A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood...

Today dawned sunny and dry. This time of year can already be humid in Florida, but not so today. It was the perfect day to work outside and give our garden shed a much-needed spring cleaning.

Handsome and I moved everything into the yard, and then we swept the cement floor, put up a great tool-hanging system, moved a few things from the garage to the shed and really streamlined our yard equipment.

Kes spent the day staring at the shelf where we keep her retrieving dummy, and every once in a while, we'd stop our work and toss it a few times for her. It's nice to see her still moving like a puppy, but now that we've all had our dinner, she's sound asleep in her favorite spot in our bedroom...snoring like the senior citizen she is.

We've made a game of working outside during hot, humid weather. The work sessions are short, punctuated by quick dips in the swimming pool to cool off, and then back to work. Today, because the weather was cooler, we waited to jump in the pool until all our work was finished. A friend who is currently visiting his second house in Pennsylvania called to tell us it was snowing there, which made our afternoon dip even sweeter.

We ended our day with a meal featuring salmon on the grill, so I took a moment to enjoy the fragrance of the jasmine bushes in full bloom in our back courtyard. I couldn't resist taking a snapshot of the flowers which grow over a small monument that my dad brought up from the bottom of a Wisconsin lake when I was a kid. He and my mum gave it to me as a gift, and it's one of my treasured possessions. We brought it with us when we moved from Wisconsin eight years ago. I think of Dad every time I look at it, and now with the jasmine growing all around it, I can't help but smile whenever I walk past it.