Blog Your Blessings Sunday #21

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I love to go on walks with my camera in hand. The weather forecast today was for heavy rain but when I looked out the window around noon, the sun was peeking out from behind dark, ominous clouds and actually shining! I decided I had better hurry and get a move on if I wanted to get my walk in today before the "real rain " came.

I live uptown and I headed downtown on Daniels, towards the river and a park that blesses me with beautiful flowers all spring and summer. That was my plan. . . but I didn't get there. I used an alternative route to walk downtown and when I got to Mill Plain, I decided to follow where it led me going west. Got some neat photos for another day doing that. Then I came to the factory area by the river and decided to head back north on Lincoln Avenue. Still no precipitation! Ü

Along my journey, there were several kinds of flowers I took photos of but that is not what I have to share today. . . I was walking along and spotted these. . .CLICK ON TO ENLARGE AND SEE DETAIL. They are reversible, having the bird house on both sides.

Now aren't those the cutest bird house picket fences you ever saw? Well, of course the camera came out and I took one photo of the first part because I wasn't sure I could get all three because of a bush in front of them . . . found out I was wrong but it didn't hurt to have an extra. So, long as I already had one section of the picket fence bird houses, I took singles of all three sections! For this posting, I will show you just the one with all three in a row.

OK so where is my blessing? I guess you could say "that it hadn't rained and I was able to discover such nice objects to photograph" . . . NOPE! well, sure it was a blessing but not my focus today. Ü

As I finished up taking the 4 photos, I heard a voice calling me. I thought. . . "Oh oh! I'm in trouble now for invading someone's privacy or something." Being a courteous person, I turned around to face my "accuser." The lady of the house didn't look mean so I didn't have to run to escape her wrath. She carried no blunt instruments to harm me. In fact, her voice was gentle as she said, "Come here." There was a fence between the two of us so I thought, "Surely there could be no harm in this." and I headed a few yards back towards her to see what she wanted.

I walked closer and said sheepishly that I was just out taking photos of flowers and saw the wonderful bird house fences in her yard and had to get photos of them as I had never seen anything so interesting on my walks before.

I needn't have worried. . . Seems she just wanted to tell me how her husband, who was dying of cancer, had built the bird house fence. First she told me of his illness and impending death and how their yard used to have many flowers but they couldn't keep up with the work involved so had most of them removed but then her husband had made the bird house fences, modeling them after ones he had seen somewhere. They were "on a path to the garage," she said.

I exchanged a few words about how they had made my day and how it was nice to chat for a few minutes since I am learning my way around this area after recently moving uptown. I said my goodbyes and started north on the walk again, thinking how glad I had remembered her name --Donna __ and repeated it with my goodbyes to her. I know she made my day! I hope I was a blessing in hers also.

I walked three more blocks and then it started to pour down rain quite hard. Guess who didn't bring their umbrella? A couple more blocks and I saw a bus stop sign so I waited for it to come along while standing under the shelter of several blossoming cherry trees. While I waited, the rain poured down and I thought of how God provided the dry spell earlier so I could have a chance to be a blessing to the lady named Donna and she could be my blessing too! Isn't it funny how those blessings just sneak up on you when you least expect them? It was more than co-incidence that I changed my mind about walking to the park and had a chance to be a blessing to a lonely lady today. God, you are awesome! Thanks for holding off the rain and giving me this opportunity to not only be a blessing but receive a blessing from a stranger . . . I mean new friend! I got soaking wet before the bus picked me up but I hardly noticed it until I removed my drenched jacket at home, warm and out of the rain that continued to soak the earth for the rest of the day into night.