The sun is literally glistening off of that Cardinal as it sits on the birdbath. There have been two robins enjoying a bath in there this morning too. At one point there was water splashing everywhere because they were both taking a bath at the same time. That will have to be filled up today because luckily, we aren't supposed to be having any rain. There is also a little goldfinch out there that the brightest one I have seen this season. So, the backyard is fully blessed with color from the Lord today. What a great start to a day. As I look around, it would appear that I'll need t fill a couple of feeders again today. The backyard diner is open 24/7 and they do take advantage of it. I also need to get another 100 pounds of black oil sunflower seed because the can is really getting low.

Our Memorial Day came and went with little or no excitement. Ms. Kate spent most of the day creating cards for birthdays, graduations, and thinking of you occasions. I went out and sprayed around the yard for the different poisonous plants like poison ivy and poison oak. If in the process I killed off a bunch of the Swedish ivy --- that would be a plus. That stuff grows and spreads like crazy.  I also spent some time finishing up my service and sermon for this week and also for next week. We'll run those bulletins tomorrow when it is supposed to be raining.

I've been watching the weather off of the east coast of the country. Heather and John are on a cruise up the coast line and it looks like they are having to skirt some really rainy weather. I pray it isn't as bad as the radar makes it look. Honeymoons and sea sickness don't mesh well. John loves light houses and they are on a lighthouse cruise. Today they should be in Halifax, Nova Scotia. I pray for smooth sailing and calm seas for them and hope they'll eat a big ol' lobster for me. Nova Scotia is on my "bucket list" of places to go simply because I've read the lobster there is the best in the world except for maybe South Africa and I'm not going there. But we could drive to Nova Scotia in maybe four days.

Speaking of trips, we are heading to North Carolina for Matthew's graduation next week. We'll only stay a couple of days because the graduation is on a Tuessday evening and all of them need to get back to work. So, we're planning on spending a couple of days in Pigeon Forge, TN on the way home. Just taking our time enjoying the beautiful country we live in. Ya' get to do that when you get old --- and have someone to cover for your job.

Time for me to carry the laundry out so we can get a couple of loads done today. It would be a beautiful day to actually hang laundry out for a change; but I'm glad we don't have to do that.

I hope your day is pleasant and full of God's blessing. Peace.

Happy Memorial Day! ---- Is that even appropriate to say? I'm not sure. After all, the day is designed to honor those who have died to protect this nation and preserve its people. On the other hand we can be happy and joyful because we are living in a nation that continues to be free. So, I guess he appropriate thing to say is "May God bless you on this day in which we give thanks for the sacrifice of others who have preserved our freedom."

It is a beautiful day out there and I will be out side soon after I finish up my blog. We still have some flowers to put in planters and I need to get out there and spray some weed killer on poison ivy and poison oak. The wind is light so far today so I don't have to be too concerned about overspray killing flowers.

Our first hummingbird has arrived. I haven't seen it but once but we have the hummingbird feeder out so it will be back. It does have a few random flowers from which to gather what ever nectar it can. We generally don't have more than a couple of hummingbirds. Up at my St.Paul's church the people that rent the parsonage have maybe eight feeders out and they always have dozens of hummingbirds. The air is a blurr with them darting in and out. It is wonderful to watch.

Ms. Kate and I got a lot of work done on Saturday. We took out a half dozen old cheap roses and pulled a bunch of weeds in the garden area and planted our garden. We put in nine tomatoes, some cucumbers, squash, and okra, --- plus we put in some new flowers where we took out the roses. We don't need a big garden but fresh tomatoes & cucumber salads and BLT's are hard to beat in the summer. It makes my mouth water just thinking about it.

Church attendance was very sparse yesterday and we owe it to the sunshine. Our farmers have had such a hard time getting out in the fields and they took good advantage of the sunshine while we had it. But, yet again yesterday evening we had another squall come through and dump a bunch of rain on us. I talked to my cousin Allen Saturday and he said that he has had to replant our corn because of the rain over in Illinois. That is not a good thing.

My hummingbird is back and so are some cardinals so I'm just going to sit here and enjoy what God gives me for a bit. Have a blessed day.

Cloudy but no rain so far this morning. That's a good thing. Maybe I'll get my outside work finished up this morning before it does rain. Yesterday I got my front yard mowed and Dan's yard mowed, and this morning I need to get my back yard done. And --- I need to get my plants in the ground. I didn't get around to that yesterday.

I have a young, skinny squirrel that has discovered the bark butter sticks. He was munching away on them this morning but I think maybe they didn't really suit his fancy. He didn't stay long at them which works for me. I don't need something else licking them clean.

Grand daughter Lauren is racing this week up in Utah on a WORCs course. She really likes those races much more than the standard WMX races on a MX track. In June she is flying to Maryland to race. She planning on staying at a friend's house and the girl is going to let Lauren use her practice bike for the race. This will be quite an adventure for her because she has never flown alone nor has she raced without her dad being there. But, it is her chosen course of life for now. She is supposed to race here in Indiana in August and all of the family here is anxiously looking forward to it.

We are still waiting to see if Matthew is going to graduate high school. The knucklehead. I love him dearly but every year he gets the spring lazies and we all wait to see if he is going to pass or not. He really needs to get this done. I know he's 18 and has already determined what he thinks he needs in life, but for heaven's sake.

It's time to drop off and get some work don. It looks like God is holding the rain off for me. Have a blessed weekend. Take time to remember our valiant men and women who died to keep this nation free. Peace.

Happy end of another work week! Did you have a good week? Did you take time to stop and smell some flowers or look at a sunset, or sit and watch some birds in your back yard? Did you take time to take stock of the blessings in your life and give thanks to the Good Lord for them? I certainly hope you did some or all of these things, If you didn't ---- I surmise you haven't had a very good week. You might have had a productive week; you might have even made a lot of money this week; ---- but that isn't the same thing is it?

It is another cloudy morning around here. It is 73 degrees and more rain is on the way. My Weather Channel radar shows rain from Mt. Vernon, IL all the way over past St. Louis, MO. It should be here then in about an hour to an hour and a half. I need to mow the grass today but it is too wet and soggy out there at the moment and this rain isn't helping. We still haven't gotten our plants in the ground that we bought. But they still look good. I just don't want to "mud them in". That never seems to work well. Unfortunately, some of our farmers still haven't gotten their corn planted. So, as I lift up my prayers this morning, I lift up prayers that the weather will break for a couple of weeks and they can get their work done.

Today Ms. Kate and I have to go for our optometry appointments. It's an annual thing and shouldn't amount to much beyond having our eyes dilated.  He will tell us that our cataracts are slowly progressing but I don't think they will have gotten to the point of worrying about them. And, I think my glasses are still good enough. Ms. Kate went in about three months and had them prescribe some glasses for her computer work. I may consider that. I notice that I have to sit differently at my computer these days to line up the bifocals. She was getting headaches and a sore neck from having to do that. I haven't gotten to that point yet.

Great news! Ms. Kate found her missing documents; her Military ID and Medicare card. And yes, they were still in one of the purses that she had changed out of. I'm glad she found them. It wasn't the hassle of replacing them that concerned me; it was the fact that in an emergency, I might need proof of insurance coverage for her and wouldn't  have it.

I have some satisfied woodpeckers and other critters this morning because I filled up some suet feeders and the bark butter sticks. I do need to get out and fill the sunflower seed feeders again. I laugh at the squirrels; they will climb up on a feeder, find it empty and turn and look to the house. Ten minutes later they will do the same thing and look at me again as if to say; "You do realize these are empty, right??" Ahh well; some days it sucks to be a squirrel.

Time for me to drop off and reade my devotions for the morning. I hope you have a wonderful weekend. It is Meemorial Day weekend. Take a moment and give thought of gratitude to those who have died in order to keep this a free nation. Have a blessed day.

Thursday morning????? Who took my Wednesday? Actually, I admit that I know where my Wednesday went. I sat out here in the sunporch yesterday morning and played "Criminal Case" on my IPad for an hour because I had "free energy" to use for an hour. Yes, Bingo Bash and Criminal case are the height of my being a "gamer".

Then it was time to take Ms. Kate for her doctor's appointment, then brunch, then grocery shopping, and then and then, and then. Before you know it, the day is gone. We didn't even get to the churches yesterday to run our bulletins. That is on the list today along with some other stuff that we have to do. Including going to the local National Guard and getting a new ID card for Ms. Kate and going by the Social Security Office and getting Ms. Kate a new Medicare Card. She has misplaced those two items somewhere and is driving herself nuts looking for them. I think that is one of the disadvantages of "switching purses" all the time. For us guys, you put stuff in your billfold and when that billfold rots and falls apart, then you get a new one. Although, when we are going on a trip, I do take things out that are strictly local and I won't need on the trip. But there is a spot that I put that stuff in and then put it all back in my billfold when I get home. Ms. Kate says she knows she had those two things with her during our trip and she hasn't needed to show them since we got home --- so they must be in this house some place.

I told you Tuesday that we had a problem with one of the freezers. Well, while it was expensive, it wasn't a disaster. We were able to save 75% of the stuff in the freezer including the corn and the peaches that we had put up. We went to our local appliance store and they were really great. We found a freezer that would do  and they pulled a guy off of the floor and another guy from their other store and made sure they got it out to us Tuesday afternoon, and they hauled away the old one. We barely had time to get home and empty the old one before they were there with the new one. If you are local to me and in need of some appliance, "Wayne's Appliances" gets our recommendation and a guy named Kent is the guy to work with.

My birdfeeders are empty or mostly empty. All of the suet cakes, the bark butter, and the bark butter bits are gone. Most of the sunflower seed feeders are empty too. Just one more job to add to the list. I have several robins and cardinals here this morning. It's always a pleasure sitting here watching them. The sun glistening off of the brilliant red feathers is a gentle reminder that it is time to stop and give thanks once again for a life full of blessings. Have a most wonderful day. Peace.

A happy Tuesday to you. It is another beautiful morning although I can see that the high clouds are starting to move in. They are supposed to carry rain with them later in the day and evening and that will allegedly be the start of rain and storms and showers etc for the remainder of the week.

The day is starting off in a crappy way. Our freezer downstairs is having problems and it is full of food. I don't know if it is out of freon or if the seal has completely broken down. Most everything in it is either melted or on the way to melted. Yes, --- the stuff is replaceable but there are a lot of frozen peaches and corn in there that we absolutely do not want to lose. We put in a lot of work putting that stuff up. The seal on the freezer has never been good but seeing a large and growing puddle in front of the freezer is never a sign that things are going to end up well. I've already thrown out several melted and leaking bags of bluberries and mixed berries. Regardless of whether the freezer is salvageable or not --- I have a mess to clean up.

I got my new mailbox installed yesterday afternoon and evening. It only took two hours and nine tools to do a twenty minute -- two tool job. Home workmanship at its finest!! But it looks nice and really needed to be replaced. The door was falling off of the old one.

I'm currently sitting at Orthopedic Associates while Ms. Kate has an appointment to have her hand worked on. Her one hand won't close anymore so she's hoping they will give her another shot in it. She that done a year ago and it helped tremendously. I'm praying it will give her the relief that she needs.

If we get done fooling around with the freezer today, maybe we will have time to get some plants in the ground. Although, I'm not sure that we shouldn't wait until after the storms are done with so they don't get a chance to get beat up. We'll see what the day brings. I know the day is going to bring me to Denny's for breakfast on the way home. Sometimes I just don't plan much beyond my next meal. LOL

I only had a few moments in the sunporch this morning. But it was long enough to see that I also need to fill up bird feeders again. And I got to sit and watch the folks out there working on the sewer line in Ms. Margaret's yard. They were cleaning out root balls.

Ms. Kate is done and I reckon I am too. C' Ya' tomorrow. Have a great day.

Welcome to a late in the day  post on this Monday afternoon. We've been out taking advantage of the beautiful day. It looks like it might be the only one we get this week. We've been to the Farm Bureau Coop and picked up a few tomatoe plants and cucumbers. We went o Bob Evan's for lunch/brunch an were really disappointed. There were only fourteen customers in the place and it took forever. I ordered country fried steak and eggs; Ms. Kate ordered a salad and a bowl of chicken noodle soup. It took thirty minutes for the order to arrive and my order was wrong. I made them take it back. So, we were there for almost an hour for a very simple meal. I had heard rumors that this particular Bob Evans wasn't run very well; now I know it to be true. We won't hurry back any time soon. We've also  been to Lowe's and bought more plants and three large bags of Miracle Gro potting soil mix and a new mailbox and post. Now we are sunporch sitting before heading out to put some plants in the ground.

We had a great weekend. Julie and Auggie Dog came over Friday afternoon. Saturday I had to take the Caddy to the dealership for routine servicing. Then we went out to the local greenhouse we like and Ms. Kate bought a bunch of plants. Part of them were for Julie to plant at her new house. The rest of them will become potted plants around here for our patio. We do like our plants around here or maybe we just like making more work for ourselves as if we need more to do. On Sunday Julie took off for home as we headed out to church. Then after church and lunch, we took off for Julie's house. Our little planting session at Julie and Jim's house went very well and then the kids made an excellent meal for us as we sat around the patio and visited.

That about catches you up tpo tthe minute on the ever exciting life and times of the sunporch people. Now, maybe I'll snag a quick nap and then get busy outside, . Here's hoping you have a most excellent evening. Peace.