Posted in Five Friday Happy Bringers

Five Friday Happy Bringers 6/27/25

My weekly gratitude journal, of sorts.

1. This visually very pretty (and delicious) box of dried fruit and nuts from Turkey. (A belated Father’s Day gift).

On top of morning oatmeal

2. Looking forward to an end-of-Pride Month gathering tomorrow here in Savannah.

3. The Amazing Ability to doze off every night for Sensational Sleep.

4. Crepe Myrtle (“Lily of the South”) blossoms all over Savannah this hot summer.

5. Clouds.

Miami

Like sleep, I find them so mysterious.

“I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down and still somehow
It’s cloud illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all”

Joni Mitchell (and me!)

Tugaloo State Park, Lavonia GA

But I do love them.

Savannah

Have a Jolly last weekend in June.

Posted in Five Friday Happy Bringers

Five Friday Happy Bringers 6/13/25

My weekly gratitude journal, of sorts.

1. LOVE-ly coffee.

Origin Coffee Bar, Savannah

2. Watching (spying on?) and documenting my Handsome Hubby, as he walks toward our little car heading to an appointment.

“Parting is such sweet sorrow.”

3. Spices! Robert and I love them.

Our spice drawer ..

Simply Organic is my favorite spice brand.

Our spice shelf …

Our Spice Club! …

Once a month or so, our local library offers patrons a new spice, along with an explanation and several recipes. This month is a spice I have never heard about before: Summer Savory.

“Summer savory, Satureja hortensis, is a sweet- and spicy-smelling herb, lighter in flavor than winter savory. It is a member of the Lamiaceae, or mint family, and is indigenous to the Mediterranean region. It is also closely related to rosemary, thyme, oregano, sage, and mar-joram. Summer savory had both culinary and medicinal uses in ancient Greece and Rome.” Bull Street Library Spice Club

4. The amazing ability to simply Pay Attention. (That trait is sometimes a bit of a challenge for me and my “all over the map” brain.)

5. I SO appreciate the theme of this year’s Pride Festival in Atlanta.

RoughDraft Atlanta

May we all have a weekend where, even on the most minute of levels, we Realize that we can Resist that which attempts to damage our lives.

Posted in Five Friday Happy Bringers

Five Friday Happy Bringers 5/30/25

My weekly gratitude journal, of sorts.

1. This unique little “Dog Library” that I discovered near us here in historic district Savannah the other day.

A variation of the Free Little Libraries and Free Little Pantries scattered across the country?

2. This simple, unassuming little fresh-from-the-garden zucchini gift from friends and what I made from it.

YUM!

3. Rejuvenating Spring Rain. (We’ve had a bunch of it lately.)

4. Robert’s Oh So Delicious! St. Louis Ribs on Memorial Day.

5. Attending a fascinating lecture at our local Jepson Center for the Arts about their latest exhibit, Moss Mystique: Southern Women and Newcomb Pottery.

We didn’t know much about Newcomb Pottery until our Toledo-in-the-Summer and Savannah-in-the-Winter friends Don and Jim told us all about the incredible pottery.

From the exhibit: “IN 1895, THE ART DEPARTMENT AT THE H. SOPHIE NEWCOMB MEMORIAL COLLEGE, a women’s school in New Orleans, Louisiana, began a new enterprise: the Newcomb College Pottery. The educators hoped to provide their graduates with way of putting their design education into practice and earning an income in a manner that was socially acceptable for white upper-class women.”

“These women decorated a variety of wares with ornament inspired by regional fora and fauna. Though students were educated in ceramics, the Pottery hired men to create the wares, which were formed from a mixture of clays from around the region. Promoting the Pottery to national and international audiences, its founders and some decorators claimed that the products were unique and authentic representations of the American South.”

“The Pottery’s aesthetics shifted dramatically over the following decades, and the school added other media, such as textiles, to the enterprise, but the emphasis on these products ‘Southerness’ remained in place until the Pottery’s closure in 1939.”

“Drawn from the permanent collection of the Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane University, this exhibition explores Newcomb decorators choice of imagery and their relationships with regional identity. Plants and vacant landscapes suggested isolation from busy urban centers in New England and the Midwest, while moss-draped oak and cypress trees matched descriptions in fiction that romanticized the pre-Civil War period. Even the decorators’ status as upper-class white women placed them as ‘belles’ in these fantasies. Though these women created many of these designs over 100 years ago, their work reinforced perceptions about the American South that remain powerful today.”

May you Exhibit some Powerful Joy this mid-spring Weekend!

Posted in Five Friday Happy Bringers

Five Friday Happy Bringers 5/23/25

1. Air conditioning! Savannah …

Ridiculously hot for spring. And yet, there is no climate crisis?!

2. Our bathroom window curtain.

It is a physical manifestation of simple joy.

3. Our incredible cell phones. (And occasionally the common sense to put them down.)

4. Reaching 15,000 minutes on my 10% Happier meditation app.

5. Reading this terrific new little book about the wonder of our natural world.

And here is a neat little Serviceberry tree outside our cottage at a recent state park stay.

May you discover some Happy Bringers in the weekend ahead.

Posted in Five Friday Happy Bringers

Five Friday Happy Bringers 5/16/25

My weekly gratitude journal, of sorts.

(A Day Late)

1. Our Travel Buddies. Have I told you about them?

These three little fellows go with us on our every little excursion. And get prominently displayed (by HR).

3. The precious ability to cry.

4. Remembering our daily fire up in the north Georgia mountains last weekend, where the lows were in the 50’s and highs in the upper 60’s.

The five day weather forecast for here in Savannah …

5. On a walk this morning, coming across this (somehow) discarded photo on the sidewalk.

May her little life be filled with joy.

And may your weekend be a Photograph of Beauty.

Posted in Five Friday Happy Bringers

Five Friday Happy Bringers 4/9/25

My weekly gratitude journal, of sorts.

1. HR’s cute Star Wars excitement.

2. Finding Benny and best buddy Huggy Kitty still fast asleep when I walked into the living room at about 6 am the other morning.

Just in case you want to know more about Huggy Kitty, here’s a previous post that explains, in far too much detail …

3. Being able to go to the grocery store and buy food. What a blessing.

4. Our new buddy Greenie, who has taken up residence in our Potted Plant Garden in front of our apartment.

See him?

No, no, that’s not part of Greenies‘s body. Here he is, truthfully exposed.

5. Continuing today’s animal theme, this friendly blackbird (grackle?) I had a little conversation with the other day.

Posted in Five Friday Happy Bringers

Five Friday Happy Bringers 4/2/25

My weekly gratitude journal, of sorts.

1. Sweet Tea, or as Dolly Parton calls it in Steel Magnolias, “the Champagne of the South.”

2. Walking by this “wall of green” covering a building near us here in historic district Savannah.

If you look closely, you can spot HR meandering in the lane.

3. Toenail clippers.

4. The absolute, joyful contentment that kitty cat Benny finds in (literally in) cardboard boxes.

5. Grandson, Daniel and his “Senior Bike Ride” this morning at his school.

On the last day of school (for seniors), Country Day has this tradition for their soon-to-be graduates to ride bicycles onto campus, where they are over-enthusiastically greeted by their families and loved ones, holding up posters and pictures and joyfully cheering (probably because those soon-to-be graduates will also soon be leaving home).

May you have something this weekend to scream joyfully about. (If not, just scream anyway.)

Posted in Five Friday Happy Bringers

Five Friday Happy Bringers 4/25/25

My weekly gratitude journal, of sorts.

1. Heavenly smelling Strawberry Blossoms and Fruit on a visit to Sonrise Farms near Dublin GA.

2. Reflection

HR and … me

3. The ability to walk up a staircase and to walk down a staircase. (Though it’s getting to be more of a challenge these days with my creaky knees.)

4. Grandson Daniel‘s 18th birthday dance at Miyabi’s Kyoto Steak House here in Savannah.

(You can hear Robert in the background, egging Daniel on.)

A pretty messed-up photo at the party but sort of cool in its own way. 

5. The amazing spectacle I often see when I step out my front door here in historic district Savannah, a few blocks from the Savannah River …

… and pause before I head to wherever I’m going … to take in a gargantuan cargo ship heading to the Savannah port.

The purple through the oak trees? That’s a cargo ship!

I hope this weekend brings you a Cargo of Good.

Posted in Five Friday Happy Bringers

Five Friday Happy Bringers 4/18/25

My weekly gratitude journal, of sorts.

1. Brilliant red blooms of the Fire Lily in a yard near us.

2. Enjoying a delicious and educational olive oil tasting at Woodpecker Trail Olive Farm near Glenville GA.

3. Making a very yummy Strawberry Pear Pie with fresh-picked strawberries from Sonrise Farms near Dublin GA.

4. Our skin, which wraps us up so lovingly.

5. This beautifully quirky little pillow on the couch in the waiting area at my therapist’s office.

(I wonder if it was strategically placed there to somehow assess or affect our mental health.)

May you have a Healthy Weekend ahead – mentally and otherwise!