Dear Reader:

Yesterday when I walked around my yard…surprise after surprise greeted me! This large snowball camellia stunned me with its purity of beauty….no other camellia color could compete. (Libby it reminded me of the “Snow Moon” last Friday night!)

And then I realized that every single azalea bush had at least two or three buds blooming…not even Valentine’s Day yet and the azaleas have come to stay. Wow!

I walked around the front, side, and back yards taking picture of my “rainbow” display of different colors….light pinks, dark pinks, lavender, apricot, orange, yellows, and purples…there are over a 1000 varieties I recently read….Let me show off my Azalea Parade.

Then add in summer flowers popping up everywhere and spring is determined to stick around.

*(If anyone knows the name of the beautiful purple flower please let me know! Clusters of them are popping up)

My new neighbor, Mary, who now lives across the street from me told me how she had been looking for the cottage she bought from Luke and Chelsey for years in her dreams…she already knew what it looked like….her own home had been flooded three times and she was in the depth of depression when the real estate agent told her about the little house.

Mary asked the address and when told it was on “Rainbow” road she knew she was going to buy it and fix it up and make it her own…and she has done just that…adding a large porch onto the back and a metal roof. She knew she was supposed to live on “Rainbow” road after all her earlier flood experiences…the light was shining now ‘at the end of the rainbow.’

I understood perfectly…since that was the way I felt too. What a great name to live on! (Of course I always tease the clerks when they ask for my address and I tell them 100 Rainbow Road…a smile always lights up and they say “Really?”)

Continuing with the fun I admit that if Road turned into Row...Rainbow Row…then I really would be on “easy” street …living downtown Charleston near the Battery!

In Debbie Macomber’s Devotions from the Heart she makes an insightful comment on wanting to live on “Easy Street.”

Debbie loves looking for crazy street names when she and her husband takes trips…some of her favorites have been:

Baby Doll Road, Noisy Hole, Succabone, Hell for Certain roads. (That last street she decided to skip…didn’t want to take any chances.)

One day she noticed a road near her home that she had never spotted before…curious she decided to follow the street and see where it lead. The name of the street was Easy Street. It looked pretty similar to her neighborhood until she realized it was a dead-end. She stopped and thought about this for a moment before realizing she had experienced a God Wink

She concluded with this prayer:

Lord, sometimes I’m guilty of wanting to live on Easy Street. Thank you for leading me down the path that leads to you. 

So until tomorrow….“Just because God’s Path isn’t always understandable…doesn’t mean it isn’t the right path.”

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

Sammy the Cardinal bird feeder is the most popular one now…too cute. However destiny hasn’t intervened to provide me with the right moment with the iPhone in hand at the right place. Not giving up hope…one day there will be a picture of a red cardinal eating from the Sammy the Red Cardinal Suet Cage.