smiles......Friday.

My Uncle David attached this photo to one of his emails....

I love Sunflowers.

LOVE.

They always make me smile.

I hope your day is filled with 

love

smiles

and 

sunflowers......

Today, I am grateful.....

so, here's why....

life delivers things you don't expect, sometimes.

usually, I find myself totally unprepared....

But,

I have learned

that when I've been blind-sided,

I can get out my toolkit of chaos busters.....

My Gratitude list is the best on I can think of when I have nothing else to say.....

so, here tis....

I am eternally grateful for coffee

I am grateful for roses.....

and sunflowers...

of course, the beach....and sun....and quiet....

I am so very, sincerely, honestly grateful for my sweetie....

and magnolias....

and waterlilies.....

hydrangeas....by the bucket full!!

pasta.....;-)

homegrown tomatoes.....

and, as Wallace says, "CHEESE!"....

and bread.....(I am noticing a pattern here....)

and different types of CHEESE!

from assorted countries.....(thank you Whole Foods)

and lastly (but never leastly, is that a word?)

Chocolate!

There, I feel much better now....

don't you?

now

I 

can 

smile.

flowers.....

Flowers...

with their lovely faces...

who can resist?

Valentines Day is my favorite 

special day...

it is the day my sweetie and I had our very first date.

So 

I am spoiled on Vday with lots of roses..

4 dozen this year....

(yeah, I know....smiles.)

I placed them all around the house.

When I was looking for these images,

I stumbled across 

these lovelies from earlier in the year.

Sunflowers rival Roses for my attention...

always.

Hope you are given flowers by someone you love,

and if not, 

go out then, and buy them for yourselves!

I do....

smiles.

Surprise!

What's that strange growl emanating from my throat?

That mucus laden croak that sounds strangely like me?

What is that pain in my sinuses that nothing can touch?

Fiddle-dee-dee...

It's the "takes forever to get over cough"

that seems to sweeping the land....

No one is immune, from what I have seen.

Men, women and children all croaking weakly.....

Now, the details of this ailment need not be reproduced for

"the delicate reader"....

but suffice to say, strange things have surfaced.

Coughs creep in from dark recesses to take me to my knees.

aches and pains are mostly treated with my favorite standby,

BC powders and a Diet Coke to wash it down.

But the coughing in the middle of the night is making me weak during the day.

I am sick of being sick.

We have cancelled our trip to visit my father-in-law, because we are

both dealing with this......blob of mucus.

Thank goodness for sunshine, blue skies, please don't go away...

My cough sounds like a bowl of rough ground clay....

(sorry)

Sunflowers.....FUN!

My goodness....

what a wonderful time of the year.

How perfect the sunflower is....

It feeds my neighborhood birds...

It makes me smile,

It it architecturally challenging...

it is photographically generous....

it feeds the soul...

Smiles!