Happy Easter

Puppy School

Our neighbor sends her Labradoodle (dog, poodle/labrador cross) to school.  Gracie is not a puppy.

Gracie's teacher is loosing both her teaching venues this month.  She's looking for new ones.  Gracie's mom showed her our back yard.  Yard with enough room for a badminton court or a volleyball court.  We've had both out there at one time or another.  As well as an archery range

Watch for puppy pix after 7 May, when the first class will be held.  One hour for the little guys, 2 to 6 months.  Followed by a second hour for older dogs who have successfully completed Basic Puppy and are working on something called The Levels.

I'm a cat person, and I'm looking forward to having the little critters here.  My mother? She can't wait.

"When are the puppies coming?" she asked this afternoon.

Give thanks for little things that please ... as the mere thought of puppies is pleasing my mother.
Don't forget to pray.  

Feed the Birds

My friends M and S feed the birds.  Daily.  Their favorites are the pair of Kentucky cardinals who regularly visit in their yard.  Mr. Cardinal is particularly friendly.

He knows when it is feeding time, and comes to the appropriate window to remind M or S when they are late.  "Appropriate" is a window where he can actually see one or another of them.

If he cannot find them in a window, he comes looking.  Into the roofed and partially screened patio.  Into the house.  Into the dining room.  Into the kitchen.  When he finds a person, he peeps a bit, then sings his melodious song.  S says, "Its as if he were saying thank you for feeding him and his mate."

One Sunday morning not long ago, S was enjoying coffee and the newspaper in bed.  She heard the cardinal's song, and thought to herself, "He's really close by.  Must be in the trees outside my window."  She went on reading.

Not much later, she felt something on her feet.  Something light-weight.  Something moving.  I'd immediately think gecko or cockroach.  Once would have thought kitten.

Peering around her newspaper, S found --- Mr Cardinal.  He'd come in through the open window in another room to remind her that the feeder was still empty.  He sang to her before she got out of bed to usher him back to the open window and the newly-filled feeder.

Smart bird.  Trusting bird.  

Give thanks for those wild creatures who brighten our lives!
Don't forget to pray.

...in the Small World Department ....

• I am an addicted genealogist.
• I have lived for many years in a rural corner of central California.  A very small corner.  
• I was born and raised in Hawaii.

While doing some genealogical research on a family that is unknown in our California community today, but which is represented by several graves in one of our two local cemeteries (not the family plot pictured here, but same cemetery)...

then found a family tree posted on the Internet including the family.  Exploring, I wandered to the anchor person on the tree ...

and found someone who was born in Hawaii.  

Curious, I burrowed a little deeper.  Lived in Waialua.  Surname Woodd.  Daughter Jennie was 7 years old in 1920.   Bells ring.  Loudly.  

My mother lived in Waialua for a year when she was about 8 years old.  Her best friend that year was Jennie Woodd.  Same Jennie Woodd?  Yes!

Jennie's grandfather was linked by marriage to a daughter of the family buried in the California Gold Country.   

I have another distant and very loose link to the community in California which I have come to love.  

The world get smaller every day.

Give thanks for friends and acquaintances who form the network within which we live and move.  

Give thanks for the bonds drawing us together. 

Don't forget to pray!