Dear Reader:

Yesterday was the day of the dirt, and nails, and hangers, and lots and lots of “stuff” bags… stuffed into the back of my car to take to Goodwill. Whew!

I am back on my mission of de-cluttering and minimizing. I must be going through some kind of stage but I can’t stand a whole lot of clutter around me anymore….I start feeling claustrophobic.

I suppose “we are our mother’s daughters” because, even as a little girl, I always had to hold mother’s (one) hand when we went shopping and we needed to ride the elevator-she turned white with a claustrophobic attack… and mother never got on an escalator. I suppose with one hand…she felt like there would be a good chance of losing her balance and not having the right hand available to grip the hand rail.

Now that I am reaching a certain age called “Now it’s your turn Uncle Sam” (Didn’t think you would have to send me a check did you…gotcha!) some of mother’s idiosyncrasies are starting to show in me.

Actually I like to think of myself as a “Savvy Senior” but when it comes to pulling weeds in my garden…I am about to raise the white surrender flag. I can only do a very small section before I call it a day. My problem is more with the grass than the weeds…and pulling grass stalks up by the roots can be tough going.

Monday I went to the back of Lowe’s where the flowers/plants…who  look like they are going down for the third count, are placed. Dee Dee would have been so proud of me…she could come home with some of the most pitiful plants I ever saw and by the next season you never would have known they had been transplanted and “transformed.”

Yesterday…by the time I finally finished planting the new additions to the garden I was so hot I was about to keel over….but I was rewarded for all my hard work!

I plopped down on the garden bench and suddenly a beautiful orange butterfly lit on my newly planted zinnia plant…and it flew up and down the path until it found two more flowers I had just struggled to plant.

I had my Iphone in my jean pocket and began following the butterfly from flower to flower…it appeared to be posing for the camera…just exquisite.

Suddenly at the tip top of one of the branches on Rutledge’s Japanese Maple…a dragonfly appeared and then it kept reappearing and posing for me also…

More rewards, for all the hard work, were coming my way with the arrival of my friend Anne’s (pseudo-name) Dr. Marigold. But this time she came armed, not with flowers or seeds, but with wall hangers and wire.

I had jumped in the shower (to get all the dirt out from under my nails) and just gotten dressed when the doorbell rang…it was Anne who had come to help me re-hang the lavender fields photo over the dining room table. (It fell while Gin-g and I were scarfing down that chocolate cake the other day….we were on too much of a sugar high I think) * Anne definitely secured it “for 25 years” – much improved from the earlier hanging…hung with a prayer and a hope.

We also had discussed what to do with the colored glass window frames since they no longer really worked with the new windows…so we came up with an idea. See for yourself!

The title picture today is actually a birthday card from Mollie and Walsh (& Rutledge) last year. (Are you like me…I have a hard time throwing away old birthday cards and I am so glad I found this one cleaning out dresser drawers.)

It is true what the card says: “Often the path that will bring us most joy will need some clearing.”

So all my de-cluttering and clearing out makes me tired but it also brings me such joy….my home now is a blessing beyond blessings.

So until tomorrow…May we all flourish under God’s blessings… bestowed upon us.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

* Forty years ago today ( I can’t believe it!) a precious daughter arrived in my life and it has never been the same again. Happy Birthday Mandy…I can’t imagine my world without you in it!

*Please continue to keep Kaitlyn, Tommy, and Rudy in your prayers…he didn’t have the surgery yesterday…because (even though the x-rays came back clear) a scan showed some swollen lymph glands and they are going to biopsy that before proceeding.

We are all hoping it is just from infection but we won’t know until probably Friday. Thank you for all your sweet emails and words of encouragement…the bond between pets and people is such an amazingly strong one, isn’t it? It all boils down to love!