Quietly walking around the corner into our alley to throw out our trash the other day, I came across this.
????
A yard in our alley?
Shhh … Silent Sunday. 5/25/25
Tag: Life experiences
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.
My Saturday Evening Post: 4/12/25 “Night Light Life”
Robert and I were walking through Telfair Square here in Savannah last night after dinner. The statue-laden Telfair Academy (the first public art museum in the South, 1888) shone incandescently, perhaps a bit eerily, exuding both pride and remorse in our city’s problematic past.
I paused and gazed up into the heavy, meandering limbs of the ancient Live Oak trees, limbs laden with both desiccated (for now) resurrection fern and new, brilliant green spring leaves.
Death and life together.
The street light could not illuminate all their crevices.
“Some of these trees have to be older than the academy itself,” I thought, as we walked out of the past. “If only trees could talk!”
A light breeze kneaded the old and the new together, causing an audible whispering in the leaves.
And that’s my Saturday Evening Post.
Five Friday Happy Bringers 4/4/25
My weekly gratitude journal, of sorts.
1. Morning Glory.
2. Simple Beige Beauty.
3. The inhale and the exhale.
And the oft-forgotten mindfulness of the inhale and the exhale.
4. The Breath of Fresh Air Robert and I are experiencing with the television reality series, “Love on the Spectrum.”
“Overview: Seven adults with autism dive headlong into a dating group to explore the unpredictable world of romance, tackling misconceptions about both themselves and how they want to live.” (Series Website)
We recently stumbled upon season two and are working through it now.
5. Playing hide and seek with a Japanese Flowering Cherry tree near us here in historic district Savannah.
May you experience a Bit of Play somehow this spring weekend.
Does Anybody Else?
Does anybody else take photos while you’re waiting in the exam room when you go to see the doctor?
No? Really? Why not?
Is this against HIPPA rules or something?
Well, this morning brought my yearly appointment at my ophthalmologist. Since it’s a new year, I’ve been making my rounds to various specialists. Haven’t you?
For some reason (reminder: talk to therapist about this), while I am waiting for the doctor—any doctor— to make her/his appearance, I get all giddy nervous and therefore anxiously try to figure out how to pass the time before she/he enters and aggressively takes my blood pressure or sticks a needle in me.
The answer? Intra-medical-office photography!
And I can’t quite figure out how to interpret this writing on yonder wall …
Huh?
“E.T. Phone home” maybe?
I’ll probably be getting a new eyeglass prescription.
Five Friday Happy Bringers 3/21/25
My weekly gratitude journal, of sorts.
1. The delicious simplicity of a good hot dog.
2. Completing 1800 meditation sittings with my Happier app.
SURELY I should be a little more enlightened by now?!
3. The ability to … Stretch. I’m having some arthritis issues, and simple stretching often helps with the pain.
4. My old front door. It has welcomed us home many a time.
5. Benny needing his rest this morn (on my I’m-still-wearing-them Christmas jammies).
May you have a Merry Weekend
Sunday Evening Shenanigans
It’s St. Patrick’s Day eve, and as Robert and I have done the last five or six years, we hightail it out of Dodge (well, Savannah).
“Why,” you may be asking. “Doesn’t Savannah have one of the nation’s largest and most celebrated St. Patrick’s Day bashes/parades?”
Yes, it does. And we have enjoyed them in the past.
But here comes the rub. I moved to Savannah back in 2009, as I was semi-retiring from Georgia Southern University (about an hour north of SAV). I have lived in two Savannah locations , and (incredibly) BOTH were directly on the parade route, which initially sounded great. And I suppose initially it was.
But as the years went by, I began to see aspects of the parade’s insanity. Don’t get me wrong, St. Patrick’s Day celebrations can be so much fun and meaningful: the Greening of the Fountains, the Celtic Cross Ceremony in Emmet Park, the Jasper Green Ceremony in Madison Square, etc.
Savannah’s population is around 150.000, and the parade usually draws at least that many more visitors. And living on the parade route, we have witnessed disappointing human behavior outside our door. Our potted plants being trampled, thrown and broken on the pavement, even urinated upon. (TMI?). Partiers loudly camping outside our door all night the night before the parade.
So anyway, we drove an hour or so south of us to St. Simons Island to a quaint little retro motel (not hotel). Queen’s Court Inn:
We are currently high-energetically super-celebrating St. Patty Eve.
My helpers:
And Robert’s:
It’s deliciously quiet here. And raining softly outside.
celebrate (with a small “c”).
Shhh … Silent Sunday. 3/16/25
There’s a Story Here Somewhere
Walking through Savannah’s Colonial Park Cemetery this morning with HR, we came across this bench.
There has to be a story somewhere. Is the story’s central character Mary Helen Ray, whose name is on the bench?
Or maybe one of the nearly 700 folks who died during a yellow fever epidemic in Savannah: “The most macabre bit of history involves a subtly tweaked fact on a historical marker about the yellow fever. According to the marker, ‘nearly 700’ victims of the 1820 yellow fever epidemic were buried in a mass grave, but historical records allegedly show that exactly 666 people are buried in the grave. Nearly 700, indeed.” savannahnow.com.
Here’s a link to an interesting story about Colonial Park Cemetery: 
Oh, and for extra credit, here is Robert sitting in a bunch of ginkgo biloba leaves at one of the entrances to Colonial Park Cemetery …
That’s probably a story in itself.
NealEnJoy 