I was care giver for my beloved husband for the past nearly 18 years... and since his passing... have increased my church involvment. I have also met a nice fellow and he brought me to meet his family in Iowa over the Christmas holidays, and has invited me to travel with him... We get along quite well, and so I intend to take him up on some of his travel offer adventures. Tomorrow he is driving me down to my daughters where we will spend about a week.. and then back home where he will be moving into a rental to be closer to me. I am still involved in church activiites, and he is also interested in becoming involved in our church ministries.. Gardening, cooking, baking, are also interest that I enjoy.. Carolyn

I always decorated our tree in a theme. Always had it planned well in advance. Then we started having kids. I still tried to decorate the tree in a theme. It worked for awhile. Then the kids started going to preschool and bringing home all of their crafts. Each one I cherish and keep. They started putting them on the Christmas tree. I moved them to other places. They kept bringing home more. And more. And more. Year after year. And year after year I kept giving each one a special ornament that they might like on Christmas Day. I never really thought about why. It just seemed like what you do. Their 'bought' ornaments would go on their trees in their rooms the following year - preserving my perfect tree. So we found a work around. We would decorate the tree my way and as each day went by they would add their stuff until Christmas Day our tree would be an explosion of kid craft. Well our kids are now 11, 8 & 6 and last Christmas while we were decorating the tree it finally hit me. I watched as they pulled their ornaments out of boxes and recounted the stories of how and when they got them to each other and to me. It was perfect for me. We saved all of the Christmas craft ornaments for the end. I take a few pictures and then they put all of their stuff from years past on the tree. And It Really Is Perfectly Perfect ! A perfect mess of all of our likes and memories.

Well last night was not too bad, my protection seems to have worked, no immediate signs of damage thankfully. I was out at 06.30 as the temps were gradually starting to rise. The bedroom curtains Big Daddy is under there. S&S in the bin! My Gunnera saved from crispy brown edges. Its cold again tonight and all are covered again, we will be back to mild wet windy atlantic mucky weather on tuesday, the heatwave is over. That may sound strange after nights like this but we have been 4 degrees above normal average in daytime temps, had up to 25C which is very unusual for May here, I even got a little bit of a farmers tan. My Rhodie is starting to flower, it seems to laugh at frost.

If Ohio's reported cases are declining in the metro areas, that's wonderful. In the mostly rural southern and southeastern counties that had only a few early cases, new cases seem to be on a slow increase. Vinton was the last to have no reported cases, then in the last weeks they've jumped to 16. That might reflect testing for someone's whole family, co-workers, a nursing home--I don't know the details--and I know that seems to be a small number compared to other areas. Kathsgrdn, I have been very impressed with KY's stats (as well as WV's). We have relatives in a KY county which borders the river, and one of my brothers works in WV, so I check their stats often. My father is ecstatic that the local Bob Evans is opening for inside dining tomorrow. I'm not so thrilled, since he is 83 and won't wear a mask or properly distance himself from others. ETA, here's our 21-day trend--unfortunately up almost 250 more cases than yesterday (484):