Happy August!

Happy First Day of August! To me, August is a month of transition...summer begins to wane, and we begin to shift our thinking from vacations and summer gardens, to getting the kids ready for school (if you still have any at home) and getting back into a regular routine again.  Of course, for those of us who are retired and all our children are grown, it may not be as big of a change, but still there are subtle differences in the air, an expectation of things to come.   Some may feel a bit of anxiety about whatever the future may hold, but the verse shared below in this Thomas Kinkade calendar picture for August is a good one to remember:  "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee." Isaiah 26:3

 

I love that painting, entitled "Weekend Retreat", and would LOVE to have such a place to retreat to, especially if it was somewhere cooler than where we are right now!

Perhaps this calendar picture below may be more what you are experiencing...picking the last of the summer flowers from your garden and trying to keep things watered and growing for as long as possible. 

And this would be someplace that I would love to be as well...Isn't that a beautiful farmhouse, and look at those lovely flowers and trees and the wheat field in the background...but most of all, I love the picture of the sweet old grandpa taking a walk with his, what I would assume, would be a great grandson.

John Sloane captures so much beauty and joy and love in these paintings in his Country Seasons calendar.  I enlarged this part of the picture to see what the little boy was looking at, and it is a chipmunk!  We don't have those here in Florida, but I have had some experiences with them  up north..especially in Ohio, where we had a chestnut tree, and in the fall I had a daily race with the chipmunks to see who could gather the most chestnuts off the ground! I think the chipmunks won! They took them and stored them somewhere for their winter meals.  I roasted the few I could gather and I think I also managed to chop up some into our stuffing for our Thanksgiving dinner! Sweet memories!

After enjoying a nice walk with a grandchild or anyone else, for that matter, it would be nice to come inside and make a pot of tea with this lovely Royal Doulton teapot from the Netherlands...and sit down together and have a nice long visit over tea and cookies...

There is something special about having tea with a friend or loved one...

Or maybe that young grandchild would prefer a glass of cold lemonade! That sounds pretty good too!

This Susan Branch calendar always captures my imagination...Yes, "Home, Such a lovely Place"...

And now that brings me to something special from my home!    This photograph is not current...I'm not sure of the date, but by the looks of it most likely it was taken in the late fall here on our own Still Waters Pond, when the Canada Geese were gathered to enjoy a peaceful place to swim and fish and honk at their neighbors as they swam around each other...always a lot of fun to watch in the fall and winter.

So why am I showing it now? Well, I did something I've never done before!  

First, I got a new bedspread, and I wanted to have something different to hang above the bed that would tie in the colors in our bedroom...

And I really didn't want to spend money on a picture from someone else's pond or woods or whatever, when I have such a beautiful place right here on our own Still Waters Pond.  So I searched through my photographs of the pond to find one that would show a peaceful scene, and I asked hubby what he would enjoy looking at more...the geese, the Sand Hill Cranes, or something else, and he said the geese...

So I sent in this photograph online to Walmart and had them make it into a canvas picture to hang on the wall!   I was concerned that the photo might look too blurry when enlarged that much, but it really doesn't! It looks just like the original, only bigger!

I am really excited and pleased with the way it turned out! 

This is my anniversary present to us, as August 16th will be our 56th anniversary! And it is nice to be able to sleep "beside the Still Waters (pond)".  

August is always a busy month for our family, with lots of other people in the family having birthdays and anniversaries.  We had hoped to get everyone together sometime this month to celebrate, but we're having difficulty finding a date that works for everyone. So we may have to break it up into smaller gatherings at different times.  Time will tell.  Either way, at least hubby and I already have started the celebration!  Today we had some errands to run in the "city", so we went to lunch at Captain D's. I like their grilled seafood dinners, and it's not too expensive, so we had that. I am thankful that he was feeling well enough to go. "One day at a time, Sweet Jesus! That's all I'm asking from you..."

This was the sunrise this morning!

And here's one last passage from the Thomas Kinkade calendar for August...some good words of wisdom for us all to remember...

So be at peace, my friends...and have a blessed and beautiful  and safe August. Bye for now!