Closed Doors, Open Windows

Welcome to my "Open Window"...a place of hope, encouragement, and adventure as we journey down the road from "Closed Doors" to the new opportunities God places in our pathway. I hope you will take the time to go back and follow the trail of mixed blessings and fears, failures and triumphs from the past and side-trips in the present. Perhaps it will conjure up some of your own special memories, and be an invitation for you to share with others. I look forward to spending this time with you!

Friday, July 28, 2023

Friday Foto Friends and More

Good Friday morning everyone! These sky photos show you how it looked this morning when we first put the flag out.

Kind of the aftermath of an early morning shower, which surprised me when I heard the rain hitting on the skylight in my bathroom earlier while it was still dark...

Here's how it looked over Still Waters Pond...

And here is how it looks through the skylight right now as I am writing this around 8:45 a.m.:

Looks like it's going to be a lovely day after all!

I don't have a lot of photos to share today, so that's why I've resorted to pictures of the sky through my bathroom skylight. LOL.

I wanted to thank you all for your kind comments on my last couple of posts this week...I enjoy hearing from all of you, and even though I don't always reply back to your comments, I read them and treasure each of you.

If you recall from my last post HERE, I mentioned that our modem was "dying", and we were having to wait until Thursday for the repairman to come. Well, he came on Wednesday instead, which was great. Glad we didn't take off for the beach or someplace fun that day or we would have missed him! LOL. As it was, when he called, we were 20 minutes away, finishing up our shopping at Publix, "where shopping is a pleasure"...(although I was NOT pleased with the high prices that continue to rise every time we go to the store...a puny head of lettuce for $2.99, that was not fit to eat! Come on, Publix, you can do better than that...and potatoes have gone up to $6.99 for a 5lb. bag of ordinary potatoes? What is going on here?) Anyway, the internet technician called me and said he was on his way, and so we hurried on home to meet him, and he was already here! After digging around in the dirt he discovered that the lines going into our house were not adequate for the speed of internet we've been paying for for the past several years...and he needed to rewire it to the inside of the house, requiring me to move some furniture around in my little "Room with a view" , etc., but when he was finished with his work I sat down to my computer and discovered that my computer was now running like a racehorse from page to page...no more long waits for the internet to come up, etc. He said the modem was fine. It was all in the wiring. Thankfully, no charge to us. Frankly, I think they owe us a refund for all the years of paying for extra speed that we were never receiving! But I will just be thankful it's fixed now and pray nothing else breaks down!

In other news of the week, let's see...well, our son Scott came home one night and spent the night because he had an early morning appointment here and took the rest of the day off from work so he could work on his car, which was having some issues.

He literally sat out there (or laid under the car) for hours, working on trying to get something loose that was stuck...I can't explain it, but he was extremely dedicated to the task regardless of the 90+ degree temperatures. I finally had to go warn him that a thunderstorm was coming so he could get out of there before it hit, especially because he was using an electric drill at the time...Anyway, long story short, he had to leave the car as is so he could go back to work today. He'll be back this weekend to work on it some more. It was nice having him home for a little while. I baked him some cookies to take back with him, which he appreciated. We also had Benton and Rose (and grandpuppies) over for a spaghetti supper while he was here, so it was nice having the whole family under our roof again.

Switching gears...

This is a picture of our front porch, taken from inside looking through the window. It was raining, and the porch was wet. I was looking at the color of the floor boards when they were wet, and thinking we need to re-stain our porch because, if you look at the posts on the left of the picture, you can see how they look when they are dry. I like the color of the floor boards when they are wet, so I am thinking we will stain the whole porch that color, kind of a reddish brown. I had debated on painting it white, but decided that would require a lot of work to maintain it so gave up on that idea.

This is the view looking out through the blinds from the dining room, while it was raining. I don't often open these blinds because we get too much hot sunshine through that window for most of the day, plus there is a road out there and people can see inside. The umbrella is open on the table to help shield this window and the front door from the blistering sun (when it isn't raining). But I was enjoying this view in the rain. I would LOVE to put a roof up over the front porch so we can enjoy it more and keep the hot sun off the front side of the house better, but that is an expense that we can't afford for awhile since we just replaced the AC last month. It will be a while before we can do any other major projects.

Switching to the back porch...I had to change the hummingbird feeder the other day because this old one broke and fell to the ground:

And all I could find was this style at the Dollar General to replace it. So far the birds seem to have adapted to it okay, so that's fine. It was only $4.00, so not bad:

And surprisingly, this little Wren was enjoying some birdseed from the new Log Cabin birdhouse I put up recently to replace the old one...I was surprised because Wrens rarely eat birdseed! They are more bug lovers! LOL.

And here's some pictures of Pamela's Victorian Cottage and friends...just because...

The little family stays busy year round...and you are always welcome to come visit!

(If you want to read more about "Pamela's Victorian Cottage", be sure to click on the link under "Some Special Topics" in the right column of my blog page.)

These are their little farm friends who live 'down the road' from them...

Here's how I feel about this...

And with that, I will close this epistle for today. Since I started writing this morning I've left home to go practice some music for Sunday at the church and came back home again. Now it is time to think about fixing some lunch...so I will say farewell for now and enjoy your day and weekend!

It's going to be busy...we have a Community Breakfast at the church in the morning to attend,

and then we also have a 5th Sunday Potluck Dinner after church on Sunday. Not sure yet what I am going to take for my covered dish...I guess I'd better quit playing and think about that!

It will also be in the Fellowship Hall:

Okay, that's all folks!!

God be with you until we meet again:

"1 God be with you till we meet again;

loving counsels guide, uphold you,

may the Shepherd’s care enfold you;