July and More July

I check the calendar and realize, Nope, we're still in July.  I know I'm not the only person who just has no idea of what month it is or even what day it is.  So I think it's Friday.  I hope.  If it is, that means it's Friday Fave Fives day.  No matter what day it is, I need to remember to be thankful for all the blessings in my life.  Here are mine for this week.

1.  We are keeping careful track of the progress of our home sale.  Our excellent agent is keeping us up to date, and it's still on track for closing August 10th.  I am so thankful that it seems to be working out.

2.  Bring Your Own Dinner in the park with our friends who have the blueberry ranch, which is now actually the strawberry ranch.  We chatted for almost three hours.  I'm thankful for wonderful long time friends (who I will miss so much!).

3.  Wednesday morning, I walked up to my friend's home.  She is part of my weekly Bible Study class and is the leader for my small group.  She got our group of ladies together in her back garden and we spent a wonderful couple of hours sipping our coffee and catching up.  I was totally surprised by the cards and little gifts they shared with me since this will be the last time I am able to be with them.

4.  We were given an unexpected blessing this week in the form of A.Whole.Bunch. of used moving boxes.  As I was walking home from my friend's (see above), I passed a new neighbor who we had met on one of our nightly walks.  He was throwing used moving boxes out of his garage, so I asked him if I could have them.  YES!  So The Professor and I drove our car up to his place and filled it with boxes.  Four times.  It was a win-win.  He got rid of the boxes he didn't want and we got boxes we need.

5.  Back gardens and parks are great places to meet (see #2).  The art group met in a park this morning and we discussed one more chapter of Hidden Art.  We can be social distanced and still have the friendship and fellowship together.

Autumn Arrives

Happy Autumn!  It doesn't feel or look much like autumn here.  But that's what the calendar says.  Here is Willow's Week, celebrating Friday Fave Fives with Susanne and others.

1.  About autumn--The Professor announced a couple of days ago that he had just declared that fall has arrived.  Why?  Because it was cool enough in the morning to wear a flannel shirt!  I wore one the other day, too.  So, yeah, I guess it is cooling down a bit.

2.  Early Evening Hike.  There were six of us (including The Professor).  We hiked up and down the hills surrounding a neighboring community for between three and four miles.  I like hiking when the sun is no longer high in the sky--it makes for cooler temperatures.  And our companions were congenial.  (I'm going to post this and then check my camera--did I take any decent photos?  If so, I'll include them later.)

3.  BYOD.  That stands for Bring Your Own Dinner.  We have an arrangement with our friends for dinners.  She and I have been friends since college, and we have maintained our friendship all these years.  Since they live several miles out of town on their ranch, they text us their order for a local eating place, and we get our meals and drive to their place for dinner.  We enjoy our fellowship, and no one has to spend hours preparing and cooking.  I have always called my friend Blueberry Lady, but since they are now growing strawberries, she told me I should change her name to Strawberry Lady.

4.  World's Best Neighbor needed to go to Santa Barbara this week.  We drove her up there.  And since we were already nearby, we popped over to see an old (in both senses of the word) friend, take her to lunch and help her do some grocery shopping.  It was a joy to spend that bit of time with an long time colleague from our Indonesia days.

5.  That loom I purchased?  Here is my first project!  A scarf for those cooler days coming up.  I used two shuttles and two colors to create a sort of herringbone tweed pattern.  I'm so excited!  This is one I'm keeping for myself.

Happy Weekend, Friends!  Be watchful and thankful for those daily blessings.

Walks and Talks

It's been a warm week at Willow's Cottage.  Literally.  The temperatures have been way higher than is normal.  Shirt sleeve weather.  So I did get some gardening clean up done.  Mostly, though, I just did 'the usual'.  But even in not-so-interesting-just-regular weeks I can find so much to be grateful for.  Here are Five Faves from my week.  Friday Fave Fives is a great way to focus my attention and be thankful.

1.  I've been contemplating the camera purchase.  For some reason, I just couldn't settle on what I wanted.  Knowing that a DSLR camera takes better photos, I was thinking of moving up to that.  But.  I am not sure that right now I want to put in the hours and hours of tackling the new technology I would have to learn to be up to speed on it.  Every time I'd think about it I would not have the excited and anticipatory feeling I ought to have; it was quite the opposite.  This week a friend was telling me about a hard decision she made because she kept feeling anxious and not excited about the situation and decided she needed to step away from it.  She made me stop and think---hmmm, that's how I'm feeling about the step up to the new camera.  Her comments helped me decide.  I really appreciated that.  So this weekend I'll be getting a simple upgrade on the same kind of Canon I have had for the past several years.  I truly can't wait to photograph the shawl I have almost finished!

2.  The second comment someone else made this week encouraged me.  She noted, "God is always at work behind the scenes."  That gives me comfort and confidence.

3.  This week I was out to the blueberry lady's ranch twice.  On Super Bowl afternoon, we took BYOD (Bring Your Own Dinner) and enjoyed football (the guys), burritos (all four of us), and a walk around the ranch (the girls).  Then on Tuesday morning, I drove out there again to walk with my friend and encourage her to get back into exercising.  By the way, the blueberries are mostly gone, having been replaced by strawberry fields.  Such is life in the agricultural world.  (So does that mean that Blueberry Lady is now Strawberry Lady?  Maybe I should just call her Ranch Lady.)

4.  Have I ever mentioned ginger turmeric tea?  Oh my!  It's marvelous!  We've been drinking a mug each most every day.  There's no caffeine, so we can enjoy it in the afternoon.

5. Last weekend we were invited to dinner at the home of a young couple in our church.  Their two children have been in the 'babies' room where we occasionally volunteer on Sunday mornings so we have gotten to know this sweet family.  It was a delight to spend time with them and their two little ones.  Now I'm looking forward to reciprocating and pulling out the grandkids' toys for the littles to play with.  When your grandchildren don't live within 500 miles of you, it's a delight to pretend to be surrogate grandparents once in a while.

Enjoy your weekend!  Will you have snow or rain or sun in the forecast?