Morning commute

My morning commute is only 10 minutes. It's a straight shot up one road and then I veer off a bit to the school road. I go by pastures and a few homes and trees and ponds and cows. I love the moon in the  morning and the when I pass the open fields I can see it very well as it sets.

This time of year, the drive starts out dark. (7:00 AM)

The hay is in!

I think about what's ahead. Usually I think about all I have to do and the little time I have to do it in. But I try to focus on the kids as I drive. I think about the funny things they say and do. For example, I overheard this yesterday:

When the day begins at school, kids enter the building and some go to the cafeteria for breakfast and some go to the gym and wait for the first bell. When the bell rings, there is a lot of traffic in and out of the gym.

The kids don't naturally align themselves into the proper traffic pattern of entering or exiting on the right side and the left side. This year we put little P.E. cones on the floor to direct them in, and out. Otherwise a lot of kindergarteners get bumped into by fifth graders trotting off to breakfast. However, some kids still cut the last cone going in and go across the threshold in the wrong direction.

There is a decorative cone-shaped neck-high plastic tree in the hall. I took it and put it in the spot where the kids tend to cut across.

Two of the fifth-graders came out of the gym. They spotted the tree.

The girl said, "That's a nice touch!"
The boy said, "I think it's going overboard."

LOL!

The day brightens fast around here. I took this picture while driving, putting up the camera, and aimlessly shooting the road ahead as I went tootling down the highway. I'd stop, but as you can see, there is no shoulder.

Today a kindergarten boy cracked me up. He's all boy, plain spoken, down to earth, loves his four-wheeler and says what's on his mind. I love him.

He had to choose 6 books for his book basket. He wanted books about puppies and snakes. We looked through all the puppy and snake baskets and he found five books he was interested in. We went through every other basket but nothing else appealed. We started to go through the baskets a second time.

Pink sky, moon set, cows wake up. (The blobs are cows)

I was started to get a little desperate. I had other kids to work with and he was taking a lot of time...and he was starting to lose his focus. I held up a book I knew other kids enjoyed, it was hilarious. But the cover featured a granny looking women scrubbing the floor. I said "Hey! This one's funny! You will like it!" he looked profoundly skeptical. I opened to the hilarious page, and showed it. "Look, she hung the Meanies on the line."

Glanced at the page, looked at me, waited a second, shrugged and said, "I ain't laughin'".

He had a point. Okey dokey then. Back to the book search!

I love morning ground fog.

It's full day when I arrive. There are a few cars lined up by the front door with puffs of air coming out the tailpipe, these are parents in idling cars with kids waiting for the opening bell so the kids can exit the car and enter their school day. I walk across the parking lot and think about all the important things I have to do. And those are: for the 2000th time, listen to the story of how the tooth fell out, ask how old they are when they tell me "It's my birthday!", say "Yes!" when asked "Do you like my dress/shirt/hair? And all in all, love on some kids.

The day has begun.

Another friend's backyard!

I had a nice visit with a friend yesterday. We ate lunch, a grilled cheese with potato salad and juice and tea. It was a hot day but the inside was cool, and we chatted and laughed. I got there just a few minutes before she arrived and contented myself with taking a few photos of the backyard while I waited.

There's a Corvette Stingray under the shelter out back. The license plate motto says "I'd rather be flying." LOL!

The odometer's measuring how fast the weeds are growing. Speedy weeds!

Former glory

Shadows and light

Shiny drums

Lucky door

Then and Now

I used to live in Gray Maine. It was a nice enough town, a bedroom community of Portland and not much to speak of for itself, other than being a "Crossroads" that all cars must pass through to get to the mountains or lakes region. Because of the pass-through traffic, lots of gas stations and convenience stores and fast food places popped up. The landscape included neon and the soundscape included horns. It was that traffic that was one of the banes of the town, though I hearit  has been dampened by the construction of a bypass. My Saturday errands used to include wading through this, ridiculous amounts of cars and trucks to negotiate around.

Gray at night, just some of the lovely neon:

But now I live in Comer Georgia. This is a northeastern Georgia county, heavily agricultural. If you have eaten chicken at a fast food restaurant somewhere, likely it was raised in Madison County. My Saturday errands look like this now:

And I am very happy.

Cow are you doing?

LOL, rainy scene on the way to church this morning. I loved it.

Morning in Colbert

I attended an all-day training for the Good News Club today and we needed to leave early. I was driving through the rural countryside here in northeast GA this morning at 7:00 and was astounded again at how beautiful God's creation is. I arrived at the collecting point, Colbert Baptist Church, and snapped these two pictures as I waited for the rest of the team. At left is the garden across the street from the church, inside of which is a small labyrinth-like hedge and a leafy overhang where we have Easter sunrise service.

The second picture is of the crossroads street where the church is located, Fifth and Church Streets. Like any crossroads, one leads to a meandering way, and the other leads to salvation.

As we piled into the car and headed out across the county, we traveled one of the best and prettiest routes in the entire area. The morning fog (mist, really) was lifting but a heavy dew remained. We passed a pertly sitting black cat wearing a red ribbon with a bell, under a leafy tree. We rode by Crow Holler Farm. We rolled past a handmade sign advertising "Okra! cut daily." A work truck promoting "Specific Window Cleaning" sat idling in the driveway. Meanwhile the dew was drying and the sun was peeking over the greening hills. The rain we received last night perked up all the greenery and the cows were let out to pasture and happily munching.

All too soon we arrived at our destination and as I went up the brick steps into the training place I turned for one last glance. I looked out over the fields, fields that are alive with growing things that will be harvested soon. I praised the Lord that He sent me to such a beautiful place, and went inside to learn how to better harvest souls for Him.

Getting the boot

Life in rural Georgia often means visual surprises. Hay rolls made into snowmen, advertising fresh corn. Escaped goats crossing the road. An over-exuberant rooster crowing us into church. And yesterday's surprise, a man's boot carefully placed on the cow pasture fence post.

Scenes from a neighbor's yard

View from here

I am so blessed to live in northeast Georgia. I awaken each day to a raucous chorus of birdsong, off-distant rooster, occasional hum of a hay tractor. As I traverse my normal route to the county seat and thriving town of Danielsville for groceries, here are a few of the scenes that I pass by.

New road cut behind the High School winds over a hill and through grassy fields on both sides. Where it ends and I must take a left or a right, this is the view in front of me.




Horses! Fields! Farms!


My driveway with the ever-popular photo of fences. It's deep in and curves so that I am far back from the road, a local road which only ever hosts tractor traffic and the occasional car anyway...

I see the devastation in Myanmar and China and in other places in Central US with tornadoes and I count my blessings. I have traveled to the Bronx, to Quito Ecuador, to Mexican border towns, and I count my blessings. I see the snow totals in Maine and the heat wave in California, and I count my blessings. I don't do that enough, so today I take a look around and I say thank you, God, for such a beautiful world and for putting me smack in the middle of the gorgeous beauty that is Comer Georgia.

360 degree view from my deck

north, east, south, west, and down, at dawn of a Saturday


Horse pasture


Meadow Baptist Church cemetary


Bert, curious


Landlord's front porch


Flowers in pots under the deck have died