I opened the door to let the dogs out this morning and a summer breeze met me.  I stepped outside and was very disappointed that I didn’t have time to have a cup of coffee on the deck…it’s not something I’ve done since moving into this house – but I wanted to do it this morning.  I live in the house my parents built in 1984…we had purchased a couple of acres together and we each put a house on it.  We built an adorable little chalet style house that we could afford and finish after we moved in.  They built a very large ranch house that they could afford and put their accumulations of stuff…it is mostly this accumulation of stuff that I”m still getting rid of….but back to the weather…My dad was a smoker and like to sit out on the deck to have a cigarette…I used to love to go over and talk to him – my mother was usually  out there with him too in her housecoat and my girls were regulars.  It’s a wonderful – peaceful memory that pulls on my heart strings..>I can still see him sitting there in his flannel (always plaid) shirt with his little melmac brown coffee cup and white saucer – putting out the cigarette he smoked down to the filter in his blue ashtray that we brought home from a trip to Louisana when I was small.  He would lean over and put the cigarette out and bend the filter because there was nothing left of the white part of the cigarette to smash out.

He loved the country.  I know this is where he found the peace…enjoying the quiet, the birds and the trees.  Tuesday would have been his 96th birthday.  I really miss him.

Until next time…..