Enjoying the Deck

It's been a couple of days since my last writing. We've been busy. The local clergy met at another church location and so I had the chance to see yet another sanctuary and enjoy the fellowship of the group. They began by sharing "highs and lows" of their congregational life. The highs had to do with some personal accomplishment or recognition or family situation and the lows usually had to do with the usual interchurch pettiness, rumor, "someone said," or hurt feelings that messes up the pastor's true focus or mission for his congregation. Amazingly, we Christians are usually our own worst enemies.

Later that day I re-stained the deck. The winter was har on the original staining I did. Now it looks better than before. I still have to do the one side of the verticle divide facing the neighbors. I never did get to that, and the neighbors graciously loaned me an extension ladder to do that. Dee bought some more flowers for the front of the house and a flower box for the deck. It looks nice. Here is a picture of her handiwork. Speaking of flowers, my Barbershop Chorus is selling flats of them for the next two weeks. The flowers come from a local nursery and are supposedly beautiful and a terriffic buy.

Yesterday I attended Rotary and saw yet another presentation of a group who went to help Katrina victums rebuild their homes. This group was supported with money from the Rotary Club and several on the trip were from Rotary. A good presentation. Then after Rotary I played some golf at Treesdale. I went out by myself, but two of the other rangers caught up with me and the three of us played together. It was very nice. I still can't believe hoe fortunate I am to be able to play there almost anytime I want (Tues. - Fri.) for free. The guys were very friendly and explained the best strategies for each of the holess. It was the first time I played the Orchard Course. We long played six holes before the lightening siren sounded and we had to stop playing. (The alarm goes off automatically if there is lightening within 5 miles of the course.) I did have one par though. I also picked up my red shirt and blue hat which are part of my uniform.

When I got home, I was got home it was sunny again and I thought I'd do more staining of the deck, but the storm clouds rumbled eventuall, and so I decided to just read on the deck. -- Ben Franklin was finishing up in France and heading home to America. While there I got the binoculars out and watched some blue jays playing in the trees. There were four of them and they were hopping all over the place. I love it when bird flies by at eye level or I'm looking down on them soaring. Cool. It did rain a little, but we were able to return to the deck after about 20 minutes. Later, we spent some time on the latest jigsaw puzzle. We made some great progress - It won't be long before I'll take a picture of our 5th completed puzzle.