Walking & Thinking

As I walked in the yard today, I noticed that my plants and flowers are starting their recovery. The trees are budding again and there are signs of small leaves making their appearance once again...I was beginning to give up hope for a recovery although I knew that one had to come.

Our plum tree needed a good prunning and we have always put it off because we didn't want to destroy any fruit, but this year there will be no fruit, so it was easy to do the much needed prunning. I'm sure that the tree will do much better and now it will be much easier to mow around it. It had gotten so bushy that it was hard to get near it with the riding mower and that left Jimmy with a lot of weed-eating to do around the tree.
At the moment these are the only flowers that are blooming in my yard and where they came from I don't know. The orange flowers look like Sweet Williams but I don't know what the blue ones are. They're growing in three separate locations in the yard and I'm assuming that the seeds either blew in from someone else's yard, were carried in on the bottom of the cat's paws or by bird droppings. My neighbors, on either side of us, don't have these flowers in their yards, nor did they have them last year. Wherever they came from, I'm happy to have them here and it looks like Daisy is too. It gives her another place to hide and take her little cat naps.And while I was browsing looking for the picture of the flowers I took today, to put on my post, I stumbled across this picture of Jimmy, Suzanne, Matt & I and I couldn't believe that it has been almost 10 years since we took this trip. We had taken a three day white water rafting trip that was really a lot of fun. I remember how sore my bum had gotten from all that bouncing around in the raft...but boy, was it fun. We had always planned on doing this again on other rivers, but the time just got away from us...You know how you just always put things off and then one day you realize how many years have passed. Matt is now married, he's the child on the right wearing the red shorts. I'm sure his wife would love to go rafting, she's very adventurous and loves the outdoors, but am I able now?? I've gained 80 pounds since then and I'd probably bounce right out of that raft and into the water...As I think more about that, it might even be more fun to go rafting now.

Speaking of things we want to do...Jimmy wants to take the mule trip down the Grand Canyon to the Colorado River below. I'm not so sure that those 'sure-footed' mules could carry me safely down those narrow trails. I'll only agree to go if I can lose some weight. I went horse back riding last year and I felt soooo sorry for the horse I was on...And besides that, I had a hard time getting off the horse and needed help. Getting on wasn't so bad, but trying to slide off was another thing. One of these days I'll post the picture of me riding on a camel...I couldn't get my leg over one of the humps to get off and also needed help. The camel kept trying to stand up while I was trying to get off.

When I started writing this post it was sprinkling rain outside and very stormy looking. The sun just popped out, although the weather alert is still flashing, "Tornado Watch." I wanted to ride my bike today, but I don't feel like dodging storms....been there, done that and it's not fun. As I've said before....I'm a 'fair weather rider.' Hope the sun is shining wherever you are and that you are enjoying the day. If you need rain, I'll do a dance for you...and please, please pass a smile along to everyone you see today, whether you know them or not. :)