Ahh, it is good to be home again and back in my own bed, and my own house, and my wonderful sunporch. Traveling is nice but I have become such a homebody. I wonder when that happened???

We were only gone four days so not much has changed around here. The temperatures have been hot and the weather has been dry here. Thanks to neighbor Dan for watering the garden and flowers while we were gone. But summer is in full force. It is 80 degrees already this early in the morning and is going up to near three digits today. The betting man in me says to expect a storm by afternoon.

It's great to see my birds again. The cardinals, the robins, the finches and sparrows are all here this morning. A mockingbird was here a few minutes ago and grabbed a bite or two of some suet, but now he has gone off to the next meal someplace. My one hummingbird is also here for breakfast. Down in TN, as I told you we had some birds, but mostly some blue heron, a mockingbird or two, and the ducks. I woke up a couple of mornings to the quacking of the ducks up on the patio as they waddled their way into the swimming pool area.

My grandson Joshua and his family just moved into their new home in New Hampshire and it is out in a residential wooded area. Christina was commenting on waking up to the sound of birds and how much she enjoyed that. --- Welcome to my world Ms. Christina.

Grandson Matthew did in fact graduate from high school. Now I only have one grandchild left in high school. Jon will be a sophomore come fall. It is hard to believe that the rest of my grandchildren are all adults!

The lilies are really blooming now and the hydrangeas have massive blooms on them. I just went out to check the garden and I think the tomatoes have grown somewhere between nine to twelve inches in the four days we were gone. Obviously they like heat and humidity. One squash has a bloom on it, and the okra is doing fine too as are the cucumbers. This was our last planned vacation until August when grand daughter Lauren comes to Indiana for her motocross race. I know a lot of people have much bigger gardens and their's are probably much further along; but we got what we got. Not going on vacation will allow us to enjoy all of our veggies as they come on. We do tend to miss out on the spoils of our labor. We take vacations and we miss out on flowers blooming that we planted, veggies producing and going to waste.

I guess I will wrap this up. I have a wedding to write and a couple of services going that I need to finish. That means I need to put my brain back in gear and start chugging along. In the mean time, I offer prayers up to God to please intervene in the madness of people in this country. Yet again someone has gone on a massive killing spree. The lunatic walked into a night club and killed at least fifty people and wounded another fifty or more. That kind of madness and evil is simply beyond my comprehension. He claimed alliance with ISIS, a radical Islamic religion that celebrates and encourages this kind of behavior, which in his mind says he was doing this for God. So I ask God to please intervene and stop this madness. I also ask for comfort for the families of all of those involved.  I ask God to heal this nation and not let incidents like this spin into a civil witch hunt or worse, a civil war. "Let there be peace on earth --- and let it begin with me."

Until next time; Shalomn!