1. The beautiful Cherokee Rose that HR and I found along one of the hiking trails at Skidaway Island State Park near Savannah.
2. This Lovely Yellow at the Savannah Botanical Gardens.
I love my iNaturalist app, which helps me to quickly verify plants I see along life’s way.
3. My only complaint about all this springtime beauty would have to be the heavy overlay of pollen upon Savannah. So I am thankful for my Allegra, Flonase, and redi-melt Claritin.
4. My nose—even when it glows with springtime allergies.
5. Non-humans.
We all need a bit of Escape from People now and again.
Make you escape to a fun and healthy spring weekend ahead.
Some years ago I came across two positive quotations which gradually have become a type of “doors” for my mental and physical health. If I remember correctly, I heard them from motivational author and speaker Louise Hays.
“My body knows how to be well and is always trying to move toward wellness.”
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“I listen with love to my body’s messages.”
Both exude such a rightness to me.
I have come to believe that our bodies are more than what we usually think they are. They have a “knowingness” and a “protectiveness” built into their very nature.
They tell us, for example, when we have been eating unhealthfully, and in the very telling, try to persuade us otherwise.
Or our bodies might alert us with shortness of breath or a sudden feeling of “something’s not right” when we are in the shadow of un-safety.
So yes, our bodies want us to be well AND to do a better job of listening to them.
They may seem small, but what wonderfully encouraging “doors”they are.
I love this quotation from Vietnamese author Ocean Vuong (isn’t that a great name?) in his fascinating and time-denying novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous.
He’s right—memory certainly is a choice. I have brothers, and our memories of past events are quite often barely recognizable. And, of course, we sometimes simply choose not to remember certain aspects of the past.
Early Sunday morning walk through daughter Amy’s neighborhood when Coastal sees him.
Shhh.
We got closer, but Dee stood his ground.
We decided to chat.
Dee started: “Whose neighborhood is this through which you walk?”
He caught me off guard. “Well, the homeowners, I suppose? The neighborhood association?”
“And who are the ‘homeowners’? Who are the members of the ‘neighborhood association’?”
I saw where he was going with his questioning, but I didn’t know where to go next with answering.
So I simply said, “I’m sorry” and walked away.
Dee continued to stare, not moving an inch.
He just followed my departure with his eyes.
My Silent Sunday ended up not being so silent after all.
When I got back to Amy’s and Scott’s house, where Robert and I are dog- and housesitting for a few days, HR was still asleep, so I made my coffee and walked out onto their balcony-porch overlooking Savannah’s Moon River.
Such Sunday morning peace.
And then the dolphins, the fish, the alligators, the pelicans, the common sea gulls and the wading birds began to talk, to question.
1. Discovering, on our recent stay at Magnolia Springs State Park in Millen GA, an aquatic plant that I have never encountered before: Bladderworts.
And they are carnivorous!
“Bladderwort (Utricularia) is a genus of carnivorous plants, mostly aquatic, that use tiny, bladder-like traps to capture small prey like mosquito larvae, zooplankton, and other microorganisms, supplementing their nutrient intake in nutrient-poor waters. These free-floating plants have finely divided leaves and produce small, snapdragon-like flowers, often yellow, that rise above the water.” animalogic
2. Speaking of discoveries, yesterday on a walk here on Skidaway Island near Savannah, where Robert and I are house- and dog sitting for daughter Amy, we came upon our first alligator of the season.
Wait! Look closer.
HR’s photo
Alligators are very common in the Savannah area, often seen sunning along the rivers, lagoons and marshes.
You simply learn early on (and teach your children) to give the gators their space. And to NEVER walk your dog along the water’s edge.
HR taking a picture of me taking a picture of the gator. 
We did not venture any farther along that path!
3. Giving heartfelt thanks to Mother Nature for her incredible abundance and remarkable diversity. May we resolve to take better care of Her.
4. Robert’s Buttermilk Fried Catfish breakfast the other morning.
Oh my Goodness.
5. Making it through (early this morning) the third and final part of my lower back procedure trying to help with my crazy back pain. Radiofrequency ablation. My orthopedic guy said it will take 5 to 7 days to see if the procedure was successful.
It better be. Each of the three parts had a $395 co-pay! (Healthcare in the United States.)
Make you take Great Care of your Health this weekend.
(P.S. I’m in and out of sleep, so this blog post may not make much sense.)
NealEnJoy 