This week’s GIVEAWAY WINNER is Chelsie Stanford! Congratulations, Chelsie! What’s your mailing address? I’ll send Sugar Birds your way!

I’ll be drawing another winner this week for a signed SUGAR BIRDS PAPERBACK when you join my mailing list!

Just drop me a note at Cheryl@CherylBostrom.com with LETTER and YOUR NAME somewhere in the subject line or body. You’ll be entered in the drawing and will get a short letter from me to you on Saturdays (with a blog link attached).

If you change your mind, unsubscribe anytime! I’ll be delighted that you visited—and you’ll still be entered in the Sugar Birds drawing.

Already subscribed? You’re automatically entered.

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PNW pics for you!

Roost.

“Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.”

—Mark 6:61

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Paintbrushes, loaded.

“You care for the land and water it; you enrich it abundantly. The streams of God are filled with water…”

—Psalm 65:9

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Grinch crossing.

This, too, shall pass.

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Now for some THROWBACKS—posted three years ago this week:

If mountains ate fruit.

“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights . . .”

—James 1:17

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West of the woods, Mamba kept barking. Blake investigated and found her nosing this western painted turtle. Long claws suggest it’s a male, but with that flat plastron and impressive size (see Blake’s shoe for scale), it may be a girl? Anybody know for certain?

When Blake carried him to our pond—away from cow hooves and dogs—he took to it like, um, a turtle to water.

Anybody know how to read those age rings?

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Laser light.

For the word of God is alive and powerful. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates, cutting between soul and spirit, between joints and marrow. It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires.

—Hebrews 4:12

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Beach lace.

“. . . I made the sand a boundary for the sea.”

—Jeremiah 5:22

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Thanks for stopping by, friends. So glad you’re here!

Watching Nature, Seeing Life: Through His Creation, God Speaks.

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P. S. from earlier this week:

You just never know. When Sugar Birds entered the 2021-22 awards race, I hoped the book might pick up a couple. Good for marketing, right?

Now in my inbox this morning: A press release saying that SUGAR BIRDS won a Silver Medal in Fiction in the NAUTILUS BOOK AWARDS—joining previous Nautilus winners that include Barbara Kingsolver, Desmond Tutu, Louise Erdrich, Naomi Wolf, and many others.

Who’d a guessed this woman of a certain age would have the joy of a fiction debut that would land in such fun places?

I’m keenly aware of God’s sweet kindness in all this—from conception to completion to where and how the story lands. May the book continue to find homes wherever it will give Him beautiful glory.

I’m grateful beyond any words I know how to write.

So for those of you in the writing slog . . . stay the course—or return to it after a long time away, like I did. (The intervening years are part of the process, too.) Pray. Think of Sarah, pregnant at 95 . Stuff happens when we least expect it, and sometimes long after we thought it could.