Dear Reader:

The Ya’s can tell you in unison, or separately, who sends the best cards….Jackson! Her cards are always unique and absolutely perfect for the occasion! This is the card (title photo) I got Friday in the mail from her letting me know that she was thinking about me concerning the cataract surgery. I always smile at her cards.

And as far as a card-giver….Gin-g Edwards is unbelievable! She sends cards for specific and unspecific reasons… simply to let you know you are still in her thoughts….along with flowers or food to boot!

When I came across this quote about the power of thoughts being directed at and for another person…I knew it nailed exactly what we all feel when we send and receive a note, email,  or call letting us know we have been in someone’s thoughts.

 Honey is another grand prize winner. Whenever she sees anything that reminds her of me or time spent together…she immediately sends a surcie, card, or email explaining where she was and the story behind the incident that brought my image to mind.

I received this card from Honey Friday, along with Jackson’s…By the time I had read both cards I was just beamingly blissful .

Honey told me that she and Mike had been over in North Georgia for the weekend when she came across this card and thought of me and my love for my garden. But there was another reason she thought of me, too. A God Wink!

When Honey first started experimenting in pottery she bought a kiln from a man (in the mountains) whose wife had just died from cancer and he told her how much she loved pottery and that kiln…she would be happy to know it was going to a good home. He then told her about his wife’s relationship with praying mantises…they seemed to appear whenever she was on the kiln and followed her around…her good luck charm.

It ended up that one of them, unknowingly to Honey, hopped a ride home with her and when she started working with the clay on her new kiln there sat the hitch-hiking praying mantis. (When she spotted it in the car….she let it loose, only to discover it on her kitchen window sill tapping against as if to say…”Please let me come in” and somehow the praying mantis found her in the basement on the kiln and since that time they seem to find her when she needs them the most.)

Recently…Honey mentioned to Mike that she hadn’t seen a praying mantis in a couple of years. Then it happened:

“Well, the next day as I sat at my wheel what crawls up on the bench beside me but a Praying Mantis. It made me feel that Kathy Sky (the wife/potter who had died and originally owned the kiln) was coming to give me some positive direction.”

I think some of the best stories originate from “thinking of you” moments, don’t you?

When I think back on so many of you, my dear readers (if I start calling names I will surely leave someone out…but you know who you are) and the cards, emails, and surcies you have sent or left on my porch in the form of flowers, additions to the garden, t-shirts from vacations, bulbs, pictures from St. Jude’s Chapel of Hope, comments on coincidences from the blog, etc. I feel very humbled.

So until tomorrow…let’s all live a “startling life” and give the “gift of a loving thought into the heart of a friend that would be giving as the angels give.”  

Come see some of the latest startling sights in my garden and others.

Below is my neighbor Jane’s clematis climbing the fence and pink morning glories from Anne’s front porch.