It's Monday morning, and a beautiful day so far! I was just outside walking around and watering my plants, and I could hear the birds singing in the treetops so sweetly! I love how they always lift up their voices in praise to their Creator every morning! It's truly a wonderful sound!!
I don't have any new bird pictures to go along with this, but I will just post the pictures that I did take while I was outside...
All Creatures of Our God and King
(St. Francis of Assisi originated this song in 1225)
1. All creatures of our God and King,
Lift up your voice and with us sing
Alleluia, alleluia!
Thou burning sun with golden beam,
Thou silver moon with softer gleam,
O praise him, O praise him,
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.
Our small bottlebrush bush finally blooming after about 4 years of watching it grow!
The Zucchini and Yellow Squash plants are growing, but I think they need some fertilizer. I thought the potting soil we bought had some in it, but apparently not much. But still, they are growing. I have to water them every day.
The "Beefsteak" tomato plants are growing also...
2. Thou rushing winds that art so strong,
Ye clouds that sail in Heav'n along,
O praise him, alleluia!
Thou rising morn, in praise rejoice,
Ye lights of evening, find a voice.
O praise him, O praise him,
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.
It's a sunny, breezy beautiful day! God Bless America!!
3. And all ye saints of tender heart,
Forgiving others, take your part,
O sing ye, alleluia!
Ye who long pain and sorrow bear,
Praise God and on him cast your care:
O praise him, O praise him,
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.
Blackie and I enjoyed some "Secret Memorial Garden" Bench time together. It was so pleasant this morning.
This picture was taken earlier this morning...Even though I put my purse on that chair to keep him from getting on it, he got up there anyway. He definitely has a mind of his own, but I keep trying to teach him. Not long after this picture was taken he woke up and was sweetly "removed" to another location.
4. Let all things their creator bless,
And worship him in humbleness,
O praise him, alleluia!
Praise, praise the Father, praise the Son,
And praise the Spirit, Three in One:
O praise him, O praise him,
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.
This rose was blooming in the garden, but it needed to come inside where we could enjoy it. It will last much longer in here, and I love to "stop and smell the roses" every time I pass by.
Another thing to praise God about: The Blueberry Farm is open and they have beautiful lucious blueberries! This was our first batch. I will go back and get more to freeze, but I wanted to enjoy these while they are fresh picked right from the farm...
And so we had homemade Blueberry Muffins this morning:
Along with some scrambled eggs and cantaloupe:
I went outside and checked on my blueberry bush that I've had for a few years, and it is really loaded with berries too! I really wonder about this drought we are in...and the cold winter we had...some things are actually growing better. Of course, I do water them almost every day...
This is the whole bush. It is loaded with berries that are still ripening! What fun!
Now I have another story to tell you that is really strange... The other day our AC started not cooling properly...Yes, we've had days warm enough to need the AC already. This is Florida. We've often needed AC on Christmas day! Anyway, it was actually Easter Sunday, after everyone had left after a lovely afternoon, and I noticed that our thermostat was registering a temperature that was several degrees higher than it should be. So I sent a text message to our AC repairman asking him to call us in the morning, which he did. He came over Monday morning to check it out, and couldn't quite figure out what was going on with it, and said he would have to come back later in the week when he had more time to take it apart and look it over really well. Thankfully it is still under warranty, but he did remind us that we would have to pay the labor charges. We understood that, but we were concerned about him having to "take it apart" and needing more time to figure it out...but he assured us he would be fair. He's a good man and is always fair, so we weren't too worried.
So you may wonder what this towel is. Well, on the day that he came back and took apart the the unit, he found this towel in the bottom of the outside air handler...
Yes, down inside this unit:
That was pretty astounding. He said that somehow it had been sucked through the ductwork into the outside unit! What????? How could that happen? He said he's seen some pretty strange things before in AC units, but this was pretty unusual. After I thought about it, I remembered a day when I was changing the filter on the AC unit inside, and I had a little "accident". This shelf unit below sits beside the cold air return/filter...
Do you see what is on those shelves? Yes, Towels. Those are mostly old towels that our son uses when he comes home and is dirty from mowing or working on his car, or we use them for dirty clean up jobs, etc. Do you also see that gallon of bleach on top of the shelf? Well, here's the story that I figured out must've happened to somehow get that towel inside the ductwork:
One day I was going to change the AC Filter. In order to do that I have to pull that shelf unit out away from it so I can open up the grill in front of the filter. On that particular day I was in a hurry I guess, and I neglected to remove the gallon of bleach from the top of the shelf (along with the other items up there) before I tried to move the shelf. When I did that, the shelf shifted in my hands and the gallon of bleach fell to the ground and burst open, splashing bleach all over me and everything around it. Thankfully this is the laundry room and there was nothing of any great value that could be harmed, but it just made a huge mess as you can imagine. I was grabbing those towels and mopping up the bleach (you should see the outfit I was wearing...talk about a tie-dye look with unusual bleach splash patterns all over me. Thankfully I was wearing my old house clothes...nothing good!) Anyway, apparently I had already opened the grill over the filter and big cold air return duct before this happened...I don't totally remember all the details because it was such a big mess! But apparently one of those dry towels fell into the open duct, and it was eventually sucked all the way through to the AC unit outside. This happened over a year ago, and so it took that long to travel! There are some small bleach stains on the towel, so that was my clue as to what must've happened!
Anyway...thankfully it didn't do any permanent harm to the AC unit, and once it was removed everything started working properly again. And thankfully all we owed was a service call amount, which wasn't too bad all things considered! Whew!!! Praise God it didn't do damage to the unit, because that most likely would NOT have been covered by the warranty!!
UPDATE: Someone reminded me that I may have blogged about the bleach spill before, so I looked it up and sure enough, HERE IT IS! Thank you, Martha Jane Orlando of Meditations of My Heart, for having a good memory!!
So now we are nice and cool as a cucumber and thanking God for His mercy! And I will be more patient when changing the filter from now on for sure!!!!!
Psalm 150 NKJV
Let All Things Praise the Lord
1 Praise the Lord!
Praise God in His sanctuary;
Praise Him in His mighty firmament!
2 Praise Him for His mighty acts;
Praise Him according to His excellent greatness!
3 Praise Him with the sound of the trumpet;
Praise Him with the lute and harp!
4 Praise Him with the timbrel and dance;
Praise Him with stringed instruments and flutes!
5 Praise Him with loud cymbals;
Praise Him with clashing cymbals!
6 Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord!
