloggers from all over the world are taking part and writing or posting pictures of their most  beautiful things today. Find out more here   http://www.writingourwayhome.com/2012/04/my-most-beautiful-thing-blogsplash.html   and see everyone else’s blog posts here   http://www.writingourwayhome.com/p/list-of-blogsplashers.html

Perhaps you’d like to take part yourself – click on any of the links above to find out more.

And now here is a list of some of my most beautiful things:

My four-month-old granddaughter’s eyes as she awakens, focuses and smiles.

The baby’s tiny fingers clasped around one of mine.

The silhouette of the Cuillin Ridge against the palest blue-washed sky.

The Hebridean  night sky in winter  with Venus hanging below the moon.

The sea’s sussuration.

The spring lambs on the crofts.

A long, lazy lunch with a good friend.

Teaching a child to read in spite of everything.

The first day of the school summer holidays.

The fluttering, glinting, green and copper of the rowan and beech trees.

The white-tailed eagle circling, hovering and plummeting above the loch.

Sunlight sparkling off the blue glass paperweight.

The laundry flapping on the line.

The laughing, chattering, shouting of children’s voices as they make the most of the last day of the school holidays.

The feel of the baby’s sleeping breath as she sprawls on me chest to chest.

“We got it in time. The cancer’s in remission.”

The babbling expressiveness of a contented baby.

The comfortable silence, the understanding look and the surprises of a thirty-four-year-old marriage…

Thanks, Fiona, for reminding me that the simplest things in life are truly the most beautiful.