July started beautifully at a wonderfully cool 45 F, which is warming quickly, but the forecast high is mid-70’s …that’s getting towards as hot as we’d like, but it IS July now. The air is as fresh and clean as it looks, the birdies are singing and all is right in our world – hope in yours as well.

This is the day the Lord has made. Rejoice and be glad in it! Psalm 118:24

I spend a lot of time at my desk.

My desk faces east, in the sunroom with large windows all around. I am a morning person, usually up by 5:00 a.m. This time of year, it is just getting light as sunrise is just before 5:30. Sitting at my desk, I watch the sky slighten behind the mountains of the Swan Range, filtered by a bit of my woods.

To the west, the sunroom has both a window and a sliding glass door. The door leads to an alcove of grass in a corner made by the sunroom, which is tacked on to the end of the house. In that corner, shaded by a large Ponderosa Pine, is a small lilac bush and a patch of Lily-of-the-Valley. The Chair sits there. Karl likes to lie just beyond the big pine and keep watch over the ravine that is also an active game trail.

Earlier this week, on a gloomy, drippy morning, I brought a few sprigs of the lily-of-the-valley inside to sit on my desk. That pretty little cruet, the warm light from the little desk lamp, the perfect little blossoms…the little things.

In grateful remembrance. Never Forgotten.

I picked lilacs yesterday and arranged them in a Mason jar.

They made me remember lilacs given to me in a large white pitcher – 6 years ago. My memory of those lilacs – overflowing the pitcher and filling the house with their fragrance is a vivid memory.

About this time of year, 6 years ago, I had a horse riding lesson, given by my neighbor in my own round corral. In a freak accident getting on the horse, I suffered a depression fracture of the tibia and was ordered to keep my weight off my leg – be on crutches – for 6 weeks. I stared at the doctor, incredulous, and said that was NOT possible! At the time, I was running a growing art pack and ship business single handedly, had 2 acres of lawn and garden around my house, a dog and 2 cats, and my programming work. There was no way I could be on crutches for 6 weeks!!!

Stop laughing!

I went home and called everyone of my acquaintance and told them that I needed someone to help me with everything from gardening to cooking to cleaning house to packing and shipping art. And I prayed – a lot!

Two women, friends of friends, responded. It was miraculous. Two women who had flexible schedules, who needed flexibly scheduled part-time work, who were both able and willing to do anything I needed – they were there and we worked out that one of them was with me from 10-3 every day. They gardened, mowed, trimmed, cleaned, cooked, learned how to make the boxes that I made for the art shipping – in short, they were my legs for 6 weeks. I concentrated on my programming work which requires no legs. It worked.

In the process, one of the women in particular, became a friend as well. She has 5 daughters and they helped too – playing with Karl, brushing Karl (no small task in the spring), the 14 year old mowing with my lawn tractor ( a 14 year old wants to drive so badly, she will drive anything!), raking the lawn, picking up sticks and generally being just a pleasure to have around.

And one day, she arrived with a white ceramic pitcher filled to overflowing, with lilacs from her yard. That pitcher of lilacs sat in the middle of my dining room table and filled my house with fragrance and the love behind the gift. I doubt that I will ever forget that gift of lilacs and the joy that they and she and her daughters brought me.

Yesterday, as I arranged a few sprigs of my own lilacs in a Mason jar, to sit on my window sill, I remembered other lilacs.

Yesterday…very early…Jeannine and I picked the first of the rhubarb and had a coffee cake in the oven and fresh coffee made well before 7:00 a.m.

We sat together in the sunroom. Our friendship spans 40 years. Sweet morning.