Dear Reader:

I had to go get “Pinkie” (my faithful old pink robe) from off the back of my bedroom door to write the blog yesterday…it is the first day of spring and downright cold for us low country residents.

The temperatures barely made it out of the forties into the low fifties for a high…Plus the day was heavily overcast with a sky filled with deep gray clouds….chilly-willy!

So for the first time in as long as I can remember…I made a fire for the first evening of the first day of spring!

However the damp cold didn’t stop the flowers from blooming. When I looked out my window by the computer and saw where a branch from an azalea bush had grown into the magnolia tree…it reminded me that no matter the weather…spring really has arrived and it is beautiful! *As you can see we still have pollen around (on the magnolia leaves) but it is getting better every day!!

Thursday, today, we should have warmer temperatures…into the upper sixties, with a few more peeks of sun, and by tomorrow Friday…the sun will be shining brightly and we will be close to seventy…as the Irish would say…Friday should be “A grand soft day”

Here are some spring quotations I like:

Spring quotes

It’s spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you’ve got it, you want — oh, you don’t quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!
— Mark Twain

Life stands before me like an eternal spring with new and brilliant clothes.
— Carl Friedrich Gauss

Behold, my friends, the spring is come; the earth has gladly received the embraces of the sun, and we shall soon see the results of their love!
— Sitting Bull

O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?
— Percy Bysshe Shelley

In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.
— Margaret Atwood

Spring is God’s way of saying, ‘One more time!’
— Robert Orben

…………………………………………………..………………………………………………..

I like the last quote because these days I so appreciate the changing of the seasons and I, literally, pinch myself that I am still here to see another new season arrive…what a lucky gal I am! Happiness is!

Here is a true, short spring story…God works in mysterious ways. (Reader’s Digest)

Kagan McLeod for Reader’s Digest

A Soldier’s Surprise

by Gail Litrenti-Benedetto, Park Ridge, Illinois

It is spring of 1943 during World War II. Standing among hundreds of new soldiers at Camp Grant, in Illinois, my father, Sam, just 18 years old, waits as a truck slowly drives by. A full field pack is randomly tossed to each soldier.

“How strange,” my father thinks, as he sees his last name, Litrenti, marked on each item in his pack. “How did they know it was me when they tossed the pack?” He was impressed! Beating all odds, my father was tossed a field pack from World War I—his own father’s.

So until tomorrow…Thank you Father for the promise of spring and life renewed…with God Winks accompanying each day…if we open our eyes to Your Presence.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

Sammy’s cousin Butch and his wife are hanging out this spring in Kelly’s  (Jo Dufford’s daughter) yard. It is nice to know the family stays close… living in the same town. Hope Butch gets over for a visit soon.

Spring time brings the fishermen out and I saw two fun things about this popular past time that made me smile…one was crossing sign for old fishermen that Brooke and I found at Pawley’s Island when we were driving around and second was a little anecdote in a recent story I read.

Every year one small town’s pastors of every denomination would get together for a three day fishing trip…they always left a note on their office doors letting their congregations know what they were doing and bragged that this ritual always brought more people into the church.

Gone Fishing…We Catch’em…God cleans’em!

HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY DARLING TWO-DIGIT GREAT(EST) NIECE …ADY GRACE! (With two digits in your age now Ady…I might have to join the crew and call you Adelyn…but maybe not… for just a little while longer! 🙂

Spring brought us Ady ten years ago today…and what a gift she has been! This adorable picture is a promo from her up-coming leading role as Jo Jo in the Dr. Seuss children’s musical… Her older cousins are definitely coming to see “Jo Jo” perform in April!

***It’s Getting Closer….Mark Your Calendar…This Saturday from 4-8…and you can actually be late or early or somewhere in-between…Just drop in for fun, fellowship, and beauty…there will be plenty of it to take home.