Fact: it is May Day.

Today is the kind of day that is beauty in a basket.

It's beautiful out. The temperature is cozy warm and coolly breezy at the same time. The air is sweet and charming.

The sun is setting in an orange-flavored sky, swathed in patchy, grey-violet cirrus clouds. As I drive past the cemetery on the edge of town, I can see the dregs of sunshine reflected in the polished granite faces of the tombstones.

Fact: nearly all cemeteries are situated so that the gravestones face west.

Above the back row of pine trees, massive cumulus clouds hover in the air, puffed up with some kind of regal pride. These clouds are pale grey with pink tops. It's the perfect time of year; it's that season when the clouds are starting to get sharp again.

The grass is green again; the ditch by the cemetery is golden with dandelions, which are far prettier from a distance. The sky is powder-blue and somehow it manages to be gently crisp. The buds on the ash trees swish in the breeze, and the mourning doves coo to one another.

Fact: there were mourning doves in the graveyard.

Fact: mourning doves do not have the brainpower necessary to understand irony.

The world is a watercolor painting, full of pastel color and springtime shape. It is all very perfect.

And then, as I continue driving home, I notice that my neighbor up the block and around the corner has a washing machine sitting right in the middle of his front sidewalk.