April 4, 2020 thought for the day: The truth is like gold: keep it locked up and you will find it exactly as you first put it away. Senegalese Proverb

I can’t seem to sleep-in lately even though there is not much of a  reason to get up early. I’m awake and can’t get back to sleep.

This month of gratitude offers an open book of ideas for shots that meet the challenge, so many in fact that it is hard to choose “the one”. One thing I notice in the early spring that cements the idea of the coming season it the pink blossoms on the magnolia tree in my neighbor’s back yard.

Since the weather is so nice outside today I will most likely work out th
ere for as long as my energy and legs will allow. I also need to clear out the frig.

I dread going away from the house in this time of isolation but I am going to have to sometime in the next few days. I have to pick up some meds. So since I will be at the store I will get a couple of things that I forgot on my delivery order. That will mean going out with a mask and gloves, yuck, but it is what it is. 

I have one of those solar birdbath fountains. I am trying to find a container that will not splash all the water out as it works. I have just come across a white plastic container I bought last year but never used. I just went out back and spray painted it to fit more in the landscape. I got one side done, I am waiting for it to dry for an hour or so to paint the other side.

The word is failure. There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows, George Eliot.  However things may seem, no evil thing is success and no good thing is failure, Henry Wadsworh Longfellow.  The most important of my discoveries have been suggested to me by failures, Humphry Davy.  There is no impossibility to him who stands prepared to conquer every hazard. The fearful are the failing, Sarah Josepha Hale. What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything? Vincent Van Gogh. A minute's success pays the failure of years, Robert Browning.  Failure is in a sense the highway to success, as each discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, John Keats.  The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just, Abraham Lincoln.  The only failure one should fear, is not hugging to the purpose they see as best, George Eliot.  I would prefer even to fail with honor than win by cheating, Sophocles. We climb to heaven most often on the ruins of our cherished plans, finding our failures were successes, Amos Bronson Alcott. Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing, Aristotle.  Finite to fail, but infinite to venture, Emily Dickinson.  Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them, Washington Irving.  Indecision and delays are the parents of failure, George Canning.

In today’s search for a photo to meet the theme I chose clouds. It is beginning to look like most of the photos for this month are going to be nature and season related. Coming out of winter when the skies are mostly gray and blank these views are exciting.

This sounds like another interesting way to get through this time of social separation. The article is about the simple exercise of walking but it lists some of the things that go with the walk.  Transit Columbus created a Walk Columbus Pledge. It encourages people to observe as you go. Look for out of the way “nooks and crannies”. As we walk we usually have interesting thoughts accompanying us as we go. Some of those thoughts might be of ways to make the neighborhood safer and more interesting. According to the article the Columbus Public Health has generated several self-guided walks that suggest art, stores, architecture and history. People can find maps for these walks on the Columbus Public Health website and MeColumbus mobile app. Some places would like for readers to share their own homemade neighborhood maps. One idea was to close some streets for more pedestrians and cyclists. There are also ideas to point more interest to streets that run through parks. 

I am probably just going to pull something from the freezer for dinner tonight.

Love you
Grandma