Shirley Visits During Spring Break

March 20-24, 2012

Shirley arrived on Tuesday afternoon, March 20 for a visit during her spring break from teaching in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. She commutes down to Arkadelphia from her home in Little Rock. She arrived just as our azaleas were approaching full bloom, and we had a nice shower which cleared away the pine pollen and enhanced the beauty of the trees and flowers. This is one of our azaleas by the parking pad.

This is another azalea in that collection near the house, and I liked the water droplets on it from the welcome shower.

Shirley went along with us to Awanas at the church on Wednesday night when we work with our active second-graders. She helped Brenda with the girls group. She took this picture of us in our Awana shirts just before we left to go over for supper at the church. March 21

On Thursday evening, Sherry joined us from Woodstock and we went to the performance of "The Merry Wives of Windsor" at the Shakespeare Tavern in Atlanta.

Rod had class on Thursday and Friday, but Brenda and Shirley had a good visit and time to talk. We attended our Sunday School class social at Roger and Brenda's Speight's home on Friday night and Shirley left early on Saturday morning for her return trip. She had to be back in class in Arkadelphia on Monday.

It was a beautiful day, so I took my walk with the camera today. Everything is springing to life, from the oak trees beside the road above left, to the juniper by the mailbox.

The new life includes daisy fleabane in Courtney's yard to the dogwood at the corner of Mrs Neals property at the corner of South Dillon.

An apparently wild dogwood in the edge of the woods on Malvin shows subtle colors around the edges of the blooms.

I walked on over to Sherwood on my normal walking route and found pure white wild honeysuckle and white dogwood.

A little further in on Sherwood, I found this spectacular red dogwood.

From a distance, it was a small tree in the shadows beside the road, but closeup it was exquisite.

Just green trees you say? But the fact that they were bare limbs just a week ago made this very inspiring. On the day of the shower this week, the transformation in 24 hours was miraculous. These views were along Creveis Drive.

Around Jacqueline Circle and up to James Road. I found these rich yellow wildflowers along Creveis and James Road.

You don't think of redtips as having flowers, but for a few days a year they do, and this was one of those days as shown above left. This was along Dillon Road, and I then came to the pink dogwood in Tip and Betty Curvin's yard. I liked the picture at left and sent them along a copy.

These are tiny, maybe 2cm, flowers down in the grass along South Dillon as I came back down the hill to home. I have been enjoying the beauty of all these flowers all week as I walked, so I thought it was worth recording. Praise the Lord!