May 4, 2020 thought for the day: Lend money to someone who won't pay you back and he'll hate you. Chinese Proverb

Another Monday has rolled around. There are a few things on the agenda as there are for me on most Monday’s. I will be updating the church bulletin as the main thing I would like to get accomplished today. 

The photo challenge title for May 3 was “dreaming of...”. I think I mentioned before that subjects that assign a photo to a feeling are hard for me to process. I had spurts of thought through out the morning on what subject I could use. I have admired the tulips in my neighbor’s yard for a while I finally settled on that. I am dreaming of spring and many more flowers so this photo will do for the theme.

Sue had some errands to run. She is adjusting to one of the things that has been a difference in our choices. She likes afternoon outings when it comes to errands or visits. I prefer mornings, as early as possible. I have tried to bend to a compromise of later in the morning, more toward noon. Since her accident at Christmas time she isn’t able to drive for now. So I take her where she needs to go. In these trips we are learning some of the many ways businesses are adjusting the flow of their business to accommodate the changes in our lives, and theirs, right now. For instance, Sue’s bank is totally taken care of at the drive in windows now instead of a lobby entrance.

I have been wondering why I have not received my order for flower seeds that I ordered over two weeks ago. So I did some investigating through email responses to online orders and/or financial records of expenditures. I discovered that one of the biggest orders I thought I had sent didn’t go through. So I went to the online site for the nursery where I thought I had placed the order. Sure enough there was a catch. One of the seeds was out of stock and my order would not be completed until I removed it from my list. I took care of that problem. Then I got an email saying the order was being processed. One of the flower seeds I am most interested in seems to be a thorn in my side. I have been trying to get a Lenten rose plant started for what is now almost a year. The first one I got and planted was stepped on and killed by a worker on the outside of my house. The replacement I ordered and planted died. It tried to come back twice and both times the tiny little shoots that were there one day were gone the next. I think a squirrel must have had it for lunch....twice. The order for those seeds was at another garden center, not the one I mentioned above. I put in another order two weeks ago, it was charged to my account but I never received it. That one is a mystery. Does it sound like to you that maybe I am not supposed to have that plant?

The word for the day is flower. A flower falls, even though we love it; and a weed grows, even though we do not love it, Dogen. The career of a sage is of two kinds: He is either honored by all in the world, Like a flower waving its head, Or else he disappears into the silent forest, Laozi.   Just living is not enough... One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower, Hans Christian Andersen. To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower Hold infinity in the palms of your hand and eternity in an hour, William Blake. Life is the flower for which love is the honey, Victor Hugo. Adversity draws men together and produces beauty and harmony in life's relationships, just as the cold of winter produces ice-flowers on the window-panes, which vanish with the warmth, Soren Kierkegaard. Every flower is a soul blossoming in nature, Gerard De Nerval. The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers, Matsuo Basho. Flowers have spoken to me more than I can tell in written words. They are the hieroglyphics of angels, loved by all men for the beauty of their character, though few can decipher even fragments of their meaning, Lydia M. Child.  Speech is the golden harvest that followeth the flowering of thought, Martin Farquhar Tupper. 

The photo theme for today is “neighborhood”. I am lucky to have a very comfortable neighborhood with the added essence that it is clean and pleasing to the eye so this photo is an easy one.

It’s interesting to see some of the aspects of our lives that are being affected by this pandemic. Just how many more aspects, as the one in today’s article, are being affected and how and to what point in out lives will take time to surface. This article speaks to the use of highways in this time of viruses. People seem to be driving faster due to the roads being mostly empty. A survey of transportation speeds and highway usage for last year from March 28 to April 19 in Columbus, Cleveland and Cincinnati showed about the same figures for each city. This year speeds were amounting to ten or more miles per hour faster than last year. The article mentioned that on a section of I-71 some speeds even registered over 30 miles an hour faster that last year.  The person interviewed for this article said that he felt that there is probably speeding on the smaller roads too. He is hoping that the city will consider new policies like changing the street network to provide more space for cyclists and pedestrians.

I have some homemade spaghetti and meat balls in the freezer, that will be dinner tonight.

Joy