And a beautiful morning to you!  It is a bright sunny 46° this morning as I sit down in my recliner. Mrs. Rabbit is sitting under one of the feeders having herself a salad of grass and sunflower seeds about fifteen yards from my chair. The starling gang is here fussing and pecking at one another regardless of which feeder they happen to be at. The downy woodpecker comes and goes to the bark butter paste feeders and there are a half dozen cardinals swooping in and out, flitting from one feeder to another and chasing one other in and out of the yard. We need an air traffic controller here this morning. Ms. Kate hung out the hummingbird feeder yesterday. It is generally around the 21 st of April that we begin to see any of them, although they have really been sparse the last couple of years. We lost our butterfly bush to freeze two years ago and that was always a big attractor for the hummingbirds; far more so an an actual feeder.

My nose faucet is still turned on with this stupid cold. Ms. Kate and I are just kind of passing this thing back and forth. I know a lot of people that are in the same situation. They get it in their household and just keep it circling. Thank goodness we don't have young children at home to share it with. But it does limit some of my things I need to be doing. I know that many of the nursing homes are posting that if you have any symtoms of this thing to please stay out. So, visits to my two parishioners will have to wait. I had planned to go earlier this week but got to coughing and Ms. Kate changed my mind. She's smarter than I am. I did get up to the churches yesterday and run the bulletins for this Sunday.

The dogwood petals are slowly starting to fly from their trees and those darned helicopter seeds are starting to twirl through the air covering my roof and sidewalks and flowerbeds, and landing in my gutters. I have a gutter cover system that really helps but I still need to get on the roof and walk the roof edges with my leaf blower to make sure the gutters don't get clogged up. It is just another one of the joys of home ownership. When we had the new gutters put on a few years ago we probably should have gone ahead and spent the extra money and had Gutter Helmet installed instead of this system but the cost would have been about triple. So, as Johnny Cash used to sing; --- I walk the line.

These two large pink azelia bushes here in the back yard couldn't possibly get any more beautiful. They are my favorites because they have a larger bloom and they just seem to have a glow around them. God really does some good stuff. We have red and we have white but their blooms are more harsh somehow. They are all beautiful, but the pink ones just really catch my attention. And --- the bluebells blooming at the end of the sidewalk just completes the picture. So, I once again gives my gratitude to God for creating all of this beauty and wonder. This is a day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it!