Dear Reader:

Wasn’t yesterday a beautiful day in the neighborhood? This is my neighbor Jane’s “Joseph Coat of Many Colors” roses. Aren’t the blooms beautiful…and more colors will emerge throughout the growing season. Just gorgeous!

Right across the street my neighbor, Vickie, has a beautiful, hidden secret garden in her backyard…it doesn’t get much sunshine due to the towering trees and thick foliage…which makes it lush like a mini-rain forest. A soothing sanctuary!

Vickie’s  Japanese cherry tree in her front yard is always a visual treat for us neighbors…especially me who can look out my front yard at this enticing piece of God’s Handiworks!

Summerville is so beautiful this time of year…I feel like I am in an animated 3-D movie sometimes….even last week just driving around our neighborhood Chick Filet to pick up my Asian salad (love that salad!) the snapdragons, poppies and pansies were so breath-taking I had to hang out the window and shoot this picture…(while the car behind me honked!)

Our title of the blog today is recognizable as the introduction to the popular children (and adult) television show “Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood.”  It was the gentleness of Fred Rogers who made the show so memorable.

I returned to the website Mental Floss for some of his thoughts about life….I chose three of twenty the website offered… to share with you today.

Being the history teacher…I liked this quote on important events in  American History.

“A high school student wrote to ask, ‘What was the greatest event in American history?’ I can’t say. However, I suspect that like so many ‘great’ events, it was something very simple and very quiet with little or no fanfare (such as someone forgiving someone else for a deep hurt that eventually changed the course of history).

The really important ‘great’ things are never center stage of life’s dramas; they’re always ‘in the wings.’ That’s why it’s so essential for us to be mindful of the humble and the deep rather than the flashy and the superficial.”

(From The World According to Mister Rogers (Kindle Locations 496-500).

(Isn’t that so beautifully said….and so true about “major” events in history…it is the humanity behind the events that is important to remember.)

This quote is also memorable…along the lines of “We are enough…just the way we are.”

“As human beings, our job in life is to help people realize how rare and valuable each one of us really is, that each of us has something that no one else has–or ever will have–something inside that is unique to all time. It’s our job to encourage each other to discover that uniqueness and to provide ways of developing its expression.”

(From The World According to Mister Rogers (Kindle Locations 463-465).

Being a grandmother….this last quote on the power of generational love touched me.

“One of the greatest dignities of humankind is that each successive generation is invested in the welfare of each new generation.”

(From The World According to Mister Rogers (Kindle Locations 586-587)

……………………………

I am beginning to see my garden as a series of vignettes now…snippets of stories from the first plantings to individual growth to date…the garden feels like dozens of children around me encircling my back yard. Even though I haven’t planted any “forget me not” flowers I can never forget the beauty of each flower, plant, or tree as it comes into bloom for the first time.

Now return with me back home from the neighbors and meet my new green “neighbors” …who just entered my garden sanctuary. Black-eyed Susie vines, clematis, hostas, narrow leaf sunflowers. begonias, mimulus (luteus) and much more …

So until tomorrow…Help us Father see vignettes of our story in everything we do…because we are leaving a little bit of us along the way.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

*When I looked out the kitchen window on the B&B side, the other day, I could see Queen “Green” Eva Cate’s Japanese maple….and then the other three “red” (grandsons) maples….it made me smile!

* IRS Scam Alert–

Walsh almost became a victim of this on-going scam…(since he hadn’t seen any of the televised news segments on it) The call was very intimidating ….the people (pretending to be IRS) on the other side were aggressive and threatening….thank goodness he was able to get Mollie who called the number and and saw the scam information pop up… plus when she confronted the caller ….he immediately hung up.

We are the ones who need to hang up immediately if we get an IRS (You owe back taxes) call!